Yesterday was great (up 3.75%) and today wasn't so great (down 1.5%). I pointed out in last night's video the import of staying below 8,000. True to form, the bulls "undid" the sub-8,000 market and gave the Dow 141.53 points.

The graph below shows an important contrast – – back in November/December of last year, we were feasting on a range in the S&P which was simply gigantic – over 210 points! Recently, even at the most extreme ends of the range, we're dealing with an opportunity one-third of that size. Puny! So it's much harder to make profits on any big moves.

I have a much less aggressive /ES short position now – a mere 10 contracts, with a stop at 849. Looking at the daily candlestick graph (as opposed to the minute bars, above), the chart seems more bullish than bearish. The whole world is waiting for the Recovery Plan+Bad Bank news this month, and until that's announced and vetted, we're all just playing guessing games.

My guess is that, years from now, the Recovery Act will be equated with the Patriot Act. That is, a gigantic boondoggle put together hastily based on a supposed need for expediency. Corners will be cut, liberties will be infringed, and countless billions will be wasted. But in the WalMart/Paul Blart Mall Cop world we inhabit, hardly anyone is sensible enough to know better. So the gubmint is going to give the masses what they want.

In the meantime, we watch, and we wait. And we keep our stops fresh!With a market this uninteresting, I have no broad things to say. My positions speak for themselves, and as you know, I simply increased the size of my positions today for those charts in which I have particularly large amounts of faith.

It looks like a foregone conclusion that – – once again! – – the sub-8,000 on the Dow will not hold. The bulls score another win.

OK, I at least honed in on twenty symbols I like so much that I decide to increase their position size (that is, I bought more puts – these are all existing bearish positions I am augmenting).

I set out to go through all my charts and pick out my 20 favorites and show those, 5 at a time, in four posts today.

I failed at this task, because even with so many positions, I can't pick out 20 favorites. Virtually all of them are beautiful, and it would be a false distinction for me to call out any particular ones as extra-marvelous.

Here' a funny anecdote, though. A friend of mine, who is a frequent commenter on this blog, emailed me to tell me Steve Jobs' house was surrounded by black SUVs. Being the intrepid investigative journalist that I am, I hopped into my car and raced over there. By the time I arrived, there was just one black SUV left – – a gigantic Lincoln Navigator with a large and somewhat dangerous-looking chap inside – – parked at a discrete distance from Jobs' house.

I'm not sure if there's been a threat of some kind or if there is just a particularly aggressive landscaping service surveying the lawn to put together a quote for the Jobs household – – but I didn't feel like taking a picture of the scene for fear of having my iPhone involuntarily inserted into an unsuspecting orifice. So you'll just have to take my word for it.