This is no longer a matter for joking. It is time to look out, take everything in, and be dead serious. If you do not have adequate cash reserves, you had better take the proper precautions.

The recent market activity has been nothing shy of ominous. Leadership names have dropped greater than 50% in a matter of months. Debt markets are in whipsaw. Currency markets are like a ravenous sea.

If somehow, you have escaped this fate, congratulations. Now stop messing around. You are not invincible.

We need concerted efforts on the parts of central bankers, but I fear that the political situation is untenable. I understand if you are skeptical on the ability of central bankers to fix any of our underlying problems. That makes sense; because central bankers cannot fix our underlying problems. In fact, there is much to be argued that they prolong or even enable those problems.

But, that is not to say they are not still a preferable alternative to a hard stall of the system. You need to look around and realize just how much debt and financial instruments we have created here. Yes, there is no method of easily unwinding it. But if everything crashes to a halt again, a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt. Evolution is a very violent process.

I completed sales of everything today, cashing out of the markets, down more than 30% for the year.

Thus completes the most stunning reversal of fortunes to date in my life.

I’ll be laughing about this next year.

The oil majors have begun responding. The question is, who gets the axe.

Dec 8 (Reuters) – ConocoPhillips said its 2015 capital budget would be 20 percent, or about $3 billion, lower than this year’s, the biggest spending cut by a U.S. oil and gas producer in dollar terms as oil prices hit five-year lows.

Shares of the company, which set a budget of $13.5 billion for 2015, fell as much as 3.5 percent to $65.50 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

ConocoPhillips said it would “defer significant investment” on less developed projects in the Montney and Duvernay fields in Canada, the Permian Basin in Texas and the Niobrara shale field, which extends over Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas.

“The announced budget is well below our expectations of $15 billion,” Simmons & Co analysts wrote in a note.

ConocoPhillips, which is focusing on the Eagle Ford shale in Texas and North Dakota’s Bakken shale, said it would also spend less on major projects, many of which are nearing completion.

Global oil and gas projects worth more than $150 billion are likely to be put on hold next year, according to Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy.

I raise the white flag. My losses are too appalling to speak of.

Watching the EURUSD, I just can’t sit idly by.

I let loose the entire SXCP position, for a small gain. It may not make sense to sell a winner while clinging to losers (don’t worry, that part comes next). But it really does if you dig down. SXCP deals in coke for metallurgical operations. It was a good value buy, but following the oil implosion (and all other commodities), I’m getting worried the entire market could tank.

Oil was very important to the US economy. You can only sell BAS for so many days in a row before you need to raise cash from something else. We need oil to stabilize at $80 and the EURUSD to stop falling or you are going to see some very serious fireworks.

In that spirit, I also sold positions down until I got the margin monkey off my back.

I’m 100% long, but if we collapse, I’m not going bankrupt.

The market may be down, but somehow I ended up a small sum. My account is up 3% today, erasing the nasty tumble I had play out over the past 48 hours.

I’m constructive in oil and energy names, but that applies more to energy services and complement plays than it does to pure oil bets. I’m also very adverse to deep sea drilling, because it’s expensive and easily priced out of competitiveness.

I’m getting excited about uranium for the first time in years. I’ve been enthusiastic up until now, but there was something missing. The fuel run is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Enjoy your weekend, my good man or lady. The 9th floor is closed for business, until Monday.

This is one of those moments in life; where every atom in the wind cuts against you and blows with all its terrible might just for the sake of getting you to give up. There is no real logic to why it does this, other than that if you give in, it will be your undoing.

Today’s big move lower in oil (again) is gripping the market with fear and my positions are selling off hard. I am down another 3.5% today taking quite a beating. I have a loss for the year. I feel disheartened.

It’s in this moment that I know I have to hold out, if just for a little while longer yet.

The point of this selloff is to break my spirit. I don’t trust financial markets at all. They are filled to the brim with treacherous men acting without morals. I will not give in to this, whatever it is. If it is simply fear, I will rise above it. If it is something more sinister – an intentional move to steal that which is mine – I shall break the culprits in half.

I will not just throw away such a treasure as the US fracking boom. It holds our future.

The days of OPEC are coming to an end. The days of dealing with black handed foreign regimes will go with them. And the US shall be awash in domestic energy for many decades because of it.

Like Armour himself before me, if I must go bankrupt on this dream then so be it. Send the ships.