I hate to go short. 

Generally, I’m an upbeat person and it’s much more fun “rescuing” beaten-down companies than standing on the shoulders of giants and hoping they trip up.  Still, what goes up, must come down and sometimes the market lets us bet on something as mundane as gravity.  While many companies have a knack for defying gravity at one time or another, my early childhood was formed with Blood, Sweat and Tears, who told us “what goes up, must go down.”  Between listening Al Kooper and Isaaic Newton, I became fairly convinced about this whole gravity thing and, I must say, the theory has generally held up during my lifetime of observation.  

It has been ages since we had a bearish list with our last set coming on April 28th, which was the last time we had a fake, manipulated, rally.  At that time, I wrote “Hedging for Disaster, 5 Plays that Make 500% if the Market Falls” and that list had a 100% success rate but the market didn’t start falling until May 4th – while gravity may be reliable, it isn’t always punctual (Einstein has plenty to say about that).  We flipped bullish again on May 26th, with the Dow at about 9,700 (the bottom of our range) when I put up “The Down and Dirty Buy List!” which turned into our “Q2 201 – Top 20 Buy List” when we got our double dip on June 7th.  Those were long-term positions as we got comfortable with the bottom of our range at 9,700, 5% below our 10,200 mid-point on the Dow. 

On July 7th we got another dip and we added “9 Fabulous Dow Plays Plus a Chip Shot” and that was the last chance we had to make a strong buy list of long-term plays.  Of course we add plays daily in Member Chat but I like to try to put up a collection of trade ideas whenever the opportunity presents itself as we learn more by going back and reviewing a few sample portfolios and seeing what works and what doesn’t over time.  We were less enthusiastic on July 26th, with the Dow at 10,400 as we adjusted our aggressive shorter-term portfolio aimed at “Turning $10K to $50K by Jan 21st” and on August 29th the Dow was back on the 10,000 line, leading us to go with a more cautious list called “Defending Your Portfolio…