On a percentage basis, I only made a little bit of money today. I had a huge long position in OIH and USO from yesterday afternoon, and I sold those at a good profit, but that was pretty much it for me for the whole day. Most of those profits helped counterbalance reductions in value in puts and shorts. Netted out, today was a winner, but a teeny one.
I'm pretty pleased with today for a number of reasons:
- The aforementioned USO and OIH longs; that was a good call; if it weren't for those, today would have stung badly;
- My decisions to swiftly make a large number of long acquisitions early in the day, in spite of the gap up we had this morning. I have 37 long positions right now, a few of them pretty big;
- My willingness to go long the /ES after it broke above 715.25; mind you, this wasn't some huge score; but it helped;
- Far more importantly, my decision to close the /ES long as it approached 725 (I got out at 722.25); this trade lost air very quickly, and I got out at just about the perfect time (my entry, of course, would have been "perfect" last night in the high 600s, but I was short back then!);
- The fact I trimmed some shorts yesterday, thus reducing my exposure.
I have far more of a hedged portfolio now than I did a couple of days ago. Until recently, as I've said, I was extremely heavily bearish in my holdings. A day like today would have caused grievous harm. As it is now, I have a much more balanced portfolio.
The downside of that, of course, is that it's a lot more boring! So any big moves, up or down, are going to be greatly moderated by my position. But, giving the highly uncertain state (and, some would argue, the very oldsold condition), I'd rather be safe than sorry.
