As usual, you're completely incorrect. People check it when the media has stories about horrific market crashes.
If you call "bottom" every other day in a bear market, you're eventually going to be right, you f---ing moron.
A newbie question here, How do you figure out the the ratios for these spreads? Ive been reading about DV01's etc, but is there another way to do it? Dont have access to bloomberg....
in bull markets - yes. in severe bears...no. it's like forms of denial. the first is "it's going to bounce back". the second is "please, let it bounce back". that's likely where we are now. the third and final one is "i can't stand this stock market stuff and never ever will touch the stuff again, SELL!". see 1979/1980 for the most recent wide-spread example of this, although 2000/2001 saw it on lots of tech stocks...
TED chart: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=.TEDSP:IND (requires Shockwave Flash Object enabled)