Editor's Note: Yikes! The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped another 1% last week, following on the heels of its 4.1% swoon the previous week. That helped add up to a 3.5% loss for the month of January, the worst performance for the blue-chip index since February 2009.

Looking ahead to next week, Todd Salamone, Schaeffer's Senior Vice President of Research, is looking for bullish signs, but he concedes that the technical backdrop has weakened considerably. He notes, for example, that the S&P 500 Index has broken below its 80-day moving average for the first time since the March 2009 bottom.

Richard Wendling of the Bear Facts Specialist Report  http://www.bearfactsspecialistreport.com/  reminds us of two things during markets like these:

1) When the market is declining (as it has this past two weeks), who is selling? The public, the instututions, the mutual funds and hedge funds.

2)Who is doing the buying? The Specialists and their System. They are obligated to purchase all of theseshares of stock at the current levelf from those investors listed above.

3) Since Specialists  don't like to sell their holdings at a loss, at some point they are going to drive the stock markets much higher so they can unload their inventory with some wonderful profits from the levels they are currently buying at.

We may have further selling in the days ahead, but technically the indices and averages are becoming very oversold, and the stage is being set for an unexpectedly buoyant rally.

In mid-December of last year, ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) announced it would buy the largest U.S. natural gas producer, XTO Energy, in an all-stock transaction valued at $41 billion. This will be Exxon's biggest takeover since acquiring Mobil in 1999. The XTO purchase provides Exxon with reserves equivalent to 13.9 trillion cubic feet of gas, or 2.3 billion barrels of oil.

From 2005 to 2008, when most of the other Big Oil companies went on a buying spree, Exxon was selling assets and adding to its massive cash hoard. Just as easy lending led to the real estate crash, high energy prices (especially in natural gas) led oil companies to expand recklessly. They started investing in alternative-energy resources like shale, which cost more to produce.
 

Once considered too expensive, as well as too damaging to the land, exploitation of Alberta’s oil sands is now a gamble worth billions.

Check out the photo gallery on this :http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/essick-photography

President Obama's State of the Union speech was upbeat and was designed to unite and placate both parties in Congress. Yet is wasn't enough to restart the "bull" market in stocks. It seemed to help the U.S. Dollar, which was more of an upside winner by default today. Gold and silver appear stuck in correction mode.

Does the stock market and commodities market have anything to celebrate in 2010, or are we sinking in another manipulated "quick-sand" of bad news and pessimism?  The S&P 500 is still down 30% from its pre-crash highs, and after the bleak start last year, the S&P 500^® Index rallied a remarkable 65% from its March 9 low to December 31, 2009. The speed and magnitude of this snapback caught many by surprise. Now the big question is: Does this rally have legs?  How about gold, silver and the precious metals stocks? Do even the "three wise monkeys "or their human counterparts know?

David Fessler Energy and Infrastructure Expert

You don't have to look around too much to find the latest buzz on renewable energy sources and the companies behind them. Since oil prices began rising and the movement toward a cleaner, greener world has gathered pace, they've become all the rage.

But it's important to note that no matter how much momentum the sector builds up, the lack of one key thing could steer this "groundswell of green" into a brick wall.