The Nikkei 225 has been in the kind of free-fall for four weeks, with intermediate-term support at 15500. Prior to today's session that level was very close. But, after a prior close of 15734 and an open today at just 15615, the Nikkei strengthened throughout the day to close up +151 points at 15885. Now the cushion is 385 points, which is about 2.4 pct.

That may seem ok except I think the Nikkei rallied with traders thinking that the $USD would not continue to cave in. A stronger USD obviously helps Japanese exporters " not just to the USA, but to the China market, where the Yuan is closely tracking the $USD.

What happened afterwards however is that, after a brief, weak attempt, there was no $USD rally today.

The S&P 500 today took a big loss. Other than the precious metals, which were mixed but modestly up, the rest of the industry groups were down. The S&P 500 closed today at 1381.9, which is still well (11.7 pct actually) above the 1220 technical support.

So, unless the $USD has a big bump in the night, I'm expecting the Nikkei to try again to test that 15500 support level on Tuesday, or maybe later in the week because a +2.4 pct drop in a single day would be a crash of sorts. And, if it were to happen, then all I can say is look out below " not just for the Japanese equity market but also for other markets.

In the Week In Review, each week, I have been pointing you to the excellent work of technical analyst Colin Twiggs of Australia. Colin bases his work on Money Flow analysis plus technical support/resistance levels, whereas I use price oscillators.

Twiggs is my back-up because he's independent and uses a different approach to mine.

Oscillators work for me because I look at a very large population of stocks that I have already decided are worthy candidates (dance partners) for long positions. In playing the long side only, I simply look for the commonality of cyclic bottoming and topping phases within the long, intermediate and short-term price series data to tell me when to start and stop.

Stocks are prices and I trade only with the objective of taking short-term and possibly intermediate-term gains with a single price series in order to reduce the cost base of the portfolio. Taxes are not a factor, and a long time ago I stopped thinking of hitting low and high entry and exit points.

But the key to successful trading is to avoid the crashes. It could be that the market is setting up for one now. Maybe; maybe not " but it's when possibilities become probabilities that you have to worry. We''ll know soon whether the clear and present danger posed by the falling $USD and the important Japanese equity market give us a strong signal of probability the Bear has finally arrived.