“Sell in May and go away” holds true for investors once more as heavy selling continued last week, the biggest monthly loss since February of 2009. Volume was well above average on this past months selling and with all the news overseas, investors are shaken.

Why do we care about the “investors” if we are short term traders? Investors are the ones that move the market on a month to month basis, while certain day trading and high frequency firms have the power to move the markets intraday, the longer term trend is established by the longer timeframe investor.
As short term traders, the first thing we want to do when starting a new day, week, or month, is to identify what trend we are currently in on the longer timeframes and work our way down to the timeframe in which we trade.