Eliminating Overtrading

One of the keys to trading more successfully has been to eliminate overtrading.  That is trading for a short-term intraday moves.  I have come to realize that overall, they are a net negative to my trading results.  It is hard to do nothing and just be in front of the computer with a mouse click away from buying or selling.  But I've the most success just taking a position and holding it, giving it time for a move to develop.

There have been too many times in the past where I have focused on making daytrades at the expense of missing a longer term trading opportunity.  Now my main focus is to seize those longer term trading opportunities, and not waste mental energy on the intraday squiggles.  It is easy to get caught up in the intraday movements and imagine all the points that you could have made if you bought at this price and sold it 30 minutes/1 hour later, etc.  It is a mental trap that sucks traders into short-term thinking, and blurs out the big picture view.

For example, if I was bullishly inclined about the S&P 500 (I am not), I could have viewed the dip in the middle of last week as a buying opportunity, maybe not intraday, but certaintly for a swing trade into the beginning of April.  Even if I thought the market could go lower the next hour, or the next day, just by having a longer term view lets you take a position at a favorable price level and just ride it out without worrying about the short-term fluctuations.  The big money is made in the sitting, not in the day-to-day hour-to-hour trading.

It is hubris to think that you can predict how a stock/index will perform in the next hour, the next day, or the next week to perfection.  All you can do is to try to put the odds in your favor, and let the trade develop.  This will result in winners turning into losers, which really pains the psyche, but also let losers turn into winners, or more commonly, let small winners turn into medium to large size winners.

It is hard to compete with the HFT front running/scalping, the bid ask spreads that add up quickly when daytrading.  The edge for a discretionary trader like me is to take adavantage of the short-term nature of these HFTs which will push prices beyond their natural supply/demand levels, to get good entry points.

After yesterday's rally cooled the nerves of traders, it should be a quiet day today.  I see little edge on either side.  Just by looking at the lesser activity of speculative stocks, the animal spirits are notably absent since the beginning of March.  There is nothing to be excited about in the markets, and the speculators seem to agree.

Short Setup Coming Soon

This one day rally has a high probability of being a one day wonder.  You do have a lot of automatic inflows on April 1, and spillover buying the next day, so that could support the market later this week, but after that,  the market will trade more on fundamentals and prepare for upcoming earnings season, where expectations are weak.  I am sure you will get some selling pressure next week as we get closer to the middle of April and start of earnings season.

I am currently short crude oil, so I don't feel the need to add short exposure to S&P at the moment, but I will be tempted to do so early next week.  It could be too late by then, but I would rather wait till after the nonfarm payrolls report and Easter to start my short operation.

I see very limited upside till you get into the middle of earnings season, where the disappointments should be fully priced in, and we can rally again.  No big picture opportunities at the moment, but it does feel like the dollar will have to consolidate its gains for quite some time in a range before we see the next trend move.

Redeveloping a Bearish Mindset

I am a natural bear.  So I took some hits during this 6 year bull market, but I was able to survive by giving the S&P the utmost respect as a bear.  I gave up on shorting it.  It saved me countless times when it was tempting to short in 2013 and 2014.  But it has cost me dearly so far in 2015, in missed opportunity cost.  If I had just been in a coma the last 7 years and woken up on January 1, 2015, I would be gobbling up points on the short side.  This is my kind of market, with my pre 2009 bearish mindset.

But I haven't been able to capitalize, because my bearish mindset has been dissolved away by the 6 years of relentless rallies, BTFDs, and dips that go away in a flash.  Once you develop a long term bias on a market, and it gets confirmed month after month, year after year, eventually it sticks.  I am sure I am not the only one who is stuck with this bullish-leaning bias.  The natural bulls of course are loving this.  And a lot of the natural bears either adapted to the bull market or have gone extinct.  Those that have gone extinct are the ones that would be thriving in your 2015 stock market.  I don't even want to mention the crash mongers, as they give bears a bad name and probably don't even trade anyway.

One of the few benefits of this long bull market has been discovering the bond market.  I had to find other ways to express my bearish views without having to short equities, so I found the bond market.  I had for the longest time ignored the activity in the bond market, I was always an equity guy but since 2013, it hasn't been boring as first expected.  Instead, it has been a source of trading opportunities that are more frequent than I first expected.

