So much for a follow-through day from the fed

Even though the fed cut 50bp today after just cutting 75bp last week, it still wasn't enough to save the market. Sure, for about 30 mins the market went up and my acct was hurting, but then people read the report and realized that "hmm, things must be bad if the fed is having to cut this much."

I currently only have 2 longs, and neither of them is working well. And today I will likely add a few more shorts.

Market in Correction

Finally today IBD called the rally off.  I never really believed in this last one that was called a Follow-through on the IBD85-85, but I know it's easy to say that in hindsight.  Now things look pretty grim.  Thursday was bad and many expected an oversold bounce to drag this out another couple weeks, but it was not to be.  Friday was just brutal.  Biggest downday on the nasdaq since 2/27/07.  It gapped down firmly below the 200d, undercut the Dec lows, then dabbled with the Nov lows before closing near the low of the day to take them out.  Does it get much more bearish?

My 3 longs are still working, but my 7 shorts are killing it.

Also, it *IS* a good time to buy gold.  It could very easily hit $900 next week and then it's only a hop, skip and a jump to $1k/oz.

Banner Day

Today I think is a very good day for me.  I have a smaller trading acct that I do most of my active stuff in, as well as shorting.  In November 2007 it got down to 50% of the opening value.  That was pretty grim and discouraging.  

But this has been a very tough market.  So I kept trying.  And slowly things started to turn around.  I had a few longs start to work, but got a few shorts going.  One of them ESI worked very nicely.  Since then I've tried a long or two, but even the beautiful ones got killed.  But I kept adding more shorts.  Now I have 3 longs and 7 shorts.  

This was tough through the "santa claus rally", but only one short got covered.  And now my portfolio has really been rewarded by this week.  As of today, my account is now only down 40% from opening.  Or, a 20% gain from where it was.  I am very pleased with that and encouraged.  This is the best I have done since I started trading.