When paper money has been in circulation for about 18 months, it is usually too worn-out to be of use, so the Treasury burns it. I'm starting to think the same way about the past four months – – I have made and given back the same wad of cash so many times, I'm expecting the Treasury to request those funds for incineration.

I'm still up quite nicely for the year, but the overall amount of "up" hasn't changed for four months now, since it's just zig-zagged up and down. A day like yesterday can nuke many days of accumulated paper profits very quickly.

But I recall in the Broke movie I watched last night that one of the poker players they interviewed said that what counted was "the method, not the result." (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the idea). The general notion being that if a person loses $1 nine times in a row, and then wins $50 in the tenth instance, it is better than a person who wins $1 nine times in a row and loses $50 in the end, provided that the method being used (in the first case) is consistent. Putting it another way, if you are consistent with a method which provides you an advantage, in the end, you will win, even though waiting to get there can be miserable at times.

Having said all that, I offer DUG, which I think has a good chance of pushing to the tinted area I've highlighted. I remain short OIH, although it's a little painful this morning being so.

A couple of weeks ago, Michael Covel wrote to ask if he could send me the DVD of his movie, Broke. I said yes, and I watched it last night. I really enjoyed it! It's really well made.

For the sake of full disclosure, I'm not being paid anything for my four-word positive review – – and given the nature of this blog, I figure others might want to check it out as well. Here's the trailer, below, and here's the web site for the movie. Good job, Michael!

I genuinely try to avoid talking about "crucial junctures" any more frequently than I must, but we're at one now. Well, perhaps crucial is too strong a word, but I think tomorrow is a very important day for the short-term direction of the market. There's a big retail report coming out before the open, and a number of big firms (including Intel, after hours) are reporting earnings. So the Q2 earnings season will begin in earnest.

Today wasn't at all a good day for the bears. With the Dow up 185 points (having been down early in the trading day), and the $BKX bank index up over 6.5%, a lot of my short positions took it on the chin. My one really big position, my OIH short, I was able to exit at a decent profit, and I got into a couple of TBT longs that were good for me. But otherwise the day pretty much stunk.

Glancing at the FAZ and SKF below, you can see how July's nice progression of gains got nuked in one session, and in both cases we're sitting right on support. I got stopped out of both of these immediately at the opening bell (thank goodness).

The simple fact is that we haven't had as big an upward move on the /ES since May. If tomorrow is another strong day, it's probably back to the horrible Waiting Game, as both sides continue to wrangle each other. I had thought we had just about gotten the upper hand on this market, but today puts that scenario at-risk.

Sorry to be OIH-obsessed, but I am re-entering.

I actually started off great this morning with OIH; it zoomed up with a $7k profit, but it withered away to $2k when I got out. Oh, well. It's still a profit. So I am re-entering now at a much more favorable price than earlier today.