This is one of those "got to get this off my chest" type posts.
I cannot help but feel very disappointed in today's action. It's not so much that the market isn't doing what I'd like it to do – – that's something none of us can ever control – – it's the fact that the way this market is behaving is rewarding rule-breaking and punishing rule-following.
One of the most basic rules is to let profits run. You don't close out positions the same day you open them just because you happen to have a small profit. You let them run, updating the stops along the way, and hope that they will blossom into big winners.
Well, that's what I try to do, and it's not working. What we're going through today is a perfect example of this. Yesterday the market fell nicely, and I had a handsomely-profitable day. Now that the Summit is done, it seemed that things were in line for a continuation of a soft market. Irrespective of one's views of what the market was going to do today, the fact is that there was no logical reason to scurry around just before the close and shut down all my positions just to take profits.
But that is precisely what I wish I would have done, simply because the market is rocketing higher today. It seems that we're on an endless cycle of up/down/up/down/up/down/up, and it's enough to break one's spirit. After all, if we can't manage to hold on to gains for more than a day, what's the point of any of this?
I took some profits on some of my riskier positions earlier today, and I've bought a big block of DIA (and shorted a medium-sized TLT) to help balance things out. But this market is exhausting, I've got to tell you, and as much as I'd love to pretend to wallow around in the joy of trading every single day, I'm frankly getting awfully tired of this. I imagine some of you are, too, and I wanted you to know you're not alone.
