It's another week and another bailout as the government looks to give Citigroup $20 billion dollars so that it can stay in business. As Reuters reports:

"The move is the latest in a string of high-profile government bailout efforts. The Fed in March provided financial backing to JPMorgan Chase's buyout of ailing Bear Stearns. Six months later, the government was forced to take over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and throw a financial lifeline -- which was recently rejiggered -- to insurer American International Group."

"Critics worry the actions could put billions of taxpayers' dollars in jeopardy and encourage financial companies to take excessive risk on the belief that the government will bail them out of their messes."

One of the leaders in the negotiations Citigroup has been having with the government is Obama's new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. So if you are looking for the Wall Street bailouts to stop with Obama you can forget about that. It was a little unrealistic to expect that anyway since he received the largest amount of campaign funds from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the past two years. It will be difficult for him to break away from Wall Street and his appointment of Geithner is a huge disappointment to any of us who was looking for a real change with his election.

Market futures are up today on the news so that is nice. The market historically almost always rallies the day before Thanksgiving so we should see some positive moves this week.

Long-term though I do not see this as the start of a new bull market. I talk about the signs that will appear when we are near the start of a new bull market and long-term investors get an all clear sign with Andy Emerson:

You also can listen to this as an mp3 podcast file. Just right click this link and select save as to put it on your computer.

I also need your help.

I plan on doing an intensive study of trading psychology and the stock market in order to put together a course or book to help you. I am going over my own personal history in the market and trying to answer a simple question - from a psychological perspective what is it that makes the difference between people who make a lot of money in the stock market and those that can never overcome the difficulty the stock market presents a new investor?

I believe that traders are not born, but are created through a learning process and a book or course like this can help anyone succeed. I know I learned from my early losses.

My plan is to think about these things and make an outline. Then spend some time in January putting it all together. It would probably be made available in the Spring.

I'd like some of your help though by answering this short survey. Go here.