Timing was pure luck. I did do some spreadsheet simulation for a month or so before that testing various things.
Only long-only traders would have been wiped out. They are not real traders to be honest, they are simply buy and hold investors pretending to be traders who ignore market signals and hold no matter what. That is how the market teaches lessons....
Still fully long in my retirement accounts which I am not attempting to time at this point. Honestly, the correction does not bother me.
Wipeout? It's been a slightly over 10% correction so far. These are very common. How leveraged were you? I learned the hard way not to overdo leverage trying to buy dips with eminis/leveraged funds, sell options, etc.
This has nothing to do with any recent elections. This has everything to do with 8 years of the most accommodating Fed ever (years of ZIRP, multiple rounds of QE, etc.) changing to one that raises rates at the drop of a hat.
I prefer to just stay with the historical data about the market performance in October just before the mid-term elections including the first week performance of November...historical data going all the way back to 1940's. Yeah, I'm sure there were other important issues as you noted but its just a piece of the puzzle just as important as the impact caused by the mid-term elections. By the way, historically the S&P 500 outperforms by the one year mark "after" the mid-term elections in comparison to where it was at the day of the elections. I wonder how many are taking Long positions in the S&P 500 to hold for one year after the recent mid-term elections. Maybe now is a good time for folks to make temporary adjustments in the investment portfolio. As for traders, maybe pay more attention on position size management (size of Short positions versus size of Long positions) for the next year. Disclaimer - Past performance is no guarantee of future results. wrbtrader