If you thought the past six months have been fun, then you should really enjoy November. Six months ago, the market took a bit of a dive and immediately, the “Sell in May and walk away” slogans were offered up as some kind of evidence. A lot of people seem to have fun with market “history” and playing around with these supposed facts is not going to end in November.

Since May, the market is up 5.1% and makes up half of the year-to-date returns. How can this be? So much for slogans and historical market wisdom. By July, the market was being badmouthed all over the place with $75 per barrel oil, Iran and North Korea bluster, Israel / Hezbollah, FOMC rate hike fears, etc. Kinda makes you wonder how it was ever possible that we managed an 8.5% gain since then. We had warnings about how tough August is historically as a month and then the same was said for September and guess what? - boy those Octobers are really tough. HMMMM? Were they “tough”? I think so. And yet, each month set some record or another for the “best month since {insert meaningless dates here}.”

Some really good economists, analysts, market strategists, and untitled other smarties all weighed in about what was going to happen and for the most part they were wrong. Now, it seems we have made it to the promised land of November and the all-too-certain “year end rally.” Sounds fun and so reassuring, but it’s really time to start being concerned don’t you think? I am not saying that the market is going to go down because many of the same people that were convinced we could not advance for the past six months are now saying we are going to have smooth sailing on this momentum wave through the end of the year. That’s not what I am saying but I can understand how you might want to question the logic of that contrarian thought.

What I am saying is that you should start making a sell list. It’s funny that we never hear much about the merits of creating a sell list, but it’s all too often that the permabulls advocate the need for preparing your shopping list or wish list or buy list (whatever you want to call it.) I am guilty of advocating it too, but the last time I did that was mid-June, when many others were dumping shares. So now I am going to do the opposite and tell you to get your sell list together and be ready when the time comes. The HEDGEfolios Timing Indicator is still showing a bullish bias, but I have a feeling a sell-off is coming in November, so don’t let the games begin without being ready.  You should be selling individual shares when they turn over, not when the market finally turns over.  It’s easier to get out at decent prices when the market is going up.  I know that seems tough to do, but you have to fight through tough things.  After all, you fought through August, September and October and we all know how tough those can be.