Over the past couple of weeks, I have been “thinking out loud” about what to do with my portfolio before the close of the year here on Slope. I’ve been making a transition from my old broker to my new one, which has been going relatively smoothly, although there’s been a fair amount of learning and tweaking involved to my infrastructure. I lightened up substantially, as I said I would, before Yellen, but I started getting back in after that.
This Monday morning, an Internet outage threw my routine into a whirl, and I decided on the spot to swiftly cover all my remaining positions (15 of them remaining, down from 100) in my old account, which I hadn’t really planned to do. Since they were all shorts, and since Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all big “up” days, I got lucky!
Thus, since Monday morning, I’ve been solely on my new account, but I’ve been agonizing over whether I should go totally flat or not. I finally decided this morning that, yes, I’m going to go to all cash before today’s brief trading session is over.
I have three reasons for doing this:
- I’ve got a profitable year under my belt, and by going to cash, there is absolutely no risk of that profit being diminished – – so bring on the surprise announcements, central bankers!
- I wouldn’t mind clearing my head for a fresh start for when 2016 begins.
- By far the most important, I’m going to be vacationing with my family for a week, and I’d really like to be able to do something I have never done: actually focus on them 100% and not worry about the stupid markets, which serve as a never-ending distraction and source of worry. I suspect it makes me less pleasant to be around as well if things aren’t good.
The only reason to just “ride out” the 4 remaining trading days of the year is the prospect of positions moving favorably in my direction, thus adding to my profits. Unless we really swoon down next week (which, let’s face it, isn’t exactly very likely), it won’t make much difference, although the superstitious part of me keeps FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) pretty strong in my head.
Nonetheless, Tranquil Tim will be forthcoming, and I’ve got to say, it’s going to be a little bizarre having absolutely no financial interest in the markets, even for a week. If we do crash next week, just assume that God, in fact, is just keeping me around for grins.
