Today's miraculous recovery of 450 or so Dow points, 300 in just the last 20 minutes, had to be one of the strangest things I've ever witnessed. If that wasn't the "Plunge Protection Team" at work then they've never worked. Breadth was terrible, down volume trumped up volume, mid caps and small caps got hammered, etc. But someone came in and bought a very narrow patch of the market...can you say S&P 500? You see, that is narrow when you compare it to the NYSE with 3200 or so issues. But it can be effective. I believe Paulsons crew at Treasury knows exactly what state these markets are in. They know patterns and technicals. He's from Bear Sterns for crying out loud. They know! There's a good chance that today they actually intervened. The price action on a one minute chart was as unbelievably unstable as I've ever seen it. Do you know that twice today the Dow moved up over 75 points in, get this, one minute! Near the end of the day it moved up 280 points in just seven minutes! SEVEN MINUTES!! At another point earlier in the day the Dow moved up 250 points in just eleven minutes! If this isn't concentrated buying by one big source then I don't want to see what is. And after all that what did they accomplish? Not much. I'm sure they wanted to instill the fear that "the train's leaving the station" so everyone would jump on board. Apparently not many people did. It left a footprint of a VERY weak technical rally. To me this is, unfortunately, an indication that the more bearish pennant pattern is operable. Nothing's guaranteed obviously, but this action sort of makes me lean that way. Hey, maybe tomorrow the market takes off to the upside on heavy volume with great internals. If so we can all stand around the campfire tomorrow night holding hands and singing that song everyone sings that starts with a "C" or "K" or whatever it is. I think I'll go look through my sheet music just in case.