In the middle of December, six months ago, the Dow Jones Composite was at about 6225. Today, it closed at about 6225. So, for an entire half year, we have gone precisely nowhere.

This is not to say, of course, that there has been no movement in that half-year. Up, down, up, down, needlessly moving this way and that, and not really going anywhere. It’s been vexing, annoying, tiresome, nettlesome, and basically a big fat pain in the ass. Days like today exemplify it. The market just won’t break, either to the upside (which would be awful, of course) or the downside (which I’ve been waiting for since Millard Fillmore was in office).

Even now, as the Greece situation seems to be genuinely coming to a head, the market is content to just hover at similar levels as it’s lilted the past 26 weeks. If we have a nice sell-off, well, goodness gracious, the market must absolutely bid back up. Traders must be pulling their hair out (to say nothing of the fact that markets formerly in really plain trends, such as energy, terminated their own clarity several months ago).

Thumbing through my own holdings, I only made it through the first three letters of the alphabet as I was gathering up good examples of the kind of short positions I have which, I truly feel, will eventually work out……….but in this market, they require patience. Sadly, patience is something in which I am woefully deficient, but I still don’t have any buttons I can push to push the market in my preferred direction, so I’m at the mercy of unpredictable jostling, just like you.

Here, then, are a handful of my current short positions, each of which are beautiful charts in their own right, but each of which stand the risk of stomach-churning upside, even without breaking their broadly bearish patterns. The patterns, for better or worse, are taking time to play out.