Day Trader?

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In the Sudden Slope Sentiment Shift post from late last week, I stated that of the cancellations I had received on April 9th (which seemed to be some kind of “Max Pain” point for people), all but one stated their reason as something along the lines of, “It’s not you, it’s me.

There was one exception, however, and he stated, in its entirety, the following:

150% short get’s us all excited only to find out that night on Closing trade you covered…you\’re a day trader who shows longterm charts…should have waited until the price hits 50day to short….killed me

I thought this merited a response, because I must strongly disagree with the characterization of myself as a “day trader.”

For the sake of clarity, let me spell out in clearer terms what the former subscriber is saying to me:

(1) On a given day, I might state that I am 150% short;

(2) Between that statement, and my next show, nearly 24 hours transpires, and during that time, I may well beat a hasty retreat and greatly reduce my exposure;

(3) During my next show, I’ll state that I have, in fact, reduced my exposure.

What rubbed me the wrong way was the insinuation that my declaration was somehow deliberately misleading. Listen, if I get into a position that isn’t going my way, my choices are pretty dichotomous. I can either:

  1. Cross my arms, declare that I’m right, and just stick with it no matter what; or………
  2. Let my stop-loss price do its job and get out.

I am going to do #2, even at the risk of seeming capricious.

Being short the past couple of weeks has, on the whole, not worked out at all. It was the strongest week in the market since Nineteen-Freaking-Seventy-Four.

Yes, you have to go back to the prior millennium, when Richard Nixon was President, to find as big an “up” week as what we just endured (and it was only 4 days long, too!) So, yeah, I got freakin’ stopped out left and right.

But this doesn’t make me a “day trader”.

It simply makes me Not Insane.