Trust in our own judgment is an important element of the trading life. I suppose trust comes from our own evaluations of past successes and failures.
In my own case, for example, I have learned through long and hard experience not to trust my judgment when it comes to buying precious metals (this has been a running gag for years on Slope). Whenever I just can’t take it anymore, and I rush out to my local bullion shop to buy gold or silver, that usually marks the top within seconds. Likewise, when I can’t stomach the losses from the aforementioned purchase any longer, and I scurry back to sell the stuff (with the laughable bid/ask spreads in such places), that usually marks the bottom.
Hell, it was late in March when I scampered off to Pacific Precious Metals and sold all my silver bars to them. I think the market bottomed, at best, the very next day. It’s been up almost nonstop every since. We’re not talking about a lot of money here, but still, it makes me feel pretty stupid.
Indeed, as I sit here now, I am just itching to go buy a bunch of 100 gram PAMP gold bars, but since I’m such a genius, I finally learned about the 7,298th time that this is a very, very bad idea. So I’m just not going to do it. I’ve finally learned to sit.
Crypto, on the other hand, continues to go silky smooth for me. My trust in myself at first was, naturally, absolutely ZERO, since I had no reason to believe otherwise. I assumed, like gold, I’d just muck it all up. I’m pleased to say, however, that just about every Buy & Sell has been very close to a good price. My capricious decision to dump every single crypto on Monday afternoon turned out to be the right choice, and I think it’ll just get “righter” in the days ahead, since the prospect of another big sell-off is a clear possibility.
Funny enough, I also got somewhat dramatic yesterday with my disgust over the inability of equities to move down more than a penny or two. I changed my Twitter and Slope avatars to fit the “laser eyes” meme (showing my dedication to crypto) and I declared quite plainly that I was sick to death of equities and might just give up on them forever. The market gods heard this, and wouldn’t you know it, all five of my put positions had a good day:
These options have July and September expirations, so there’s a ton of breathing room.
