My usual morning routine is:

5:30 a.m. – Son wanders into bedroom, gets me out of bed

5:30 a.m.-6:30 a.m. Catch up on emails, look at charts, tidy up house – generally be prepared for the day

6:30 a.m.-7:00 a.m. Watch the market and assess the lay of the land; consider what stops to update, if any

7:00 a.m. Well-prepared for the trading day

Today, instead, it went more like this……

5:00 a.m. – Son tries to wake me up; I tell him it's too early

7:00 a.m. – Eyes open, glance at clock, I see the market has been open for half an hour; I fly down the stairs. I see all the indexes are way down, but I have no idea what has happened the past half hour, no idea what the charts look like, and no time to prepare. ARGH!

After a very hasty glance at the index charts, I bailed 100% out of my Russell puts and IWM puts. It is very rare I screw up like this, but I'm off to a late start. The morning is good so far, and I'm trying to determine if I should go long anywhere. Feh!

This chart is, to me, a thing of beauty. We'll see how that neckline holds up under the Bernanke storm, forecast for 2:15 EST today.

Pfft, if I had drawn the Fibs on the $TRAN properly yesterday, I'd have reported that it touched its retracement perfectly. Here's the correct chart.

All my fretting today was pointless. As is so often the case, just letting the stops do their work, and let the market go where it will, is the best policy. As most of you know, since I was on a plane during most market hours today, I was really stressed out about what I was missing. But, in spite of all the ups and downs – some of them terribly worrisome – it ended up just great. This is the kind of screen I like to see on my portfolios………all red at the top (the indexes) and all green at the bottom (the net daily change for each of my positions).

I've got to say, since I'm a hopeless worrywart, I am starting to be concerned about an intermediate term bottom. Looking at the Dow 30, for instance, there's a pretty formidable Fibonacci line coming up at around 11,500, which isn't that far away. We have, after all, fallen about 1300 points in just the past month or so.

The Transports, too, are nearing a Fibonacci level, although please note this retracement series is on a much shorter time scale than the $INDU's, above.

My "purple line in the sand" turned out to be just as strong a level of resistance as I hoped. We are getting close to a channel line that – – yet again – – could represent substantial support.

Let's keep beating a dead horse here……….the $NDX is already at its Fibonacci level, and its "spinning top" candlestick suggests a pause here. What better day for a bounce up in the market than Bernanke & Company's announcement.

Oddly, the Russell 2000 looks like a good, solid short to me. I've got a bunch of puts on this, and they're doing terrific. I've tinted in green the target price level. So I'm sort of in love with the $RUT after a hiatus.

As disgusted as I was with OIH, I still watch it, and I really do wonder if we're seeing a failed breakout here. This pattern is pretty ugly for the OIH bulls. It's just one day, but it's not a good sign for them.

Lastly, my $CZH comment a few days ago (about bouncing away from that tinted area) turned out to be correct.

The following avalanche of charts I offer without commentary, except that I really, really like 'em (and have either puts or short positions on each of them).

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is going to be pretty interesting. We've got durable goods orders in the morning, then Bernanke at 2:15 EST, and them a bunch of interesting earnings (ORCL and RIMM) after the bell. I'll probably do a post sometime intraday. See you then!

Crap.

This is exactly what I was afraid of. I get on a plane during the first few hours of the market. The market takes a big dive and them recovers.

Oh, well. I'm going to quickly looking at my charts before hopping on another leg of this trip. What a waste!