Online trading has made my life simpler, but has also kept me up at night because I am glued to the screen, searching out events in global markets as they unfold.

Tara, my wife, has told me that I haven’t slept so little since September 11. That’s true. Perhaps leaving the work to an online broker is not such a bad idea.

I’m trying to do a couple of things with online stock trading and online options. One is to protect our holdings. The other, is to make some money. There will be few times in a lifetime when there is such a buying opportunity.

It’s true, though, what they say about not knowing if the markets have hit bottom. I believe the markets have further to fall. But picking the bottom is not an easy task. The blood is seeping out of the cracks, but it’s not yet running in the streets.

Alarm has reached the retail level. That happened last Friday.

This Friday is triple witching, and it could be a blood bath.

Still, it’s hard to cover my own positions the way I want to, due to the cost of hedging. Still, to not head will cost me much more in the long run. In fact, it will cost me the long run. This could be an extended bear market not seen since the 1930’s.

So, a lot of my nights have been spent glued to this computer. Even at work I’m regularly checking the markets.

I’m thinking not much will spring to the upside until after the presidential election. Even then, there is that phase of uncertainty that happens between election and taking office.

This could be a battered market for some time to come, with nobody really piloting the ship for a long time.

For the longest time, a market meltdown has been predicted. Often, the predictors have been off by decades or so. I remember in the late 1980’s, there were all kinds of warnings about stock market crashes, and none ever happened. The only thing the warnings did for me is convince me to buy some gold coins. I loaded up on gold coins, St. Gauden’s and others, when it was hard to give them away.

I kept them, because I liked the beauty of the coins, not so much that I ever thought that they would come back in value or actually have to serve as the last resort of value. I pretty much thought that markets were basically under control and a massive meltdown would never happen again.

I was wrong, obviously, but at least I was not completely unprepared.

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