Its interesting how much more organic this market has gotten since they banned short selling. The Rally today was weak sauce (on low volume), if you didn't see a rally coming then you have to get back to some principles of how markets work. Nothing goes straight up or down, well with the exception of Bear Stearns, AIG, FNM, FRE, and some others... A couple of things to note that I would like to talk about in the Short / Near Term.. Obviously the big thing that is driving the market is... The Bailout, didn't pass the first time and from what I hear elected officials are still having their fax machines on overdrive and their voice mail's filled.... I hope it dosent get done, it will just be wasting 700 Billion or any amount they throw at it with the current plan. The full implications of this current plan are disastrous but I'll look at what they come up with... Same old song same old dance here, if they pass one expect a massive rally, no bailout expect Dow less than 10K...Easy... The thing is the macro picture still looks pretty gloomy with or without a bailout. The thing about options is they give you leverage, time decay is the effective interest for that leverage, or at least that is the way I looked at it in my high school thesis paper. But in this environment there is a lot of money to be made.. Also a lot of to be lost, by getting side swiped by the fed.. So I've toned my position's down and reduced my leverage (e.g. the number of contracts I trade per position)... We'll see what happens with the bailout, but just because it passes and you become a bull on U.S. Equity markets I think you will get slaughtered. Cramer was very bearish after monday, this is a near term bullish signal to me... I wish they had a Cramer indicator like the VIX.. One thing that I think will surprise in the future is corporate earnings, expect to see More RIMM's take place.. Trade King when are you gonna introduce a currency converter and trading on other exchanges? Etrade Does it and they suck... I gotta make this short because I have a paper to write.... Just wanted to throw some of my positions out there: A ton of the 7.50 and 12.50 Puts on FITB.... Most of the 12.50 are early 09 while the 7.50's are all back month leaps.. I love those Citigroup Puts, I mean come on 1.1 Trillion, yes with a T in off balance sheet entities, and they are lobbying to not have to bring them back on their balance sheet. The risk / reward here is not as great as FITB though, thats why I am heavier there.. To top it off I have some MS puts also.. Another big capitulation will be a nice entry point for TBT..... Ultra Short U.S. treasuries.. (Capitulation as in when market goes down people flock to treasuries, not sure how long that trend is gonna last with Bernanke and co at the wheels)..... I think that Swiss Franc's are a great investment right now. for the next couple of years.

Swiss is tied to the Euro so I was thinking even with all that is wrong in Japan the yen. Only because they will not lower interest rates while everyone else does.

Swiss is backed by gold and one of the only true hard currencies around.