My portfolio took a 5% haircut today. That's no surprise, considering the strength in both equities and commodities. Oh, well; not every day can be a winner!

I have been very absent from comments lately, so please don't be insulted if you think I'm ignoring you. I'm not. I don't even have the chance to ignore you, since I'm not there! I am simply mired in other activities.

As was the case yesterday, I don't have a tremendous amount to say about the markets; there simply isn't much from a technical perspective happening. It was interesting to see AMLN, which I've mentioned a couple of times in this blog, take a 25% tumble. Sometimes it takes a little while for a stock to finally succumb to technical forces. Needless to say, that horizontal resistance line proved important.

The markets continue to be in F.I.M. (Farting Around Mode); here we see the Dow 30 biding its time beneath its busted wedge. Snore.

The Russell was up percentage-wise more than most indexes, but it hasn't broken its modest series of lower lows and lower highs.

A variety of issues that were severely battered by the credit crisis have, over the past several weeks, been up in some cases even hundreds of percent. FRE and FNM have been very strong this week, but to my eyes, this is nothing more than another lurch toward that sharply descending trendline.

I have been quietly accumulating a large position in DUG; this isn't a money-maker yet, and I've got a stop at that red line you see.

The "Jesus Pattern" of ANR (click on Present Chart to see it more plainly) isn't spiritually inspirational yet. A push above the high set early in August would take me out of this position. At least the volume has been withering away.

I am, however, pretty pleased with GOOG. In spite of some big strength in the NASDAQ, GOOG has been sinking. Some overall weakness in the markets could push this back into the three hundreds.

That's it for me today; I'm not trying to squander the wonderful traffic I've built up over all these months with lame posts, but today just doesn't call for any more commentary. And with that, I shall return to my work! See you tomorrow.

Phew, not a very good day for the bears! Ouch!

I'm not too shaken up by the charts I am seeing, but I will note, as I did yesterday, that some of the financials may have been battered enough to mount a rally. MER in particular, based on the retracements, looks enticing. I'm not going to act on it, but I wanted to share the chart.

Looking at the Russell 2000 (and, ergo, the IWM), it seems to me we've returned to June 16th. We're in a situation in which:

1. we surged inexplicably above the retracement line;
2. we broke a countertrend rally;
3. we fell back;
4. we surged again, but not as high

If we are simply repeating this cycle, what we expect to see next, of course, is a trip back to plunge-land. That would be nice. This morning has been pretty rocky so far; I was stopped out of XLU, FINL, DVN, ANR, FLR, and CMP.