Although yesterday’s roller-coaster ride has left me with little gusto today for a roll in the hay with the E-Mini S&Ps, there are actionable touts in both gold and silver, including a bullish play (!) in our favorite mudder, Silver Wheaton.  Check it out if you’ve been waiting for something promising to happen to this erstwhile glue horse.  And click here if you feel lonely just standing on the sidelines, possibly living a life of quiet desperation.

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Eurospasm!

This just in: It is early Friday morning, and index futures are erupting like Vesuvius on news that European leaders have come up with A Modest Plan to recapitalize the banks, saving Italy and Spain from almost certain ruin.  The markets seem not only grateful but relieved,  possibly because Plan 9 supposedly will not add even a dime to public debt.  How will it work?  The answer was not immediately forthcoming. “It’s not clear exactly what was agreed, so we still need to see the debate in the second day of the summit,” said a spokesman for Mitsui Bank.

However uncertain some of the summit delegates may be about Plan 9 (my name for it, recalling the 1950s movie with zippered aliens), the markets are acting as though they are quite sure that something unbelievably cool is about to come down. The E-Mini S&Ps have surged the equivalent of 200 Dow points, beginning and ending the rally in mere minutes as is nearly always the case when stocks move in a big way. Did you catch a ride? That’s what we thought. Although we doubt that sundry details yet to be aired will move stocks much higher, it is presumably the absence of such details that has already accomplished the goal of short-squeezing stocks halfway to Venus.  It has also seared the pants off speculators brazen enough to have bet against a happy outcome for sovereign Europe and the banking centers of the West.  In other words, a big success. Who said talk is cheap!?