Nothing like some bad news to worry the stock market

On Friday, rating agency Fitch cut Greece's credit rating by three levels to "highly speculative," basically junk bond status. In addition, Standard & Poor's cut Italy's outlook to 'negative' from 'stable.'

 f that weren’t enough we read every day that the Fed's quantitative easing program is set to expire in June.  That “news” is so old it really doesn’t matter at this point.

Markets are jittery though, and we broke several trend points so it looks like we are in a down trend. I can’t really tell at this point if the trend is up or down. To manage risk, I sold ½ of my trading positions today (at a 2% loss – ouch, I hate being wrong).  I will zero out the trading portfolio unless we go improve tomorrow. 

NTMS is still Hold and I am cautious at this point. 

 I remain 100% long in stocks in the Long-term portfolio and 40% long in the trading portfolio. (See the page How to Use the NTSM System).  That is way too aggressive for most people (including me) and I don’t recommend it unless you have a high tolerance for risk.