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I guess you could definitely say we saw the downside trigger today. Markets are going to be tough and chopping around sideways to down for most of next week.

Indeed, the bull walks up the stairs (80% of the time) and the bear jumps out the window (20% of the time). So odds are in your favour trading long.

You can short with CFD's or futures but it's harder to short with actual shares. It involves borrowing cash from your stockbroker which you must then pay back at a later date, either pocketing a profit or paying in extra if you lose money. You will be called for extra margin if the position goes against you.

I do not know why GLN is going up like this, or the others like Billiton. But I appreciate it.

All resource stocks doing very well this last week as investors look for value. Resources performed badly last year and on P:E terms are showing value now. Anglo American was the superstar last week. However, resources are not going to hold this year. China is cutting back on its steel sector and coal also looking weak going forward. Parts of Anglo are going to be sold off this year. Watch this space. 

It's interesting how pessimistic most South Africans are on the Rand and this is reflected in most of the daily trade you see with importers wanting to hedge and protect against any Rand weakness whilst exporters are less worried about hedging because they don't think the Rand will strengthen. So of course the flow of trade supports further Rand weakness in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, in recent years the Rand has performed spectacularly well and if you had off-shored a lot of Rands you would be questioning the returns. SA is unfortunately lumped together with the other emerging markets with thinly traded currencies and most of the FX traders are sitting off-shore with a limited insight into what is going right with SA, alongside all the negative news. I would recommend JP Landman's new book, "The Long View" to anyone with an interest in SA.

And short term I think the Rand will hit 11.00 and then strengthen back to around 10.80 for a bit. Currently it's quite overbought although the 11.00 level is too exciting to traders to not get there now. Ego's are at work.

Not liking the price action on JSE or Dow futures. Would definitely hold off on entering any new longs for now.

Market still choppy but waiting for an upside breakout here. Should continue to tread water sideways for today although any good news on Wall Street etc. could easily see the market run up 1,000 points here.

Definitely should not be short. Eager traders might consider entering anticipation longs as downside is limited. However, may be able to get better entry point later on as upside move not confirmed yet.

Some terminology...... A buyer "bids" to buy, a seller "offers" to sell. Very different to buying a house where a buyer makes an offer....

When executing a seller "hits the bid" as in a hammer going down and a buyer "lifts the offer". From floor trading days when a trader shouted "mine" he was buying and when you shout "yours" you are selling.

Trading is all about the bid / offer spread and the stack. Goldmans stole a lead on all other banks trading systems by offering a volume weighted traded price execution mechanism which gave traders key insight into the most popular trading levels. This is important to know, especially when you are "fishing for stops" i.e. pushing the market down and hoping that long-only traders get stopped out and push it down further, typically because you want to get in at a lower price.

P.S. I really think by having the delay and eliminating penny stocks that the system is robust enough i.e. the bid offer spread on stocks trading above R1 can't be that significant to affect performance......