Regular readers know I'm really into dogs, and occasionally I've put up pictures of me and my new pup (who is a year old now, so isn't really a pup anymore). Since he's a little white fluffball, some folks in the comments section have described my wonderful canine friend as 'gay.' Although I cannot speak to my dog's orientation (although, since he is "fixed", it is largely irrelevant), but as a rejoinder to these statements, allow me to show to you a dog sitting near me here at San Jose Airport. I hereby present to you: Little White Poodle with Dyed Pink Ears.

Awwwww, shoot. What a letdown. My iPhone isn't emailing me pictures right now.

Anyway, consider this a comment cleaner. I don't want Atilla-sized quantity of comments here.

Well, this will be my last post until late tonight. I will say that, in my view, the price of RTH is reaching "a gift to the bears" levels. I mean, how promising does retail seem in 2009?

There's 2.5 hours left in the trading day as I'm writing this closing post, so I'm not sure how things will wind up for me; so far, it's been a pretty good day, with nice gains on both the long and short side. The Fed minutes come out at 2:00 EST, so maybe that'll create some sparks.

I'll see you (late) tonight.

I'm sure this is being discussed in the comments section, but 2sweeties' RetracementLevels.com does it again. Here was the morning's retracement level, with one in particular I am pointing out:

And here's the high so far today:

Un-freaking-believable. This kind of thing has the statistical likelihood of Bernie Madoff's long-term track record, with the difference being that it's real. While I've got your attention, I am aiming to buy puts on these, assuming they exist:

AZZ
CCC
CME
DE
ECA
ENR
FLR
FMC
MLM
RTH
VTR
WMS

Just a quickie post this morning of a few interesting charts I saw this morning. First is DBA, which agrees with my view that commodities are approaching a rollover point.

A look at major individual commodities also shows them at meaningful resistance levels.

Here are a couple of new tickers I hadn't seen before that I think are prospective shorts.

Good luck today; looks like the bulls are off to a firm start.

For reasons unclear to me, in my Robitussin-induced daze last night, I decided to look at Dan Quayle quotes. Here are a few favorites:

 "Mars is essentially in the same orbit… Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun [as Earth], which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

"I have made good judgments in the Past. I have made good judgments in the Future."

 "When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame."

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

What does this have to do with technical analysis? Oh, if you only knew.

Anyway.

My bear suit is starting to feel a lot more comfortable these days. But here's the cool part – – – my longs and shorts both served me well today! My IRA, composed of a bunch of rinky-dink battered long positions, pushed to a new record today, and my shorts and puts did well too. It is very rewarding to have a mixed bag of positions and, on the whole, have them prosper on the same day.

The S&P is mashed right up against its 23.6% Fibonacci, which makes for a nice, clean stop. I'm short a lot of ES at these levels, but I don't rule out the possibility of an eventual drive to ~1050.

I haven't messed with the $UTIL in a while, but this is starting to intrigue me again.

Therefore, I might be buying some SDP soon, for the first time in quite a while.

Bonds got walloped today; just look at how fast the stochastics plummeted on this bad boy:

Therefore, some relatively newly-minted ETFs that take advantage of moves in the interest-rate markets moved big as well; HYG, mentioned here a couple of weeks back, has moved smartly higher. I don't own any, but congratulations to those that do.

As for oil, we've rapidly moved from about $35 to nearly $50. We're getting close to the 50-day moving average, which we've been beneath since mid-summer. I would at least expect a pause here, if not a drop to around $40 or so.

Bolstering the short-term bearish case on oil is the $OIX, which is approaching its 100-day moving average and 38.6% retracement, shown in bold.

Last month, I kept looking for a rise in commodities. This finally materilized, and I think this countertrend push may be in its waning days. Consider wheat:

The positions in which I have the most confidences are my gold shorts. I'm loaded up on these. I know I'm being repetitive with this $HUI graph, but it's very enticing:

I will say again, Slope is going to slow down quite a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday as I am engaged in travel and many meetings, but I'll do a post or two in the morning.