This is just a quickie post. As you know, I rarely watch CNBC, but I was curious about today's testimony. I'm watching Ron Paul rip Bernanke a new one. Thank God for checks and balances in our system.

By the way, I am a very weak hand with respect to my SSO and QLD long positions. I am willing to exit those like a shot. These are strictly day trades. I believe the next big plunge is coming within the next couple of weeks. The LunaTicks blog has some interesting things to say about timing, and I appreciate the time the writer has put into his blog.

I am going long via QLD and SSO right now. I am counting on a bounce until late this week. I will discuss this more later.

As for the $UTIL trade, it's going super.

The target is the pink zone. And I am taking advantage of this by means of XLU puts as well as the relatively thinly-traded SDP, of which I own 2000 shares.

Although it seems to me that the act of posting a comment is very straightforward, I've received more than a few emails from people asking how to post a comment (and even where to read comments!). So, a few quick tips and remarks:

(a) To read comments for a post, simply click on the title of the post itself (in this instance, the hyperlinked subject at the top, "A Comment on Comments"). You will see the comments at the bottom of the post, if there are any (and there are usually a bunch).

(b) To participate in comments, you need to be signed up with Disqus, which is free, of course. You can sign up at their web site in just a few moments. Please take the take to give yourself an avatar (the little picture that appears next to your name) to give you a bit of street cred.

(c) Also, take a moment to read my page on comments and community. It will help you and everyone else here. Thanks!

Well, I guess the big news after hours is that Warren Buffett is buying up $5 billion of Goldman Sachs stock. After-hours on the GLOBEX, equities markets are being pushed higher (not "crazy" higher, but the equivalent of "someone had good earnings" higher).

It was a really good day, and my oil/energy/gold bearishness worked out decently. My day trades on index puts were where the real gravy was, though. I ended the day with only one index position – – a relatively modest block of $NDX puts. I also trimmed quite a few positions including, importantly, my SKF holdings.

What's amazing to me is how much the battered "near-death" stocks have been doing. I haven't traded them at all, but those who have been doing so nimbly DWARF any gains I've got going. These stocks have gained hundreds of percent in a matter of days!

What's interesting to me is how uncertain so many folks are, including those who are usually drenched with certitude. Even Elliott Wave International (at last reading) was essentially saying "it could go up or down at this point!" I agree with Gary Savage that the potential gains to be had from a crash are outweighed by the potential losses from a steady surge higher, which is why I'm doing something I normally don't do – – – confine most index trades to intraday.

Looking closer at the S&P 500, we can see that about 2/3rds of the Thursday/Friday surge has been eliminated, but the risk here is that Congress works something out with Paulson. Isn't it funny how trading has stopped being about earnings flow from corporations and now has almost everything to do with politics? As the old saying goes, don't confuse a stock with a company.

I had a short, wild ride on QLD today. I'm out, obviously. What's mildly interesting about the QQQQs right now is that they are beneath a pretty important Fibonacci level. Indeed, with all the tumult it's easy to forget this, but the NASDAQ 100 closed at the lowest levels of the year, with the exception of last Wednesday.

Regular readers probably have gathered I'm a bit of a movie nut. Let's relax a few minutes and enjoy some of the hilarity from the start of Annie Hall. Good night!