In the Zone!

I just closed out all positions in my account. With a 45% gain I just had my best month ever. There is no reason that the market turns on a dime, but I had to protect gains that got too large to let slip away. It only took two significant changes this month and a steel resolve to let winners run in my Zacks Challenge account (and a ton of luck that the volatility exploded to make the winners grow as large as they did). After the first run with the inverse ETFs got me to plus 20% I reversed and went with ultra long ETFs for a quick profit. Not wanting to buck the emerging downtrend, I revesed again into inverse ETFs along with a short of CAF (and long FMT which was a mistake, stopping me out for a big loss) until today when I sold out of everything. What is most promising is that the strategy I am beginning to build around ETFs is not extremely high maintenance. With the universe of equities to research and trade dramatically trimmed you save time. Designing entries and exits to take advantage of intermediate or long term trends also reduces the trade management workload. Swing trading fits for the Zacks Challenge since rule changes eliminated day trading and it also works in the real world for those don't day trade.