And just like that, here we are, all the way back to the top.  What a week it was, I’m out of breath.  The bullish falling wedges last week on the indices resolved themselves as expect in a powerful rally, bringing the small cap index $IWM to new rally highs and the $SPY and $QQQQ to within pennies of the same.  The US Dollar $USDX took a hit this week as I expected, look for more weakness over the next few weeks as the Euro shorts get squeezed.  Materials, to which I have no exposure, led the way as the dollar fell with tech and services, the meat of my exposure lagging.  Financials put in a good showing as Goldman Sachs $GS finally made it above 160 calling the all clear for another rally into the close on Friday afternoon.

For the week, the momentum book was up almost 4%, grabbing 65 basis points of alpha.  On an absolute basis this was obviously an excellent week.  On a relative basis I am disappointed in my performance.  With my level of confidence in this week’s rally, just go and see what I wrote late last week, I should have added higher beta names to the portfolio and took advantage of a surging market.  In what I believe will be a range bound market this year, this was one of the better opportunities to put points on the board, and just keeping pace was not acceptable.

I continue to hold certain names in the portfolio which have lower correlation to the market, this served me well during the pullback but was a major crutch this week.  I’ll be giving this some thought over the weekend as energy names are setting up for a major rally.

The education space continues to be a focus of mine.  I hold large positions in Devry $DV and Capela Education $CPLA.  Both sport excellent fundamentals and are making new all time highs on great momentum.  Short term, these positions are extended, but I am reticent to sell because I believe we could easily see large upside gaps in the coming weeks.  Both names sport large short positions which are currently getting squeezed after good earnings reports.  For the love of god I can’t understand who is betting against the education industry with this country’s level of unemployment and the views of our president.

The two service sectors I’m focusing on are food and airlines both show great relative strength and good momentum.  I took a position mid week in $PAC but sold out late Friday afternoon as I had good gains and the name was extended to the upside.  I still own $ALGT which hasn’t budged in a few weeks now, I’m getting impatient, it needs to crack 54 to really start squeezing the shorts, of which there are many.  I slowly sold out about half of my $CMG position this week as it surged, but would like to add back on any dip.

Major winners this week included $CMG $DV $IPXL $MJN $PAC $F and $HAS.

Laggards this week, because there were no losers, included $NTCT $SFSF $SBAC $ALGT $CTRP and $PCLN.

New positions added this week include $INCY and $PRAA, $PAC was also added but sold before the close Friday.

Positions sold this week include $INFA $CTXS $IMAX and $RAX.  I sold $INFA dude to it being extended, $CTXS and $RAX were under performing in a strong market, and $IMAX was a wild ride after getting smacked down mid week, but after adding to the position at the bottom I snuck out with a small win.

Look, the market is extended here and needs a rest.  I’m seeing a lot of overbought indicators now, not only on the shorter term time frames, but on the daily time frames, many RSI and Stochastic readings are pretty high.  I doubt we just roll back over, but a week or two of sideways action makes sense here.

There aren’t too many times I’ll say this, because I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I’m on tilt right now, especially on the shorter time frames, the long / short book is killing it, patterns are playing out as they should given the plummeting volatility.  But while I came into this week confident as hell, I have far less conviction going into Monday morning, and I’m not afraid to admit that.  I raised a some cash Friday afternoon, above 15% now in a strong market.  My advice, if you don’t have conviction, step to the sidelines, I just don’t see the market melting up to my final rally target of 1250 just yet, it’s going to be a grind.