I confess to being so bummed out by GOOG's blow-out earnings this afternoon (yes, I was hoping for a nasty surprise, which would be a great catalyst for the bears, but no such luck), that I'm going to change gears and offer a few long ideas I've got in the housing (or housing financing) sector. I've loaded up my IRA with about seven straight equity positions (all long), and here are a few of them.

I was going through some old files when I happened to find a copy of Money magazine from December 1999. A couple of the quotes I found somewhat amusing……….

Page 78: "Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski responded by calling Tice's criticism false, unfounded, and malicious. And the analysts following the stock sided with Tyco management. At least three of them strongly recommended buying because of the drop, projecting target prices of $75 to $80 per share. Tyco's accounting issues are far different from cases of obvious impropriety in which a company is covering up fundamental problems…if you liked the stock at $51 a share, you've got to like it even more at its recent price of $44."

 ……and this one……

Page 129-130, The Sensible Internet Portfolio – included recommendations such as CMGI, Exodus Communications, Inktomi, EarthWeb, and Ariba

Well, maybe I shouldn't freak out too much just yet. After all, IBM had killer earnings yesterday, and I thought we'd be in for a horrible day today, but it wasn't so bad. Still. I was really hoping for GOOG to blow up. "Hope" is a lousy basis for decisions, though, isn't it? But this week is going to be even more loony than usual, with index options expiring today and equity options expiring Friday. But the "thrills" this week are over. All the big earnings are done, and there's absolutely zippo economic news tomorrow. So with that, I bid you a slightly tearful adieu until tomorrow!

Well, the long-awaited GOOG earnings just came out, and I've got to believe from the bid/ask that it was a blow-out quarter (or at least a relief). The after-hours quotes are showing a gain of over $50 per share in price, which is over 11%. Amazing!

As always, I keep my positions on any given equity very small. My GOOG put position is going to get trounced, but c'est la vie. More generally, this is a (sigh) fairly bullish sign, because everyone looks to GOOG as a bellwether.

There are an abundance of momentum-driven stocks in the world of commodities. One day they'll cease their ascent, just like all stocks eventually do. Maybe it'll be today. Maybe it'll be in a year. I have no way to know for sure.

These are astonishing climbs. Those individuals who have been long these stocks over the past year or two have made huge percentage gains. For those (like me) who keep trying to tilt at these windmills……….good luck. It ain't easy.

Well, I'm so disheartened about about the past month that I view any dip down with grave suspicion. But at this point, I'll take any red on the screen. As of this writing, in spite of IBM's great earnings yesterday, most of the big indexes are down about 1% or even more. Even confounded OIH is down over 1%.

The teal, magenta, and yellow tinted areas noted below on the IWM all representa  series of "higher highs" whose pattern must be broken in order for bears to prosper. GOOG's earnings after the close today will, I believe, be an important psychological next step for this market. One way or another, I think GOOG is going to make a big move.

Having read the comments section from yesterday, I can safely conclude this: if the bulls versus bears was a physical fight, we would win! Bears are pissed off!

Ah, well. At least it looks like we'll get a smidgen of relief at the opening bell. After IBM's earnings came out yesterday afternoon, I was fearing another triple-digit point higher on the Dow at the opening bell. Today is also a big earnings day. And of course, the monster of all monsters – GOOG – reports about 3 milliseconds after the closing bell. That will make an interesting show, for better or worse.