In this weekend's post, I wrote, "Zooming in to the intraday level, however, you can see how technically
perfect all this price action has been. An ascending wedge, a break,
and a perfect retracement to the underside. I would be very, very
surprised (and disappointed) if we didn't see a down day on Monday."

Well, I was neither surprised nor disappointed. I got the "one-two punch" I was hoping for…………a drop across the board in oil, gold, and equities. The notion that these are inversely correlated is, in my opinion, total nonsense, and I am positioned as such. Today's 241 point drop on the Dow was welcome, and the last three days of this week are packed with important economic reports.

Observant readers may notice that my performance figures have dropped from something like 95% to 77%. The reason for this is that we've changed how this is calculated. Last week, a reader pointed out what he felt was a mathematical flaw in the calculation; I agreed, and I asked an engineer to correct it. This has been corrected, but still, the figures shown are not bad! Please keep in mind my caveat about this figure, no matter what it says.

Today I'm simply going to show you my favorite current positions. I've got a total of 109 – – yes, 109! – – positions, every single one of them bearish. But here are my jumping-up-and-down favorite ones………

No, no, not you. (Unless you're Ned). Me.

In spite of my three rules being very simple and easy to understand, I tend to blow it on the second rule ("never do an ad hoc close") way more than I should.

This morning I closed out my IWM and SPX puts (both at a profit) simply "because." Well, to be fair, the reasons were more than that, but none of them were based on technical analysis. I am a genius at justifying why I should sell certain positions; some of you might hear yourselves with this kind of self-talk: "Well, the market is down a lot this morning. I should take a profit while I can. And these are September puts. You don't want to hold onto September puts, do you? After all, these are the only Septembers you have. If you sell these, you can take your profits, and you can be devoid of any Septembers. Wouldn't that feel good?"

About sixty seconds after I sold these, the market plunged another 100 points.

I am writing this not just to bellyache or self-flagellate, but to say that even with an "expert" like me who has been doing this for a couple of decades, screw-ups still happen.

And, setting all this aside, let us remind ourselves not to become enamored of the material things of this world. Love and truth are timeless. Beauty fades……….and can even become terrifying.

It seems anything with the words "Central" and "European" has a pretty weak future ahead.

I'm glad to see that Slope isn't the only corner of the web dedicated to giving the citizens of the United States at least a 3rd grade education when it comes to spelling, grammar, and syntax.

This has nothing to do with charts, I realize, but I'm still recovering from seeing the ridiculously dishelveled and rumpled Mayor of London at the closing ceremonies last night, looking like a buffoon as the elegant and poised Chinese Premier and IOC Chairman passed him the Olympics flag. Wow.