Last night a few of us from our desk went to a movie short premiere, “$ Game,” written by Maureen Holohan and directed by Tom Cavanaugh. Great time and excellent short. At the after party many who I did not know but who either found out what I did or recognized me from “Wall Street Warriors” approached me to talk about the market. Are we at the bottom? What is going on? How can we lose 500B in one day out of the economy? Non professional traders lead with the new AIG news. One shared a story about how he is now is serious trouble since his retirement portfolio had evaporated. Another shared a story about how a friend lost 10m over the last week in the market.

We are not experts in market calls. There are probably hundreds of guys at Goldman who you ought to listen to about that. But on our trading desk we have seen no evidence that we are near the bottom. In fact we have seen signs to the opposite. GS, the leading financial stock, broke down yesterday and closed below 150. And GS has opened up down 10 points. MS is trading down 4 points in the premarket. Oil closing below 100 is very bearish for that sector. AIG is down again and the rumors are circulating about their difficulties. So we do not see evidence that we are near the bottom.

As a trader at this time you should develop theories as to what needs to happen for the market to bottom. I would take a look at GS. A good theory could be that when GS bottoms that this will be a bullish signal for the market. GS will hold a conference call today at 11. Let’s see how the market responds to their call.

At the top of the Internet bubble I was frequently approached by non traders about internet stocks. Last night I did notice how many more wanted to talk to me about the market. But the price action is showing us no signals of a bottom yet. Maybe GS will give us some data to suggest otherwise. As much as yesterday was another great trading day for our firm and today will be as well, I really hope we are near the bottom.