If you're thinking, as I am, that BIDU is the happy recipient of the GOOG upsurge today, you might want to look at this graph. The price is precisely at the Fib retracement and is sporting a spiffy little doji. I'm buying puts.

Although as of this writing OIH is a little off its intraday high (208.52 was the high, and it is at 207.24 now), the rise has been astonishing. Ever since 9/11 (which, weirdly, seems to be just about the low of this market – – – whoever thought war would create cheap oil???) OIH is up about 340%.

I am not sure how much stock to put into Fibonacci extensions, but just for the hell of it, I decided to see where the extension would take OIH. The answer is 233.55, which frankly at 12% away is only a couple of strong days away (the OIH is up about 8% today alone). Gawd.

I am awestruck by OIH. It seems to have no upper limit. Ugh.

The one bright spot today as been ISRG. This stock had a huge run-up over the years.

As of today, it's taking a wallop. This could be the start of a fundamentally major downturn for this stock, but for me, I'm happy taking my profits, since this stock has, in a single day, been pushed all the way back to this medium-term trendline.

As for OIH, I'm going to embrace my inner idiot and simply hold on tight. 

Well, this doesn't look to be shaping up like any kind of momentous day in bear history. For bull history, however, it should be a doozy. Especially for the lucky ducks with GOOG calls.

JakeGint pointed out, just for laughs, some of the ungodly percentage gains some people are going to enjoy with April GOOG calls. One example has a particular call going from 50 cents to probably around $34 or so. In other words, $1,000 becomes $78,000 overnight. Yeesh. Of course, there's some other poor s.o.b. on the other side of that transaction. In any case, fortunes will be made and lost today! GOOG is trading pre-market where the red circle is drawn:

My, errr, single put on GOOG (May 480 puts) will not enjoy a 78-fold increase in value. You probably figured that much out already. But, as always, my commitment on any one position is small. To help compensate, I at least have two puts on ISRG (May 350 puts) which will ease the pain quite a bit. ISRG is trading where the red circle shows. I imagine I'll sell one straightaway and just keep the other one to see what happens.

Another bright spot – and God knows these days I need 'em – is that gold and oil seem to be headed for a weak opening. Most of my positions are short gold or oil in some way. Here's where GLD is trading, for instance, prior to the open (red circle):

The overarching concern I have is whether our hopes for a bear market have been a fantasy this whole time. A deluge of bad economic news seems to have been shaken off. So we had first quarter earnings as a possible catalyst. Well, with the exception of GE, that hasn't worked out at all. Earnings seem to be perfectly fine to investors. So with the IWM trading at the upper reaches of its 2008 range (see red circle below, pre-market indication) we are at a high-risk level. A breakout above 2008's range would be a wreck for the ursine types.

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!