Well, now what?

Last week, my column was entitled "Will the Market Selloff Continue?" and I talked about an oversold market, ripe for a bounce but already in the grip of the bear. The original title before the editor got to it? Stocks Peer into the Abyss." Usually, the editor's changes are much better than my suggestions. Not this time. That was nearly 1200 Dow points ago.

I am not going to tell you to buy 'em cheap here or sell 'em before you lose it all. If you want that sort of advice, well, let's be honest, you have to subscribe.

Now that the shameless marketing plug is over, I can say that even though we covered our shorts Tuesday before the 400 point rally and the market closed below our cover point today, I am sleeping quite well at night. I've avoided what used to be full bull and bear markets but compressed into a few days.

Even stranger, I sold a portion, not all, of my gold holdings in the low 1700s. Yes, too soon but look what happened to silver when it started to go parabolic. You had to be mighty nimble to get out once it past its peak. I still have a day job and would have easily missed it in April. The same is true for a wildly overbought gold market now.

What if the raise margins? or the bubble poppers are right? For better or worse, I had far too high a percentage of my assets in gold and had to pare some back. There is something about a 14-day RSI at 86 that makes me nervous. And if I am wrong, I still have a good chunk left to participate in the melt up, should it occur.

These are indeed strange times. Without getting political here, the market is telling us it does not like a lot of things and many of them originate in Washington.