I'm going to pull an all nighter (again) because I want to be fully prepared.

I took a moment to go to my Disqus administration, because there are some people whose comments are being sent for moderation that shouldn't be; mainly because I don't do moderation on the comments! I feel bad that people are taking the time to enter comments and theirs aren't just flowing into the stream like everyone else's.

When I was glancing at the "blocked" list, I noticed one particular comment from back in June. I almost never block people, but it really bugged me, because the reader said I was "hurting" people with my shorting ideas.

The amazing thing is to read the post, which is here, and get a sense of the tone both from me as well as the commenters. There's a lot of despair in the air. Little did we know that we were about to take over the world.

It's nearly four hours until the open, and the S&P is already down 33 points. I've said it a hundred times, but I'll say it again - - we are either going to go somewhat lower (Dow 10,000 or so) or crash (Dow 8,800 or so).

As for the obnoxious commenter from June (who apparently has been divorced three times - - big surprise).........I think the only people that got hurt from this blog were those that tried to fade it. For those of us that have shared our knowledge and insights, we've made tens of millions in the past few weeks, and I think there is lots more to come.

I have many interests, and among the strongest are history, sociology, and cultural trends. A number of months ago, I bought the book Richistan. I didn't buy it to read; thumbing through stories about how super-rich people waste their lives on self-indulgence sounds like a complete bore to me. Instead, I bought it as a memento of the age we were living in. The obsession with wealth was pervasive. You couldn't open a paper without hearing stories about Stephen Schwarzman's birthday party, the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, or - - the one I hated the most - - how there were eight zillion cranes in Dubai.

Now, look, I don't have a problem with money. I live in a nice house in a nice town, and I enjoy making profits in the markets. But I find ostentatious displays to be grotesque. One of the men I admire most is a billionaire - - the only one I know well - - who for the longest time drove around in an ugly blue Vanagon.

In any case, I find it utterly unsurprising that the publication date of this book coincided almost exactly with the market's top; indeed, I think this is a market top that will not be surpassed for many, many years. So the cultural saturation reached a maximum with the publication of this best-selling worship of the "new rich".

I wonder to myself what kinds of books will be sold at the market's bottom (in about 7-8 years, I think). What would be the opposite of the book above? Books about the virtues of piety and self-sacrifice? Survivalist guides? Worshipful biographies of Karl Marx? I really have no idea.

We're in for a very interesting ride.

Unless something (else!) happens over the weekend, I imagine this will be my last weekend post.

Regular readers are acquainted with what I call the $SLIX indicator, which is basically the readership of this blog. The old saw was that spikes in readership marked market bottoms, because all the folks that don't have the good sense to read this blog daily are so rattled by a given day's drop that they read the bearish blogs for a change. So in a way, the popularity of this blog became a pretty good contrary sentiment indicator.

I'm not so sure it works anymore. Readership has recently been growing steadily. I'd like to think it's because Slope is just so danged good, more and more people are (finally) discovering it. It's also probably because the market's downward grind has become much less of a one-time drop down and more of a regular way of life.

If you didn't watch the video I did on Friday afternoon, please do so. All I've got to say is that I think we're in store for one of two possibilities. One, the market wrings out the last of the sellers (for now) and brings the S&P down to about 1077 and the Dow to nearly 10,000; or, Two, we have an honest-to-God crash, bringing the S&P down to about 942 and the Dow to about 8,850.

No matter which of these take place, I think we're in position to have a good, sustained bounce higher, and I will spend the entire time with the word "Patience!" tatooed to the inside of my eyelids, because once the bounce is finally done (and I'm bound to jump the gun a few dozen times before it does..........) we're in for an amazing time.

Even though the very soul of technical analysis is that history repeats itself, I actually don't get that sanguine about comparing, say, the chart from 1929 to now, or the chart from 1987 to now, no matter how many "eerie similarities" (that's always the phrase used.........) appear. I do, however, want to offer an interesting comparison between the last bear market (about 8 years ago) and this one. First, the old one:

I've put a circle at about where we are at this point in time (assuming these falls are similar, which they probably aren't!), and I've tinted in green the true bottom. Now let's look at where we're at........

I've taken the liberty of hacking out what the market would look like if we replayed the 2000-2002 bear on top of this one. We'd bottom out a little below 800 on the S&P, and we'd had a couple of amazing retracements to play beforehand. The green arrow I've drawn is sort of my life's mission at this point............that is, wait until we've retraced, wait until people are calm again, wait until the VIX is in........I dunno..........the mid 20's or so...........and then completely pork out on my (much larger) warchest, buying puts and shorting stocks like crazy.

I'm torn as to what this week holds. People are obviously incredibly nervous, and with the failout package out of the way, at least we don't have to wring our hands over Nancy Pelosi anymore, now that Congress has totally sold the country down the river. I guess if I had to pick between the two scenarios, I'm inclined to look for just a little more of a drop, but I've got to say, a couple of sources whose work I really respect makes a strong case for a true crash by the middle of the month. America, we all know, will never be the same. I would suggest to Slopers that they make as much cash as they can out of this catastrophe for the sake of themselves and their own families. See you Monday.