I'm convinced that every day that Congress is in session, we lose more of our precious freedoms. To be completely honest, I know that there are a lot of people suffering out there financially and that these are perilous times, however, I'm almost glad the markets did not go up after the bailout was passed and signed into law. Had the market gone up it would have convinced those power-hungry politicians into thinking we needed them even more, when in fact, if they would just stay out of the picture all together, this mess would probably not have been as bad and the markets would probably have recovered by now.

In all seriousness who wants a market that says in order for it to work it has to have the support of the federal government? You might not want it, but if you support this bailout you are saying as much. We've allowed the SEC to ban short selling and that hasn't worked, we've allowed the Fed to dramatically lower interest rates, we've allowed the federal government to bailout Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie and Freddie, and that still hasn't worked. And now....we want them to throw a $700B package to bailout the rest of them? Do they honestly believe that will work, and even if it does work, do we want it to be so because the federal government says so? No. It doesn't end here either. They will want more oversight, more accountability standards, and if you thought Sarbanes-Oxley was an infringement, well then my friends you haven't seen nothing yet.

I can't tell you how much I have to bite my tongue in what I really wanted to say about the SEC and their decision to  extend the ban on short selling of financials. This is their way of manipulating and artificially fixing saving the financials, which is drastically wrong and drastically anti-free market. So now the ban is extended until October 17, and if a bailout plan is passed then the ban will be lifted three days thereafter. The funny thing is that the ban hasn't even worked. We've had some of the worst days ever during the time in which you couldn't short the financial stocks.

If Tuesday's rally had you thinking the worst was behind the financial markets, then today had you second guessing that wild assumption. For the Nasdaq, things only got worse, by closing below Monday's lows, and to be completely honest there is no sign that a bottom is coming in the near-term. Bailout or not, this market is in for some tough times still, and don't think that Congress, for a second can fix the problems that our economy is facing.

Don't try to call the bottom in the market, it's likely to be detrimental to your portfolio. Let capital preservation be your #1 priority even if that means staying on the sidelines while this mess plays itself out.

Here's the Nasdaq and S&P charts...