The S&P on Timothy Geithner, etc.

Those who listened to Timothy Geithner speak this morning must have been sorely disappointed. If they were hoping for anything of interest or useful, there was none. And it disappointed the markets. In fact, today, it seemed like that whenever Geithner spoke, the markets dropped, which led to my semi-comical conclusion that we should sell off the S&P whenever Geithner shows his face on CNBC. On the other hand, it may have been sheer coincidence that Geithner was on CNBC so much today (once for the press conference for what I will call TARP II, another time for an interview, and the final time around the close in a senate hearing) and that the S&P tanked nearly 5%, or it could be that the S&P was really reacting to Geithner. Well, enough of that thought.

Also on CNBC today, of more interest to our male readership (if any readership exists at all), was the wonderful Bar Refaeli, this year's model for the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Someone's gotta take some metric of market interest and activity while videos of a hot model doing a photoshoot are playing on CNBC (which used the racy, innuendo-filled caption "The Other Stimulus" for that segment). Hell, I don't see anything wrong with being short a couple straddles (cue sexual joke) to collect theta while everyone else has their eyes off of the trading screen and glued to CNBC...