Have Faith In Your Trading Plan

…as long as you've tested it enough.

Well it took far longer than I wanted, however the miners are breaking down from a symmetrical triangle pattern.  They hung out in the resistance zone for a couple of weeks, but the sheer magnitude of selling on the general markets and the commodity gold are dragging the miners down. If we see selling as severe or worse tomorrow I may cover half of my positions and set stops at my entry price and just let them go. The last thing I want is for my profits to disappear. For those wondering I have positions in ANV GG GOLD NEM PAAS SSRI.

At this point in the trade I'm trying to determine where support is and I've indicated it by the shaded area below. As I stated above, I didn't expect the miners to go as high as they did but they never violated my stops (nearly hit my stop on GOLD) so holding was the only option. But I do view the recent strength as a short term positive for the miners, therefore I may cover sooner than I originally thought. Before I thought they would go down and retest the May lows. Now I'm not so sure, but it still could happen, especially if the general markets really gain some steam on the downside. It helps that GC_F is down over $50 points today.

All four sectors I highlighted yesterday as potential shorts are down. Hopefully some of you took those trades. I would have had I not already been highly leveraged with shorts in miners, LOW, PAAS, SSRI and the two defense stocks I added today: LMT GD. Also long UUP.

It's been uncomfortable watching the markets go against me these last 6-7 days. Barring any bullish reversals on the indexes I'm rather pleased I didn't get squeezed out of my shorts and stuck to my plan. It's not always an easy thing to do, even for traders who have been doing this awhile.