The market knifed down through most of October. Then it snapped back quite aggressively. The move to the upside lost a little steam mid-day Thursday and the market lost yet more steam Friday.

It seemed like a lot of people came out of the woodwork calling for a rally in the last few days. Given the environment we have right now, a close to 40 point move (40 SPX points) so quickly calls for a little downside. Maybe the next 25 or 30 points will be lower. If that happens very quickly, we probably go higher after that. More often than not big, fast moves reverse themselves, at least a little.

I haven't weighed in yet on the excess profit tax idea for the energy companies being kicked around. I'm not sure how to define excess profit. Even if someone creates a definition, won't energy companies report smaller profits? One good question about this is the subsidies granted to the energy sector. Maybe the tax breaks should be taken back? That would be a little easier to calculate. Of course if the price of oil goes back $30, then everyone will be up the creek.

Energy is kind of a special case because of how important it is and how difficult it is to substitute for.

Here is my idea, maybe we could encourage domestic oil companies to donate money to the US government to help reduce the deficit. Yeah, donations. That's the ticket.

Seriously, history doesn't support higher taxes as a long term improvement. As was mentioned on one of the Fox shows this weekend the republicans are running the show and an excess profit tax will not happen. I do think we can look forward to a couple more weeks of time wasted discussing the topic though.