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I'd have on some sort of bear option spread in SP and some flavour on the long side in the assorted longer-term interest rate

Seems we're both looking at the same market signals, my prob is the way we've been getting so many false signals. I'd be ready to change my mind if I hadn't lost it a while back.

this nonsense about Syria is simply about the transit of the "new" NG pipe running through Syria, which threatens (if/when completed) Russia's ability to hold Europe hostage

Wouldn't that make Russia 'anti-Assad'? Yesterday' buz was that Syria's beginning to look like it was set up to be a sequel to fast'n'furious with the Whitehouse intentionally allowing harm to US interests + deliberately allowing the deaths of hundreds of innocents in the vain hope of blaming all on some political opposition.

It's really bullish today; mine are moving up but one; too soon to cash out. Hard to tell what's a good deal of the ones I watch every day.

They've said Raytheon is way up; well that wasn't true, slow to take the bait but it was up some yesterday. Now it's up 1.10%.

Bad news will shoot the whole thing back down again. That gas pipe and petro dollars has to have something to do with this. But they'd better not blame Assad without solid proof for political pragmatism.

It's disgusting how they are trying to cajole the recaltritrants. I hate to see people buckle against their principles because they can't take the heat.

You'll probably be sorry if you don't get back in. Maybe sized way down. I don't have a feel for it right now. One good thing is that volume is supposed to be up now compared to the past month.

No, Pete, Russia would not be anti-Assad. Assad and his gang are in 100% fief to Russia and have been engaged in delaying and subverting the gas line since its inception, almost certainly at Putin's behest.

The teams here are Saudi & Qatar vs Russia, Syria and Iran (if indirectly -- remember Iran's huge available supply of NG, which they would be more than happy to route northward). This, among other things, accounts for why Saudi & Qatar are putatively willing to foot the bill for US airstrikes (and, one assumes, at least for a part of the ensuing war).

Islamic factionalism plays into things, too. Saudi & Qatar are Sunni, as is the Muslim "Brotherhood". Iran, increasingly Iraq, and Syria (indifferently, but Assad knows who butters his bread) are Shia.

The correct policy analysis for the US here is, interestingly, Kissinger's, dating from the Iraq-Iran war: "It's too bad that both sides can't lose." Or, as Palin put it the other day, "Let Allah sort it out." The US does not have a horse in this race, and no reason whatever other than Zerobama's and John Frenchin' Kerry's galactic-sized egos to intervene.