Geez there’s a lot of red on my screen today. Kind of disgusting if you’re holding long positions…three weeks worth of gains were wiped away in one day - literally. Welcome to a bear market (in my opinion). The water gets really choppy when the bigger trend starts to point lower, so I think we all need to get used to this for a while. However, I was encouraged by a handful of stocks that managed to make gains on the midst of Friday’s destruction. Those are listed below, with a little discussion.

The upside to a bear market is this - bigger single-day gains and bullish ’swings’ actually occur in a bear market more often than a bull market. The downside? They’re usually dead-cat bounces, and difficult to spot beforehand.

One of the best things you can do to defend yourself against a bear attack is to go with the flow. That means set yourself up to sell stocks short. Or, the newer and easier option is just to buy ’short’ ETFs, which go up when the market goes down. A higher-octane tactic might be to buy put options.

If you’re still only interested in owning stocks - and just weathering the storm - don’t get too disheartened. You still have a shot at making some money…you just have to be very careful about your picks. I’m not saying these following stocks are the ones to own this time around. I just found it curious how these names managed to make any gain at all on Friday. When you see that kind of relative strength, there’s often something amazing (and investment worthy) going on.

In no particular order, Friday’s winners that caught my eye:

• United Rentals (URI): Up 6% on Friday on pretty strong volume on news of a triple in profit. URI has a knack for getting trashed and then recovering…makes me wonder if we’re in a trade-worthy recovery mode right now.
• NextWave Wireless (WAVE): Up 10% on the highest volume in months, but no news (which I actually like). There’s still a resistance line here, but I wonder if there’s a big move brewing.
• Khongzong (KONG) rallied 10% on Friday along with a bunch of other China-related names. But, it had been in recovery mode for several days. The prompt was a key upgrade, though I think that was a hollow reason; I think investors are just deciding to look at China again. Hence my next mention…
• China Natural Resources (CHNR)…a nice 11% gain on un-news-worthy news that they bought a Mongolian copper mine.
• China Finance Online (JRJC) up 25%, blah blah blah.
• OmniVision (OVTI) saw a nice 13% rally, producing some earnings news that was not only good, but real. Interesting concept.

There’s nothing particularly special about these names other than they went up when the market went down. Maybe it’s nothing, but I’m willing to watch ‘em for a couple of days and see what the deal is.

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