Time Horizons

Are you glued to CNBC constantly reading between every adviser's line for unintentional innuendo? Is your portfolio streaming all day? Do your doubt your methods with every twist and turn of the up current Dow Jones? Oil Futures? Iran's latest imbecilic leader's rant? Are you just miserable from your trading?

Lengthen your time horizon, allow for fluctuations, buy insurance at obvious times. And see the whole picture, the long picture, your life's picture. Let Rick Santelli's words drive someone else to drinking, drugs, and divorce. Use your time to look at more investment possibilities. Analyze the current situation without emotion. You can have unheard of gains with longer trading time lines, without the spasticity of a monkey with a cocaine lever.

Sigh

It is one thing to say the market will show you which way it is going. And it is another to trade solely by letting the market show you which way it is going. The last week, the market has said nothing but I am going higher. Yet as of Friday the portfolio had only a short in it.

Now five days later it has two shorts and four longs, the longs grabbed desperately under the threatening guise that one must get on board now.

As a result the portfolio is down over 5% for the month. a month in which no trading really needed to be done. Since this rally started in March more has been lost with contra etfs and shorting then is far necessary time to re-evaluate what you are doing.

Ho Hum

Even with loosening our stop criteria, we have been stopped out of all our long positions. Left with one short position going into Monday.

The market is still over bought, really. However it still is hugging that upper bollinger band and showing no signs of falling soon. However it does appear to be losing short term momentum and looks awfully familiar to the July rally that sort made a straight line from here, and then finally corrected a bit.

Although am not a huge fan of back testing and don't think history really repeats itself. Finding good short candidates is still easier then finding good long candidates. Probably neither will produce much in the way of short term wins.

The Audacity of Hope

To buy a stock that is going down and hoping that it will turn, is an expense in two ways. One the time it will take to turn costs, and the price falling below your purchase price is even costlier.

The positions you enter must be already moving in the direction of your trade. And there must be enough room to profit before they are likely to meet resistance.
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Sounds simple enough.

DLTR was just stopped out, and it wasn't moving up. It was just a cheap entry in a market that does not have many stocks with cheap entries.

Now granted it was defensive play, with an assumption that the market would observe that the economic rally doesn't have that much traction.

But it was placing an assumption that wasn't showing itself. So the trade was placed with the audacity of hope.

Market refuses to go down

Market rally is looking more and more like the July rally and not the August rally. Went long today in NGS and BCR. NGS is breaking out, and BCR is also both off smaller than optimum bases. NGS is going into all-time high territory short term and breaking a long trend trading range. BCR is breaking a long term down trend.

With the market positively in an uptrend it is time to trade longer term charts as there are no shorter term charts to trade.

Futures lower

Overnight futures are lower. On Friday we shorted TEL and purchased the inverse oil ETF, DTO. Oil is also lower overnight.

Shorting when the market is so strong is not advised. QQQQ is still riding the upper bollinger band, and we generally refrain from taking short positions when that is happening. However if tomorrow does indeed, close half a percent or more lower the shorting game will look stronger.

DTO on the other hand has much to like about its pattern. And the economy strenghtening enough going int fall to push up demand of oil is a rather flimsy premise.

Strenght returns

A strong day no matter how you slice it, the QQQQ pattern now looks to be heading higher. The long term down signal has also reversed. All patterns suggest over bought, but all patterns suggest an uptrend as well.

Took profits in both exposures to China because their nasty habit of opening at stops. Also went long DLTR which is not short term over bought but should out pace the market in the short term without much risk.