The Italian commedia dell’arte starring Sylvio Berlusconi as head clown begins to bear fruit — strange and bitter fruit — worldwide. Clown, mafioso, master manipulator, whoremonger, cancer at the heart of the Italian political system (if there is one) — Sylvio’s years long reign in Italy appears to be coming to an end.  Always more interested in putting notches on his pistol handle than handling the Italian economy Sylvio has promised to resign.  These promises are about as good as Assad’s promises in Syria.  Sylvio will wriggle and squirm — but if he really goes out of office it will be to court for numerous trials and, if justice is done, to prison.  Only his parliamentry immunity has kept him out of jail — that and the impotence of the Italian justice system.

But we digress — we were talking about why the market is down 300+ points as we write, not in anger, but in sadness… or pique, or exasperation, or irritation — or perhaps amusement.  Trading pros jumped on the news and bombed the market.  But as can be seen they will have to drive it a long way to reach our stops.

Sometimes we regard these power bar days as signals, but we are inclined to regard this incident as an attempt to flush out weak hands before taking the market higher so we are sitting on our positions, and will add to them when we see this downwave exhaust itself.  Possibly tomorrow, the way things have been going.