Thursday brings, as I wrote recently, 2 forms of March Madness: The one we all know (the college basketball festivities); the other, minted this year, is General Electric's (GE) self-proclaimed "deep dive" into its controversial financial businesses.

Between the company's proclamation that it won't need additional financing, Standard & Poor's benevolent downgrade to AA+ with stable implications, and UBS's removal of its "short-term sell" rating, all appears right with GE now - or so we're being told.

We shall see.

When I compared the "deep dive" to the other kind of March Madness, I mentioned that GE has a critical home-court advantage, insofar as it will be able to pick and choose the topics of discussion. At least that's how these things usually work. The problem, however, is that many feel GE has been less than forthcoming about its problems, and too much softball self-interrogation might actually backfire.

One thing that surprises me -- and has cut painfully into the profits I've booked leaning short GE -- is the market's willingness to sell near-the-money March puts. Expiring as they do after the "deep dive," these would seem to be cheap bets (or protection for stockholders) on a "deep dive" outcome, less sanguine than recent comments would suggest.

I added to my 9-strike puts earlier today. Given that the stock had a 6-handle a week ago, and the main source has been a major rating agency (hardly inspiring confidence these days), I'm surprised sellers aren't demanding a bit more for them.

Of course, because of GE's heavy reliance on its rating, the mild downgrade was in and of itself an event - but certainly one subject to change. After all, nobody's accusing the rating agencies of getting too much right of late. To this observer, the modest downgrade was more an indicator of the agency being unwilling to shake a losing trade than anything else.

Having booked most of my profits, with the rest of my position in options worth not much more than the commissions it would cost to sell them, I'm just going to sit and watch...for now.