The dollar plunged huge today (which pushed gold sky-high). In the world of FX, this kind of move made people rich (or broke) very quickly. It would be like Google going up $200. You just don't see moves like this very often. (This graph is the EUR/USD, which naturally exploded higher today).

There's a lot of room for the EUR/USD to ease back. I'd be a lot more excited buying into this market if the dollar consolidated back to about $1.32 on this chart. That would make a really beautiful confirmed saucer breakout.

That's probably it for me for the night. What a day, eh? I'm going to go decompress.

It is very, very easy to enjoy trading when you're making money. It's very easy to take pleasure from trading when the market is your ATM machine.

But you've got to be able to deal with things going against you as well. I have, over the years, been able to almost completely tamp down my emotions, either positive or negative, with respect to how a trading day goes. If I'm making hand over fist, sure, it's a kick, and I get a little excited in my writing, but I'm not going to go nuts about it ("go nuts" meaning rushing into foolish trades, buying a sports car, etc.)

By the same token, if I have a horrible day, like today, I'm not going to tear my hair out, stop trading, or curse myself. I take each day rationally, and I let my stops do my thinking for me.

Even in the course of a single day, the swings can be horrific. This morning, I was delighted with how well I had nailed my precious metals shorts. By the end of the day, those same profits have disappeared and turned into five figures of losses.

Emotions are the enemy of sensible trading. So are overly-tight stops! Here's the very definition of regret – -as you'll recall from my post a mere eight days ago, I bought – yes, bought! – 20 /ES at 670 (over 120 points ago!) At the time, the "dip" was easy to see:

You will have to use a microscope to find this "plunge" in the grander scheme of things:

Say what you will, the rally over the past week has come from one thing and one thing only: the government's willingness to roll the printing presses and throw fiat currency at the problem. This rally isn't based on earnings, growth, or any other real business reason. It's based on the government continuing to mortgage the future.

The reasons hardly matter, though. The goal is to use charts to make money. Today, I failed at that. But I'm not mad at myself, because I did everything right. As long as I behave rationally, I have no quarrel with myself. Tomorrow is another day. And we've all been yammering about "S&P 800" around here. Well, it's here now. Do with it what you will.

This is pretty much a comment cleaner. Today was probably the worst day of the year for me. I surrendered all the juicy profits over the past week. The losses were mitigated by:

• Stops;
• Some long positions (I wasn't entirely short);
• My IRA, which does really well on days like this

This is also very instructive, because even though I was tempted to do a "neener, neener, neener!" post about gold, I did not. And thank goodness I didn't! Because gold represent really fat profits for me earlier in the day, and in the end, it was responsible for some really ugly losses.

I'll do a post later this afternoon. I always like to talk about how well a day went, but I don't sugarcoat things either – – today was a brutal day for me, and a pretty big disappointment. But it wasn't devastating, and I'm ready to face the market again tomorrow (this time, without Gentle Ben doing his mischief).

Yeoch!

Our friends at the Fed gave the bulls another big, fat present. And, wow, did it hurt the bears!

I got stopped out of GE (my formerly favorite short!), GDX, and a couple of other small positions. My huge gold gains from earlier today vanished into losses. Only my IRA (all long positions) is thriving today.

All eyes are on 800 on the S&P. This is a brutal reversal today.

Well, here we go again. The Fed silliness. I'm typing this five minutes before the "announcement."

I already know what they're going to say. Basically:

• The economy stinks;
• Rates are staying at 0%
• We're going do our darnedest to make things prosperous again for you good people

There was a time I used to fear rate cuts. Since that is now impossible, I only fear what pandering pontifications emanate from the Fed. We shall see.