Inches from despair, battered and bruised by a stock market maniacally on the rise, we'd nearly given up hope of enjoying a 'fun' expiration day any time soon. Boy, were we ever wrong! The Dow took an exhilarating 370-point plunge on Friday as October puts and calls breathed their last ' and for a few glorious hours all seemed right with the world. Fortunately, we weren't just idle spectators, having made a bearish bet late in the day Thursday. It wasn't a Hidden Pivot gambit, just a hunch that the QQQs lacked the cohones to take on some daunting peaks recorded in the last week or so, including the one just before October 11's entertaining cliff-dive. With the Cubes hovering just beneath those highs toward the end of Thursday' session, we decided to take our chances, buying some November 52 puts @ 0.60. The trade was not an official 'Tout,' just an idea tossed out amidst the usual shuck-and-jive of the Rick's Picks chat room. Much to our surprise, on entering the room Friday morning we discovered that several subscribers had been right behind us buying the puts. Naturally, they were feeling pretty feisty, stocks having opened ugly that morning. Lo, by day's end our puts had doubled in value. We decided to hold onto half of them in case Friday's sell-off proves to be just a warm-up for a good-old-fashioned October avalanche. Google, of course, was the turd in the punchbowl, gapping up nearly $20 on the opening and holding onto fully half of those gains until the final minutes of the session. However, we took some satisfaction in watching those who held positions in the stock at the close kick, claw, punch and bite each other as they struggled to manipulate GOOG's settlement price ahead of the weekend. The
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