RealMoney

The indices are mildly positive and breadth is solidly positive, but it is the trading in some of the "junk" bitcoin blockchain names that are the highlight of the action. Today it is Net Element (NETE) and Nxt-ID (NXTD) that are the big winners, but I have my eye on several others, such as Gridsum (GSUM) and Digital Power (DPW) , which need some technical work

I have some other names working well, including Veritone (VERI) , Solaris Oilfield (SOI) and Aimmune Therapeutics (AIMT) .

There is a lot of "fun" trading in the bitcoin and blockchain group, which causes a very negative reaction among more traditional market pundits. They are convinced it is a bubble that will end badly, and when you have a stock like Long Island Ice Tea (LTEA) changing its name to Long Blockchain and trading up 200%, is it hard to argue with that thinking.

Despite the ridiculous action in some of the names, I expect that "Blockchain" will be a very important market theme in 2018. It is important to understand that bitcoin and blockchain are very different things.

Blockchain is the technology that makes bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies possible. In its simple form, blockchain is simply a tracking mechanism that is incorruptible. The ownership of specific assets cannot ever be questioned, because there are ledgers across the internet that verify the chain of transactions.

The applications for this distributed ledger technology are endless, and that is why it's likely to be a theme as important as cloud computing or "internet of things". So far, this industry is in its very early phases, but companies like IBM (IBM) are moving quickly. There will be some big winners in this industry in 2019. My guess is that they are mostly unknow at this time.

The market is plodding along nicely, in a holiday mood. I'm digging for more buys. Trading like this doesn't occur that often, and we need to take advantage while we can.