Don't worry about genius. Don't worry about being clever. Trust to hard work, perseverance and determination.
-- Sir Thomas Treves

Charts and Table Zup on my site...

Good week for headlines. Huge up day or two in the market. The government will back up everything and everybody. There's a mortgage rescue plan. There's a plan to kill all the short sellers and speculators. The price of oil falls precipitiously.

The worst is over!!!

NOT!!!

I see it differently.

Headlines about huge up days are about today and yesterday and earlier in the week. Lookie here...CLICKIT!!!



Looks to me like if you sold anything or everything somewhere between Halloween and mid June, you'd be ahead and maybe by miles. Even bonds look like crap. So far the reversal barely shows.

Yeah, the government has some plans. Plans to float the whole mortgage/credit mess on money taxed from you (out of your pocket) or printed from thin air (welcome to inflation; a more genteel and harder to trace picking of your pocket).

Speaking of speculators, Lookie here....CLICKIT!!!



This is a chart of a commodity index. The trend is obvious. So is the cause. The recent speculative spike as everyone rushed to the other side of the boat is obvious too. If you had a dollar and knew how, you HAD to be invested in the last part of the market to go up. Now what is not obvious is how much the demand destruction that high prices cause will deflate the high prices. I'm thinking that prices will sink back to or through the long term trend channel I've drawn. But the reasons and imperatives that created the channel exist even with the speculators slapped back. I think that back to the trend channel is probably where prices will ultimately go.

Finally, going short is what is keepin' this poor ol' pipefitter's meager savings working on funding his retirement. I just don't see myself as the cause of the pyramid scheme coming down when the last fool gets sucked in.

401a

All cash all the time. Credit card defaults and 401a distress caused by buying gas and groceries on short term credit is the next shoe to drop, joining higher prices and a further drop in the price of homes. We're in the third or fourth inning of the great credit unwind. Stocks and houses don't go from $100 to $1 in a straight line. Look up ENRON. All cash all the time until I see a reason to change.

IRA's & trading account

I got my nose bloodied by the spike up Tuesday because I was big time short. I did NOT cover my shorts; Wednesday I hedged them with the same amount of longs. The last coupla days I've broke even regardless of the market movement. I expect to dump the longs if/when the market resumes the previous trend down. Ya can't catch interday reversals when you are at work. Ya ride the trend as you see it. See the first chart. If the trend changes I'll go to the long side and put some 401a money to work. First I'll have to see it. Then I'll have to believe it.


I just started to check out this link;
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008 ... -trap.html

The key part is the interactive graphic. No game goes on forever, no tree grows to the sky. Like it or not, like Montana and California, the economy still has a fire ecology. Out of the ashes comes regrowth.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ ... -plan.html

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