Michael Santoli had a great one liner in his StreetWise column.THE OUTSIZED FOCUS LAST WEEK ON THE DOW'S REACHING "official" bear-market status with a 20% decline from a recent high is a bit like fixating on the moment that storm winds go from 73 to 74 miles per hour to formally become a hurricane.He also mentioned that oil was up 25% since May 1. I hadn't thought of it in those terms but anyone's perception of fundamentals notwithstanding, 25% in two months creates a meaningful headwind for further price rises in the near term.In an environment like this that headwind could be overcome to be sure but with energy now 16% of the S&P 500 an equalweight position takes on a little more risk for downside volatility than some folks may realize.

This weekend, I had the privilege of driving around the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn't see one gas station that was selling regular gas for less that $4 a gallon. Even the so-called 'cheap' stations were selling gas for $4.29 a gallon. Diesel wasn't selling for less than $5 a gallon anywhere. It was only on May 1, only one month ago, that I thought that gas above $4 a gallon was shocking and may have just been an aberration. Now it seems that $4 a gallon gas, at least in California, is now ubiquitous. [This word is now becoming ubiquitous, so I will stop using it for a while.]

Short Seller Trivia: In the May 1 “Market Insider” blog, which green stock did shorts want badly?

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I got an email today from American Stock Exchange that I wanted to pass along:

AMERICAN STOCK EXCHANGE ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF FIXED RETURN OPTIONS (FROs) ON THURSDAY MAY 8, 2008

New York , May 1, 2008 – The American Stock Exchange® (Amex®) announced today the launch of Fixed Return OptionsSM (FROsSM), which will begin trading on May 8. FROs are “binary” options on popular equities and exchange traded funds (ETFs), including QQQQ, SPDRs and Google that will pay a fixed, cash amount of $100.00 upon settlement “in-the-money.” Fixed Return Options are offered in two forms: “Finish High” – each long contract returns $100.00 if the underlying security settlement value is above the strike price at expiration and “Finish Low” – each long contract returns $100.00 if the underlying security settlement value is below the strike price at expiration. FROs will settle at expiration based on Amex. FRO Settlement Index that will ...

With the continuation yesterday of Friday’s market weakness, the last of our April 3 calendar-spread bonus trades hit its minimum profit target. Here’s a summary of the three positions: EEM May/June 140 - Reached 20% profit on April 15, less than two weeks into the trade. XLE May/June 77 - Even if entered at the less-than-optimal price of $1.20, this position achieved our 20% minimum profit target on the sell-off in energy that occurred May 1, which was within 4 weeks of entering. IYR May/June 69 - The iShares real-estate ETF proved stronger than we expected, but a week ago the spread was trading near a 20% gain. It would’ve been hard to get an order filled at the target price of $1.50 last week, but today the mid price rose as high as $1.575, ...

The individual names do not matter at this point so I am going to just consider this mini basket to be "1 position". Last Thursday as the chickens were running around with their heads cut off about the "strong dollar", I was incrementally adding to my coal stakes [May 1: Incrementally Beginning to Add to Coal] so today I am simply reversing those purchases plus taking out some Alpha Natural Resources (ANR). Let's look at them as a group since that is how I look at these 4 names - I had a 10% weighting going into day with Arch Coal (ACI), Massey Energy (MEE), ANR, and Consol Energy (CNX) They have come a long way in just a few days ACI from $53s to $62s (+17%) MEE from $48s to $57s (+19%) ANR from $46s to $58s (+26%) CNX from $75s to $89s (+19%) Please note I did not buy at the lows Thursday, ...