Chinese Fire Drill

Tuesday's action in the communist (although we pretend they're not) Chinese neck of the woods.

Hang Seng down 8.65%
Hong Kong HSCC Red Chip down 8.64%

As was foretold on this blog in the summer, if you look at a chart of the Chinese markets 2005-2007, it looks just like a chart of Nasdaq 1998-2000. So this is not all that unexpected.

On the other hand Europe is up across the board with the exception of Germany. London up 1%, Paris up close to 1% as of 6:30am.

US futures down 500, but I don't see a massive sell off at 9:30. I really think having the day off yesterday was the savior of the US markets. Plus right now I'm sure the CEO of Merrill, Goldman, Lehman et al are at Benny B's house begging, pleading and most likely blowing like they have never begged, pleased or blew before. Maybe it's just the contrarian in me, but when every headline screams end of the world, I look in the opposite direction.

Since I haven't been to the dentist in a while, I haven't seen a copy of Time Magazine in a while. If the day comes when Time's cover says "DON'T EVERY BUY A STOCK AGAIN", my advice is find every dime you can and buy nothing but stocks. This strategy should have been followed 3 years ago when Time had this to say about housing.