GK, yes I got out quite early with the bank shorts when they turned in order to protect profit. In hindsight I could have set tight stops on my other short trades when the SPX bounced off the 100 ma. However, I decided to keep my shorts open with somewhat looser stops in case the SPX had a short consolidation near the 100 ma, and then followed through with steep falls to the 200 ma. If this scenario had eventuated then my remaining shorts would have done very well, but you typically need to be in the short trade to catch the big falls.
Regarding CBA, after closing the short trade for a nice profit, I was considering re-opening a CBA short in order to take advantage of the dividend strategy that I have discussed previously. The set up presented by the CBA chart did not match the set up from earlier ex-div dates, and did not match the set up for my very profitable ex-div short trade strategy with ANZ earlier this year. Hence, on this occasion I did not re-short CBA as I figured that I am not in a rush and there will be many bank related pre-dividend to post dividend chart set ups to take advantage of in the future.
CBA's dividend was $2.18, yesterday the sp at close was 81.40 and it closed at 79.90 today, with an intraday low of 79.37. Hence, the strategy would not have worked today. However, the strategy would have worked in August 2013, and worked well for ANZ earlier this year as discussed above. I suspect that it is 'simply' a case of looking at the chart set up about a week out from the ex-div date, plus look at the direction the global markets are heading at the time.
