So the big news over the weekend is the resignation of Citi's CEO and announcement of additional write down?   Or is it the news that Alibaba.com's IPO offering is a gazillion times oversubscribed?    Well, it depends on what you care the most!    We can say both news are kind of expected and hopefully both news are working as potential positive catalysts for this market.    The near term effect of all these write downs isn't over and turmoil will persist for a while from the financial sector.    It is, however, getting to the point where some if not most of those financial institutions are "forced" to disclose the kind of damage they were supposed to disclose a while ago.    Things are moving forward, in a however rocky way it seems.    Hypothetically, some of these banks/investment banks stocks should bottom in the near term.   

Back to Alibaba.com!   This is the hottest internet IPO since Google, in terms of amount of capital that's being raised.   Unfortunately, most of us won't be participating directly in that action.    What does it mean?  It means that the market opposite side of our continent is still live and kicking.   It bodes well for the ADRs trade on this side of the world too.     It's going to be interesting to see how BIDU and some of the other companies behave after the probable crazy debut of Alibaba on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, there is a Monday and the Hang Sang/ Shanghai have taken a beating because expectations of a delay to the highly anticipated plan to allow mainland investors to trade directly in the city's stocks is growing. This has fueled the Hang most recently.

This is the month where many of our DJIM type of stocks report.   It is an important month to us because that's where we gauge what we should be kept or deleted on our watchlist and as well as the potential new plays.    One thing we have noticed so far is that there's no shortage of good earning plays on a daily basis.   Some of the earnings were being rewarded generously.