MOO ! GROWL ! MOO ! GROWL !

What a hilarious week in the market. We have some determined cows out there. Nobody can tell which way its going to run. This sideways movement : bear trap or is it going to get some traction ? The dollar is the same thing : rally to uh... 1.50 ? before we resume ?

Seems to me its not ready for a real run up (before the inevitable fall back). But I remain hedged both ways. In fact I've been fairly well by simply collecting moves in either direction. Eventually (like right now?) I'm going to get caught holding something the wrong way.

In scalping you learn certain movements. Quivering, lurching up and then selling off hard. Some call them head fakes, and if the market is controllable (small float, big money) then it could be a real head fake by a real person. People love to personify the market or say that smart money will do this or that. And they will, but its also true that its a lot of guys staring at computer screens desperately trying to figure out which way it will go.

There is an attitude now that we should just get the selling over with sharp and quick. OK, are we done now ?

The US appears very rich what with all the developments and shopping centers and displays of corporate wealth . Now we have to imagine/realize that a large amount of that HAS to go under and physically disappear before the accounts are balanced. Cause its borrowed and fictitious. And that will take much longer than 2008. Bennigans/Steak-and-Ale just went down. The look of the country will change by the time its over.

Its a game of musical chairs. The smartest players will still have chairs when the music finally stops, but we go through these rounds. The realization is spreading that there are less chairs than was assumed.

Traders don't mind this. People and banks holding significant amounts of worthless paper would like another round to maybe shift some of this into somebody else's pocket.

Look at the market after 2001. What is now started cannot possibly be less than 4 years. Look at the sideways 70s. That's the optimistic turnout.

what happens when the shorts really getting going ...

For once I'm going to agree with The Cramer on this one. What exactly is going to happen when more and more of middle class America all start piling into short funds ? (oh right, by then we will have sold off enough for a good rally) Its creating a nasty environment, although the current market does need to be sold down (still). There's a lot of fictitious wealth in there. I'm just trading, making money up and down during the day, so no, "I don't care" or to be more accurate I'm disconnected from the underlying businesses that I'm several layers of abstraction away from.

I think the shorts are now heavily favored because they can instill fear and panic that the longs don't have the ability to do. They can destroy businesses -- the ultimate goal -- and the longs can't. I don't like that, I don't like it because the great history of the stock market shows that it works better if we regulate the shorts, to make it so they can't overwhelm the longs. The creation of wealth, not the destruction of wealth, is what the market is supposed to be about, it is why it is worth participating in at all, otherwise the mattress or bonds -- only good for the most solvent of operations -- make more sense.

http://www.thestreet.com/s/cramer-shorts-are-not-and-should-not-be-equal

But the Uptick rule is irrelevant in this day and age. A short ETF, in its internal implementation, can simply be programmed to sell harder on the first uptick. (I really wish I knew exactly how these things execute their buys/sells of the underlying)

And how exactly is the entire or frightened America going to sell dollars for GLD ? Many of these new fangled ETFs are constructed with derivatives and futures strategies. What happens if the derivatives market undergoes a major collapse due to parties not being able to pay ? With this many robot driven planes in the sky, eventually something is going to collide, no ?