next leg down?

After a few days of range bound trading, the markets made a decisive move to the bottom of this most recent consolidation, poised to move lower as the bad news just keeps on rollin'. As one astute market observer stated, the markets will continue to trend downward and sell-off because there are no buyers to step in and start standing firm on the bid.

Broker-dealers are short on cash, HF's are sitting on the sidelines to have cash ready for redemptions, the retail investor is still selling and putting their funds into money markets. Some people are trying to bottom fish aka catch a falling knife and they're going to get burned all-the-way-down. Until there is a huge catalyst for change or until the market gets to the point where valuations make it so ridiculously obvious that we've reached bottom (stock price = cash per share on the balance sheets), we could see lower lows and more big down days.

In other news, oil continues to drop, hard to believe it was $147 a barrel a few short months ago. The election is finally less than 2 weeks away. Holidays are already being forecast as the worst holiday buying season in decades.

Happy Friday.

DJIA 8,378.95

NASDAQ 1,552.03

SP500 876.77

ups and downs

this week saw the largest 1 day point gain in Dow history. It also had some other big down and up days thrown in there as well.

Just a few short weeks left until the election is finally over and we can all get on with our lives.

Oil is now trading at less than 50% of what is was trading for just a few short months ago.

Q4 is more than upon us. Just a bit over 2+ months left in the trading year.

Here's to another crazy week.

DJIA 8,852.22

NASDAQ 1,711.29

SP500 940.55

fuel

this was yesterday:

DJIA 8,579.19 -678.91

NASDAQ 1,645.12 -95.21

SP500 909.92 -75.02

Those indices are getting low. Low like the lows of late '02 and early '03. And to throw more fuel on the fire, Asian markets were down again big on Thursday night/Friday morning. What will Friday bring?

The hastily put together bail-out plan is not working out like Paulson & Bernanke & Co. thought it would. It doesn't even scratch the surface at addressing what is wrong with the US and the global financial system. Now the government realizes they are on the hook for all of AIG's losses and they essentially wrote a blank check to AIG to fix whatever problems come along.

More banks continue to come out of the woodwork and announce their woes. Some HF's are making a killing with this, shorting the indices and shorting pretty much anything that trades. And now that the financial institution short ban has ended, those firms - or what is left of them - are ripe for the shorting. There are other HF's that saw big redemptions last week and as they continue to de-leverage, they realize how ugly the equity picture is in their funds.

Unfortunately for most Americans, the markets are not going to turn around anytime soon. Don't be looking for the 3000 point bounce back in the Dow in the near future. The subprime credit hangover is going to be here for a while.

In some good news, oil is back down under $90 and the prices are slowly beginning to drop at the gas pumps.

Happy Friday and welcome back to work from Yom Kippur.

first week of Q4

More fall-out.

-Wells Fargo will step in front of Citigroup and buy up Wachovia
-oil back under $100 - previous run-up now credited to a squeeze
-September looks to be the worst month for HF's in the last decade
-redemptions for funds were due on Tuesday - the totals are still unknown
-lots of HF's closing - on pace to be the most since 2005
-congress finally passed the bail-out package after initial failing
-the short ban on financial institutions has been extended
-the election is 1 month away - Obama has a slight lead in the polls

Q4 started this week. Let's go.

Happy Friday.

DJIA 10,325.38

NASDAQ 1,947.39

SP500 1,099.23