I shorted Gold last night at 809 and covered that short at 771 today, just so much money so fast I had to take the profit. I would love to see it rally more for a longer term short, Gold has never been a good hedge against weak stock markets. That is an old wives tale being peddled by people selling gold coins. These are probably the same people who were selling houses a couple of years ago saying they will never go down again. This market is in a downtrend so all rallies should be sold.

I also agree on these 2 and 3 times leverage funds. If you really want that much risk play futures, they are way more liquid on the fills and you can get out in the night sessions if you need to.

I did short the SP 500 last night but was surprised by the magnitude of todays drop as I am expecting a little bit of a larger bounce moving into January. The seasonal strongly suggests this should happen. However, the trend is down so suprises normally occur in the direction of the trend.

Big picture I think most all markets are shorts on bounces, there are still a bout 90 billion dollars worth of futures positions in the large funds that need to be unowound before this debacle ends. This does not mean we cannot have 2 to 4 week rallies in things. I hope we get them to create good shorting opportunities.

I know the person who started this thread likes to trade alot in and out which is fine. These comments are more directed towards catching larger moves that will last a bit longer. The opportunity to make money in futures has never been what it is now, and it will not last. We will move into an extended sideways market in most of these things once the free fall stops. That might create a very good opportunity to write options against the range extremes.