Over the coming months, I will work to regain the bearish mind that is now buried inside after having been shelved for a long time.  It is not going to be easy, because the bearish bias has only really started to pay off over the past few months.  But with the overvaluation, long term bullish sentiment/TINA attitude,  overallocation to equities, weakening global economy, and the sheer length of this bull market, almost everything seems lined up for the bears.

One of the ways I will redevelop a bearish bias is to make sure I read more bearish articles and authors: Zerohedge, Harry Dent, John Hussman, etc.  What about a blowoff top that rips the face off the bears?  I just don't see the catalyst, as the one that has been used over and over is central banks, and that is pretty much all used up, and well-known.  No, I don't expect a blowoff top in the S&P 500, there just isn't anything to get excited about to ignite one.  You didn't get one in the 1966, 2000 (that was Nasdaq, not S&P), and 2007 tops.

An outright short of the S&P 500 is no longer a no-no, but now an essential part of the current bear's arsenal, along with bonds and yen.

Today is setting up for a theta burn, tight range garbage day.  It is Friday after all.  Gone are the days of the Friday selloff with the advent of the weekly options.  Now put option selling institutions have a vested interest in keeping away big down days on Fridays, especially when there is a lot of put open interest for the week.  Plus Yellen is due up to speak later this afternoon, I am sure she will have some encouraging nuggets for bond and stock bulls.

Gray Swan

Well, that crude oil short timing was about as bad as it gets.  I wouldn't call Yemen a black swan, because that is something that really creates havoc, but the volatility was definitely elevated overnight.  A bit scary, as the shorts scrambled to cover in the face of HFT front running.  That is what happens with HFTs, they will exacerbate moves as they front run orders and cause prices to go further than they naturally would.

A move in crude oil on geopolitics is usually short term, unless it disrupts supplies like Libya.  But in most cases, and probably this case, the short term rally will be given back in subsequent days.  I did take a partial loss on the short, but maintain a smaller position, which I will increase again once the storm calms down.  I expect WTI to get back to $45 sometime in April.

Surprised to see bonds weak again today, considering the equity weakness.  Seems like just a consolidation of a huge rally over the past 3 weeks.  Don't have a strong opinion on S&P, looks like we could have a small bounce but I won't play it.  And not really interested in shorting either.

Oil Short Squeeze

The market is really testing the crude oil bears today, as everything seems to be going down, stocks, bonds, dollar, but not oil.  Even a bearish inventory report was just a blip in the day's uptrend.  I added to my previous short position, too early, but this will be a longer term play.

As for S&P 500, completely breaking down, it is clearer than ever that without the daily stock buybacks, this market is standing on quicksand.  We are right on the cusp of a big bad bear market.  The market is screaming weakness, as we flatten out the monster 6 year uptrend.  I am expecting a break of SPX 2000 within 2 weeks.  I have no short position, because I figured we would trade sideways into early April before getting whacked, but the market is too bearish, it doesn't have the staying power and therefore doesn't give longs as much time to sell the highs.

I have a double bear suit on, bearish oil, and bearish stocks.

Saturated with Equities

The retail and institutional crowd are loaded up on equities.  Not just US equities, but also Japanese and European equities.  It is a triple barrel of overpriced assets loaded up on household balance sheets.  At post 2009 highs for all 3.  In the meantime, cash and fixed income are at low levels.

As you can see in the link above, it seems like the most likely scenario is a rebalancing the hard way:  equities going down, leading to a flight to safety in Treasuries.  This is all big picture stuff, but we are much closer to the inflection point where corporate buybacks don't move the needle enough to fight the fundamentals of slowing earnings growth and overvaluation.  Unless you get a bubble mentality of investors selling even more of their fixed income to buy stocks, you will see the hard rebalancing:  down equities, up Treasuries.

We are consolidating the rally from the FOMC, in a bearish way, as the market looks tired here.  Even a weaker dollar isn't able to provide a lift this morning, after the down day yesterday.  Just weak.  Going forward, I will probably be playing the short side on S&P with put spreads, which are cheap and offer good risk reward ratios, even with the Friday manipulations notwithstanding (a story for another day, but expiration days usually manipulated by institutions to make puts as valueless as possible).

Crude oil is a good short at these levels, will look to add to my short after the inventory report.

