20081208PM, HIG BGU XLF

DOW 8,934.18 +298.76 (+3.46%)
NASDAQ 1,571.74 +62.43 (+4.14%)
SP500 909.70 +33.63 (+3.84%)
After losing 25% last week, oil was up today.
Gold and silver up.

HIG 14.86 +.27. Day range 14.67 - 18.12. Gapped up, went higher, then lower the remainder of the day. Went long Friday and sold out today for a profit on a small position.
BGU 37.10 +3.72. Closed out a small long position. Triple large cap ETF. DIREXION SHS ETF TR LARGE CAP BULL

XLF 13.67 +.86.
DRYS 7.17 +2.42. An example of being sort lower priced stocks that have already had huge losses.

Short ETFs:
EEV 61.00 -10.45. Gapped down and stayed down.
SRS 78.34 -17.58. There was a time when I thought conservative investors could hedge personal real estate losses with SRS. It is too volatile to be useful for hedging personal real estate and it simply another volatile momentum play on a sector.


In Barron's last weekend, Jonathan R. Laing writes about the housing bubble and suggests that nationalizing mortgages would allow the artifically created housing prices to be maintained. Maintaining an artificial bubble created by the Federal Reserve and Congress is not a good idea, but Jonathan R. Laing writes like a Socialist who believes government best solve every problem.

How to Solve the Foreclosure Crisis
By JONATHAN R. LAING
Listen up, Uncle Sam: Barron's plan to end the foreclosure crisis is bigger, better -- and probably cheaper -- than yours.

NOTHING IS THREATENING THE U.S. FINANCIAL MARKETS, and indeed the U.S. economy, as much at the relentless rise in home foreclosures.
...
That's why Barron's is proposing sweeping action. First and foremost, the government should make that same 4.5% mortgage rate, the lowest in decades, available to all American homeowners through refinancings. Banks and other lenders would write the loans and then sell them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the secondary-market giants that were nationalized in early September.
...
Meanwhile, the government must help "modify" the most troublesome group of mortgages -- the roughly $500 billion of subprime and Alt-A mortgages that are in arrears and headed toward foreclosure.
...