Here's what else I'm thinking as I keep one eye peeled for the railroad dicks:

• I could afford an actual train ticket if I'd had the won-tons and brains to buy the casino stocks earlier this week. I have no defense for ignoring the group, given that I had chances to Buy Them on both the "Otherside of Macke" trade (which my email tells me is a popular strategy) and yesterday's not at all sarcastic observation that the stocks were "probably longs for a trade but going to zero". Despite my lack of participation, Las Vegas Sands (LVS) is another 25% today on confirmation from Singapore that, yes, they have agreed to accelerate their plan to fleece LVS on the Singapore development. MGM (MGM) and Wynn (WYNN) are up about 15%, apparently on the realization that both companies are way ahead of LVS as Macau is already putting the screws to Chinese casinos.
  
  For what it's worth, the Purple Crayon sees not a whit of resistance for MGM from a trading perspective until at least $20; Wynn looks good to at least $50, if not the October 9th low at $55. And my trick knee likes Joe Calzaghe at +300 to stop Roy Jones Jr. next Saturday.
  
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• Life is a give-and-take proposition. I've given you some ideas. Now please take this song out of my head. Please. It's been stuck in my noggin for a week and I've already started unspooling clothes hangers for another Do It Myself lobotomy effort. You wanna be in the show? Hit the link and let's go!
  
  
• I'm still long the US Dollar via the UUP ETF, though not in a ton of size. To further define my current "Play Small and Take Quick Gains" game plan, I've been selling the dollar and 2x S&P 500 short ETF, the SDS, in dribs and drabs pretty much since the instant they started working for me. Staying Alive is Job #1 in Bear Markets. Playing quick and small is the best way I know to pull off that somewhat surprisingly difficult goal. The downsides, in no particular order, are: tax inefficiency, the requirement for eternal portfolio vigilance, the mental tax of constantly behaving opposite to what your gut tells you ("buy more winners, run from/ ignore losers") and the simple fact that not a ton of things are actually working these days. All of which is trumped by Job #1.
  
  
• Remember the good old days, when Ford (F) was making "Quality Job No. 1" while General Motors (GM) was focusing on capturing one-third of the total auto market and both were failing miserably? Meanwhile, Chrysler was celebrating the disco era by Staying Alive, thanks to a then unprecedented government bailout of almost a billion dollars. Fashions come and go but bailing out failing auto makers is a long-standing American Tradition (which, in part, explains why being a Hobo as a result of government waste will always be with us).