View from 10,000 Feet

After a weekend to clear the mind and look at the markets with a fresh perspective, we are clearly building a top.  Not just in the S&P 500, but in global equities.  It is not earnings expansion driving prices higher, but valuation expansion.  In U.S., Europe, and Asia.  Shanghai Composite is at a post 2009 high.  So is the Eurostoxx, and the S&P 500.  The bull market is 6 years old.  The economic data is coming in weaker than expected.  The faith in central banks keeping the liquidity going is at an all time high.

Here is the problem.  The central banks can provide the liquidity, but they do it through the bond market.  The money does not have to flow from the bond market to the equity market.  There is no rule that says so.  The money can just stay in the bond market, or cash, or the money that went into equities can go back into bonds, or cash.  Only because we've had such a long lasting rally in equities that people assume that QE automatically equals higher equity prices.  Going forward, I don't believe that will be the case.  Rather, I believe QEs going forward will greatly distort the bond market, leading to unthinkably low yields, even in Treasuries.  I would not be surprised to see a 1.0% 10 year Treasury yield in 2016.  10 year yield, not Fed funds!

You would think the S&P and commodities would gap up pretty strongly on this weaker dollar, but its not.   I see very limited upside here, and see a sideways trade for the rest of the month that lures in more inflows before we get another move lower.

Dollar is the Lynchpin

The dollar is controlling the market.  Today, you have a weaker dollar, and that is helping crude oil squeeze some shorts (a possible short opportunity today) and the market is trying to stay above 2100 again.  I read news that there were $20B in equity fund inflows this week, most of it ahead of the Fed meeting.  The fund managers are now fearless, they buy ahead of the events, and after the events.  With Janet Yellen giving the green light for blowing bubbles, you have a market gone hog wild.

Bonds are loving it too.  Everything is going up.  The "future is so bright, gotta wear shades" market.  This rally shouldn't last too long, you cannot build a long lasting rally on hopes of weaker economic data so the Fed doesn't raise rates, and to keep the dollar weaker.  Earnings season is coming up in a few weeks, I am sure de-risking will be back on the menu before that period.

Waiting for a spot to short crude oil, for a longer term swing.

Euro Giving Back Gains

Looking at the stock, bond, currency, and commodity markets, you can see which markets have staying power and which don't.  Stocks and bonds have mostly kept their FOMC gains, but the euro and crude oil have not.  It is no coincidence that the markets in sharp downtrends could not sustain their gains from yesterday, while those in an uptrend could.

Periodically, when you get crowded positions, like the short euro trade, you get counter moves to shake out the latecomers and the non-believers.  I am neither, as I am not one to just buy something because it has a lot of bearish sentiment.  The euro is still in a well-established downtrend, and it was overvalued for so long that getting closer to fair value makes it seem like a bargain.

Yesterday's price action after the Fed announcement shows you that those that wanted to buy euros, stocks, and bonds all wanted to wait till after the announcement to do so.  Not too many were planning to sell euros, stocks, or bonds after the announcement.  The nervous ones already did ahead of the announcement, for fear of "patience" being removed.  The Fed rarely fails in their dovish glee to placate the markets.  Remember that.

I was hoping for crude oil to stay up this morning for a slam dunk short, but the market never makes it easy.  At these gap down levels, I am less excited to short crude, but if I had to take a trade, I would be on the short side for the day.  Perhaps if the euro can bounce again, a better short opportunity will present itself in the crude oil market on Friday.  Not much to do today, going nowhere fast for the past couple of weeks.

FOMC Game Plan

The Fed can be counted on to do one of either 2 things.  1) Be more dovish than expected, or 2) Meet consensus.  You ask, but they can be more hawkish than expected, right?  No, that is like betting on the equivalent of a 100 year flood, the last time they did it was when the market was making all time highs, there was no reason for QE, and they came to their senses (June 2013).  This is not one of those times where expectations are out of line.  In fact, the expectations are too hawkish, considering the death of oil and negative interest rates + QE combo in Euroland.

The big, smart money has already sniffed this out, which is why the euro didn't weaken going into today's FOMC decision, bonds keep rallying, and S&P has been strong.  This negates a lot of the bounce that I expected out of FOMC meeting, but I still expect a bounce in stocks, bonds, and euro, just smaller in magnitude.

As for crude oil, this is one sick market.  Deadly.  WTI prices are beginning to scream to the producers to shut their production or we will go lower.  The producers have still not reduced their production enough, only a WTI price shock lower will get their attention.  This is not that price shock level.  You need to see WTI in the 30s and Brent in the 40s before you get their attention.  Those adding to their inventories in Cushing will only do at lower prices, remember.  They are at inventory levels where they will not chase the market higher to buy.

