I'm going to start mentioning shorts more often, and adopt more of a mostly long yet some short strategy.
Up to this point, I have minimized actual short recommendations because:
1. It is usually easier to buy what is going up, because money is seeking someplace to go. For example, TLT and GLD longs were easier in January compared to shorting the market, and ultimately had more gains as well.
2. Tops tend to stretch out - which is an advantage on the long side, not the short side. Though to be fair, when it happens the down move is much faster.
3. If you have cash on sideline on a drop, then you can watch to buy the leaders on any signal or speculative signal. This worked great on financials in Q4.
That said, due to the election and other factors I believe we have entered years of significant volatility. I'm not just saying that due to Trump - consider, I have already laid out some big picture thoughts in August that are playing out rather nicely.
I also have already posted an ideal bull market high on SPX in the 2250-2500 range from 2017 Q2 to 2018 Q2 here. Keep in mind that bearish version targets have already been met.
These factors are now combining with the gang of clowns that is now leading the most powerful nation on the planet. So even if there is a Trump honeymoon - which could last one week or two years, who knows - I think markets will ultimately go the way of the Trump Plaza (and Shuttle, Steaks, etc etc etc). In that kind of environment lots of things will be going down. I'll still follow rules for entries as discussed here.
For shorts we ideally want to see:
Pivot resistance - Q, H, Y (monthly while above three others not enough)
MAs with falling slope
MACD negative, or RSI setup
To be clear:
I'm not going to try to start picking tops ie shorting at resistance levels. Even though someone less familiar with my perspective may think this would be rather obvious, I have found that shorting at resistance (R1, R2, R3 etc) or buying support (S1, S2, S3 etc) is not the best way to use pivots. We want pivots on our side, regardless of trend. Long above, some shorts if below.