Going Bullish: A Total Waste of Time & Money

I laid out my strategy yesterday. Go partly bullish to play the retracement. Bag the profits on the way up. Reverse the position. Bag the profits on the way down to lower lows. Brilliant, eh?

Not so much. Every single long position I got into today was a loser. GGP was a particular gem! (I'm, um, no longer in that one). I guess for a bear to be a bull in a bear market is pretty bulltarded.

Not to say that it wasn't a sensational day. The sick thing, though, is that I've got a pretty severe case of the "couldas" going on, because I keep track of my former positions, and many of them have moved up hundreds of percent in price higher. Looking in the rear-view mirror is largely useless, but I do it anyway, just to torture my beleaguered soul.

At this point, I am positioned for the mother-of-all Russell 2000 collapses. If the market explodes higher tomorrow, I'm pretty much in for it. Well, not totally. I've still got a ton of unallocated cash. I've got a big OIH call position. And I've still got eighteen long positions on equities. But having a big $RUT put position with the $VIX at nearly 50 gives me the jitters.

I am going to go offline for a while now, since I am hosting a party at my house for the Biden/Palin debacle debate. I've dubbed it the Electile Dysfunction Party, and it should be interesting. I'll do a post very late tonight. But let's face it - - - the real fireworks are going to be (a) the jobs report tomorrow before the open (b) the House vote, which will take place God-knows-when (c) the reaction to the House vote, which, frankly, no one can predict.

This market is grinding all of us into hamburger. Go get a little rest.