9th one gone? Fri Jan 22

The fat cats might have lost that all important 9th life last night. After walking away from being hit by the anvil of a crashing market and tucking into the cream as the market bounced it's looking like the luck has run out. With the  US (formerly investment, now commercial) banks oblivious to community anger the US administration has taken out the big stick with restrictions planned on proprietary trading, ownership of hedge funds etc. It's one thing to bail out the financial system and quite another to support predatory, parasitical behaviour so it's going to be interesting to see who's brave enough to oppose the proposals.
Along with belated recognition of Chinese attempts to cool their economy, the bank bashing led to a 200 point drop in the Dow and similar in the other US indices and in Europe. Resource plays were hit as well although the falls are orderly so far, at 12.07 pm, with a drop of 80 points.
Gold was down again, it's below USD 1100 now, and I bought back 4000 more Lihir at 302.5 to book 720 dollars profit on those 4k with a balance of 8k to go.
I'm scratching my head to find some new trades, not unusual with a market that has gapped down. What's interesting is that the market has fallen faster than I anticipated and a lot of individual stocks have too, so it's quite possible that the Xjo has topped and most rallies will fail to reach recent highs.
I have shorted a few Challenger today at 417 (they're 420 now) but I'm not completely convinced about it yet. If I put on a full position then I'll make it my trade of the day.
Here's the Xjo chart. This leg down is extending which implies that it will ultimately form 5 down. It's starting to look like somewhere around 4600 might see this out. It's 4743 as I write.

4.10 Challenger did weaken some more and overall I've sold 9000 shares at an average price of 415. My full position would be a short of 12k shares but I'm still not quite convinced. It has been a long slow uptrend with the suggestion of a 5th wave top and a small break down today as it traded below 417. My caution is due to the long trend and the general choppiness of the stock. The close is below the break at 414.

The market overall has rallied into the close, perhaps some short covering, and the loss is a modest 77 points or 1.6% on the Xjo index compared to losses of greater than 2% in Japan and China.