2012 has started out great for equity investors (see tables at bottom of this post) and the hunt for a top has frustrated anyone who has tried as the market continues to slice through levels which offered the potential to become resistance. Of course someone will pick the top and remind us how smart they were, but for now it is a fools game to try to short this market for all but the nimblest of intraday traders. The daily chart below (click to expand) outlines prior important levels which the market pushed above and also shows some other areas to focus on as potential battlegrounds for sellers to take control, but the trend remains higher. Our job is to respect the trend and manage risk.

If the market can exceed the levels on the daily chart above, the larger level of importance to focus on will become ~142, the level the market broke hard from in 2007 and subsequently found resistance at in the first half of 2008.