I appreciate everyone putting up with my absence this afternoon. I remain handicapped, since I not only am away from my computer, but the one that I do have has a letter that does not function (the letter, by definition, I cannot type to you, but it is the first letter of my last name…..so I'm discovering how many words have this letter and I am having to be very creative in coming up with synonyms). Grrrrrrr…………

So, now that I am dealing with a 25-character alphabet, and a lame-o little laptop, let me pose this question: what do you imagine are some extraordinary things that might happen in our society if equities wend their way down from their current levels down to – I dunno – 6,000 on the Dow over the course of a few years. I am no speculating on the effects of a crash; I am opening up the idea of a multi-year grind down, as I've often postulated.

And I'm not that interested in hearing about pitchforks and torches. Some ideas I have include:

• Renewed violent acts directly associated with financial distress;
• Multiple congressional sessions where "wrongdoers" are dragged in front of television cameras and made to wring their hands (such as we did with all the Wall Street types about nine months ago, as well as the auto manufacturers who flew in on private jets, and so forth);
• Similar congressional sessions where Federal Government members themselves are forced to wring their hands in front of a bloodthirsty public (Geithner, Bernanke, and so forth)
• A totally surprising political shift, such as what now seems beyond imagination – – Obama as a one-term president.
• Cramer getting fired or – even more extreme – CNBC shutting down altogether.

I would be interested to hear your ideas. I would also be interested in a fully functional keyboard, but you can't help with that. {Note: how did I manage to use the letter k when it is missing? I found a page that had it and did cut/paste; I am truly the MacGyver of broken laptops).

I have a series of meetings to attend, so I'm not going to do a post for a few hours. Strange day on the market today, eh? Absolutely no news, a major market holiday (volume-wise), and yet big gains all around. Good thing I had all those long hedge positions; those were a big help!

Anyway, there are a ton of great comments, so tawk amongst yerselves, and I'll do a post late this afternoon.

The drop, consolidation, and resumption upward has been seen many times before. Just look at the start of this month (the red circle near the center of the graph). But does the trendline break mean this time it's different? That's the million dollar question.

I'm pretty surprised what a lame-o reaction GLD is having to the strength in equities; it looks like the dollar's strength is getting the best of it. So far this morning, equities are strong (The Dow is up well over 100 points, and all my index quotes are green); as you can see below, SPY is kicking GLD's hiney. I'm throwing my GLD long under the bus, at a modest profit from Friday, and I've taken some handsome profits in DIG and SSO. I'm holding on to all fourteen of my lottery longs – – the sixteen in my 401-k are all in the green (the two extra being OIH and GDX, both long as well).