The difficulty of trading this market recently can be summed up in one chart:

As has been said of Oakland, "there's no there there." The amplitude of the market has dithered its way into nothingness, and I think bulls and bears alike are eager for 2009 so that something – anything – can happen.

More dynamic has been the EUR/USD, which has had a pretty nice upswing overnight.

You can see the breakout spanning months take place about a week ago and the smaller breakout take place last night. This looks really bullish when zoomed in this close, but the conclusion is murkier when these breakouts are viewed in a greater context.

My bullishness on energy will probably be well-served by much a move (and pre-market quotes indicate so), but I think this entire week is going to be a beast of confusion. Bear with me as the question marks circle their way around my head.

So far, two heroes have loomed large in my life: Steve Jobs and George Carlin.

Carlin, regrettably, died earlier this year – – he was the subject of a blog posting I did which generated more emails than any other post I've ever done. I was reminded of the loss this morning, since the New York Times Sunday Magazine profiles the well-known whom have died in 2008. George Carlin's profile was the first. It states:

Offstage, he was a kind man who was unusually generous with young comedians. Liz Miele, who is now 23, was 15 when she wrote to 45 comics seeking advice. Two responded: Judd Apatow urged her to study English. Carlin called. He told her to keep writing, always. Four years later, they met for a soda in the lobby of the Carlyle, where he opened his laptop and showed her how he organized thousands of idea files. She sent him progress reports, and he cheered her on until two days before he died.

Carlin's values and philosophy resonate with my own thinking. I look up to him as an intellect, a master of words, and a brokenheartened idealist. He also is Exhibit A to my theory that the best Christians tend to be atheists. I still really miss him, and I'm sorry he didn't get to see the whole of 2008 unfold; I think he would have found some justice in it.

I haven't really gone through all my positions to get a sense, from a "bottom-up" perspective, of the market; I will say, however, that given the recent strength in energies and commodities, a new trading year starting this Friday, and the failure of a "terminal end" to 2008 transforming, I am tilting more heavily bullish. Simply stated, if last week's lows hold, the likelihood of a robust move higher in January strikes me as pretty solid.

This graph is, to me, particularly alluring.

My "early" positions on this bullish notion are focused in energy; I fear that, if I'm right, I may have to exit my many gold shorts earlier than I planned.

I'll see you Monday morning, in what will be another relatively quiet week; we don't really get back to normal markets until Monday, January 5th.

From just about the peak of the bubble………

A favorite bit of mine…………

None of this is to argue that low mortgage rates haven't been a plus in the housing picture. Of course they have. But the imbalance between excess demand over limited supply, resulting from tax factors and land-use restrictions, has made home buying even more profitable in recent years than has been the case in the past. Which leads to a final thought: Why not apply the same tax laws that have benefited home owners to stock market investors and home buyers? If this were to come about, even more wealth would be created in America, leading to even more new business and job creation. Tax reform to create a level playing field could boost our economy's potential to grow beyond almost anyone's wildest dreams.