Who do you think took the money on losing short trades? It is either commission or the investors. One has to accept the fact that so far they have been winning big.
Let us assume there is indeed a retreat. What is decent discount? SPY back to 140? That is not a bear market. Did it ever occur to you to consider what if the bull market actually started end of 2011? The bear market started in 2005, and ended end of 2011. The helicopter probably knows it.
There will be time to short, when the market begins to go down, shorting uptrends for the sake of shorting high is idiotic. Be patient and you will be rewarded promptly, rush into shorting and not only will you suffer heat but probably lose, unless you underleverage of course, which is yet again, another problematic.
Waiting for confirmation has also proven to be idiotic. Every single time the market has "confirmed" to the downside over the past year, it has marked the end of the pullback.
their will be no lay up when this market tanks it will have to be a big gap down. you are 100% right every dip was bought after it broke that magic silly number. its called a bear trap for a reason.
I remember the days that I was long and every god dam day market was going down triple digit points. It seems that there was no end to it. I was long 45000 shares of YHOO at 13.5 which I sold at 16 and I would never ever thought that it would go to 20. Now it is over 36. I have learnt my lesion to never say never but the hard fact is that market tends to gravitate to reality but it might take a long time. That is why I said you cannot find a mutual fund that has 10% return on a decade. You can find hundreds of mutual funds that had over 50% return in a year but over a decade the average return is less than 10%. The problem with staying long and not having an exit plan is that usually market does not give you a clear correction sign until you have missed the major chunk of it. It goes down 2% and then many people consider it a buying opportunity and buy the market. It goes up 0.5% and you become happy that you did not sell it. The next day I goes up 0.1% and you become super confident that 2% drop was just a glitch and the next day it goes down 1.3%,...... and in a month you see that it has dropped 10% and by that time you believe it is already late to sell and market drops another 8% and the story goes on. The same is true on the bull side. If it was so easy to identify the bear and bull market while it is happening, many people would have made money in the market. I am short ADI, MCD and long TZA. I don't hide my positions. I am also long out of the money GLD PUT. Short term (2 weeks).
That was the bottom of the bear market. Did anyone look at vix? It tries to rise, but the market does not seem to care at all, and it then goes goes down. Does anyone know when the fund managers receive their bonus or the letters/decisions? If decisions have not been made, why would any fund manager start selling? He would risk the bonus.
I have attached a 5 year chart of IWM. You call summer of 2011 the bottom of bear market. Look at the chart and let us when the bear market started? All you see is the continuation of a bull market and that summer 2011 incident is a short term relatively huge drop.