Most people criticise because they are technical trend-followers, and don't understand your style of trading. Each to his own, I have known some good reversal traders so clearly it can work - and ultimately only P&L is the arbiter of success or failure.
Having said that, with all due respect a 2.9% gain is not that much to brag about, especially not for a single stock swing trade. Even if you put 100% of your account into the short, that's still only 2.9%. While you were making 2.9% fighting the trend in CAT, others made public calls on trending markets and were riding those much bigger moves for much larger profits.