Market Ruminations

It's been almost a month since my last post. Since then the market has jumped up and down like a yo yo but after expending all that energy is about where it was when it started. In my last post I expressed an unusual, for me, degree of optimism. The stock market promptly dropped almost 1000 points. In the future, should I be so foolish as to express optimism again, sell your house and car, sell your wife and children to Arab slavers and find a cave in the mountains and stock it with lots of water, meals ready to eat and ammo. I am the world's best contrarian indicator. All that aside we are, more or less, back where we started a month ago. At this point I'll give my best guesses as to where we are likely to head. 
SHORT TERM: Between now and the end of the year I expect our typical Santa Claus rally tempered by the realization the Europeans can still do something stupid. They have been busy kicking the can down the road but at some point the can will kick back. We just don't know when but more than likely they can keep it going until after the 2012 elections are over. 
MID TERM. This covers the 2013-2015 time period. This is when I think all the brown smelly stuff is going to hit the rotating fan device. I think we will have a full blown depression along with a virtual collapse of the stock market and real estate market. More on this later.
LONGER TERM: 2015-2020 will be our valley of despair. It will take that long to purge the system of all the excess debt, clean up our political system and get back to a point where recovery can take root and flourish. More on this later as well.
BETTING UPDATE: Here is a chart of the bets I made last month. DDM has done well. TBT has done horrible. UGL is treading water. TBT is a short of the long bond and I remain confident the bond market will collapse as inflation kicks in so I'm not too worried about that one. UGL is the gold fund and I still think $2000 gold is coming soon. DDM is a proxy for the Dow. I think it has more ways to run before it runs out of gas.

	Today							Since Purchased
Symbol/Name	Price*	Change	Last Trade	Gain/Loss (USD)	Shares	Price Paid	Purchase Date	Gain/Loss (USD)	% Change	% Port	Value (USD)
DDM:US ($) ProShares Ultra Dow30	59.92	+0.62	16:15	+62.00	100	53.78	10/20/2011	+614.00	+11.42	33.59	5,992.00
TBT:US ($) ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury	19.47	-0.16	16:15	-16.00	100	22.91	10/27/2011	-344.00	-15.02	10.92	1,947.00
UGL:US ($) ProShares Ultra Gold	98.9799	+1.4399	16:15	+143.99	100	96.99	10/26/2011	+198.99	+2.05	55.49	9,897.99
Totals				+189.99				+468.99	+2.70		17,836.9