I, along with most of those trading crude oil, will look to sell any bounce of more than $1.  Look for a $2 bounce and you miss your selling opportunity.

Buy any dips in S&P, euro, or bonds today after the FOMC announcement, as Yellen will talk dovish in the press conference to try to weaken the dollar.

Crude Oil Waterfall

Crude oil is in the middle of a waterfall decline.  The Twitter streams are overflowing with newbies trading crude oil.  Mostly from the long side.  While the contango widens out even further, hitting $2.30/barrel currently.  It made no sense late in 2014 to see crude oil plunging while the S&P 500 was making new highs.  They used to have a high correlation from 2009 to 2013.  The relationship broke down completely last year, as positive equities no longer supported the oil market.  It was a bull trap, seeing a strong S&P and weak crude oil, tempting correlation players to buy crude oil/short S&P, or just buy crude oil only.  It has been pain for bulls, along with the constant vig that goes to paying the contango rolling over every month, losing over $2/barrel.

Even if you are right about crude oil going higher, unless crude oil goes higher than the rate of $2/month, you lose money going long.  Just for longs to stay even, crude oil needs to go up $2/month.

A market like crude oil doesn't go down from $100 to $45 just because of a small change in fundamentals.  There was an accumulation of inventories, and eventually those accumulating had enough and would only be willing to add to inventories at much lower prices, they were the marginal buyer of crude oil.  Price is set at the margin, by those that have the most elastic demand for crude.  They don't need to buy the stuff, but if it is cheap enough, they will buy it to try to profit later.  And the more inventories they build, the lower the price that they are willing to pay to accumulate.  It seems like they are not willing to pay higher prices to add to inventories.  They are satiated, and will only buy more at lower prices or if there is a sudden fundamental change in the market.  That is unlikely as OPEC has stuck to their game plan and don't want to exit it prematurely before the shale oil producers go bust.

Crude oil is the most bearish market in the world.  I believe Janet Yellen will be dovish, rallying the euro, yen, and S&P 500, as well as crude oil for a day or two.  Which of the 4 will you short on the rally?  My number 1 short target is crude oil.

The next two trading days will be position squaring ahead of the Fed, which means crude oil, euro, yen, and S&P will likely remain stable to weak.  I doubt they will strengthen going into the Fed meeting (maybe S&P, but definitely not the other 3).

It should be slow trading until the FOMC fireworks on Wednesday.

Short the Weak, Not the Strong

If you want to take a bearish view of this market, which I do, you have to give yourself the most room for error.  For example, if you want to short the S&P, you can go ahead and do that, but you expose yourself to face-ripoff potential as seen yesterday, when the market shot up on bad retail sales, which confused a lot of rookie traders, but made sense if you thought about what the market has been anxious about.  The market's number one worry is not slowing earnings, or bad retail sales, it is the strong dollar.  Anything to weaken the dollar was a welcome sign, even if it came with bad data.

Well, today, we are giving up almost all of yesterday's gains, which makes sense if you look at the EURUSD.  Taking a long on the SPX is almost the same as going long euros.  It won't be like this for long, but that is the current meme of this market.  That is what short term trading is all about.  You have to know what the big boys are worried about, not what you are worried about.  I am worried about overvaluation, and slowing US growth, not the strong dollar.  But it doesn't matter what I'm worried about, its the trillions of dollars being shoved around by hedge fund managers who are herd animals.

Crude oil is getting crushed, and it now looks like the move up in February was a dead cat bounce.  These commodity bear markets don't scare you out, they wear you out.  You don't see many V bottoms in commodity bear markets like in stocks.  They are U bottoms, and scraping along the bottom is slow, constant pain for bulls.

EURUSD is setting up for making a bottom ahead of next Wednesday's FOMC meeeting.  I have a strong feeling EURUSD will make a bounce after the news comes out.  Janet Yellen will be dovish, and I am sure she will try her best to make the dollar a bit weaker in the short term.  Expect stocks, bonds, and euros to rally off that meeting.

