Image Source: UnsplashNow that we’re in the thick of the earnings season, and with the market more-or-less making lifetime highs every day, I thought it would be helpful to reflect on some of the big indexes.On the one hand, there’s a lot of new buying power (notably, massive corporate buybacks) that are going to come back on the scene in a few weeks, (as well as improved seasonality), so maybe we’ll be at the 6,000 mark on the S&P 500 in no time. Yet, on the other hand, some of these indexes look like they’re sputtering at these lofty levels.The Nasdaq Composite is close to making lifetime highs, but it spent the week stuck at that dashed line, which represents the now-sealed price gap.The Dow Industrials remains above its nearly century-long trendline. Every single long-term measurement of stock prices I examine indicates prices are insanely, crazily, and grotesquely too high. Trees do not grow to the sky.The Nasdaq 100 is, as with the first chart, bobbing around its sealed price gap. I would suppose it is waiting for a critical mass of earnings data to figure out whether to bolt higher or break lower.I have called the Russell 2000 an existential threat to any remaining bears, and that is still true. No other index is so well-poised for a massive run-up in prices as the Russell 2000, but let’s keep an eye on that dashed blue line to see if it can muster the strength to break to a higher high. If 2025 is, after all, going to be yet another big year for the bulls, the small-caps have a lot of catching up they can do.This is in contrast to the S&P 500 which, yes, is near lifetime highs, but it has already expressed plenty of strength and has less potential room to run.Finally, the Dow Utilities has had an eerily strong 2024 propelled, surprisingly, by the AI mania. The cash index is just a whisker’s breadth away from lifetime highs itself, so pushing above the former high is a crucial and nearly immediate test as another “vote” for continued bull strength.In spite of all this, my mantra remains the same for my own trading: bearish equities, bullish silver, and that’s precisely how my portfolios are constructed.More By This Author:Facebook TrimmingsNailed China To A Tree Hang Seng Gap