My "two hours of sleep a night" bit is getting to me, so this won't be an especially long post. Let me just hit the highlights.
First, I'm intrigued by the newfound strength in the $IRX. It is very near the top of its range since the 9/15 gap, which suggests a (relative) sense of calm and ease is returning. Now, with a VIX nearly at 40 I realize that people aren't kicking back in their lounge chairs. But, let's face it, the Dow shooting up nearly 500 points probably calmed a lot of very nervous bulls out there, and as I've said repeatedly, a big surge is precisely what we bears need to see.
I'm not optimistic that we're going to get another turkey shoot where the VIX is at 18 and everyone thinks a full-blown bull market is back. But give me another day that's similar to today, and it'll be time to load the rifles again.
I've see a lot of smart folks pushing for a bull market in gold. I don't get it. Gold looks really sick to me. I have a reasonable number of bearish positions in gold, although I did close out my bearish silver positions today in order to wait for a hopefully better entry price.
As for oil, this is a bit of a tough one. The topping pattern is pretty huge, but the prospect of a large, very time-consuming right shoulder on this pattern is very real. It could be months before we see a real collapse. So I trimmed way back on my energy-related shorts, taking profits and stocking up on cash for our next golden opportunity. (Those following me on Twitter will recall that on the 19th I declared it the "selling opportunity of the year." Boy, was I right about that!) Anyway, if the $OIX got back to, say, 750-775, that would be pretty intriguing.
Looking at the equity markets, I'd say they easily covered at least half the ground they need to cover in order to create some great bearish opportunities. I actually got into a respectably-sized SPX put position near the end of today, although I might be early on that. I was dead spot-on getting QQQQ calls last night (and, thank God, getting out of my index puts yesterday), although, as is so often the case with my bullish positions, I sold them way too soon.
I likewise did a lot of trimming in my commodity positions. The $CRX is hugely broken, but there could be a substantial retracement at these levels.
The view from the $XAU is a head-scratcher. $130 seems to be an important support level. I think it's possible we just noodle around this area for a while. There's a pretty big range from 130 to 155, and as you can see for 2006 and most of 2007, XAU just boinged back and forth within that range.
I've tinted in green the progress QQQQ made today back to its retracement line. Like I said, we're a little more than halfway there is just one trading session. I think what would goose us up to the victory line would be the passage of the government failout.
As for the $SPX, it could be argued that we've already achieved the retracement. That bold Fibonacci line is a major one. If there's more strength to be had, I would think 1205 would be about the next stopping point.
Finally, just for fun, here's an update from the steps of the Capital building.
