I cannot shake the feeling that the market gods are trying to trick me. I keep looking at these charts and wondering to myself, “there is NO WAY they are going to make it this obvious.” Because during the depths of the selloff, the “obvious” move was a rally to the low 25000s on the Dow, which is exactly what happened. Now that we’ve recovered about 62% of the drop, the next obvious move is another plunge, taking out the lows from early February. If by some miracle that transpires, I will fall over backwards at how easy it should have been to trade (I’m too much of a worrywart to aggressively position myself, in spite of the aforementioned obviousness).

Here’s the DIA ETF, for instance. We’ve got a perfect shooting star reversal formation on Friday, and we’ve come full circle on the retrace back to where the serious fall commenced (at the arrow).

I guess one asterisk in this is that real estate has only partly recovered. Hypothetically, it could keep fighting its way up through this yellow tint before it hits a lead wall.

That aside, though, virtually every ETF looks the same: a clear top, a hard fall ,and a swift recovery back to the underside of the same top. And, as icing on the cake, that same shooting star pattern I mentioned earlier.

One last one, just to drive the point home (for obviously reasons, with a remarkable resemblance to DIA):

If I were the devil-may-care type, I would have put every ounce of buying power into short positions at Friday’s close. But I’m quite concerned about the devil caring, so I’m only about 130% short in my normal portfolio and merely 50% short (by way of puts) in my options account.