The market has been acting crazy over the last five days. The Color Guard shows five red lights, seven yellow lights and three green lights, and the Primary Wave has gone from Up, Up, Dn, Up to Dn. How can anybody make any money with this kind of chaos?

You have to be agile and you have to be prepared. That's why we gave ourselves the options last night to go either long or short in the Model Portfolio today. So what did I do?

I decided to spend another day at the races. I checked Bloomberg last night and the Futures were up, just slightly. Therefore, I thought the rumor that caused the late rally yesterday afternoon probably was false. If it were true, the Futures would have been up, big time. Nevertheless, I was going to be prepared to "bet on the fastest horses" if the market moved sharply in either direction.

So I fired up VectorVest RealTime before the market opened this morning, created QuickFolios of the strategies suggested in last night's Views and waited for the opening bell. The Futures, as shown by Yahoo! Finance and CNBC, were signaling a flat open and that's what we got. All the major indexes opened modestly to the downside and the Price of the VectorVest Composite barely budged. However, the portfolio of five high volume Contra ETF stocks I had selected broke out of the gate and were up 1.66%.

At 10:00 AM, all the major indexes were down, but less than 1.00%. So I wasn't even thinking about going into the market. The Contra ETFs were still moving higher, however, and were up 1.99%. Mini Rockets Short was up 1.18%.

At 11:00 AM, all the major indexes were up, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was up 0.46%. Jailbreak was now in the lead with a gain of 2.28%. Silber's Singles/BMB was in second place with a gain of 1.54%. At 11:30 AM, all the major indexes were down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was exactly at 0.00%. The Contra ETFs had retaken the lead with a gain of 2.30%. Mini Rockets Short was in second place with a gain of 1.21%.

At 12:00 PM, all the major indexes were still down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was down 0.23%. The Contra ETFs portfolio had increased its gain to 2.97%. Mini Rockets Short was still in second place with a gain of 1.65%. At 12:30 PM, all the major indexes were still down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was down 0.06%. The Contra ETFs were leading the pack with a gain of 2.62%. Silber's Singles/BMB was a surprise at second place with a gain of 1.35%.

At 1:00 PM, all the major indexes were still down, but the Dow and S&P 500 were down more than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C, however, was down only, 0.59%. The Contra ETFs portfolio was now up 4.30% and I was itching to go buy these stocks. But I had to wait at least until the Price of the V V C was down at least 1.00%. Worst Stocks Over $20.00 had now roared into second place with a gain of 2.45%. At 1:30 PM, all the major indexes were still down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was down 0.18%. The Contra ETFs were still leading the pack, but its gain had slipped to 1.95%. Worst Stocks Over $20.00 was close behind with a gain of 1.77%.

At 2:00 PM, the NASDAQ was up 0.18% and the Dow and S&P 500 were down slightly. The Price of the V V C was up 0.16%. Silber's Singles/BMB had now taken the lead with a gain of 1.52%. Jailbreak was nearby with a gain of 1.42%. At 2:30 PM, all the major indexes were down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was down 0.13%. Silber's Singles/BMB was hanging tough with a gain of 2.32%. The Contra ETFs portfolio was threatening to retake the lead with a gain of 2.29%.

At 3:00 PM, the NASDAQ was up 0.04% and the Dow and S&P 500 were down slightly. The Price of the V V C was up 0.16%. The Contra ETFs portfolio was back in the lead with a gain of 4.30%. Worst Stocks Over $20.00 was in second place with a gain of 2.13%. At 3:30 PM, all the major indexes were down, but less than 1.00%. The Price of the V V C was down 0.14%. The Contra ETFs portfolio was up 2.68% and Worst Stocks Over $20.00 was up 1.96%.

At 4:00 PM, the market closed with the Dow down 1.04%, NASDAQ down 0.48% and the S&P 500 down 1.00%. The Price of the V V C closed down 0.49%. The Contra ETFs portfolio won the race with a gain of 4.61% and the Worst Stocks Over $20.00 came in second with a gain of 2.75%. While I would have been very happy to log either of these gains into the Model Portfolio, the market did not move sharply enough, 1.00% or more, for me to jump in. So we are still in cash and I'm looking forward to spending Another Day at the Races.

P.S. One does not have to have VectorVest RealTime to implement the process described above. You can use VectorVest U.S. to run the suggested strategies, and build WatchLists of the stocks found by each Strategy on Yahoo! or any other real-time platform. Then you can select stocks from the WatchList with the best performance when the market moves by 1% or more.