VOLATILE AGAIN? VIX where are you today?

Friday ended in a crashy type of market. I was wrong when I said we may turn out okay by the close. The volatility index rose ... again to 25... on the nasdaq. Remember the VIX was close to 32 in August when the market had its tremors?

We did very well with our puts on SLB (the oil service play). Today SLB is down to 95. And we made a huge amount of money by selling all our NOVEMBER puts. I do not recommend holding options when they are in the money in a big way ... take the profits and rotate into the next position. If the stock were to turn around the profits will evaporate fast and furiously.

CRM (Saleforce.com) was another short position we hold at 54. It touched 50 today. Great time to cover at least half our position. CRM has competition creeping up from the likes of MSFT... and CRM is trading at p.e. multiple of way above 100.... Despite stellar growth the price is way ahead of itself unless its on the takeover radar. Will watch it closely for it to drop below 50 this week and cover our short position and move on.

This time around the correction that began last week does not seem to be panicky and fearful. The same stories - recession, subprime, housing -dont scare us anymore. I would worry if there was somethin new to scare us about. I think the market will be okay- such pullbacks are great to put our cash to work.

Today I am buying COH (COACH) at 40.8, its oversold in my opinion and a great brand with global presence... good for a trade. Also like CSCO again at 31- its a low risk play. YGE - solar stock -we bought at 31 last week - averaging today by buying at 29 ... have a good vibe on this one and the earnings if the YAHOO finance numbers be right, look too good ... at $5.18/share for 2008. SO YGE is a screaming solar buy. Will keep a stop loss at 25 of course.

Our position in SNDK got stop lossed at 45 on FRIDAY. I still like SNDK... maybe if it gets closer to 40 will buy it again. Will watch it this week.

Some more earnings comin in this week. Lets watch the price action in MSFT and AAPL before and after earnings... and then re-assess what we can do to take advantage. Meanwhile, its been great going so far and theres more reason to celebrate than swoon as our short positions save the day and our longs did not collapse.

We are not done going down... a few days of consolidation and one more round of sell-off with the VIX rising again will make me more comfortable going long LONG!