I’m literally just off the slopes (the ski slopes, not this Slope), but I’ve got to get this off my chest right now. First, let me show you the chart that tears me to ribbons:
That is, of course, the ES for the past couple of days (with that overrated nincompoop Tom Lee featured, who – – as usual – – totally got the prediction for the stock market dead wrong). I had absolutely no participation in this beautiful drop, because as I said, I choose to completely remove myself from the market for the final week.
For the first time in history, I was praying for a mega-rally, because I am going to enter 2016 with machine guns blazing. This market has so many short setups, it’s almost embarrassing, and as I’ve been reviewing the posts of 2015 to pull together my Best Of Slope feature, I cannot help but reach one conclusion……………
I need to stop listening to anyone except myself.
Honestly. Some of the posts offered in 2015 are straight-up genius, and I balance that by being fool enough not to TRUST MYSELF MORE.
I have been so distracted by worry, what-ifs, and the completely ridiculous statistical masturbation people trot out (“For all the Tuesdays where the S&P is up .3% and the prior Wednesday is less than .25%, then every other September there will be a fatted calf who is slaughtered 67% of the time, yielding a Santa Claus rally 8 times out of 13.”)
The statistical masturbation (I just thought of that phrase, and I rather like it) will yield nothing but eye-rolls from me henceforth, because it’s useless to me. Charts are all that matter. Charts. Charts. Charts.
Now, to be clear, statistics are VITAL to some people, and they work very well. Different strokes for different folks. But my point is, that for ME, I’m going to focus on charts and not get freaked out by probabilities, since they don’t “sing” to me the way charts always have.
I tripped across a posting I did in May 2015 where I laid out my prediction for how low the market would go this year. I braced myself, because I had no recollection of my prediction, and I thought it would be something totally shame-inducing. On the contrary, the prediction was holy-mother-of-God accurate, and, simply stated, I forgot how good I am at this kind of thing.
I don’t trust myself, and I don’t know why.
So I can tell you this for 2016. I am going to take on a LOT more risk, have MUCH wider stops, and get VERY aggressive. The insights I had on JNK (the high-yield ETF) alone could have made a person a ton of money this year, and I hope to God my Slope Plus readers were, on the whole, bolder than me, because I’m sure they must have done very well.
As for handcuffing myself, as I did this week, and taking myself out of the market just to reduce the risk to zero – – – – it has been utter torture, I would have been better off just letting everything ride, and I can promise this one thing, based on the entire experience:
