Bigworld, Yes, all true, but it's still best to wait until the market stops going up before shorting since the odds of guessing the top are very slim.
Looking at the 2007/08/09 chart, it took approx 1.5 years from top to bottom. The market peaked in late 2007, but you could have waited for the collapse of Bear Sterns in March 2008 to go short, and still more than double your money by the time the market bottomed in early 2009.
When the big crisis comes this time, as in 2007/08, events will likely unfold for months before the crash starts. So there isn't a big rush to jump in on the short side, you can just wait until the crisis begins.
An alternate approach is to just trade the normal corrections rather than the big collapse. That's a lot less risky, you can use TA signals, and 5-10% corrections are a lot more common than big crashes. But the flip side is if the potential of the trade is only 5-10%, why bother? You can boost the potential profit by leverage 2X, 3X or using LEAPs, but then the risk goes way up too.
Being conservative, I view not losing money as a victory, but most people here on I-Hub are on the gunslinger side of the spectrum :o)
