Today we loose the Maestro, Alan Greenspan. You can say what you want about him but one thing he did was instill confidence. Confidence is something that is earned and sonething that is very intangible. I gots money that Bernanke aint got it. The man has a throat beard for God's sake. This intangible "ism" will transmute to the market. Prediccion: market performs nicely for a couple days and then whammo--Bernake says something estupidio and it all come unravelling like a pork pie in a hem hock.

I had a dream last night that I wrote a book about how the "Save" statistic ruined the game of baseball. I was doing a publicity tour for the book and realized that I didn't know what I had written in the book, nor could I come up with any justification for that claim.

However, thinking about it in the shower this morning, I did in fact realize how dumb the concepts of Saves and "closers" are. In a nutshell, I would be interested to see if, rather than inserting your most unhittable pitcher at the end of each reasonably close game to finish out the final inning...why would this pitcher not be inserted mid-game at critical junctures. Your team is in the field in the top of the 6th, 4-2 game, runners at second and third with no outs. You are a base hit away from a tie game. You have no idea what is going to happen in the final 3 innings. You could come out and score 10 runs in the bottom half. Or not. Point is, there is no way to predict that the game will warrant the entrance of your "closer" in the 9th. However, you do know you are potentially at a critical turning point in the game, right now. You will never see the Mariano Riveras of the world marched out in this situation...but is this not exactly when you'd want your shutdown guy in? Sure, he wouldn't get his Save, but you put your best pitcher in there to face the clear and present danger you know you have in front of you with a chance to preserve the lead. Perhaps if I think about this a bit I will be able to articulate it well...or realize it is stupid. Anyway, individual statistics aside, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.

The last four days have been hell in the stock market. I do believe that the selling is nearing it's end. I'm hopeful that the Dow will recoup some of the losses that it took today and turn sharply higher for the next few days. Will it make a run for 11,300? That seems far off given that we're at 10,830. There could be another dip before then. Then again I could be wrong and this could be it for the markets. Seems like we are seeing shades of things to come with Yahoo down 12% and the Tokyo Stock Exchange halting trading due to so many sell orders. This is what happens in a down market: fear, panic selling, infrastructure failures, etc. My gut tells me that these are just warning signs of trouble to come in February.

I hereby make a prediction that the Dow will top 11,300 by mid February. This may seem a shock to those that think of me as the consumate bear when it comes to the stock market. This, I believe will be the top of the market. It will then begin heading down to 10,350 by mid April and then head lower still.

Good time to buy some calls while it lasts.

I feel validated. Today in the New York Times there is an article about Bush and how he is saying that "the real reason he invaded Iraq is to bring democracy to an undemocratic region." It would have been interesting to see Colin Powell explain that one to the Security Council, but I digress. The author of the article, David Sanger, explains that Bush views his Presidency as one of the big ones as far as presidential terms go. Certainly we've seen some big events and we'll probably see some more big ones but I think it's safe to argue that Bush has not risen to the occasion of any of them, but I digress again. The real point of this post is to quote Mr. Sanger: "at moments he [Bush] often seems to also be talking directly to historians, tilting the pinball machine of presidential legacy. It may not be too early: the year 2006, many in the White House believe, will cement the story line of the Bush presidency for the ages." Hey I said that last week! Is this guy reading Lowbar? He's much more eloquent than I but I scooped the NYT! Go figure.