Today the market shot up again, with Dow added 150 points to close at 12960, with 20 points in the last 5 minutes. Since I'm on the short side, I don't feel well at all. Dow has a new all time record again today, third day in a row, that makes me sick!
- I added DXD (Ultra short on Dow), DIA puts and QQQQ puts today.
- I know it's the right thing to do, but I'm not sure and I'm not comfortable.
- On my way back from work, I stopped at the civic park in my community's downtown, just to sit there for a few minutes. Young children playing in front of water fountain, grass is spring green and is covered with sunset light from the Rocky Mountain top. It's a beautiful scene.
- We're lucky here in U.S., we can trade to make money. But I'm not feeling great just because I didn't do well in trading? I should not complain.
- Just this week, one day in Iraq, more than 200 people were killed, thousands wounded. Do they have a life to look forward to in the future? More than 3000 U.S. soldiers were dead in Iraq, some of them may do great things for us, but their lives were cut short. And we never know what they can do for this country. To say it's a mistake to invade Iraq is an understatement!
- Just this week, in Virginia Tech campus, 32 people were gunned down by one dark and twisted soul. So many students, some of them gifted and may have a great potential in the future, but their lives were cut short by being at the wrong place the wrong time. They don't have a chance to work hard, to do great things in life.
- Just this week, thousands in Darfur, Sudan were dead due to fighting and hunger, and the whole world turned from them, without a helping hand. Do they have hope to have a decent life in the future?
- Just this week, thousands in North Korea were dead due to hunger, do the children there have a decent life in the future?
- If these dead can come back, I'm sure they'll do their best to make a great life out of it! If the people from Darfur and North Korea can live freely, I'm sure they'll work hard to make a great life out of it! They don't have the chance! But here, we not only have the chance, we have the choice!
- I should not complain, I should appreciate what I have now.
- Work hard, follow the rules and principles I learned, and appreciate life.
4 comments:
Sorry about your luck Friday. Your blog is a good read and I have personally had some luck trading URZ after seeing it on your blog. If I could offer some observations it might be that though you analysis founded on quite good facts the market moves on the whole of everyones trades and everyones idea of where to make a profit. A little intuition helps too. If it does not feel good or it doesn't look like a sure thing it may well be a loser. I quite trading RIMM for a while because I thought they should be crashing and played it that way. I lost money. After asking my brother about RIMM, ( he likes the stock ) I changed my mind. He said his co. JPM uses RIMM and only rimm is supported by their IT. Also they hate MS because they can't negotiate any rates so they will use rimm for a long time. Apparenty, I didn't have the whole story on RIMM. Now I am up a couple $$$$. Blog on and good luck.
Great post. Keep it up, I think the market is heading to a correction sooner than most people think.
I've been reading book after book on trading. There are two points that stand out to me in all of the books.
1. Always use stops and always get out before a big loss.
2. Always follow the trend. You must let the market decide where it's going and then you follow it.
It's clear to me that you aren't doing either of these things and hence you're getting killed.
Just to let you know that I share your angst over bad market days and that it is good that you can keep the meaning and importance of "life" in perspective.
16 years ago,(at the age of 51) my wife and I opted out of the system, and became self-supporting via my confidence to manage our own assets and be accountable to no-one but ourselves. And, although I've had 16 straight profitable trading years, I still get down on myself when I have one or two or more consecutive money losing weeks. And it takes my wife to remind me how far we've come in the past 16 years. So your "life" post resonated with me in that the markets are just one small aspect of life.
But, as trading for profit is my sole source of income (except for my Social Security which I started receiving last year), bad days in the market can be projected out of proportion. And can bring on feelings of doubt and uncertainty about future decision making.
No matter how much analysis or rationale or research we do, there is an over-riding old adage that basically says: "Don't tell me WHAT to buy, tell me WHEN to buy it." Logic in todays markets is a commodity that very few seem interested in.
My current outlook is based on a hyper-inflation type scenario. I have been long on gold , silver , uranium and oil stocks since 2001 as an inflation hedge and use Canadian and US Oil Royalty Trusts and International Closed End Currency and Bond funds as my vehicles of choice for income.
But I always trade in and out of my positions all the time (generally 1/3 - 1/2 of all holdings) on good up moves. I may not maximize profits on all my winners doing this method, but I find that re-entry opportunities come along more than enough times and that I generally can produce more "total profitable points" per stock , than just buying and holding. This is generally quite effective in trading out monthly income paying stocks PRIOR to ex/d date. The basic reason is that when a stock goes ex/d, the share price is reduced by the dividend amount and in most cases those share prices tend to go even lower over the next 10 days and can be repurchased more cheaply and usually a new upward move will occur just prior to the next ex/d date, which in effect tends to double the profit over just holding for the dividend each month. So on almost all the oil royalty stocks that yield between 10-13%, I usually net out 18-25% annual return via trading them instead of holding. And basically the tax rate on short term trading profits and dividend income is the same. But in an IRA account, I find this a better way to grow my assets tax deferred.
Please feel free to contact me at my e-mail address (shown below) if you are interested in sharing investment thoughts.
regards,
hlgold
(portfoliomanager@comcast.net)
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