I feel pretty good about my bearish stance on XLE (and long on DUG). I confess I am somewhat conflicted because USO actually is shaping up to be a pretty interesting buy. I am telling myself to separate the commodity (oil) from the companies that produce, refine, and distribute it. They are two different creatures.

Although even in my remote island hideout, I'm better suited than the normal trader (two laptops, high-speed Internet) I still feel relatively "crippled" since I done have my absurdly big 30" display, a third monitor, my natural keyboard, and all the other comforts of the regular work environment. Most of all, I don't have time, and that might be a good thing. I don't have an opportunity to screw things up!

Today has been really strong so far. The "dispositions" I mentioned in my last post are all going my way. Oil is down (and DUG up), gold and silver are doing great, and equities are definitely on the weak side.

The only big roadblock I have is that Principal Financial Group, where unfortunately I am forced to trade my IRA, has been down for days. Theirs is, in my experience, the worst web site for trading I have ever had to endure, but being completely down is a whole other level of awfulness. At least my stops are in place, but I wouldn't mind having access so, I dunno, I could update my stops!

I was bugged to see this letter threatening a fellow blogger. If you want to get involved to help Mike Morgan, check out his web site. I guess anyone working at Goldman has Paulson-on-the-brain and figures they can just run over anyone that doesn't line their pockets with more cash.

Down in Jamaica they got lots of pretty women, steal your money and the trading hours are different than those to which I am accustomed. Even though we are east of Miami, they use the Central Time zone here, which means 8:30 to 3:00 trading hours (as opposed to the 6:30 to 1:00 that I work with in the Bay Area). It's nice to "sleep in" until 7:30 and not be late for the market.

My portfolio is pretty much tilted for these anticipated moves:

• Bullish on precious metals (GDX, GLD, SLV)
• Bearish on oil (short OIH, long DUG)
• Bearish, short-term, on equities in general
• Bullish, medium-term, on select equities on which I'll just keep tightening stops
• Bearish, long-term, on equities (I won't make positions until later this year)

As of an hour before the open, things seem to be setting up for a good day based on the above. I think the EUR/USD is poised for some near-term strength as well, although I'm not an FX trader. I used to think that a strong EUR/USD meant strong energies, but it doesn't seem to be that way at the moment.

I'm going to fight the urge to apologize for my far-less-than-normal posts over the next 48 hours. I'll just say again that things should return to "normal" Wednesday morning. Good luck to you; this is going to be one heck of a week.