When I ambled off to bed last night, I was somewhat nervous. Although I had covered all of my large short positions, I still had 88 – yep, 88 – small-to-medium-sized short positions, and zero longs. My belief was that even if the market showed strength Thursday and/or Friday, I could enter one or two very, very large ETF longs to neutralize things until any buying strength was exhausted. Suffice it to say, I went to bed somewhat nervous, and the last quote my sleepy eyes fetched from my bedside iPad was +5.50 on the /ES
You can imagine my relief upon waking at 5:45 and – as always, first thing I do – grabbing my iPad and seeing the /ES was down 8.5 points (and now down 10, as of this writing). What the bulls wanted to see was the green arrow below – that is, the successful test of the neckline and a launch skyward to 1430.
Instead, the +5.50 gain last night when I nervously went to sleep happened to be the most they would get, and it started slowly melting from then on. So I imagine my only regret will be the 43 stocks I have in my Bear Pen watchlist on which I have no positions. Seriously, though, I am grateful for the downdraft this morning, and I intend to keep my wits about me. In other words, gains are fine, but greed can lead one to suboptimal decisions. So let's watch ourselves and our emotions carefully, yes?
