Portee,

Although I'm one of the longs (haven't mastered that trading stuff yet), I can certainly see why others might want to sell and rebuy on the assumption that the sp will go down because of tax loss selling and lack of news. I'm not sure that tax loss selling will be as much of a factor this December, though.

A lot of tax loss selling occurs toward the end of November. The people that sell then can re-buy the same stock in the same year after the 30 day wait period so that it is not considered a wash sale. And they get to buy at a lower price because some people are still waiting until the end of December to do their tax loss selling! This year, though, I think that most people have already done enough selling of underwater stocks- not necessarily for tax purposes, but just to get out of the market during the meltdown. This is one year that I doubt that a lot of people have capital gains that they need to offset with even more tax loss sales...