Give with one hand, take with the other

Today was a bad day in the markets. The catalysts behind any such move (be it Syria, Greece etc) are irrelevant to a trend follower, as we focus solely on price action. The Nasdaq and the German DAX were the two strongest indices up until today - both were gearing up to breakout to new highs, yet both ended the day on the verge of breaking out to new lows!

 
Both of these charts are shown below. This now brings these two indices more into line with the S&P, Dow, Nikkei and the FTSE, which have already started downtrends.

Our long positions had generally been holding up well, but the price action today triggered several stops - again we are in a period of giving back open profits. The fact that the major indices are starting to trend downwards again raises the question of looking for stocks to short.

The one area where uptrends are continuing is in the precious metals and related stocks. As posted on here several times recently, silver and gold have broken out to the upside and are now in nice uptrends, and there have been plenty of mining stocks following suit, some of which we are holding long positions. This has helped cover the majority of eroded profits on other trades.