I can boil my view down to one chart which shows Total Credit as % of GDP is so wacked that we would be lucky if the worst that happened was a severe recession. If we have the deflationary debt crash I expect, stay short now…when NOBODY even cares about the market anymore (one sign would be Cramer getting canned) buy gold miners for the re-flation.

http://www.comstockfunds.com/files/NLPP00000/292.pdf

Some of the high ends like Nieman Marcus had sales drops of 25% already.

KJ Foehr:

Even though this has been a great opportunity to be short, you have to accept that markets don’t go smoothly up and definitely don’t go smoothly down. I keep harping on it, but find a chart of the DJ from Sept. 1929 on for several years. Lots of spikes up an even a genuine 50% bear market rally starting in late 1929. Unless you are like Steve with almost an obsession for sitting on QID, you will risk getting whipsawed. I’ve experienced it.

When times are good you don’t mind paying a few extra bucks for having it NOW. When times are not so good, if you buy at all you’re much more prepared to shop around online for a deep discount.

Will be very interesting to see numbers for Amazon compared to retail over the holiday period. Not saying it won’t still be down, but I suspect it will be down less than your local mall.

Easy money is GONE! Tell me, what replaces it?? Without a replacement,..BB eats shit just like CC.

I’ve found the best way to be short is selling covered calls. Whenever you sell a covered call NEVER buy it back for a higher price, no matter what. Eventually, this will make you a crap load of money. Yes, you can sell an option and then the share price tanks and you’ve lost more than you had to begin with and you sell the option again and all of a sudden the option holder makes out with a huge gain but those are rare. If you get exercised against you get exercised against. Keep the volatility in mind of what is likely rebound in panic and what is not.

I haven’t shorted in 6 months now and the only time I’ve done better is 2006 (before I started shorting). I did make some money in EEV but I quickly realized with the volatility it would lose money over time. The other problem with being short is you can’t tell where the friggin bottom is going to be.

I thought this recession would be my ticket to riches like Joe Kennedy in the GD, but it was too tough for me. I am just trying to recoup some losses at this point, and I am fully aware that is not going to be easy. I just keep thinking the government will ultimately fail. Even FDR needed WW2 to really get the economy going again, so why should we think it will be any different this time?

I feel confident we have not seen the bottom in the economy nor the stock market, but whether or not I will be able to make a net profit on it still is in doubt.

Good luck to all, long and short.

Yes banks will continue to have problems and so will any other industry with major competition broke auto companies . But if the US can withstand a terrorist attack and still moves forward without going into depression it shows how difficult it is to get that kind of event.

If the market continues have problems the gov’ts all over the world will continue interviening to jack the shorts. How fun was it for Ackman the day he woke up and found out it was illegal to short banks.

Austrailia had a bill to prevent naking shorting in their entire market. I don’t know whether it was passed or not. I don’t believe it’s good to bet against the government. They are way to powerful and can change the game on you at any time and if you are betting against the market and the majority of the public you are going to get creamed eventually.