What a totally BIZARRE day for me. I am, as most of you know, in the thick of a trip with a lot of traveling, so I was “offline” about 90% of the trading day. Such a circumstance is very painful for me, and one which I try to avoid, but on the heels of a 35%+ quarter, I gave myself a little leeway. Anyway, here’s kind of how things played out over the past thirty hours:
- Pre-Open on January 1st: The more I looked at charts, the more I regretted having any short positions. I had stuck my toe into the bearish waters again on the last trading day of 2018, and I had 43 short positions and 120% commitment. But I was really worried that we might make it all the way to 2600.
- Open on January 1st: Sure enough, we shot higher. First by a few points, but within minutes double digits on both. The ES and NQ were both quite strong. I was ticked at myself.
- Early hours of January 2nd: Then…….red! And more red. And more red. and soon the ES was in a total free-fall. Thus I stopped being pissed at myself for being short and started being pissed for not being short ENOUGH. Never happy, right?
- Open on January 2nd: Big profits. Big green numbers. And almost instantly, the bulls started chipping away. By the time I had to get my day started (away from my computers), my profit was 1/8th was it was at the open. Before long, it would be all gone.
- Trading Close of January 2nd: I kept glancing at my P&L on my iPhone throughout the day, and it went a little profitable from time to time, but on the whole showed a small loss. Worse, my positions kept getting stopped out. By day’s end, 43 positions were down to merely 16. And a 120% commitment was down to 58%. I had a tiny loss on the day.
- After the Close: Now here’s the part that Pisses. Me. Off. After the market had blown me out of so many positions, AAPL comes out with bad news and all hell breaks loose again.
I mean, just LOOK at this. The green tint represents the New Year’s Optimism. The red shows the plunge based on actual economic data. the green arrow shows the rise based on absolutely nothing, and the blue arrow represents the AAPL bad news collapse. An absolute shitshow.
What am I going to do about this? WIDEN MY STOPS. I’M TALKING WIDER THAN OPRAH’S ASS. Because it’s the start of the quarter. It’s time to be BOLD. It’s not time for tight stops. Because we’ve got volatility again, and I need to position myself accordingly.
Enough is enough.
