The first quarter of 2008 is complete. Boy has it been brutal. As of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 7.53%, the Nasdaq Composite Index corrected by 14.09% and the S&P 500 retraced 9.88%. While many people lost money on American equities, Death Cross Trader subscribers came out well ahead of the game.

That’s because DCT circles the market like a vulture. We wait for vulnerable stocks to show signs of failure at short-term highs, and then fully exploit their downside potential.

This “vulture” strategy is working pretty well so far. Year-to-date, Death Cross Trader has closed 10 out of 15 positions at a gain. That’s an accuracy rating of 66.7%!

On a cumulative basis — taking into account both winners and losers — you could have made gains of 243% during the first quarter of 2008 with Death Cross Trader.

If you average that over three months, it’s 81% gains per month, while the entire market fell!

We even managed to get a triple-digit winner, making 119% on the drop of FedEx Corporation (FDX:NYSE). Some other big moneymakers included 68% on Texas Instruments (TXN:NYSE) and a whopping 40% gains in only two days on AMR Corporation (AMR:NYSE).

Death Cross traders are loving it! And I mean that literally. Subscriber D.J. just wrote in to say, “I love your newsletter!”

Subscriber A.E. dropped me a note after our recent gains to say, “Amazing. Just using your service is making me money. Keep up the good work.”

And subscriber P.G. just made “a quick $800” on our last recommendation!

These are people just like you, making substantial gains by playing the downside of the market. And from the looks of it, the weakness in stocks is far from over…

While the markets have been rallying to kick off the second quarter, I suspect the enthusiasm could be shortlived. Technically, the name of the game is a final push toward the indexes’ 200-day moving averages.

This is a customary move in a falling market… Consider it a last chance to take any gains off of the table before the real drop starts.

There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll continue to see a major breakdown in the market. My money is on Dow 10,216 (at least!), a Nasdaq valued at 1,750 and an S&P at 1065.

In that kind of climate, you better be holding some strong recession-proof stocks… or playing along with the successful downside positions you’ll find in Death Cross Trader.