NYSE, NASDAQ, GODOT

Sweet Jesus on a Biscuit......can we please get some direction? Yesterday's 148 point drop on the Dow was encouraging. But follow through? Of course not. We bounce back today by half that amount. Zzzzzzzzzz. Give us as break - literally - through one of those price lines!


Oh, a bit of housekeeping. I've made a couple of cosmetic improvements. First, at the request of a comment made to the previous post, I have reduced the number of posts displayed down from 7 to 3. That will speed up loading time and make for a shorter page to scroll. Second, I've changed the scheme of my charts to what I think is a much cleaner appearance. Let me know what you think. Oh, and in case you've forgotten, click on any chart to see a much bigger version.

Back to charts. The Russell 2000 is in the same boat every other index is - if it breaks beneath a very clearly defined support level, it's time to rock and roll. If it continues to fart around in this range, it's just going to keep boring the pants off of everyone. And if it breaks into new high territory, that's when I climb to the top span of the Golden Gate.


I bought a bunch of puts on the $XAU today based on its price position relative to its well-defined channel. A stop-loss on this would not be expensive, since we're mushed up so high against the channel.


Cardinal Health (CAH), mentioned here numerous times, is on the cusp of a breakdown. But until it goes beneath that neckline, it is a pattern in formation, and nothing more.


I found the puts on Chinese equity-based FXI were fairly heavily traded, so I acquired some today.


I mentioned McGraw Hill (MHP) as a short last month, and it has lost about 15% of its value since then.


Now, as you know, I acquired a couple of iPhones on National Steve Jobs Day, and I made a little video about it. It's a terrific product. There's a ton of wizardy and magic in it, and I'm proud to show it off.

But, Lord almighty, this thing has bugs. Bugs, bugs, bugs! And I'm not even a heavy user. I just checked, and I've used it a total of 9 hours and 36 minutes. That's decent, but it's hardly an exhaustive field test.

In that time I've tripped over a surprising array of really serious issues. Like the fact that the phone outright hangs so hard that I have to reboot it. And the lack of basic editing features, such as double-clicking on a word not selecting that word. Or the inability to insert a cursor within a word (e.g. if you misspell a word, you have to erase the whole frickin' thing and retype it instead of correcting the offending letter).

The worst bug of all is Safari crashing. Which it does. Constantly. So a typical example is like this.......you're cruising along, looking at a web page, scrolling up or down a bit. And then - bam! - it throws you right back to the "home" screen of the iPhone. No big deal, you say, I'll simply go back to Safari (the web browser). Sure, you can do that - - but you're starting at scratch again. The page you were looking at is gone.

This happens to me so constantly that I'm put off on looking at any web content anymore. It isn't just a nuisance. It basically eviscerates one of the principal reasons for having this thing!

Added to which, every time I plug the iPhone into its dock for some juice, this stupid window appears on my desktop, so I have to cancel out of it. Annoying as hell.


Luckily, someone has helped me to release some of my frustration by asking the question: Will It Blend?

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.