Some Gain
Today was bittersweet for me. The market took off like a rocket and it appears to be more than short covering. I benefited a bit from the rally. My portfolio was up 2.20% about half of the major indexes.. However, I made the mistake of selling some of my most beaten up stocks yesterday when I was pulling my hair out feeling sorry for myself.
I feel like I just recovered from the flu. I'm a bit shaky and not sure the worst is over. I feel better, but things were awful for a long time. It will take time to see if we've got a new trend forming.
I'm not sure what I can learn from these past few months. I do know that losing so much so quickly really threw my whole trading plan for a loop. I threw my strategy, my money management, and my unemotional take on the market out the window and acted like a desperate newbie at times.
In retrospect, I should have stayed in cash for the last two months. Nothing was telling me that it was time to buy. I just expected the bottom to form along the way and it didn't. But as a mechanical trader I'm supposed to ignore the swings of the market and stay fully invested. I feel like that guy with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other whispering in my ear telling me how to invest.
This downturn has been the worst (on many different levels) since 2002. Today's surge was the largest since 2002. Hopefully the rest of the year won't resemble 2002 and I can get on with my trading. Right now, I'd be happy to be even at the end of the year. Maybe that's aiming too low, but I have to admit that this downturn has put a serious chink in my trading armor.
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3 comments:
I'm with you Scott...
I was in cash so long and should have stayed that way...I started shorting by going with ETF shorts and ultra shorts....I looked like a genius for the past weeks....then I lost it all on the FED move this morning. Sad part is since I came out of cash I'm down over 10%. Stupid, stupid. I was mechanically trading for all of two weeks before I tossed it out and desperately made all the mistakes I've been making for the past year chasing money around. The only thing I did well was keeping my losses small, but there were so many small ones that it adds up....
It's better to be out of the market, wishing you were in than in, wishing you were out
"Confucius the investor"
I've followed my screens and I'm down 16% YTD. I don't think that there has been any place to hide in this market. I do take some solace in the fact that my job is to trade my system, and I've done that. It may be that I've created a poor system but I won't be able to evaluate that fact for another few quarters.
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