I've been terribly conflicted about the near-term direction of the market. The chartist in me sees plenty of opportunities for a meaningful near-term bounce. The shell-shocked human in me, who has watched the past couple of weeks, is just waiting for some other gigantic "shock" that makes the market plunge without warning.

The rational thing to do, of course, is to pay heed to the chartist instead. Given what I'm seeing this morning, bulls have reason for some short-term optimism. Because this morning…….

• General Electric announced some pretty bad financial news (their stock is down nearly 5% pre-market)
• Durable goods orders were far weaker than expected; the lowest in seven years, I believe
• Unemployment was higher than expected

And in spite of all the above, as of this writing, both the S&P and NASDAQ (as observed by electronic pre-market trading) are up decent amounts. Indeed, when the durable orders came out, the S&P (@ES0812) halved its gain from +12 to +6, but then it quickly pushed back to +10.

The date that I keep seeing mentioned is September 29; I am avoiding getting too attached to "turning points", since I know nothing about them and shouldn't base decisions on blind faith. But I do think that, given the success of what I've seen in the past, it is worth keeping those dates in mind as potentially important.

At the moment, I'm holding strong to my bearish stance on oil and gold (both of which look a little weak going into the open), whereas I'm more skittish and indecisive about equities in general.

Just a quick "one chart" post to reiterate how bearish I am on gold. Everyone keeps asking me questions like, "What if we attack Iran and gold goes to $2,000 an ounce?!?!" Good grief, how should I know? I am using the charts and charts alone. Some people really do overthink this stuff.

One of my (few) pleasures in life is the newspaper. Every morning, way before the sun comes up, I stumble out to my driveway (puppy clenched under one arm) and pick up the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Thumbing through the paper, totally alone, while eating my breakfast is usually the high point of my day.

Over the past ten days, however, I've had the same situation with papers as I've had with Slope comments – – – I haven't had time to read any of them. They've just been stacking up.

I officially threw in the towel today. I got a big cardboard box, wrote "Financial Crisis 2008 Newspapers" on it, and shoved all the papers inside. Maybe in the year 2035 I'll crack it open and reflect on the recent insanity with a different perspective.

Comments, on the other hand, I still haven't sacrified. Although it'll probably take me hours, I want to go through them all. Why? Several reasons.

• It's a great source of ideas
• I enjoy looking at the links and articles people mention
• Most importantly, it helps temper my disposition; I find the opinions here give me a much broader perspective. Did you think about this? What about that? Have it looked at it this way? I'm much rather challenge my thinking that just plunge ahead.

As for the market, it's tough right now, because it's not in the "slam dunk" state that I like. Energy (and the EUR/USD), for instance, strike me as a no-brainer. Same with gold. The indexes, however, could go either way. If they decide to go up, there's a huge amount of "up" that could happen. That scares me. Any "down" left would probably come with a short, sharp drop as opposed to more day-by-day bloodletting.

But, as Colonel Kilgore says, "Some day this war's gonna end." In a way, I'm going to miss it.

The attempts by buyers to establish a short-term base have failed. I got out of my QLD and SSO positions (the former at a small profit, the latter at a small loss) and at once again 100% in a bearish position.

If anyone's interested in buying puts on GS (because Lord knows it's a criminal act to short it now), the stop price I'd suggest is 152.35. Quite a ways from here, yes, but that's what the chart is telling me. I picked up a couple of November puts myself.