Springheel Jack and I have a couple of things in common with our posts today: first, like him, I want to apologize for being so late. I’ve been very “out of it” today dealing with my totally unexpected new family additions. Second, judging from what Jack said in his post, we both had a “dog” issue stalling us.

Before I forget, a big shout out to Jack for his AMAZING call last year, when he shorted the ES at almost the exact top. From what I gather, he covered today for something like 300 handles on the ES. Good gravy, Jack, congratulations! That is totally amazing!

As for the dogs, my guess is that they were dumped in the park. With one wife, several children, three dogs, six hens, and one big, complicated house, I seriously have enough in my life to handle, so a 4th and 5th dog will send me over the edge. We’re going to look after them for now. Once my children get acquainted with them, putting them up for adoption will get that much more difficult!

OK, let’s look at a chart or two.

Late last week, I figured we had “bottomed”, and I was wrong. My retention of my 50 shorts was wise, and my acquisition of 33 longs was a bust. As of yesterday, I was “pure bear” again and had 75 shorts and 0 longs. I was very happy to be in that position.

Yesterday, however, I felt even more strongly than last week that “this is about all we’re going to get.” There’s only so much blood one can squeeze from a stone, so at this point, I have “only” 38 short positions and 12 longs, with a few of those longs pretty damned big. So I’m actually pretty balanced at this point (suffice it to say that a market crash at this point is utterly unexpected and would really bum me out).

My principal focus, good contrarian that I am, is energy. Take a look at the oil and gas index, and take careful note of how close we’ve come to that major, multi-decade supporting trendline. I never thought we’d get here this fast, but here we are.