The shorter hold times are serving well, and I'll continue to pull what I can from this strategy. Likewise, diving only in deeper pools is keeping fills reasonable. With quicker trading, one cannot afford much slippage, so keep that in mind before every trade...

After the US government put out a forest fire with the takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae last week, Wall Street’s troubles were far from over. As they say, when you see a rat in the house, you can bet there are hundred more rats lurking in the dark corners. Slowly but surely, they are being flushed out now.

Trading fears stemmed from possible insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which could lead to a government buyout. Losses were trimmed after reassurances that “both firms will be kept in their current condition” and an emergency discount window for direct borrowing from the Federal Reserve may be made available.

Oil rises $10.75 to $138.54, jobless rates spike to 5.5%. If these are not bad news, I don’t know what is. Not surprisingly, Dow Jones came down 394.64 (or 3.1%) to close at 12,209.81, its biggest one-day decline since the subprime mortgage crisis in February 2007.

The stock market continued its losses on Tuesday after Fannie Mae, D.R. Horton Inc. and Swiss bank UBS reported quarterly losses. We also recorded a new record for crude oil, $121.49.

Another crappy day in the market as General Electric stoked concern about the health of corporate profits and the wider economy. The major indexes were at times down more than 1 percent.

This article talks about EPS estimates for S&P 500 companies today versus 90 days ago. In addition, it discusses whether estimates are still to high and whether the market is cheap due to a low PE multiple

Felix Salmon thinks says that the "financial sophisticates know that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a bit of a joke: it's only 30 stocks, and it's not even an index."