Confidence waning?

Again, waking up this morning, I found my positions underwater. And for a few minutes the “good news” was that home prices only went down 18%….so much better than last months -18.7%….I feel richer already

But then sanity came back to traders when we heard that mortgages were defaulting at a greater rate and that consumer confidence was down. The market went down, as you would expect with this kind of news…and thus, my short ETFs went up: QID TZA. Following along were some QQQQ puts and IWM puts. By mid-morning my biggest winner was the IWM puts so I sold those off and half of the TZA position. Lunch time brought the usual meandering up move in the markets, so I refilled my TZA position.

Near the close, the Plunge Protection Team was in full force, artificially taking the market up. Listen to what they were saying about the PPT on CNBC: Economic Analysis. And also read about all the “transparency” the government is removing from our markets at the Zero Hedge blog It’s hard to trade against the U.S. government.

So I remain in a short position because I think all the news can’t be good tomorrow morning: ADP Employment Report, ISM Manufacturing Index, Construction Spending, Pending Home Sales, and Motor Vehicle Sales. We will also hear from California if they will be paying their bills with IOU’s or Fed bailout money. The Feds can’t backstop everything coming down the pike. Almost looks like a horrible car crash in slow motion….or some sort of crash

It’s