Today is one of those days where we are seeing breakouts galore in the sector and outperformance with the $SPX up .79% and the $BKX up 1.6%.

Here’s a few studies from the StockTwits Charts Stream which highlights the goodness:

1. Citigroup ($C) gapped 4% higher on the first day of the trading year and has not looked back. It now trades up 25% YTD and crossed 50$ this afternoon for the first time since January 2011.

@rafitax captures today’s gap, flag and rip that represents such strength simply and clearly:

2. @swingtradealert succintly describes the move in Goldman ($GS) writing, “Clean break out above trend line. Looks beautiful to those who are in it…” Indeed:

3. @traderstewie has been all over Bank of America ($BAC). He notes, “powerful move. Wants 14$,” and posted this chart capturing the inverted head and shoulders, the clean break out and today’s follow through also making two year highs:

4. The regional banks are also breaking out and to some they offer less exposure to too big to fail risk. @ivanhoff posted this one of  The Regional Bank ETF ($KRE) now making 4yr highs:

5. Popular ($BPOP) is one regional in particular worthy of note. It has been going sideways for 3 months and looks about ready to break above the horizontal channel. Here’s @NextTrade1122′s $BPOP chart for your consideration:

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All goodness for the peoples. Have a great weekend….

$SPY $FEZ $ILF $USDJPY $TLT

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There’s one great lesson for newer traders in the price behavior of gold and Apple that is easy to understand but more difficult to respect.

When an asset that has had a great run breaks, its broken, and there is not enough wishing in the universe that can ever change that.

$AAPL $GLD

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Executives at large companies who observe the broad market making new highs and their own stocks doing well will have a tendency to grow more confident in the economy and their own businesses and confidence has been sorely lacking.

This, in turn, might lead them to be more aggressive in conducting business and, importantly, to do more hiring than they might have otherwise. More hiring would positively affect the economy, increasing consumer spending, confidence and the like.

We may also see reflexive investor behavior. The market goes up and people become more attracted to it as they observe others increasing their wealth. This, in turn, leads to more investors getting involved and further increases in equity prices.

Last Friday’s employment numbers are a critical part of this virtuous reflexive dynamic..

The numbers improve and executives shift, again, ever more from the fear posture towards the aggressive posture where they are more likely to make new hires in turn leading to an improving employment picture…

Reflexivity at your service…

Related:

Reflexivity and New Highs

Reflexivity, Financial Markets & Economic Theory

$DIA $MACRO $FED

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$SPY $TLT $XRT $CMG et al…

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There’s an elasticity of scale that I think $FB has reached that will protect it from mass exodus from the platform no matter how many ads they paste to its pages.

Its so huge that it doesn’t matter anymore if the cool kids migrate elsewhere because it has secured so many graphs that are intertwined and the cost of leaving now outweighs the cost of a deteriorating user experience.

This is a profound achievement – scale as an elastic factor.

Instagram, however, while its getting really big (100m active monthlies), has not necessarily reached this level of scale. I use the term necessarily because really I have no idea how big it needs to be to ensure scale as an elastic factor though I am sure Zuckerberg has a pretty good feel for it.

There must be immense pressure to begin monetizing Instagram.

Meanwhile, the experience without such meddling remains simple and magical so it will grow and that growth will serve as a positive feedback loop and inch it closer to being immune from mass migration away from it.

Zuckerberg has resisted the pressure to monetize Instagram and he will continue to until it surpasses escape velocity and that is long term smart.

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Basically, you can pull one all nighter, do the best work of your life and become famous like Ackman or Einhorn. Its that simple.

Here’s the contest detes and sign up HERE.

And here’s Joel Greenblatt offering some last minute advice if you’re game:

Follow The Sohn Foundation on StockTwits & Twitter.

Josh Brown and I will be at the conference and live blogging of course. Should be great!

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