A few cool new features.....

Ratio Charts

Upside-Down Charts (my goofiest idea yet) - just hit Ctrl-U!

Tag All/Move All commands for watchlists

As always, these features will be coming to Prophet.net and thinkorswim's trading platform in the coming couple of weeks.

Just a side remark - - - Disqus problems seem to be getting worse and worse. Although it's not my system, I'm sorry for these troubles.

I will say that I am planning - for a variety of good reasons - to move to an entirely new blog platform in the coming couple of weeks. There will be a little bit of pain involved, but the upside will far outweigh it.

Contingent stops..........

 BLK 160.60
GD 57.96
GOLD 69.99
NEU 76.19
PCLN 113

I know I'm repeating myself, but I am "re-iterating a buy" (to use the lingo of our investment banker friends) on UNG. I've never seen such a superb "volume" argument on a chart. I'm long as of this morning @ 13.57 (7500 shares).

I read a couple of interesting articles this morning I wanted to share.

The first is called Hedge Fund Legend Michael Steinhardt Says Treasuries Are Foolish.

Steinhardt goes on to say that he thinks the current market rally will not last and that we are not out of the woods yet. He says, "The economy is still a scary place. My net feeling is that this rally doesn't have all that much more to go and the dangers out there remain consequential." Clearly he sees this as a bear market rally and thinks we have large fundamental problems still unsolved.

The second is an interesting article on how the consumer confidence indicator is actually often running the opposite direction of where the market is about to run. Bears, take this to heart when considering the recent surge in confidence.

In other words, focusing on consumer confidence tells us more about how the stock market has performed in recent weeks than it does about the future. But insofar as consumer confidence tells us anything about the future, it's that big rises and/or high readings are more negative than positive for the stock market.

Good Morning,

First, a few people have written wondering if I've blocked them from Disqus. Unless your name is Cetin the Cretin, no, I haven't blocked you. It's something I do virtually never. So I'm afraid it must be a Disqus problem. Please write to them and see what's going on, since I value your discussion! I daresay the Comments section is more important than any of the stuff I manage to write.

Second, I emailed a handful of you last night (selected individuals who filled out my survey-that-shall-not-be-named). One person asked if it was really me that was writing, and not some Nigerian prince. Yep, it was me.

Anyway, let's hope today goes better than yesterday. A nice lift in commodities would do the trick for me, personally!

Looking at my top six holdings (by dollar amount), it's a pretty good start to the day; as you can see, I've gone long energy, for the most part. One puzzler is UNG (natural gas), which is the one big position I've got which has started the day weak.

One really does have to wonder, "what's with natural gas?" It's been terribly weak. But I bought it just yesterday, since I think it may soon follow its stronger breathren.