Good News is Now Bad

We are entering bizarro world in economic news.  Good economic data is now bad for the market.  This is what happens when the market is addicted to ZIRP, and shudders at the thought of a Fed funds rate above 0.  Don't believe for a second the pundits that say that the Fed rate hikes are priced in.  They are not.  The bond market would be much weaker if it thought the Fed would actually get tough and raise rates.  The bond market knows.  It just does.

The German 10 yr Bund is at 0.20%.  The 30 yr Bund is at 0.60%.  The 30 yr Bund is yielding less than a 2 yr Treasury!  The German yield curve has gotten so low, that anything less than 4 years is yielding less than -.20%, which is the cut off for ECB bond buying.  This means that the ECB can only buy longer maturity Bunds, which puts a huge squeeze on the long end there.  The central banks have so distorted the bond market, that you are seeing historically unique behavior.  With the Bund yielding so low, bond managers looking for safe assets feel like they have to buy Treasuries instead even though they fear rate hikes.

We got a very weak retail sales number, and already the brigade is out stating that it was due to cold weather.  More excuses for a economy that will be torpedoed by rate hikes.   US economy is not strong enough to withstand non-zero interest rates, it is addicted to low borrowing costs.

With the bad retail sales number, the dollar is weakening, which should help the market today, as the theme lately has been to sell off the S&P whenever the dollar gets stronger.  This number should keep the dollar bulls away for at least a day.  Probably not longer than that however.  Market should bounce some here, after getting a bit oversold.  I don't expect a big bounce, but it should last for the morning at least.

Intraday Dullness

This is quite unusual for the market to be this dull after dropping 60 SPX points in 3 trading days.  It's eerily quiet despite the S&P losing most of February's gains in a few days.  This is quite different than the down days in January, when you had a lot more intraday volatility.  Those led to quick reversals which themselves led to reversals.  This feels completely different, almost as if there aren't many dip buyers left to come in to support this market.  Perhaps there have been so many dips over the past 3 months, that the dip buyers are worn out.  They have had plenty of chances to buy stocks.

Gut tells me that perhaps it will be the dip sellers who actually are making the right decision selling this time around.  I am not putting any money behind the idea, as I have no S&P position, but I am very cautious about getting long this market.  Let's not forget that the theme of QE supporting the stock market is no longer valid, as the Fed is now clearly in a tightening mood, or at least a non market supportive mood.  The ECB bond buying helps Europe, but it doesn't help the US, it probably helps Treasuries a lot more than it helps US stocks.

Be careful trying to buy this dip, I am only willing to buy panicky dips, this just doesn't feel that way at all.

Too Cautious and Missed It

I should have just shorted the S&P 500.  Recently, I have been bearish on the stock market, but all those years of a relentless bull market, shorting and getting my face ripped off, with stock buybacks getting bigger and bigger made me cautious when it came to shorting the big daddy.  And I missed the move.  I wanted to short a proxy, like USDJPY, when it went up some more, and I just missed everything.  Missing this down move in the S&P is regrettable, there were quite a lot of warning signs, such as overbullish sentiment while making just marginal new highs, weak market breadth, and the continuing strength of the dollar.  Yet I couldn't pull the trigger.

There is almost no doubt that we are now writing the final chapter of this bull market.  You can see the signs, when the worst equities (European equities) are now the most loved.  That always happens at the ending stages of a bull market.  Investors always go out on the risk curve and reach for more speculative stocks, fundamentally weak laggards, etc.

This down move which again, like in late December, came without warning, without any volatility at the top, and is happening basically in a straight line.  All I can hope for is one more rally off this pullback to short.  The time to be cautious about shorting S&P is over. For the rest of this year, I will have to anticipate a drop before it happens, instead of waiting for market price action to show me hints, because this market now goes down without any price action warning.  Welcome to your 2015 market, where fund managers are now fully saturated in US equities and have overextended themselves into no growth, European and Japanese equities.  This will end badly.

For today, looking for a gap and go day, a bloodbath finishing near the lows.

Ticking Time Bomb

The market is on the clock.  There is not much time before the crap hits the fan for this market.  I am talking about the big picture, not a pullback, but the start of a bear market.  It looks to me that the market is now in the exact opposite situation of 2014, when good or bad news was interpreted as good for the market, as seen by the number of gap ups you had during nonfarm payrolls reports.  But that is no longer the case.  With supposed Fed rate hikes getting closer, good news is bad, and bad news is bad, because the market needs a strong economy to support these valuations.

