I've linked to this before, but it is worth watching again. Watch Jon Stewart skewer CNBC. My favorite part? The Maria Bartiramo bit – – brilliant.

It was a pretty "clean" day for /ES trading. In spite of the chop, it's quite evident that, recently, we've been range-bound between 670 and 700 (plus or minutes a few points). This makes for some relatively low risk/high reward trades. At this immediate moment, I'm long 10 /ES with a stop below 670.

It occured to me we may be looking at a diamond-bottom on the /ES on a short-term time scale. This might give us the firepower to make a lunge higher out of this range.

Earlier today, when I posted about how great my gold shorts were doing, SnPMonster asked what my technical reasons were. I hurriedly said I didn't have time.

Some people might have interpreted this as meaning (a) I didn't have good technical reasons; or (b) I had no idea what I was doing. If nothing else, I didn't mean to be rude about it; I honestly didn't have the time.

I will say, however, that looking at these charts of gold (the commodity itself) and $HUI, I am very comfortable with my bearish position. I've reconsidered how low gold might go; it might only get to the low- to mid-700s; the high 600s is a bit more of a stretch.

The main point I want to make is that, although I'm a pure technician, I'm a terribly simple-minded one. My methods are very elementary. I just try to use them very, very well. So don't mistake the lack of fifty indicators as a lack of knowledge. I simply think the vast majority of technicians confuse complexity with competence.

When I was a teenager, I wrote about twenty published books about computers (beginning with The World Connection back in 1983, when I was 16 years old). I didn't write a book for a long, long time until Chart Your Way to Profits, which came out a couple of years ago.

Why do I write books? Well, as a kid, it's so I could have cash for ridiculous things like a Porsche (a seriously stupid move) and pay my way through college (less stupid). But that's no longer the reason. I made more last night on a simple move in the /ES than I have from the entire Chart Your Way to Profits income stream. So Lord knows it's not for the money.

I mainly do it because I enjoy it. As it is now, I don't know where I'd find time for another book, but I've got a few ideas I'm kicking around. I'd love to know which one youd' be the most interested in buying. Generally speaking, the ideas are:

• The Slope of Hope – a retrospective, drawn largely from this blog, of the 2005-2008 financial markets. I think "repurposing" a lot of the material from thsi blog would make a pretty fascinating chronology and would yield a lot of good lessons in trading;
• We Want Our Money Back!– profiles of all the investment bankers, Countrywide Loan-types, World Savings-types, and other ne'er-do-wells and the compensation they extracted from the bubble; the kind of populist rile-em-up book that makes for an infuriating bathroom read;
• Advanced ProphetCharts Trading – not the real title, but basically a deeper-dive into ProphetCharts with some of the newer features, including retracement levels, pattern recognition, candlesticks – – kind of a Chart Your Way to Profits, Part Deux

Here's an easy poll to tell me your preference:

As a follow-up, a couple other ideas I've got are……….

• Just A Minute! – the Modern Man's guide to lovemaking; and
• Oh My God, It's Coming Toward Us – Tim Knight's guide to fitness and fashion

I have been jumping-up-and-down bearish about gold since last week. These positions are doing extremely well and constitute virtually 100% of my profits today. I am delighted, and I think gold has a long, long way to go down. I've received a fair bit of "are you kidding?!?!?" emails from gold bugs (and Gary), but I'm stalwart in this position. Gold's going back to the 600s.