JJC:    Did you call the bottom?... Did you?... That's the question a bunch of high-profile money managers, who are big fans of the show, put to me repeatedly last night in a classic Wall Street dinner up at Rayos in Harlem... one of the coolest places I ever frequent... actually, the only cool place I ever frequent...

The big money haunchos were watching last night... when I said that the success of the Merrill Lynch (MER) offering, coupled with a chance to refresh the financial system, and take it off life support could mean that we are finally leaving this bear market... All right, anyway... I layered on the amazing collapse of the commodities market, which has made things cheaper for a hoard of companies... and the fact that earnings have been unbelievable across the board, other than in banks... and should even get better now, that it seems that oil and gas have peaked... I don't care about today's little rally, give me a break... I didn't include the bear-crushing 186 point rally today... because it hadn't happened yet... Okay, anyway... So, did I call a bottom? Does a bear get sliced in half the woods?... Or, at least in America... All right, you bet.


It smells to me like something, in fact, many things, have at last changed for the better... It feels good, my neck right in the old noose, the occurace at Cramer-Creek bridge... Or, to put it another way... I am indeed sticking my neck out right here, right now, declaring infatically that I believe the market will not revisit the panic lows it hit on July 15th... and I think anyone out there who is waiting for that low to be breeched is in for a big disapointment, and missing a great deal of upside... They're stuck here, in the house of pain... wrong address!... House of pleasure... Stop waiting... buy, buy, buy the next dip, because I think it might be the last big one...

How can I be so sure that we bottomed?... And not this kind of bottom... All right, there are plenty of clues... and I'll tell you, all of them... But what hit me the hardest is the negativity... The fact that no one believes... The disbelief from the money managers I had dinner with last night, who said I had unbelieveable guts to call a bottom... their eyes were wide with excitement... And it wasn't just the chicken parm... All right... that, as much as anything else tells me where we are... that I could shock seasoned pro that we're done goind down tells me the call is a correct one... Then, today, we got the extraordinay 30% bull, 50% bear ratio in the investors intelligence survey... with so many bears, I mean, come on... who's left to sell?... When you've got just 30% bulls, and 50% bears... and this is something that's been true historically, the bears, I got to tell you something... they're going to be wrong... It's starting to get a little smelly in the cave... you know what I think it is?... I think it's the stink of bear cohonies on the griddle... All right, you get negativity like this at a bottom... Real despair and disbelief... but it gets, frankly, always darkest, just before the dawn... and I'm saying the dawn has arrived... and this isn't Dusk from Dawn, perhaps George Clooney's best movie, this is the dawning on the age of tourists... and I don't mean the Ford car I lived in during the dark days... You don't have to take my word for it... The evidence from my bulls thesis just keeps piling up... In fact, the bull case is so tight, we're going to put the bears on trial for being so wrong... witness for the prosecution, no not the Billy Wilder movie... although, I often feel like Tyro in power when I blow the big calls...

Exhibit A, Merrill Lynch (MER)... which I always call Merill Reese during my old trading days, because he is the voice of my beloved fellow, the Eagles... Yesterday Merill Lynch gave us a blueprint for flushing the unimaginably bad CDO - tired of hearing that, don't worry, you won't soon - paper out of the system... and I think we can do that... I think we'll all put one of the first obstacles of the upside behind us with this move... Even as bad as the stock offering was for MER in terms of dilution, 45%, don't forget that the stock is now up 10.6%... and at one point it was up 5 points from when it did the offerings... 380 million shares... that's called free money bears... And I think every one of these next deals will be over-subscribed... Good work MER... The only thing we've lacked is a blueprint for getting rid of this toxic junk... and they gave it to us... They've cleaned the love canal, with straws... By the way, my sources indicate that that paper that MER sold was all 2006 vintage, which was the most spoiled wine imaginable... and it tastes even worse than that Charles River wine that they get at Trader Joe's for $2 bucks... although a case of that is really not a bad deal... MER sold it not a moment too soon... as its defaulting left and right... that MER rallied again today in the face of rising oil and gas... it's amazing to me... It's a powerful statement that demand for shares down here is so dramatic, I can only wonder what would happen if my friend, buddy, pal, Bob Steele, CEO of Wachovia Corp. (WB), launched an offering... MER popped yesterday like a - IPO... I would've said jalapeno, but obviously they're poison... and it's still climbing...

Now, I want to call your attention to a piece of evidence... Even though commodity inflation has been a nightmare for so many companies... we now know from Alfetus-diversis, the rails, 52-week high-ville, they're on fire... How about Colgate, Cummins, Avon, X, never see them lumped in one aisle do you?... The market seems to have taken the increased pricing that all of these have put through in stride... Sure, there's been some pushback at the pump, 14 straight weeks of us doing less driving... that's incredible... When it seems like the majority of the price increases, which are oil based, are sticking, and when oil falls, despite today's counter-trend rally, these price increases will lead to incredible margin expansion year over year for almost every company that has had to raise prices to pass on the cost of higher oil... Oil just fell from $148 to $121 and then bounced to $127... I think it deserves a dead feline bounce... Now, these oil consumer companies, they will likely keep the elevated prices for the goods where they are, even as they pay much less for oil, gas and electricity... something that should lead to the greatest series of upside surprises we can ever remember... It could be absolutely monumental... Nobody is talking about it... It's the thesis behind my happier days are here again - themed stocks... Hey, how about that DIS after the close?...

The declining gold is also part of this greatness... I love it when gold goes down... It serves to verify the commodities crash that has occured...

I don't the bears see this coming... If they don't open their eyes soon, they will be eating bear stew for weeks... and, I've got to tell you something... my recipe is much better than the bear stew I had at Rayo's... Now, funny, these bears were ranting about stag inflation every minute a couple weeks ago... now they must be all at a prolonged stag party... because they've disappeared from the airwavess... Remember all of those, stagflation, typeflation?... Gone...

The next one is from the prosecution of the bears... The SEC... Boy, it's been a long time, and I'm talking about the confrence, which is the only one I like... The new short selling rule enforcement has changed the dynamic of 19 banks they protect from naked short selling... which is what allowed an outfit like Merill to get away with $380 million shares... It was unbelievable... they could have only done it if we had those rules in place... Despite the ridiculous assertion the money section of the Fox Street Journal today... that these rules led to "mixed results"... There is not a doubt in my mind that this offering would never have occured if the shorts had their way and had been able to carpet-bomb MER into oblivion with their naked shorting... I would honestly believe that MER would have been blitzreged down to $13.15 without these rules... a price where it simply couldn't do the deal in the hole and have it worked... I think this new policy enforcement is amazingly significant and must stay for the rally to continue to war... They would allow even a near-do weller like LEH to execute a MER-style exit from CDO's... Remember Dick Folds, LEH's CEO, to do the deal and stay off the Wall of Shame... Don't make me pants you...

Finally, the prosecution called BAC, WFC and all of the other major banks that just got a deal from Congress that allows them to send all of their bad mortgages, many of which are under warrent, to the FHA, for $.80 cents on the dollar... of course, it's phrased as a markdown, something that they have to take pain on... But that's nonsense... Any mortgage issued between 2005 and 2007... this is a markup... This is a huge bailout that should allow these banks to become the deposit and fee machienes they really are, with good service and revenues... And, if you disagree, remember MER, our first witness... These banks are all candidates to be Merill...

I am calling this leglistlation the BAC relife act... verifying, once again, that our government, our glorious government, is indeed, before they get broomed in November, a government of buying for the cooperation... unless that cooperation wants to drill offshore...