"Hello David. One thing which has been puzzling me, and I intended to ask you this a few weeks ago but the question is even more pertinent to me now, is why you did not enter any hedge shorts when this recent stock market weakness commenced. I recall you mentioning on several occasions in the past that you had entered into hedges to protect your long term portfolio against anticipated stock market volatility, but this time no such action, or at least none reported that I recall. I wondered if we might all benefit from your thoughts on this. Speaking for myself the initial fall around the beginning of August caught me out and I thought it then too late to cut or hedge, although subsequent events may have proven me incorrect in that analysis."

David Fuller's view I had a number of hedge shorts in the earlier stages of the correction, as you may recall, but it was hard work because my main hedging vehicle for convenience is usually the S&P and it was in a lengthy trading range as were NDX and DAX. Those patterns turned out to be Type-3 ranging tops but the last failure near the highs is seldom obvious until after the event. I was annoyed with myself for blinking when downward dynamics commenced on 27th July and decided not to chase, which proved to be a mistake.