With crude oil sinking again today on economic slowdown worries, energy stocks have tumbled and even Exxon Mobil, fresh off its humongous earnings report last week, has broken support. I wrote this up in this morning’s newsletter and while there was no trade trigger on it, I hope astute readers saw the technical breakdown when it happened. At that point is was worth a short!br /br /Last week, I wrote in Barron’s Online that energy stocks were attractive again. It was simply based on the risk/reward ratio they presented after falling hard and landing on support. But over the course of the week they failed to rally and as I always say, strong markets do not hang around support for long. With today’s oil plunge, it looks as if the trade failed.br /br /However, since we had good money management controls in place – in other words, a stop – we took only a few lumps. It could have been a home run but we ended up grounding out to the pitcher. Better than a double play, though.br /br /But nothing ventured nothing gained. We have to take prudent risks in the markets or we’ll never earn anything, The secret is to live to trade another day. br /br /We’ll revel in the success of our trade in T-3 Energy, which was stopped out at a nice profit this morning.br /br /So, oil drops on a weak economy. But inflation is at a 27-year high. But gold is falling, too.br /br /Something is very weird here and whatever it is, it cannot be good for the stock market.