Bookkeeping: Taking Some Profits

I'm taking some profits off on items bought into the morasse Friday - generally 15-25% of various positions to lock in some profits. Friday had all the makings of a classic bottom and the first impulse is to sell this rally assuming it will fail like every other for months. Hence I believe this one has a good chance to continue for a while. But, when you can make 20-30% in positions in 1 trading session, I'll take some of that and move it to cash. Not adding short exposure but simply locking in some quick gains. As I said this weekend, when a rally does indeed come it might indeed be hard to keep up with the indexes on the upside since the move could be dramatic. I am hoping things don't just go up in a straight line and we can have a more systematic rally that builds nice support. It will be interesting to see the action today and tomorrow as a lot of people a couple of miles underwater will be happy to sell into any rally. Volume will be key.

On another note - I was up at 4 AM (a lot of sleepless nights of late, eh) and watched UK's Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's news conference on their solutions to the credit crisis. Since my comments have a political bent, I'll surpress most of them but let me just say in 30 minutes of watching these 2 I felt more confidence in leadership than in days, months, years in watching US leadership (both sides of the aisle). It is truly sad to see the difference - they were bright, on the ball, stern, intellectual, well spoken, confidant - everything you'd want to see in leadership in time of crisis. I also did not feel like they would be "fun to have a beer with" (well maybe for me since they talk my language but not the typical guy on the street) which appears to be the #1 character trait Americans look for in a politician. Somehow the culture has turned where we look down on brains as "elitist". Very strange. I wish I had the video clip but this is not the type of stuff people rush to put onto YouTube. It is nice to know someone in the world wear's the daddy pants. It looks like the world is following the UK lead.... I expect the US to roll out similar plans to the UK except of course to not have the punitive penalties to executives. Because that would punish capitalism.... and reduce political contributions... that would be un-American.