Where the Market Stands

This past week, I was "concerned" of a market collapse may occur.
The market went down, but it didn't "collapse".
Unfortunately, without a panic-moment, I have little faith the market has reached a near-term bottom. Some people are calling the S&P500 low 839 from October 10th to be the near-term bottom, probably through 2008.
I have a hard time agreeing, if Friday has opened down big, and tested S&P 840 or 790 levels, and bounced, I would feel more comfortable the USA had a local bottom formed. On Friday before the open, CNBC and other media outlets hyped that Friday was looking extremely bad. I fell for it in my blog entry. But the "good news" is the market panic did not occur, The market did "rally" (if you can call it that) from down 852 to 896, ending up S&P down -32 for the day.

Negatives on US Market has hit a near-term bottom
1) It does not line up with previous support levels in 2002-2003 of 790-760 range.(see blog entry longer term view)
2) The market panic (fever) doesn't seem to be broken, just subsided, but it seems ready to flare up.
3) The USA and the world continue to have a never-ending stream of bad news from all corners of business and governments. Russia possibly defaulting cannot be good for the market, except the USA looks "stronger" vs the world. (for the moment)
4) Mike Morgan, (and legions of others) a blogger is calling for market collapse shortly, based upon his viewpoint inside the world financial market.

On the "plus" side, in favor of market bottom.
1) The markets outside the USA had a terrible Thursday night, and the US markets did not panic sell on Friday.
2) The markets did go down to 852, somewhat close to recent 839 bottom, suggesting some support growing.
3) The US dollar is extremely strong vs Euro, parabolic even. Notice in the last 10 years, the USD has never risen or fallen as such a steep rate. When the USD rally slows, stops, or reverses the US Stock market should see a rally. Parabolic runs cant last forever. I expect resistance around 0.8 - 0.85 vs Euro.
4) The market is acting numb to the stream of bad news and not panicking, it seems that everyone is starting to realize the severity of the situation. Panic seems to be subsiding into acceptance.

My viewpoint of the US collapsing for the last two years was much easier to trade the market than currently. I do not believe the USA has even come remotely close to a bottom. This won't happen until 2009-2010. But for the near-term, now through 2009 is my main focus, and the US Market could still plunge to 2002-2003 lows before finding a bottom. And it wouldn't surprise me if the US Bond market has a dislocation that we blow right through 2002-2003 lows to back to 1996 levels. However I find this scenario much less likely.

In any event, I'll blog more why I am liking gold miners as a positive play and why I have almost no shorts after shorting the market for 2+ years.