Readers who attend my Global Strategy Luncheons always ask me to be careful when pursuing my many adventures around the world.

After all, they would hate to lose their favorite source of trading and investment advice if I fell to my death in a mountain climbing tragedy, froze to death in an avalanche, or crashed my plane while flying upside down.

So what do I do when I returned from my Portland, Oregon lunch? Deep into a ten-mile night hike on nearby Grizzly Peak, I STEPPED ON A LIVE RATTLESNAKE!

Yikes!

Of course, I danced away as fast as I could, at least to the extent that you can dance with a 50-pound backpack.

When he coiled up and rattled at me, I took off poste haste, but not before taking a picture with my iPhone, held at arms length (see below).

That was one pissed reptile!

The bears who got caught in this month?s ferocious short squeeze may be feeling similarly snake bit.

From feast to famine.

After knocking out a head spinning 40 Trade Alerts in September, we have fallen in to a Trade Alert famine in October.

Bringing in a blockbuster 12% profit last month, we are now posting negative numbers for the month.

Markets have suddenly gone strangely silent.

Is this the calm before the next storm?

That?s a definite maybe.

Got to love that (XIV), the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN. We have pulled off four round trips in the short volatility fund, all of them profitable.

Volatility had to go down, lest half of Wall Street drop dead from the stress.

Every Volatility Index (VIX) spike from here on is to be sold into with both hands. I think we are going to see the (VIX) trading between $12-$22 for almost all of the next year.

The $30 handles in the (VIX) are to be seen no more.

In addition, we simply ran out of crises.

The global political scene has calmed down. China quit crashing. Oil and commodities may have finally found a bottom.

So investors and traders have stopped being so negative. But they haven?t become positive either. Hence the pause for Q3 earnings to come out as the pitiful excuse to do nothing.

When we get the all clear signal, I expect the S&P 500 to take a run at a new all time high by the end of 2015. After all, that?s only 7% north from here.

With November the largest corporate stock buy back of the year, underperforming managers desperately chasing returns, commodities getting a new lease on life, and interest rates remaining low as far as the eye can see, it couldn?t go any other way.

But just to be sure, I?ll ask former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when I have dinner with him tonight.

No kidding!

A new high will not happen by November 20, hence the logic behind the S&P 500 SPDR?s (SPY) November, 2015 $207-$210 in-the-money vertical bear put spread.

I think the (SPY) 200-day moving average is going to present prodigious upside resistance the first several times around.

And if the market retests the August and September lows one more time, giving us our final fright of the year, so much the better.

Isn?t Halloween coming soon?

The market has just enjoyed a short covering rally for the ages, up 9 out of the last 11 days. It is waaaaay overbought.

Oh, and by the way, I just received an invitation to climb Mt. Whitney next year, at 14,510 feet the highest fountain in the continental United States, in the run up to my 65^th birthday.

Damn the rattlesnakes, and don?t forget the Champaign!