I laid out my strategy yesterday. Go partly bullish to play the retracement. Bag the profits on the way up. Reverse the position. Bag the profits on the way down to lower lows. Brilliant, eh?

Not so much. Every single long position I got into today was a loser. GGP was a particular gem! (I'm, um, no longer in that one). I guess for a bear to be a bull in a bear market is pretty bulltarded.

Not to say that it wasn't a sensational day. The sick thing, though, is that I've got a pretty severe case of the "couldas" going on, because I keep track of my former positions, and many of them have moved up hundreds of percent in price higher. Looking in the rear-view mirror is largely useless, but I do it anyway, just to torture my beleaguered soul.

At this point, I am positioned for the mother-of-all Russell 2000 collapses. If the market explodes higher tomorrow, I'm pretty much in for it. Well, not totally. I've still got a ton of unallocated cash. I've got a big OIH call position. And I've still got eighteen long positions on equities. But having a big $RUT put position with the $VIX at nearly 50 gives me the jitters.

I am going to go offline for a while now, since I am hosting a party at my house for the Biden/Palin debacle debate. I've dubbed it the Electile Dysfunction Party, and it should be interesting. I'll do a post very late tonight. But let's face it – – – the real fireworks are going to be (a) the jobs report tomorrow before the open (b) the House vote, which will take place God-knows-when (c) the reaction to the House vote, which, frankly, no one can predict.

This market is grinding all of us into hamburger. Go get a little rest.

It's only half an hour until the close, and only just now did I glance at the Dow Transports (tells you what kind of day this has been………….) My God! Down nearly 10% At this point, we're either at a triple bottom or about to break a major support level which would confirm the Dow Theory bearish signals in a big way.

OK, there is one thing I refuse to do. I absolutely refuse to be long calls when the wipeout comes. No way. No how. I have waited too long for this market and worked too hard to get here.

I have sold my NDX calls for about a $4,000 loss. I have acquired a substantial Russell put position. I am not thrilled with this, because (a) the VIX is ungodly high; (b) we still could be set up for a big bounce; (c) it's impossible to tell what the reaction will be to the House vote, and whether the bill will pass or not.

But I cannot stomach the notion of having my only index position be bullish and seeing the Dow blow up by 2,000 points. That's a nightmare scenario.

Setting aside all this emotional nonsense, I will point out that the Russell ($RUT) has broken a massive, massive neckline. This isn't a perfect H&S pattern, but it's pretty good, and it's gigantic. People, we could be looking at a wipeout on Friday or Monday. I hope I don't keep hoisted up by my keister by chasing a phantom here.

Add to my thick book called "Sold Too Soon" my SDP position. $UTIL has continued to move down, although it hasn't violated the 281.6% retracement which was the basis of my (somewhat hasty) sell. Anyway, I'm looking for it to bottom around here and move up to the pink oval I've drawn. Should this happen, I'll gobble up SDP again and hang on for a much bigger drop.

I will mention my "knife-catching" exercise with long positions isn't going great (although the gains elsewhere are so good today it doesn't even matter). I bought GGP and got distracted so I neglected to set a stop. A couple of hours later, it was down about 40% from my purchase price! Ouch! In any case, this waiting-for-a-bounce is anxiety-producing. I'm not sure how strong I'm going to hold on to these NDX calls. Things still look terrible out there.

This looks like a fantastic short. I actually am already short, but I'm going to buy puts as well.