Son of a (Triple) Witch......

Well, what a difference three days makes.

As of Tuesday's close, things looked just hunky-dory for the bears. Although such a rapid, 400+ point drop from the Dow certainly suggested it was time for a bounce up. But the very unresolved question is whether the bounce was the contratrend in the scope of a real downtrend, or whether the 400+ drop was no more important than the one from late February.

One trend is clear - - comments are up. Even with anonymous posters shut out of the comments section, activity has been ramping up in line with the market's volatility. Big down days bring out the snarling bears, and big up days bring out the told-ya-so bulls. Of course, beanie11111 alone was responsible for 15 of the prior post's comments, so a few people are largely responsible for the activity. (And Beanie - we get it - solar, solar, solar - enough!)


Looking at the $INDU, the best the bears can hope for at this point is a double top. A neat cascade of lower lows and lower highs simply didn't happen.......today's push higher broke that theory to pieces.


If the market does continue its descent next week, the Russell 2000 is, in my opinion, the best place to play it. Not only because of the relatively decent bid/ask spread, but also because it is relatively weak in its performance.


I don't think I've ever mentioned ACL before, but this looks like one which has turned the corner from uptrend to downtrend.


I got into a short position with BEAS today, and it's a bit in the green already, in spite of the market's strength. The right shoulder of this pattern is half completed.


I shorted BTJ successfully a couple of weeks ago. It has bounced high enough for me to be comfortable re-entering this short.


Cardinal Health (CAH), a short I got into a couple of days back, is doing pretty well. It is encouraging to see stocks act weak when the market as a whole is very strong.


Constellation (CEG) has a medium term downtrend that is intact so far.


One highly liquid, low-risk short (or put purchase) are the Diamonds (DIA). A clean stop here would be 136.84


Now that Goldman's earnings are out, I think the risk is much lower to short this stock. The blow-out earnings yesterday actually caused the stock to declined, and it seems toppy enough to me - and far enough away from the trendline - to warrant another attempt.


I first mentioned CRDN as a long back on May 3rd. Since that time, it has push much higher on very strong volume. I guess the war in Iraq is actually good for this firm.


McGraw-Hill (MHP) is a new short for me, entered yesterday.


I added to my MMM puts today, based on the big rebound in the Dow. It closed the day with a nice shooting star pattern and without penetrating its prior high.


I also bought puts on another megacap stock, AT&T (T).


The rails were very strong a couple of months back due to Warren Buffett's investments there. I think it's time to sell into this strength. I sold short a block of Union Pacific (UNP) today.