Ahem.

 

Yeah, I'm now re-thinking my previous position...

 

Here's a good rule . . . whatever I do, do the opposite. I've now discovered that I am the sole market catalyst.

 

I'm a registered broker in the industry for the last almost 5 years, been trading for the better part of 10 years and even I can't time the market lol. Anyone that says they have the secret sauce is full of ****. You can however make somewhat educated "guesses" based on the technicals/fundamentals of a position, execute and hope for the best.

Keep in mind, most traders are emotional and instead of sticking to rules and a system, trade on feelings, which makes the market akin to a hormonal teeanger who's parents dont get them. Even when disciplined traders stay the course with their strategy, they're still fighting against an often illogical market that in many respects is driven off emotion.

 

See, this is my problem.

Fighting against an illogical market is what me got me into trouble in '07. So I swore that the next time the herd panicked, I'd go along with the flow.

That's not worked well the past two days.

 

This probably wont help anybody with their stock portfolio, but its an interesting read:

 

Article for you in case you aren't keeping track: Three straight weeks of gains in the new year on Wall Street have erased nearly all of 2018’s losses. It’s the best start to a year since 1987..

 

I follow a different method than most with 100% self directed stocks (no bonds or ETF's).
80% of the total dollars invested equally spread amongst high quality stocks in search of long term diversification (AMZN, AAPL, HD, V, BP, GS) that I only review each quarter to decide how much to hold/put/call.
The other 20% is in speculative growth, which is where I have actually have made most of my money.
What I am looking at is money that falls thru the cracks of the big buyers/sellers that buy & sell in baskets.
The theory being that when the big guys push the sell (or buy) button they are actually not doing individual stocks but specific amounts of various groups of stocks that somebody puts into a single basket.
When the decision happens to sell energy (for example) there might be 20 individual stocks in that basket that get sold off as a group.
This tends to make smaller cap stock prices swing short term more than the large stocks in that same basket.
I watch for big volume sell days where pretty much everything in the market is moving down as this tells me the big guys are all hitting the sell button.

Latest example of this was back in October of 2018 when the market peaked then started selling off until some time in December with lots of volume and lots of downward pressure.
I was watching WPX since it made it up to a hair over $20 in October before the entire market did the dump.
By December it was down below $12 with no good reason other than the overall market dump and the price of Oil dropping from the 70's to the 50's.
Set a trigger and bought a position at about $12.25 but it continued dropping so I doubled my position when it hit $11.
It continued dropping to high 9's but it never hit my next trigger so my current position cost is break even at about $11.80
Currently it is in the low 12's but my sell trigger is for $18.25, which should happen when crude gets back up to over $70 hopefully before the end of 2019.
The Russians and Saudis have indicated they will be cutting supply in order to get the price back up to that level and they have the focus and discipline to make that happed as they have proven in the past.
Another possibility to raise crude prices is supply disruption (Venezuela?) or news headlines that indicate potential supply problems.

It works real well for me but is not for people who are not willing to do homework and have a list of potential smaller stocks in baskets to watch for opportunities.

Update for April 16 2019; The price on WPX is currently just above $14.50 so it is climbing nicely.
Haven't sold any yet because I am still happy with my $18.25 sell trigger.
Being up 22% in 4 months is a really nice cushion to let me sleep at night while waiting for the next few months.

 

For all the MT.net traders out there, looks like most of the big box brokers out there are going to commission free models (E*Trade, Fidelity, TD, Interactive, etc..). It's worth checking to make sure your accounts are reflecting these new pricing plans.

 

Been watching the DJIA / S&P 500 lately, as has everyone else, I am sure.

With respect to the very true fact that attempting to time the market is generally futile, I can't help but feel that there is going to be a very good "buy" opportunity coming up. Whether it'll be in days or months is going to be the tricky part.

 

Yes of course there will be.

But everyone also had their cash in the booming market and now does not have any purchasing power for more stock.

Unless they were already sitting on cash reserves in the record market for some reason.
or bear funds.
or double bear funds
or triple bear funds

 

I always keep cash on hand.

And I'd actually been seriously contemplating a double-bear buy, but didn't quite have the nerve to pull the trigger.

 

To me; any time it is down 30%; like today; the market should be considered ON SALE.

However, my cash reserves exactly match my goal level for the non-volatile bucket of my imminent retirement, so I have to restrain myself from buying.

The main thing is DO NOT SELL your market indexed mutual funds. HOLD THEM. Selling now is how you loose money in the stock market.

 

Relevant...

 

I've done pretty decent swapping between short and long positions over the last week or so. The market hasn't seemed to sustain losses of 8% or more over the following trading day; and during the weekends, governments don't take any major economically stimulating actions, but the virus does continue to infect and kill at an exponential rate.

I was uncomfortable today on whether the market would go up or down, so remained in cash. We were fairly flat today. I'm hopeful that we'll see a few percentage gain tomorrow in which case I'll hold a short position over the weekend.

 

I'm holding what I've got for at least 20 years until I start moving more towards bonds, so this isn't a big deal to me.

 

I’m very much in the liquidate other assets (I.e. sell race car and other superfluous things) stage so that I can buy in with as much cash as I can in the next month or two.

Not gonna worry about timing it perfectly.

I am very recently LONG on a couple stocks I wasn’t planning on being long on. Have to hold now though...

 

Stock tip... ask your Senator what they did!

 

Moved $100k cash into the brokerage account today.

Now, we wait.

 

As a broker, **** the last 6 months. As a trader, I'm up about $41k this year. I'll call it a wash lol