Today was one of those days where it didn’t pay to be in front of the computer at the open if you were long. After the news of the Senate not passing the auto bailout combined with that fraud Bernard Madoff and his scandal had the futures looking bleak. What is it with all these losers in the financial industry and why can’t we get some stand up guys that actually care about their clients?
Why is greed the American way all of the sudden or am I being naive to assume it hasn’t always been this way? I’m sorry but I am totally sick and tired of hearing nothing but bad news every single day, and I’m not talking about the kind of bad news that is typical in a slowing economy. I’m talking about fraud, scandals, cheating, manipulation, etc.
It’s amazing how the markets can look past all of this news and close positive. In fact, the only thing that saved me today is that my market timing is an EOD (End of day) indicator, or else I would have been stopped out of all my positions at the open, which happened to be the low of the day. I told myself last night that I’m not even going to wake up at the open so I didn’t do anything foolish. My wife and I were up making cookies for the homeless last night and I never rolled out of bed until the markets had been open for 3+ hours. If I had more faith in this new scan I’m working on I would have been buying positions at the open, but I wanted to only risk the money that I had in the markets and no more. The markets could have easily opened down 200 and closed down 700 given all the negativity going into this trading day.
The point I’m trying to make here is that sometimes it pays to step away from the monitor and remain true to your trading system. Know what your willing to risk, accept it, and let the markets do what they’re going to do and trade you’re plan off of that. There’s nothing worse than being forced out of a trade that ultimately goes the way you predicted, but a short term “black swan” gets in the way and makes you trade outside your plan. Right now the markets are still holding serve and the bulls may even have the advantage going into the last full trading week of the year as they continue to shake off bad news like a dog shaking itself off after a bath.
