I have absolutely no earthly idea. My kind of trade would be to do something like buy dollar weighted ATM IBM Calls and sell ATM SPY Calls as a relative value play on the market - very cheap capitalization, pure alpha generation, and staying power. For me at least, I just need better risk/reward skew than timing flat price directionality. The bottom line is the bottom line, and I prefer not to burn through capital and stomach lining timing a flat price market - you do not have to do that in order to make a very good living trading markets. You will find that many HF portfolios are essentially micro or macro relative value for a reason - they want to endure market cycles and grind out income to attract more investors.
Quote from retaildaytrader: "I am putting my reputation on the line with this post. " Well, the original post was a call for a top in the S&P when the market was trading 1165.32 on Oct. 11, and then he started a new thread and declared a top on Nov. 05.
Retaildaytrader is an example of someone whose conscious mind and subconscious mind are at odds with each other when it comes to the market. This is like Mark Brown declaring he's a predator yesterday. There is a subconscious need that people express by behaving this way, often coming to the public to demonstrate it, and unfortunately it's often satisfied by realizing the exact opposite conclusion of what they say. Newbs, observe the kind of humility that consistently successful traders exhibit. If your ego is wedded to your trading ability, the market is very good at getting you to realize the true narrative of self you ultimately hold.
"In the meantime, just sell high, buy low." Whatever happened to trend following - you may think you are buying high in order to sell higher on a 'wing and a prayer', and a few months later in hindsight it turns out to be a brilliant move. There is this primal urge to time a reverse in markets that is the ruin or bain of many participants. Timing a big market reversal, calling a top or bottom in a flat price directional market is such a crap risk/reward skew for 95% of the people who try it. And most people who try it, myself included, just plain suck at it. The sad part of it all is that guys try to time markets, blow out, and then give up on trading because they just don't know any better or they can't resist the urge to be another "Market Wizard" - and that ends their aspirations and dreams of becoming a successful trader. Timing major market reversals is the shittiest risk/reward ever.