Hi Coach, it sure does look like a prime shorting environment these days but it could be very stressful. History indicates that the biggest daily rallies occur during a bear market. Sometimes you have to be on a hair trigger to be successful. The Ambac news release was a dud as the long awaited bank bail-out seems to have been abandoned for now. Beats me as to what investor would even consider buying any of their new stock as the company's fundamentals could not be any worse.

AIG has never been a friend of silver. In fact, their demise should help to unleash silver. Hopefully, their hidden little derivatives problem will be "contained" in the same manner as the subprime problem has been.

I was just reading that the best shorting environment over the next 3 weeks will be in Japanese equities. A well respected technical newsletter editor had this to say today about Japan:..."My concern internationally is that we have not heard a peep from the Japanese banks. And Japan basically has had the lowest-cost capital on the planet for the last decade or so. That's where you get all this yen carry trade, where people borrow at very cheap interest rates from Japan to make external investments. Typically, when the bubble is bursting, ultimately its the lender of the last resort who's going to end up eating an awful lot. What's critical here is that Japan's fiscal year ends March 31, so between now and then, my guess is that a number of audit firms and a number of Japanese bankers are engaged in some sort of death wrestle. What are the write-offs going to be? They've been living in denial for the last decade. And denial is not just a river in Egypt; its policy."

GL with your investments - VHF