Think of the stock market’s ups and downs as driven almost entirely by short covering and carnival-midway manipulation, and it begins to make sense. A couple of Sundays ago, when DaBoyz had to take index futures down 25 points to dry up selling ahead of the obligatory short squeeze, the strain was obvious.  Now, it’s equally obvious that shorts are getting harder to spook. Monday ended with the Dow up a nutty 208 points. One might have thought this would have left shorts badly on the run.  Instead, the broad averages got only moderate lift on yesterday’s opening bar before they detumesced into a state of tedium.  Under the circumstances, we still view any rally as an opportunity to get short.  That’s the easy part; it’s staying short that’s a challenge.