Is this it? Fri Aug 20

I was hanging on for more of a rally in the US but last night was pretty weak. It was still on light holiday volume but the motivation - further weakness in the US economy - was sound enough.
I've sold out of long positions ahead of my stops because I'm concerned that we're starting another leg down after 5 days of retracement. Here's the Xjo daily chart.

Awe was sold for close to even at 166 and I took a loss on Wsa with a sale at 495 after I'd repeated an old mistake of chasing a stock.

The market has held quite well with the futures down 41 which is better than the overnight close of down 67. The index has rallied off early lows in tandem and the loss on the Xjo has been pared to 38 points. I don't think that's significant though and I've taken the opportunity to put on a short position in Fortescue. It reports next Thursday, so I'll need to pay attention to that.

The stock has been grinding up, continuing to squeeze shorters I suppose, because while the chart is not strong (no clean trend, just choppy overlapping waves) it keeps making marginal new highs. I'm short at 459 with a stop around 480.

2.10 The relative strength faded and the Xjo is down 65 points.

I went short a couple of other stocks today. Aio which has dropped further and Qan which is hanging in where I sold it. Ozl and Tse are lower and Fmg has edged back to 456. My only long position is in Sbm which is a tick lower. The larger gold stocks like Newcrest and Lihir are up today but the rest of the sector is a mixed bag.

3 pm Having moved to a solidly short stance on the market (and I doubt if I'm alone here), I've now got that uncertain period ahead of me where the market has the potential to make a higher low and trace out a more elaborate correction. Here's a 60 minute chart of the Xjo. While I'm pretty confident, there's still an obvious possibility that the index finds support above 4380 and repeats the process even if further weakness is still in the offing.

4.12 There was a last hour rally and the losses were reduced to 48 points in the Xjo index. My shorts firmed a tad except in the case of Fmg which squeezed up to 464. I'm beginning to think there could be another minor new high in this and I plan to be watchful but not trigger happy with my stop if it opens higher next week.