Sellings are events while buyings are a grinding process. The market spends most of the time going up, due to dynamics of greed and fear, which fuels the law of supply and demand. To catch the selling events, it's a given that the bears would have to suffer and endure the unrelenting taunting of the market. And despite the suffering, the bears may still lose in the end. Because even if the market operates according to the laws of the fundamental and technical analyses, the bulls have the Fed and the politicians on their side who often manipulate the market rather than letting it run its natural course.
The topping process may take months. If the few lucky bears made it to the top, they may be emotionally drained by then to be able to hold their entire positions much longer without having to let go of some during the few rare moments of respite to ease their pains. The few who could ride their positions all the way through the bear market are the ones who attain the level of true zen.
So being a bear is not for the faint of heart. The bears are essentially gluttons for punishment. I'd liken shorting being a double black diamond trail and going long being a blue or even green trail, using skiing as metaphor. Why go against the odds? I guess I can ask the expert skiers why they want to go down the double black diamond.
All being said, if and when one catches these rare selling events before he gets wiped out or admit defeat due to the unbearable pain over a long course of time, he would be on top of the world and taste the ultimate joy of being vindicated and proven right. Let's face it, the bears on average know more than the bulls. The bulls are either naive imbeciles who think the market will always or eventually go up, or opportunists against their own conscience who buy despite in their guts they know the current financial systems are simply houses of cards, and doomed to collapse if it weren't for the politicians' greed and the agenda of the financial elites.
I am no saint, but I know too much to have faith in the market. It's difficult to invest in today's unprecedented environment. I own gold bullion since when gold was still prices in the $390. Aside from that, all I can do is to somehow strike a balance as I make my daily trading decisions, and preserve my capital in the end.
