Panic for Everyone - Buyers and Sellers

Well like I said, sell at the open. It was the right call, you just had to be at a computer to buy at noon. The open told you it was something to sell because of the news combined with the apathy attached to it. About 11:00 central time we finally had the crunch that would have been the open I was looking for to buy. You were down from the open to low point over 400 points on the DOW in about 3.5 hours. You had the capitulation selling that had to come. So you had panic on the downside and the short coverers came in at those huge technical levels. I know this because the stocks that started moving higher first in the stocks I follow on my ticker screen were the most heavily shorted stocks. After the short coverers came in, the buyers took it as a successful retest of the lows and they started buying and all panic broke out with a stampede to the upside. Unless your a hard core trader you probably saw all this and just got a dazed look. There is nothing really rational about any of it. In fact it shows how sick the patient is. It is like seizures on the operating table. The market isn't healthy when it trades like this even if the movement is up. GE added over 22 billion dollars of market cap from 1 o'clock. Are you kidding? I am not a trader and didn't really do anything except right at the close (literally the last 30 seconds). I put on a "trade" bet going short an index. I usually don't "trade" but this is a true trade based on probabilities. If the market starts moving up substantially tomorrow I am out. I just like the probabilities that after a 900 point rally in 2 hours or 11.25% on the biggest exchange in the world that I will get a chance to cover my short at least a little lower.

The bigger question is where from here? After this 900, 11.25% rally in 2 hours we are dramatically back to where we were at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Wow, talk about volatility. The stock market guys are pounding this as a successful retest throwing terms out there like triples bottoms and reverse head and shoulders. At some point the market is going to get ahead of the bad news and we will rally hard for many months even as more bad news pounds us. As I have said I thought the October lows was it. Now I don't really know. This is still either a digestion of the October lows setting a base or that trading range that I felt was verified on Monday with the first lower low of the rally from October. All that is a bumbled mess of I really don't know. I was very vocal on Tuesday that I thought we were going to retest the October lows and it could happen very quickly (it happened quicker than even I thought). If we break through 940 to 950 (which is my stop loss on my index short I put on right at the close) I think you can forget about the October lows for awhile, at least like a week. lol The patient is just sick.

Oh one other point. The rally started about the time President George Bush started speaking. Now I am not crediting the rally to that, it is probably more coincidence but it was the first speech from him or anyone in government that I have heard that was motivating, instilling confidence, gave me hope. It was all about capitalism and other great crises and America going to get through it. It was about the market working things through and working things out. Where was this 3 months ago, 6 months ago? Every time I have heard George Bush speak in the last 6 months it was like deer in the headlights. In fact it was playing in the background and ignored the first half of it until it just started drawing me in. It almost made me want to buy. That probably had no impact on the market rally but it was curious of the timing. Unfortunately, especially since he will be seeing the exit door very soon, it is to little to late.