After establishing new advance highs early Thursday, the indices have pulled back a bit, first by reversing most of the early Thursday gain and then by reversing an early gain on Friday as well.
Still, the indices continue to find a way to press higher while leaving behind only small pullbacks.
From a long-term perspective, there are some interesting things taking place.
If we look at the extent of the advance off the ultimate low that was recorded on the NDX in late 2008, price has now retraced 78.
5% of the 2007/2008 decline.
This is essentially the maximum retracement that can legally occur if a move is to still prove corrective.
We're already firm believers that this enormous year-long advance is not a corrective move, but many Elliotticians still call it one.
Now, price is right at a point where it can prove it isn't corrective with certainty.
Any further strength on the NDX would leave us with a recovery that is too big to be called a correction by any rule-following Elliottician.
And that's important because the vast majority of Elliotticians out there are still looking for a bigger bear market decline off the 2007 highs.
Either way, we remain confident that this year long advance is ushering in a bigger bull market advance.
On any shorter time frame, we still have no objective reason to doubt price's ability to continue firmly higher from here.
Yes, the move is incredibly overextended and yes, there doesn't seem to be much behind it in regard to the real world.
But as you know, price movement is all that matters.
If price goes up, the bulls win, regardless of anything else.
More specifically, we know that price movement takes on a certain form before any given pattern completes.
And in that respect, this upside pattern does not appear complete at this point in time.
Additionally, this advance has to have earned our respect with its persistence.
Until the nature of the move changes, we have to expect more of the same ahead.