Do you like unordered lists?  Here’s a few of them.  Before reading, you may want to hit play on the video below to provide some famous house beats from our featured band:

So I spent the last 3 days in Las Vegas and have made the following observations…

OMG, we’re (still) in a fucking recession…now PANIC and FREAK OUT!

• I could get a (fountain-view) room at the Bellagio for $100 or a strip-view room at the Wynn (2 weeks out) for $175 (with $75 resort credit).
• Half the cabanas at the Bellagio pool went unsold on Saturday ($300/day).
• Could only count 2 occupied cabanas (out of ~100) at the Wynn on Sunday.
• I could actually walk down the strip without having to rub shoulders with every other person I came across.
• There was no outrageous rush-hour (Friday eveneing/Sunday afternoon) clusterfuck at the airport.  No feelings of claustrophobia whatsoever!
• Several cabbies tried to pull the $10-minimum shit.
• I could get a center spot at the railing for the Bellagio fountain show without any problems at all hours of the day (granted, I obviously wasn’t there for every single show, just a fairly random sampling in the afternoon, evening, and midnight).
• I could get into the lounge at Joe’s (@ Caesar’s) at 8pm (party of 2) without a wait.
• Literally EVERY single store was having a sale, regardless of location.  From the standard mall stores of the Miracle Mile through the upscale shops at The Forum Shops to Manolo Blahnik/LV/Cartier/Chanel/Ferrari at the Wynn.  And these weren’t just your usual “3 items on 1 rack are 10% off”…these were 30-50% off the entire store!
• Only about half the population of Mexico was out snapping their whore-cards at you.  They used to bring over everybody in years past.  Hell, I think I even saw a couple whities proudly displaying their ‘Girls direct to you’ shirts…

Nah…Vegas is (still) recession proof!

• The Bank (@ Bellagio) still had the balls to charge you $20/drink, $7/bottled water, and $1000 for bottle service at their shitty-ass VIP “booth”.
• Carnival Court (@ Harrah’s) was actually charging a cover!
• I think I saw a few construction workers at the still-in-progress City Center.
• Ummm…yeah, that’s about it.

So there ya have it…take it for what’s it worth…but Vegas, as I mentioned above, has always been billed in my mind as ‘recession proof’.  Apparently…just maybe…not so much.

And taking a quick/cursory look at options activity…the index put/call ratio has fallen to its lowest level since the 5th of May!

While this reading may seem bullish at face value, we’re working with the theory that the put/call ratio is a contrarian indicator at its extremes.  Thus, I will be buying some SPY puts at tomorrow’s open (while all my trades with this ’system’ have been virtual so far, I may yet do this for real…depends on how I feel in the morning).  Performance so far: