I was stopped out of my short position in Elan. If I'm honest, it wasn't a great set-up in the first place. I should have been more patient and passed on the trade.

Elan's 200-day moving average, which has contained the stock for the last six months or so, is at $14.60. If the stock can get that far, I'll probably try another short.

I closed out my long position in Brent crude at a tasty profit.

Unfortunately, it should have been much tastier. After rising from a low of $52 in January to $63 in early March, oil took a muchneeded breather and corrected back to the $60 level over the last fortnight, where the 50-day moving average lay in support.

Geopolitical tensions rather than technicals were the cause of the oil price jump over the last week, however, with growing anxiety over Iran's nuclear work and its capture of British military personnel causing oil bulls to jump on board (Iran is the world's fourth largest oil exporter).

Anyway, all this meant I was up over a grand on the position and with price approaching its 200day moving average around $64, I decided to take the money and run.

What happened next? The introduction of an oil bull's best friend . . . panic. Prices surged above $68 a barrel late Tuesday amid rumours that Iran had fired a missile at a US ship in the Persian Gulf.

I was kicking myself. Nine times out of 10, I would have kept half of my position open. I elected to close it because I've been jittery of late and wanted to book those profits. Breaking with my usual methodology was bad enough.

Considering we're in the middle of one of those periodic bouts of Middle Eastern instability that tend to cause large price moves, my decision to close looks positively unforgivable. Stupid monkey, stupid.

Anyway, it was a short-lived spike, as the rumours turned out to be unsubstantiated. Nerves remain fraught, however, and the price remains comfortably above where Market Chicken sold at.

On a separate but related note, I've resolved to start paying more attention to oil and the commodity markets in general. Friends of mine who regularly trade oil and gold point out that they tend to trend to a much greater degree than the more choppy stock markets. A cursory glance at the charts shows this to be the case, with a lot of big moves occurring in a short period of time.

Back to stock markets. I sold half of my position in Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion at $137.50. This was at the upper end of its March trading range and I was tempted to close the position in its entirety . . . I was up over 1,500 on this position and not particularly optimistic about further gains. I resisted, mainly because I'm eyeing up a ton of shorts and wanted to have some exposure to the long side in case I'm wrong about the near-term market direction. Accordingly, I'm holding on here but I've brought my stop loss order up to protect my existing profits.

My only other position is a short of the Dow Jones index. I rarely trade the Dow . . . I tend to pay more attention to the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 . . .but this was a good set-up and I'm glad I took it. Like the aforementioned indices, the Dow rallied last week. Unlike the others, it was unable to reclaim its 50-day moving average. It hovered around this level for a number of days, but it was clear that last week's momentum was gone. I went short on Monday after it took out the low of the previous Friday. Monday was a pretty volatile session, with the Dow dropping 100 points or so before rallying to end the day near unchanged. Thankfully, the bears finally showed some gumption over the next two days and I was able to take partial profits when the index retreated to the 12,300 level (it went lower, but I wasn't complaining). I'm hoping for a retest of recent lows (underneath 12,000). It might not happen, of course, but having taken some profits and lowered my stop order on the remainder of my position, I can sit pretty and relax.

So why am I bearish? For both technical and fundamental reasons. After heavy selling, US markets were due a bounce last week. Sure, they showed more strength than I expected, but I believe that the jump had as much to do with short sellers covering their positions as fund managers putting new money to work. Over the last few weeks, I've looked at the typical anatomy of a market correction. The indicators I'm putting my faith in suggest that this a bottom has not yet been put in.

As for fundamentals . . . well, I don't usually agonise over such matters, but the market's presumption that interest rates will be cut in the coming months is not one I share. For some time now, statements from the Federal Reserve have suggested that "additional firming" of interest rates was a possibility. Last week's statement did not contain these words, which has led many to believe that a summer rate cut is likely.

I don't think so. The Fed statement removed the bias towards rate increases but there was no hint of an imminent cut. Indeed, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke clarified his position this week, warning that policy remains oriented to inflation control. The markets promptly sold off.

I'm no raging bear. Both optimists and pessimists have some good arguments. Too much exposure to the short side is unwise, as I found out recently, but a preponderance of shorts does make sense, at least to me. For now, monkey is siding with the grizzlies.