Stay Tough

It certainly was an eventful week for the market as far as news. We had bailout plans and budgets and an endless stream of governmental actions. The overall market reaction to all these attempts to save us was quite negative. President Obama just isn't inspiring confidence in the investor class, but that sure doesn't seem to be one of his priorities anyway.

A down-trending market is hard enough for investors to deal with in the first place, but this one is even worse because it is so choppy. We continue to have very random spikes up and down, especially late in the day. If you aren't doing some quick intraday flips, you have little chance of making much progress at all. Unfortunately, even the flippers are being worn down by the chaotic action.

Technically, the big picture is decidedly negative and confirms the painfully obvious fact that we are in an ugly bear market. There is a big group of traders that keep looking to play some oversold bounces, but they are too skittish to hold and end up flipping the upside moves to death. You can't blame folks for looking for some upside opportunities given how badly we have been beaten up, but waiting patiently for better action rather than anticipating it isn't a bad strategy.

Stay tough. You're not going to encounter a more difficult market all that often; all you need to do right now is survive.