Not a really good first full-trading week for the model portfolio, after getting whipsawed into going short, which did most of the damage contributing for my week's underperformance. Eventually I picked up the pieces and was able to cut my short positions and go mostly long Thursday and Friday. This led to a couple of profitable trades on paper. Hopefully I can get to exit them for actual profits too. Particularly, my long trades last Friday on SLAB and TAM did well. Well, this is the problem with having to make a call in anticipation of something that hasn't happened yet. If you are right you win big, but if you are wrong, at least have your stop losses prepared. The surprise Australian rate hike and the positive retail sales figures really caught me off guard. I expect to make more mistakes in the future given that losses are a normal part of trading, but I'm hoping on a cumulative basis I can show outperformance. Any trading blog showing all gains and no tough stretches might not be showing you the real picture. While I am 48% long at the moment, I limited each position to $10,000 total exposure or $500 potential loss, whichever is lower, and I will wait for a proper setup on the S&P 500 index to go short again. I would concede that we are currently much overbought, but liquidity aplenty will not make this market turn on a dime. I'd short on a failed rally retest after an initial sell-off.