It’s hard for the average person out here in online trading world to know what’s going on. No matter how much news you watch on the cable networks, and no matter how early you get up in the morning, it is still tricky to know what, if any, moves to make. Professional stock brokers have oodles more experience than us, so definitely have some advantage.

In fact, many of my online stock trading and internet options trading buddies are frozen in fear. They are afraid to sell and afraid to buy. So they just sit all day and watch the data flow across the screen, and wonder what to do.

It’s a good time to be short in a few things. I know that shorting stock is being painted with a black name, but without short sellers there could be no movement on any of these stocks at all. And obviously, sentiment is not great; otherwise there would be a lack of short sellers. You just can-not fool reality, and reality is the markets. There’s no getting around that.

I just read a report on commodities, and they are slipping and dropping seemingly with each day, with oil leading the way. I haven’t heard anybody wanting to do a bail out yet for the oil companies, whose profits must be dropping due to lower rates and revenue.

Even gold is losing its luster, with money leaving it for safety and going to US treasuries. It is comforting to know that the world still believes that the United States is a safe haven. That made bode well for the United States if this keeps up, in that the country could be net winner as far as inflow of foreign money and investment.

However, the price of copper has declined quite a bit. Copper is always a metal to be watch-ed, as it is a bell weather as to the health of building and production. I think it can be agreed that most residential and a lot of commercial building is not going to have a very rosy picture associated with it.

Even agricultural commodities have declined in the face of falling demand. Just a number of months ago many agricultural commodities were the stars of that world. Corn and other products could be held and bid up enough, mainly in consideration of the US government mandate that ethanol be used in an ever increasing percentage as fuel for motor transportation.

It’s very hard to predict the future of markets and the economy even under the best conditions, but with all this going on it’s nearly impossible.

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