As I stare at the long list of my holdings, almost all the longs (each of them carefully chosen) is in the red, and all the shorts are in the green. It's as simple as that. Las Vegas Sands, which popped up to a 30% gain in a couple of days, sank into a loss today, so I dumped it. Plenty of other issues I bought last week have been closed out with 20% losses.

Anyone trying to peg a bottom is going to get burned. The tables have totally turned. I spent a long time Waiting For Godot, and Godot is finally here. Now it's the bulls turn to wait for years to "their" market to return. This is a bear market. This is a technician's market. The ultimate bottom is years away.

The old saying "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" cuts both ways. All the good reasons for a bottom don't count. The market is, on the whole, completely bearish for years to come. I am snuffing out the little bull that was emerging inside of me. Sure, if we plummet to 500 on the S&P or something, maybe there will be some bargains. But I am focused on shorts.

I get many emails each day, and I just received one from a gentleman in France with some questions. He asks:

+ Why do you write all this? Is it a hobby? Is it to promote your book? Is it to display a proven track?

+ Since your blog has been voted as one of the most serious, why aren't there more commercials on it?

+ We are experiencing difficult times on the stock market. I wanted to learn technical analysis to help my partner and to get more knowledge for my clients (I am a wealth manager) but I have the feeling that rules of technical analysis no longer exist and are of no help nowadays. Do you agree?

 The writer, Thomas, gave me permission to post his queries, so I thought I'd respond to these in public. So, respectively……..

• I write because I enjoy doing so. Besides that, the main two reasons I write are (1) a strong sense of obligation to my readers, whose presence and attendence here I greatly appreciate (2) the value I derive from the interactions I have with others on this board. I certainly do not do it to promote my book. I make more money in an hour or two than I've ever made from my book, although I'm proud of it and I'm glad people seem to like it. And I don't do it so show off any kind of track record, because I have absolutely no vested interest in doing so (in other words, I'm not trying to convince people to invest money in a fund of mine or something like that).
• There aren't many ads on it because I want the focus to be on the content. I really haven't tried to do anything to "commercialize" it except for some very simple basics. I have a friend who spends about an hour a day doing a video blog, and he clears a few hundred thousand dollars a year doing it. I make maybe a few hundred dollars a month from Google ads and such, which I spend on mochas. It's not for the big bucks, believe me.
• I think these are challenging times for all traders, but I think technical analysis is more valuable than ever. I think listening to pundits is (and always has been) "no help", but, for me, technical analysis is the only road to salvation.

Also, late-breaking news. Slope of Hope now has live chat! The last time I experimented with this, it didn't go well (a different product, I used that time, said Yoda). Let's see how Jabbify does for us.

We keep talking about the big range we're in, and how we're near the bottom of it, but a couple of things occurred to me. Let's pull up the chart first.

Thank you, Vanna. The first thing – – indeed, the most important thing – – the world is watching is whether we break below the lower blue line and sustain the drop. And the word "sustain" is an obvious reference to Thursday, during which time we plunged beneath the low for all of ten minutes (or six hundred seconds, if you need it to sound more lasting).

The second thing is this – – – even if, for whatever reason, buyers appear, there is a huge (dare I say ginormous? No; better not) amount of overhead supply created over the past five weeks. Notice how, with each successive attempt to move higher, (a) the push doesn't reach as far; (b) it is quickly beaten down.

The reason, I think, is that there has been a growing accumulation of owners of securities at these levels, and they're becoming increasingly despodent and eager to get out at any opportunity. For this reason, I think the odds of a meaningful breakout above these levels any time soon are becoming increasingly long.

I spent most of the afternoon dealing with the most knuckleheaded technicians on the planet from Comcast Internet. Anyway. Don't get me started. This is just a comment cleaner. I'll do a decent post tomorrow. Promise.