Stock market min-crash finally happens; S&P down 8.5%; strong up day tomorrow?

The 7% mini-crash I've been waiting for all year finally happened today, but under very unpredictable circumstances that leave tomorrow's action in question. Still, I think we'll see a Tuesday gain of about 3.5 to 4%.

The problem with this crash, ironically, is that it had a cause: the failure of the bailout bill. Most the previous mini-crashes had general causes (Asian crisis, Russian default) but were more unexpected and based on fear and uncertainty. When reporting on this one, the media will have a definite link to pin it to, which changes the psychology of the next day. The next-day upsurges in the past occurred because market players realized the mini-crash was an overreaction. But will they think so tomorrow? Tomorrow's action depends a lot on what happens with the bailout plan. In other words, fairly concrete news will drive the market, not hopes and fears. So I'm only about 75% confident that tomorrow will be up, and about 35% confident that it will be up big.

I expected that Friday would look like this...it didn't. The market shrugged off the bad news that the plan was in jeopardy, waiting to digest it over the weekend. So who knows...maybe tomorrow's news will be worse, and the market could still go up.

I'm ready to dive in with S&P options if the first hour tomorrow looks bad, as that's part of the pattern: the first hour of the next day is terrible, then the upsurge begins. If the upsurge doesn't happen, then whoops, there go my options. More likely, the first hour plunge doesn't even happen, since market action at the end of today didn't suggest heavy selling at the close or any backlog of sell orders. And there was a 2% surge in 15 minutes in the last 1/2 hour before it fell back again. Like I said, this one almost followed the pattern...but not quite.

Update: As I write this the S&P continues to fall, even though it's well past 4:00. So futures trading in the last 5 minutes may have been very heavy, and very negative. At the close the market was down about 7%, now it's down well over 8% and is still bubbling around trying to catch up with late trades. So I may have to take back the previous paragraph; clearly very late selling was negative and the morning tomorrow should be the same. And a turnaround is questionable for Tuesday, to say the least. The market fell just a bit too far, although it does put the Dow smack dab at the -7% level. Tomorrow will be interesting, to say the least!