I'll just say one thing that's on my mind, since we're a safe distance from the potential ultimate top of this countertrend rally.

It is relatively easy, at S&P 842.50, to say what we'll be like at, say, S&P 1050. We can soberly declare that….

• Optimism will be rampant;
• Fear will have died away;
• Obama and Geithner will be heralded as heroes
• All evidence will point to last month as the bottom

Yes, yes, it's all too easy. Everyone can agree on the above. And everyone might think they'll be ready to pounce then.

But I'm here to tell ya, when the S&P is at 1050 (or higher), very few people will actually have the guts to short the market. Drip by drip, I'm already seeing hope and optimism infect folks, but it isn't widespread yet. We can, here in April, speculate how rational and cool and sensible we'll be in September.

But it's going to be a different world. Slope is probably going to be crowded with nay-sayers and told-ya-so'ers. There's just one slip5ham right now, but there will be fifty in here by autumn. Shorting is going to seem as out-of-fashion and foolish as it was in, oh, October 2007.

Running a bearish blog was easy earlier this year, because the bears won. We had nothing left to prove. Everything we said ultimately came to pass in spades. But the bulls are going to creep back in, horn by horn, pig by pig, and we bears are going to be the freaks again.

I'm looking forward to it. I like being a freak. But don't be so sure how bearish you'll feel when the time comes. Some will join me. Some will laugh. Most will wait and see. In the meantime, we must be patient and guileful.

I'd say this captures the zeitgeist of Slope better than anything else out there. I've shown it before, but it bears repeating.

Long ago, there lived a farmer at the edge of a small village.

One day, his best horse broke through the fence and ran away. The farmer's neighbors came to visit and give him their condolences for his loss.
"Such bad luck!" they said sympathetically.
"Maybe." replied the farmer. His neighbors were puzzled by his response.

The next day, the horse came back, and with it, followed two new wild horses.
The neighbors, hearing the news, visited the farmer again.
"Wow, such good luck you have!"
"Maybe" said the farmer.

That day, the farmer's son, while attempting to ride one of the wild horses, fell and broke his leg.
"Oh, how unfortunate!" the neighbors said.
"Maybe" the farmer replied.

The following day, a military brigade marched through the village on the way to war, drafting all the young men in the village for their army. They noticed the farmer's son's broken leg, and did not draft the wounded young man.
"Such good luck!" said the neighbors.
"Maybe" said the farmer.

I believe equity markets will fall next week, and they may fall a meaningful amount ("meaningful" being 50-100 points on the S&P). Having looked at my index charts, I believe the only thing that will continue pushing the market higher will be company after company announcing shocking positive earnings, a la RIMM. I think the odds of that happening are somewhere close to a number that rhymes with "hero."

Astonishing earnings blowouts notwithstanding, I am looking at a sea of charts that are right up against huge resistance levels.

I also see that the NZD/USD, which I used to follow religiously, is at the major 50% retracement level and is up against a crucial level of resistance.

The only bright spot in the world of equities, I think, is high-tech. A bit of a pullback would just make buying high-tech NASDAQ stocks even more compelling.

The stock market has been up solidly four weeks in a row. The Russell 2000 is up 33% in just nineteen trading sessions! If we end higher by Good Friday, I will be very surprised. I intend to hold on to most of my longs during the anticipated downturn, notwithstanding any stop-outs that get hit.

I have to run soon, but I was very quickly going through comments, and a comment from this contributor caught my eye:

I've no idea how you trade and what you trade. Have you ever got a
chance to reconcile your statements? If its bullish you've a claim, if
its bearish you've a claim.. This is more like a ponzi scheme :)..
Sorry to say that but a bit confused on the overall positioning as a
trader..

Anything which impugns my integrity catches my attention, so I want to address this at once.

I feel I am probably the most transparent financial blogger out there. I post every single one of my positions, both long and short, and these are personal accounts. I do everything except scan in and post my bank statements on this blog.

The insinuation above is that I can always claim I am winning. Complete crap! In the most recent post, I specifically wrote

At the other extreme of the spectrum is my personal portfolio, which is 100% pure, unadulterated puts. This one, cough cough, did not reach a new high today (averting eyes).

It doesn't take a genius to divine that I am getting slaughtered in my personal portfolio.

So the notion that I am running around saying I am just nailing the market left and right is absurd. The beauty of running four different portfolios is that I can see what's working well vis a vis the market. It's actually a very illuminating situation. In my IRA, I am up 723% from 15 months ago, and that overshadows everything else I am doing. Does that mean I should change all my trading to wacky little penny stocks? Not at all. That would be foolhardy.

The point I was trying to make in the prior post is that, as a trader, I am finally at a point where I can let winners run. That's a valuable skill. And that was my only point.

Now, if I am overreacting, and the general question was whether I am bullish or bearish, I think the "game plan" I've laid out repeatedly answers this. I think it's simple-minded to say one is Bearish or Bullish right now. It's a matter of timeframe. I am, in this environment, increasingly bullish. At the same time, I see many wonderful short opportunities, and I am in those positions. I would also add that I am ready to take advantage of any short-term softness, but all my attempts to do so in recent weeks have yielded nothing but losses or missed opportunities. Between now and the end of next year, I see a complete wipeout and I am so bearish that I am contemplating some very serious life changes to take advantage of that shift.

So if you really demand an answer, I guess I would say "bullish short term, but with plenty of shorts, bullish medium-term, and wild-eyed bearish long term."

Happy?