Another Tricky Day

You can't always get it
When you really want it
You can't always get it at all
--The Who

Just another 500 or so pt range day in the Dow today--all of it to the downside. Premarket futes starting heading south on chatter that one or more French banks were in trouble. After the opening bell, markets lost 300-400 Dow points before an afternoon rally closed the gap to about -100.

But then that rally totally fell apart, such that markets knifed thru the intraday lows on their way down in the last hour. Closing bell: Dow -519.

The market's dynamic is readily felt when assuming a trading mindset. Stocks are generally going down easier than they are going up. The temptation is to short 'em, but not only are we deeply oversold but there is also intervention risk, such as a local or worldwide ban on naked CDS sales.

Bottom fishers keep buying stocks at what seems to be 'low prices' only to get their heads handed to them when the indexes break lower in monolithic fashion.

This keeps the shorts out and the longs trapped in declining positions--a wholly bearish situation.

Also, let's keep in mind the background macro picture which portrays a massive deleveraging event underway.

As such, my inclination is to look for short side entries. The first situation I'll consider is if we happen to open green tomorrow. The risk, of course, is that we scream higher and don't look back. That's acceptable to me here given that I'm still long some stock (e.g., CSCO, MSFT).

At any rate, my general game plan as it stands is to sell rallies.

I'm also interested in adding to my SLV position. There has been a big disconnect between gold (moonshot) and silver (sold but trades relatively firm) during the past week. Clearly, market participants are wondering whether any paper currency will be worth anything--and until they do that they're piling into gold (as they have for thousands of years). My sense is that silver may play some catch-up here.

position in gold, CSCO, MSFT, SPX, SLV