Saved by the bell...

Somehow, throughout the day, it just didn't feel right that we would actually end in green off a couple of financial and pharma companies.    The majority of the market, on our screen, was way off the scale.   End of day it was horrible as many stocks finished -10% or more off and other NASD momo stocks fell another $10-30.  We had the technology(growth oriented), the oils, the golds, the chemicals, the metals.....  just about every group that did well this year was under major selling pressure today. Diversified Metals and Mining -9.3%, Coal and Consumable Fuels -8.8%, Construction and Engineering -7.9%, Fertilizer/Agricultural Chemicals -7.8%, Gold -7.7%   Yes, the pattern is clear and market is loud in what it's doing.    We want to dump the highfliers.    This is in addition to the continuous and relentless selling from the solars, the shippers and the China group which we all were familiar with.     Basically, if you hold anything that is even remotely interesting, there was no escape.

This is exactly the kind of stuff we were talking about the past few days.    Traders just don't want to be the last one out the door given the doom and gloom scenario that is currently developing.    We can't blame them!   Even standing on the sideline, it is still painful to watch and imagined if we were still knee deep in this market, it'd be totally devastating at this point.    The real kicker here, is that the pace of selling is accelerating and we are going to be approaching a climax really soon.    We can't foresee how many more points this market can drop but we feel at this rate, it's going to end sooner than later, and perhaps during this week.  Considering the magnitude of the selling in the last 3 days, many are still knee deep due to the quickness of it all.  Therefore, you need to know there is an overhead of supply leftover in many of the highfliers just waiting for a bounce for others to pounce on.

Is there a bright side to all this?   We always think that after we survive such a crisis, we'd emerge as better traders at the start of next cycle. We all learn something new during these phases.

We feel Asian market may try to find a bottom the next couple of days and that may affect some of the ADRs trade on our side of the market.    There are a few Chinese IPOs reporting next few days and we'd keep a close eye on the reaction from those reports.   We'd jump in on some favourable reaction unless the overall market is giving us a reason not to do so.  But, there is no hurry.  Let the action in the stock dictate your course, don't chase to be one of the first in the door.