Dan Fitzpatrick here at StockMarketMentor.com and your Chart of the Day. Hope springs eternal, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to make any money.

If you are encouraged by this ( NASDAQ: QQQ ), welcome to trading because you’ve obviously just started. The market is really, really weak right now. If you look and see how this had been in a bit of a squeeze pattern here, this was the first, you could say, yeah man, it could have gone either way. Do you know what? It really couldn’t have.

Back here, this little move higher, and then a big dump on heavy volume, was the first indication that the party was pretty much over. This was all you truly needed if you are really, really dense and all you see is blue sky ahead, even you would have been tipped off that this was a problem.

Then we get a lower low, right? And then another one, like this was all really, really bad stuff here. This was last Thursday, and then Friday, even worse. So what would happen on Monday? The typical thing that happens, the same thing that happened here, where the following Monday, boom, a nice move up.

That sucked some people in, really it was more short covering than anything else I think. Then the following day, everybody is giddy, like okay, it’s ready to go. And then this morning, the last of the innocents, as I call them (that’s plural, it’s not an adjective), came in, buying first thing in the morning, hurry up and get it before it gets away from you. And now we’re getting a pullback.

You’ll notice that this on the QQQs ( NASDAQ: QQQ ) was on lower volume. Last Friday was a massive dump on really, really heavy volume. There was nothing really happening on Tuesday, and then today, higher volume still.

But wait, there’s more. We get the same exact thing on the SPDRs ( NYSEARCA: SPY ). A big dump for six consecutive days, really, really bad closes, every single one. And then Monday we get buyers coming in. Tuesday, more buyers coming in. This morning, more buyers came in, all four of them, and now we’re getting a pullback here.

Now, this is going to be a volatile market because most traders, most money managers, they’re never short, they’re just long, only. I’m happy about that because that is why this is the way the long-term chart works. It generally goes from lower left to upper right. So if you have got to choose a side, be long. But every so often it doesn’t pay to be long and this is one of those times.

As the market moves lower though, it’s going to get closer to that point, to where buyers come in. And so it is very, very difficult to make money shorting stocks because of the volatility, because of these unexpected moves higher. You’ve got to be aware of that.

I’m going to show you a couple of shorts that you may want to consider on these indexes. However, you’ve got to be mindful of the fact that shorts, again, are much more difficult than longs, when there is a proper climate to be long. So shorts are shorter in duration and typically lower in magnitude. You are not going to make 15 percent.

Think about it, you are not going to make 15 percent on shorting the S&P 500 ( INDEXSP: .INX ). If the S&P 500 ( INDEXSP: .INX ) falls 15 percent while you’re still short, you’re going to wind up wanting to go into your safe and make sure you’ve got one in the chamber and plenty of boxes of ammo on standby. So this is going to be a fairly short short here, pardon the pun. My suggestion is, that you short this puppy ( NYSEARCA: SH ) right here by buying long.

By buying the S&P ( INDEXSP: .INX ), and then you can put your stop just a little bit below the 50-day moving average. Or if you want to have a really tight leash on it, you can put your short right underneath today’s intraday low. Personally, with the volatility, I think you probably have a decent chance of getting stopped out. But keeping it underneath here you are probably going to get a better move out of that.

The other one would be on the NASDAQ, the Short NASDAQ ( NYSEARCA: PSQ ), the same kind of deal, where you get these two big down days. You may be short the stock by buying this, short the QQQs ( NASDAQ: QQQ ), by buying this one and keeping your stop right under there. I think you are going to do just fine.

The one thing is, after hours Meta ( NASDAQ: META ) reported earnings. Let’s just say that didn’t go too well. And so this will absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt, bring the S&P ( INDEXSP: .INX ) down tomorrow, and the QQQs ( NASDAQ: QQQ ). It’s a big massive company and it’s all bear.