Welcome Weakness

I confess that I got very spoiled the first 2 1/2 weeks of the year, with bulls stumbling all over themselves, looking every bit the fool that we bears did for so many years before. What a bummer that the market actually caught a bid mid-Wednesday, giving the bulls a 2 1/2 day rally. Since my bearish spirits had been reinvigorated, and I had pushed back into 70 shorts (and 0 longs), I was naturally a little apprehensive about how trading would go on Sunday and into this morning.

Well, the ES and NQ bobbled between a little bit up and a little bit down for hours, but last night, all it took was one dude to change that: a spokesman for a single oil exporter said they’d be keeping their investments in place for energy extraction. That was seriously all it took. One company and one innocuous statement about how an oil driller is – – wonder of wonders – – going to keep drilling for oil.

Oil had thus given up some of those recent gains (black line below), and the ES, which is absolutely joined at the hip to oil these days, got dragged low (in blue):

For me, my position remains the same: lovingly-chosen individual short positions, one of which – Caterpillar (CAT) – is already having a nice tumble this morning. Good luck to you all out there today. Don’t slip on any oil puddles.