The Plan Didn’t Work

April 13th, 2011 | by Hugo Gullett |

Last Friday I was supposed to go long. I did. It didn’t work and quickly recognized it. The thing is I had my suspicions based on the patterns of my own charts and how price reacts at certain points/indicator levels. However, I was being dumb (which is smart) and going long.

On Monday I quickly went to cash in the morning and sold nearly everything eating my losses. I went back in smaller at the end of the day Monday for Tuesday morning thinking I may have overreacted. I got out Tuesday morning of the funds. The only stock I held from Friday is BDX which I still have. It had the best chart pattern and didn’t have a giant reversal bar like nearly everything. See FCX, JPM, etc.

I remained in 99% cash from Tuesday morning till now. I’m not seeing anything that looks that fantastic here as far as the indexes and popular stocks goes for swing trades. From my experience where price is in relation to its past this is definitely a period where what is a buy is a sell and vice versa – hence overtrading and profit give back. Its even possible to swap trading strategies here if you can’t sit on your hands and play intraday. If you are swing trader you need to see a bigger break in either direction her, imo, its not coming for a few more weeks. The market is just in the blase zone.

Strategies That Might Be Nice Here

Dividend plays, call selling, fading overnight gaps in either direction, intraday trading. I’m going to revisit my intraday charts to see if there is any opportunity. This time around I’m semi-content to wait for the next serious move rather than playing in the chop.

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