Editor's Note: The below is reprinted with Mike O'Rourke's gracious permission from Bedtime with BTIG. Mr. O'Rourke is the BTIG Chief Market Strategist.

"FOMC participants indicate that considerable uncertainty surrounds the outlook for economic growth and that they see the risks around that outlook as skewed to the downside. They also see prospects for inflation as unusually uncertain, and they view the risks surrounding their forecasts for inflation as skewed to the upside."
--Ben Bernanke

But there is an action our regulators can perform overnight: Eliminate naked shorting, which we believed was already illegal anyway. Enforcing the rules on the books should have been occurring all along. When we start talking about bringing back the tick rule and changing the current short-sale rules, we're letting ourselves get distracted from the real problems.

For the record, the shorts didn't create the problems at these troubled institutions; to start vilifying them is simply an attempt to make it appear that something is being done. Yes, action's being taken, but not where it will effectively influence the system in a positive way.

Short-selling as a practice is a very important component of free capital markets. We learn that in Free Markets 101. Hoping a return of the tick rule will save the stock market is ludicrous.

That being said, we wouldn't want to be short the financial sector as a whole at this point in time.

Despite the 1% loss in the S&P 500, today's trading was a push, and there are several reasons to give the bulls a slight edge. Chairman Bernanke's grim but realistic assessment of the economy set several actions in motion. The Vix finally ticked above the 30 level as the S&P 500 hit the 1200 level.

The move was short-lived, as equities bounced, but it was a positive step toward ending the current downdraft. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets back up there tomorrow.

The other benefit of the Chairman's acknowledging the real downside risk to the economy was that the problems everyone else is facing are finally resonating with crude. While it would much more comfortable if crude broke below $130 sooner rather than later, the fact that these big downside moves are appearing as often as the upside ones is encouraging.