Monday Melt-Down, The Fallen (Big Chart Review)

What a disaster! Once again we are in a market that environment that reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer jumps over a gorge , crashes, is taken up by a helicopter (Ben) smashing against the wall along the way only to fall all the way from the top again.  Pain, pain and more pain every time we try to get long.  Today we finished near 11-year lows on the Dow and S&P, so much for that decade of savings ….  I said this morning that we had a " wall of worry " to climb this week and we didn’t get very far up it before falling off a market cliff of our own.  Fortunately, as I mentioned in the morning, we went pretty bearish into Friday’s close and I said at the end of the morning post " we’re certainly not going to be impressed by anything under 1.25% today. "  It’s very important to have a trading plan and we peaked out right at the open, well below our 1.25% target.  My opening comment at 9:36, despite the " rally " was:  " AAPL and the Qs not doing too well this morning.  Financials up 3% already, SKF below $180 .  We need a nice move in the Transports to shut up those Dow Theory people but this is a very weak morning move so far.  Dollar is strong and that’s keeping us down (stocks are a commodity) but weak is weak so, like I said, roll up the long puts when you can and no need to cover the other half with short puts until we pass 1.25% at least. " Nonetheless our F play went well as an agreement with the UAW was announced at 9:44 giving us a quick trip to $1.90 before pulling back to a 10% gain on the day.   We bottom fished a little on UNH and X but I said to members at 11:39: " Watch out if $7.40 breaks on XLF, that can drop us 5% fast in the financials.  Hopefully it will hold. "  XLF finished the day down 3.5% but we ended up deciding it may be a little overdone.  We shorted FAS and that went well but then we tried to day-trade them to the upside and that led to two aborted attempts to go long as we were trying to catch a wave up that never came.  It was all over at 2:34 when CNBC broke a rumor that AIG had lost $60Bn…