Testy Tuesday – Letting off Steam or Sending a Warning?

It was fun because we were short-term bearish and we finally got a bit of a sell-off.  During yesterday's live Webcast, in fact, we had just shorted the Russell Futures at 1,060 in PSW Member Chat and, as I was demonstrating the Futures trade on /TF, we were already down to 1,052 and up $800 per contract.  We never got a strong bounce and the next leg took us down to 1,138, stopping out at 1,140 for a $2,000 per contract gain on the day – wheeeee! indeed.  

Our very bearish, very aggressive, Short-Term Portfolio positions popped from +18,000 on Friday to +$42,000 but we closed that one and we're going to stick to more conservative trading this year, rather than endure daily $24,000 swings, even when they are in our favor!  We already have a more conservatie virtual Short-Term Portfolio in our seminar series and, as planned, that STP popped 2.3% as it was the bearish offset to our Long-Term bullish portfolio, that fell 0.3%.  

We'll be doing a full review in today's Webcast at 1pm, which you can sign up for here.

• Dow 16,300 and 16,100
• S&P 1,825 and 1,800
• Nas 4,125 and 4,075
• NYSE 10,275 and 10,150
• Russell 1,155 and 1,140

 Not until our indexes get back over 3 of 5 of our 1.25% lines are we going to be making any short-term bullish bets (but we did some long-term bargain hunting already yesterday in Member Chat and in our Webcast).  We'd still like to see some earnings reports to give us an idea of which sectors are struggling and today we're already beginning to get some Retail Sales numbers, which are so-so at best.  

IN PROGRESS