The only thing holding up this market is the optimism over ECB QE, and corporate stock buybacks, which are now increasingly funded by bond issuance.  That is not healthy in the long run.

So on "good" jobs news, Friday we had stocks down big, bonds down really big, oil down big, and gold down really big.   That is a rare feat.  To have the markets crushed all around.  It goes to show you what the market thinks about a Fed rate hike.  It is NOT priced in.  The market has been conditioned for the Fed to come up with all kinds of excuses to delay tightening monetary policy, or to raise the bar for how good economic data has to be to raise rates.  They did that with Bernanke, who said 6.5% unemployment would force them to tighten, and then they raised the bar to 5.5% unemployment rate, and then got rid of it all together.  It has been a fool's game to expect the Fed to tighten, because they have always erred on the side of caution, and kept the easy money flowing.  It will be a shock to the system when they raise rates, even when many expect it, because there are still many out there, including me, who don't believe they have the guts to do it in a timely manner.  They will only raise rates if they think the market would be disappointed if they didn't.  In other words, the Fed will only feel the urgency to raise rates when the majority in the market thinks they should be raising rates immediately.  That is not the current opinion of the market.

So I do believe Friday is not a making of a long term trend of stocks and bonds going down together.  But until the Fed meeting next week, stocks and bonds should remain weak.  Then Yellen will probably have some soothing words for the financial markets to avoid a situation like 2013 with the taper tantrum.

No position in stocks or bonds, but I am bearish commodities, especially crude oil.  Also am waiting for the USDJPY to get a bit higher to start a short position there.  And if the euro gets really extended to the downside, EURUSD 1.05 would be a good point to buy euros.

Bond Market Massacre

This is going to leave a mark.  The Fed fear trade is now officially here.  The fear of the Fed rate hike.  Paul Tudor Jones said to short bonds 3 months before a rate hike.  Well, with this blockbuster NFP number, even though wage growth is weak, will get the bond fund managers in a panicky mood, ahead of the FOMC meeting in two weeks.  It is almost guaranteed that the Fed will remove the patience language from their statement, and now it seems like there is a lot of expectation for a June rate hike.

I tried to buy the dip in Treasuries this morning but took a loss as the market kept going lower and lower.  I will be back to try to play this Treasury market from the long side, but probably wait till Monday to buy.  It will be a panic Friday in the bond market as no one wants to be long for the next few months.

Today reminds me a bit of the July 2013 nonfarm payrolls report that killed bonds.  I will BTFD in Treasuries, just waiting for a bit of a bigger dip.  Levels I am looking at are 2.25% 10 yr and then 2.30%, and huge support around 2.40%.

Early on WTI Short

It looks like we will be getting a good inventory report, as API has a smaller than expected crude oil build.  I put on a starter position short in crude oil yesterday and will look to add on any pops from the inventory report.

On the S&P, the market is boring me.  Are we returning to the Big Bore type of trading?  I don't think so, but it is entering my mind, since it is trading in a tight 20 point range for the last two weeks.  We are going nowhere in that market, and I am not interested in getting involved.  It looks like we are forming a top, but it will probably take at least another week or two before they pull the rug under the bulls.

Out of Treasury Short

I have covered the Treasury short a day earlier than planned, because it is trading stronger than I expected compared to overnight price action.  Also, this S&P looks like it is ready to roll over at any moment and I don't want to take a chance at getting caught short Treasuries when the S&P gets dumped.  I still think we'll likely get a bit more of a selloff in Treasuries over the next couple of days, but the risk/reward is less favorable now.  Plus, I am always nervous being short Treasuries, it's not an easy trade.

I have legged into a short crude oil position, this time looking for a bigger move than before, as the inventory situation is getting more bearish and the WTI/Brent spread speaks to this.

Waiting Game

Nothing to do right here, wait for it.  Investing is as much a waiting game as a trading game.  There is nothing compelling at the moment, but I am waiting for one last push higher in the S&P, which should help to set up a better entry point for a crude oil short.  Unfortunately, crude oil has been so weak that it hasn't given me the chance to short at a high enough price where I can feel comfortable holding the short long term.  I'd like to see $51, but don't know if it can go there before the big drop.  And I think the big drop is imminent, it could happen any day here.

The S&P looks quite tired, but I am not a big fan of trying to short these slow uptrends waiting for it to topple over, usually it takes longer than I initially expect.  I am short Treasuries, and will remain short for a few more days.