As required by Federal law on days like this………..

I'm in somewhat of a quandary.

After trading has been tough (and, over the past couple of weeks, it has been, since it's been generally upward), I tend to take profits way too fast. The reason is obvious – – I'm sick of losses, and I'll happily snatch up profits whenever they come along.

That's a big problem, of course, if one is at a turning point in the market. Because the wise thing to do is to simply let those profits run. This is a very common head game the market plays with bears – – – make them skittish and trigger-happy when it makes the most sense to sit tight and let the profits grow.

The biggest challenge for me is the timeframe. If you look at an intraday chart, there's plenty of wisdom in taking profits (which I did today – – I closed out my puts on GE, $RUT, SPY, and $NDX) since it looks like we're pretty close to a Fibonacci retracement level.

On the other hand, looking at the daily graph, there's still plenty of juice left (look at the tinted area).

I'd like to continue to think we're in a bear market with many, many months left to it. But, like I said, I'm feeling a bit stuck. Comments?

I grew up in the deep south, so I'm somewhat acquainted with arcane colloquialisms (arcane colloquialisms is not one of them). If I'm told someone is knee-high to a grasshopper, or that I haven't seen someone in a coon's age, it makes perfect sense to me.

But Marketwatch threw me for a loop with this one:

But whatever a cropper is – – – or its aforementioned "coming" – – – I said good luck to it, because it whacked GLOBEX in the head. And plummeting markets always give me a grin.

Since my back-patting arm has been out of practice, I've got to mention that I did suggest the GE short a bunch of times. And I've happily taken my profits. This is plenty enough drop for me, thanks so much.