Mr Market: I am surprised to see you here, Monkeyboy. I thought you were a good lad. Unburden your soul and confess.

Monkey: I. . . I. . . I am too ashamed to admit my crime, Mr Market.

Mr Market: Confess it, pitiful chimp, or you shall feel my wrath.

Monkey: I doubted your word, Mr Market. I fought the trend.

Mr. Market: Fought the trend?

Haven't you made a bundle by letting the trend be your friend over the last few months? Haven't you lectured Sunday Tribune readers on this very subject time and time again? Haven't you been hammered every time you tried such unspeakable counter-trend trades?

Monkey: Yes, Mr Market, but I thought you were near a temporary top. Dr Brett Steenbarger said that money flows had been deteriorating of late and that the rally might be running out of steam.

Mr Market: Many people have been questioning my greatness of late, silly monkey. They got their butts whipped last week when I shocked them all by gaining 300 points in a single day. Do you want to be like all the other saps out there who lose money by agonising over economic data and liquidity bubbles and boring earnings reports?

Monkey: Oh no, Mr Market. My doubts were founded on technical rather than fundamental concerns.

Mr Market: Well, that's something, I suppose. For your sins, I fine you 1,000 with the promise of much more should you repeat this heinous behaviour.

I'VE made a packet over the past few months by riding the trend. This week should have been more of the same, with the US indices powering to all-time highs. Unfortunately, I got a bit smart, went counter-trend and Mr Market. . . Well, you saw his reaction. He got angry with me.

I outlined a few technical concerns last week. My outlook was still bullish, but I speculated that a counter-trend short might be profitable if the Dow or S&P return "on low volume" to their 2007 highs.

Volume is important in assessing whether to join a breakout or fight it.

Like a true newbie, I ignored it and stood in the way of a high-volume breakout attempt. Unsurprisingly, I was quickly stopped out for a quick loss of a grand.

I would love to have been on the other side of this trade . . . it would have been a beauty. Markets opened higher that particular morning because of "more M&A news and surprisingly decent June same-store sales figure", according to one media report. This was cause for a little cheer, perhaps, but hardly celebration. The Dow opened was up a modest 80 points, the Nasdaq 12.

As a surprise technical breakout to new highs unfolded, however, short sellers started running for cover and the momentum traders got on board. By the end of the day, the Dow had gained 283 points . . . its biggest one-day gain since 2003 . . . and the Nasdaq a further 50 points.

Most market watchers accept there was no fundamental catalyst for the rally. Hedge fund manager and blogger Barry Ritholtz (www. bigpicture. typepad. com) writes of a revealing conversation he had with a trader who asked "if this rally really mattered". Ritholtz's reply hits the nail on the head: "It matters to your bottom line. If you were long going into this you made money. If you were short, you got your nuts squeezed, and that's that."

Ritholtz's fellow trader was still dwelling on the unfairness of it all.

"This is a bullshit rally", he cried.

Ritholtz asked him to justify this. "Do you disagree with this because you were positioned improperly, or because you cannot find a rational basis for today's move? Do either of those things matter?"

Of course they don't. It doesn't matter if the bears are 'right'. All their arguments . . . the weak dollar, the Chinese bubble, inflation, interest rates, whatever . . . don't amount to a hill of beans when they're on the receiving end of such a powerful breakout. Or, to quote Ritholtz once more: "If you are looking for a rational basis for the day-to-day movements of markets, if you seek to find a degree of serenity by understanding why markets do what they do short term, well then you are going to drive yourself insane".

The problem is that traders get their time frames mixed up and personal opinions get in the way of making money. People tend to develop a long-term thesis about a market and apply it to short-term trades. I know short-term traders who've been shorting oil for the past year. I know people who have viewed every little drop in the US indices as marking the cusp of an oncoming correction. I know people who've been shorting the likes of Google and Apple in advance of earnings because they're 'over-valued'. It's daft, it really is.

I'm not saying that counter-trend trades are suicidal. Shorting an overbought Dow at 14,000 would have made for a good trade this week, for example. You need a strong technical rather than fundamental concern, however, and you need to take your profits quickly.

Talking of profits, I said goodbye to IBM at $111 on Wednesday (earnings were being announced later that evening). I'm still long Elan and the Nasdaq 100 and looking to buy strong stocks and indices that dip to obvious support areas.

I know my time frame. My typical holding period is for days or weeks.

When that's the situation, you don't need to agonise over every little detail or fret over "bullshit" rallies. To paraphrase Tennyson . . . who doubtless never guessed his verse would be perverted in a market trading column . . . mine is not to reason why, mine is just to sell and buy.

Weekly gain/loss: . . . 300
Overall balance: 53,500