Looking through recent blog posts in the TradeKing community over the past week, it's clear that the ultra-bears are gaining momentum and that they are looking for new trading strategies to take advantage of their bearish inclinations. For example, in a post called "Very Dangerous Times," Snowman -- one of the leading voices in the TradeKing community -- wrote, "I would like to start of saying that I expect a total collapse of the financial system end of Feb. and it will definitely happen by the end of 2009. That is what I know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" TradeKing community members like Danny Upshaw are looking for "a few stocks to short," while Will Profit continues to highlight pumps, dumps and grumps and recently suggested a Monster Crash.

With that in mind: Who are your favorite bearish pundits and what are your favorite bearish trades? Nouriel Roubini and Peter Schiff are two prominent voices in the mainstream media who are now getting serious attention in newspaper op-ed pages. Even Krugman might be considered a bear now. Snowman has already pointed to forecasts from Gerald Celente.

Anybody willing to take the opposite side of the trade?

[image: Bear by All Glory to the Hypnotoad on Flickr]

Well whereever there is a bear, there is a bull waiting behind the bushes for the bear to take a nap so he can come out and eat some grass. Then the bear wakes up and says "Hey Bull...Get off of my grass!".

My point is there are always 'bull-type' opportunities even the bearest of markets. They may be fewer in number but they are there. I'd like to think that bearish conditions bring out the fundamentalist we would all like to be, but most times it is simply looking for a a way to jump on a short lived rally for a quick profit.

True fundamentalists are fundamentalists all the time and usually are rewarded with less than 'star-like' gains, but those gains are consistent.

    I'm a young man who just recently started trading and investing in stocks.  Here's why I decided to take some disposable income I had and start investing.  I watched the market tank last fall, and saw a great opportunity to buy some stocks at great prices.  The important thing is to identify the quality companies in poor economic environments, which can be difficult because that poor economic environment taints everything.      Since the October, i've just been trading volatility and doing some short-term profit taking.  I'm waiting to see if we're going to re-test november lows to start my aquiring my long positions.  I'm bullish long term and here's why.  

Schiff has been getting knocked around lately because of how poorly his investment strategy has performed - something I've said for a while. Likewise, Roubini says he is largely invested in US equities because of their superior long-term performance... in other words, I've probably outperformed them by 50-75% in the last six months, even though I had less of an idea about how bad the markets were going to become.

As for negativity, I gave a presentation last night and was accused of being way too negative. I continue to question whether or not people understand how large of a problem this is, and the steps we're taking are ineffective. My gut instinct says that we need to bleed out the sentiment that equities will rally anytime soon, before we can get a real bottom.

Each day it seems we are heading towards nationalizing all of the banks.  It is obvious that with all of the money infused into  TARP it has done very little and banks still dont know what is on their books.  They only hoard the government cash to firm up their balance sheets.  Everything now points to more government involvement to force loans.

We will continue to go sideways or go lower until this banking mess is fixed.  Big money is on the sidelines waiting for this fix. 

As to shorting opportunities I will stick to the ETF'S with options.  The RTH and XLI are two of my favorites.  As to my longs, GLD and some of the miners.......

JCullen – Great point about Peter Schiff. That's what makes the markets so interesting. Even when you think you know exactly what\'s going to happen, it's sometimes quite difficult to execute on the right strategy.

Have to give the ultra-bears credit, though, who first spoke up about the crisis facing the financial markets. Now, people are piling onto the bandwagon. It takes tremendous courage to be a contrarian, and a big tip o' the hat to people who are willing to dig through the data and tell others that the emperor has no clothes.

- The TradeKing Blog