24 of 25 Long Positions Positive Today

A rare occurrence here, almost every stock positive in the entire long side of the portfolio in the green - generally takes a +4-5% day for that to happen... always a few slackers during even a 1-2% type of rallies. Only laggard today was Perfect World (PWRD). Technically, I suppose it was 25 of 26 as we sold Atwood Oceanics (ATW) earlier today. Just scanning my watch lists a lot of oversold stocks finally got a reprieve which is actually good for the short side in the intermediate term.

We are now in the middle of the range we were expecting this bounce to jump into. S&P 910 is the 200 day exponential moving average so until proven otherwise I'll consider that the near term ceiling. Ironically we have been bouncing off the 200 day simple moving average... and now have resistance ahead with the exponential. A weird divergence that has been with us for 6 weeks now.

So tonight we have some CSX (CSX) earnings (railroads) and Novellus (NVLS) in semis. Then we all pretend to act surprised that Goldman Sachs (GS) beat analysts tomorrow morning and watch from there. I expect a lot of bipolar knee jerk reactions in the next 2-3 weeks, and as I stated this morning a lot more large premarket moves as we extrapolate any 1 company into somehow being a proxy for the entire US, or indeed global economy.

Look for a lot of overreactions from your familiar pundits, along with hyperventilating on certain financial entertainment channels.

I added another 6-7 limit short orders late this afternoon to the group I already had, and hope some of them begin to hit as I express astonishment tomorrow at how Goldman milked the system for record profits. If things go as planned as we ramp into S&P 910 I'll have locked in some number of individual shorts and be back to a neutral or even negative bias overall. The reason I am not getting any hits on these shorts is I am being very "greedy" with my prices, placing them JUST below key moving averages - so in case we forget everything about the past 4 weeks and return to (imagined) green shoots in the weeks ahead, I'll be stopped out for minor losses and protect a very good 4 week run. I don't mind being wrong, even if it's often - as long as the losses are contained.

If we get back over S&P 910 HAL9000 and crew will be back chewing green shoots, as their microchips get happy.