I will be traveling and meeting extensively over the next couple of days, so you can expect the frequency of my posts to go way down. Hopefully we won't wind up with the 1,000-comments-per-post that xTrends gets, but consider yourself warned.

I'll do a post a little later, but for now I'd just like to thank Gary Savage and the readers here in general for turning me on to shorting bonds. I bought a bunch of TLT puts last week, and they are doing fantastically well. Here's a chart of TLT:

This was truly "the last bubble", and I imagine Barron's cover story on being bearish on bonds helped a lot today.

I've tilted more and more bearish today, particularly with respect to precious metals. Yesterday (Sunday) I went from being long 16 ES contracts to being short 14 ES contracts, and that was a good move. Although I had a stop set at 933, my FF (Funny Feeling) Indicator told me that there would probably be a failed breakout, so I removed the stop. That, also, was the right move.

The overarching theme to my trading is that the bear market will resume in a big way. I am  not sure the rally back to the 930s was the extent of the move, which is why I still have many long positions. This kind of market demands a hybrid portfolio, so I currently am long 80 positions, short 57 positions, and long 57 options (all of them puts).

One last thing to keep in mind is that sometimes a "long" position is still bearish, such as my large positions in SRS and DUG, both of them ultrashorts.

The most common question I've been getting lately is, "how do you find trading ideas?"

My answer is disappointing. There isn't some whiz-bang site or service I use. The fact is that I have a pretty steady set of about 500 stocks that I review on a regular basis. They are obviously heavily-traded, relatively volatile issues. This list changes based on the following circumstances:

• Ideas From Fellow Slopers – my best source for new ideas is right here. If a person mentions a symbol that I don't know, I'll punch up the chart. In many instances, it will be an interesting chart, and I'll add it to the list.
• ProphetScan – I use ProphetScan on the Prophet.net website to smoke out new opportunities; what is most helpful about this scan engine is that I can exclude symbols already in my watch lists, which saves me a lot of time.
• Trimming the Cruft – I trim stocks from time to time if they have basically lapsed into unconsciousness. This doesn't happen very often, but let's face it, some stocks simply become uninteresting to trade (think of the YHOOs and TASRs of years ago; one day they're red-hot, the next they're ice-cold).

The key to my trading isn't finding symbols, it's managing them. I make judicious use of watch lists (to group them) and labels (to earmark them). With well-ordered lists, all things are possible.

I've mentioned this before, as long-time readers may recall, but I've always been bugged when I see folks eating out that are totally ignoring one another (this didn't make the cut on my pet peeves page, but perhaps it should). I witnessed this while dining with my extended family last night:

The culprits are as follows:

• "A" is the mom, who is reading a paperback book while simultaneously listening to something on iPod-style headphones;
• "B" is the son, who is also listening to headphones which may or may not be plugged into the GameBoy he is playing;
• "C" is the other son, who is playing a GameBoy as well; he is hunched over since the GameBoy is on his lap (in the manner one attempting to conceal this would do, although there is clearly no need for concealment here);
• "D" stands for Dad, who is reading a newspaper; he extends the isolation by lifting the newspaper high enough to make a little wall around himself.

I should add at this point that food was on the table, and they were taking turns shoveling morsels in their mouth……so it's not like they were waiting for food and had simply run out of convivial conversation and delightful bon mots.

What's wrong with these people? I imagine the drive to and from the restaurant was stone-silent as well (although the father probably had the good sense to put the paper down while actually driving). What a lonely, miserable existence.

I really should get back on my meds.