Serious weakness

This is more like it; the Asx 200 is lower by 1.8% or 78 points, at 2.20 pm. That's despite the banks relative outperformance. I've stopped out of longs in ALL, CPU, IPL, JBH, TOL and WTF. There's not much damage done in any of them and shorts have performed well, especially in BPT, IMD, OST and PNA. In addition, the XJO May 4250 puts that had lost most of their value are staging a recovery as they trade back to 25.

I'm not sure if we've seen the low for today but losses are accelerating thanks to indications of a slowing in growth for the US economy and a European austerity backlash from voters in France and Greece. I plan to hold on to the XJO puts overnight, at least.

After stopping out of TOL, I realised that there was now a decent sell signal and I've gone short at 570. It's better quality than the long I'd taken which was as much about providing some balance to a predominantly short trading book.

4.14 I stopped out of one of the last long positions in MSB at 716 as it broke 720 support. The market sold off into the last hour although there was a minor rally at the match. Opening calls for Europe and the US are pretty weak too. Since the XJO puts are becoming more significant and also because I generally do it, I nibbled at a few of the shorts where they were sold down. Overall, the index fell 95 to 4301.