‘Time, time, time….is on your side…yes it is’ Rolling Stones hit song
Yes, the clock can be your ally. As a stock investor, time is not as big an issue as to a trader.
To an options trader, time is a critical element as option prices actually contain time as part of their value. As a buyer of calls or puts time is the enemy, the battle is to reach the strike before expiration. As an option seller, time is your friend as the option decays, the longer it stays out of the money.
As it relates to time, this market seems to move very fast these days.
What once took weeks to cycle through a corrective period now seems to take only days, maybe even hours. A recent bout of selling with some very heavy distribution (institutional selling) was met with some ferocious buying, this after a modest 2.7% loss. The funny thing is that many traders/investors were looking for something more, like a 5% down move. Wrong intention, because as we know the market is not set up to accommodate the majority opinion.
If one just watched/listened to what the market was saying during that correction they would have found price had support at several short term moving average lines, and that was generally enough.
If you blinked, you missed the re-start of the rally. Further, who would want to be short or playing that other side with heavy-handed ‘helicopter Ben’ was reiterating the Fed’s easy monetary position? The dip was a good time to be long, as currently the SPX is up around 3.5% since. Yes, time is on your side if you are paying attention to the market facts.
