There are only three days left this quarter, and having had four profitable days so far this week, I was deeply pondering this morning what to do. There were basically two very different roads I could take:
SAFE – The safe road is one that takes risk down to zero and guarantee I can close out this quarter profitably. It calls for the elimination of positions at the expense of possible profits to be had by a drop in the market (since I am bearishly positioned).
OPPORTUNISTIC – This road demands that I simply "stay the course" and do what I always do, which is keep stops updated and take new opportunities as they appear. It exposes me to the prospect – – albeit slim – – of turning a profitable quarter into a losing one, but it also keeps me open to the possibility of more profits.
I am, by nature, a risk taker, but after thinking long and hard about this, I have taken the Safe road. There are a few reasons for this….
(1) I want to bag a good quarter.
(2) I think the market is more prone to a push higher now (albeit briefly) than a push lower. I saw last night that interzone was asking me if I felt EWI's projected push higher was represented by yesterday's action. The answer is an emphatic no. I think that push higher is going to take place next week.
(3) Being "out of the office" next week severely hampers my ability to trade large numbers of positions effectively. I need the screens, the computing power, and the uninterrupted concentration to do this well. I am going to basically take the week off.
Of course, by doing this, I am exposing myself to the prospect of the market tumbling hard next week and missing out on the profits I have worked very, very hard to capture. I think the possibility of such a tumble is slim, however, and as I said, I'd rather be assured an "up" quarter more than anything else.
So what does this mean to you, as a Sloper? It means I'll be talking a heck of a lot less about individual selections, since my trading will be limited to just a handful of ETFs, and probably just on a day-trade basis. Instead, I'll probably be sharing more anecdotes (like my milk-shake-winning arrow shot through the apple last year, pictured below) than trading war stories. It also means, if we do push higher, that I won't be yelping about it, because it won't be hurting me.
As I type this, I have gone from 160 positions to 3…….yep, 3! They are all long – FXE, GLD, and IWM – and they are currently all profitable. Having just a handful of ETFs is going to be par for the course until July 6th, at which time I will go balls-out trading once again.
Thank you.
