Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Choppy Day

Today was a frustrating day to trade, and that holds true for both longs and shorts. On days like this, it is best to ignore overall indices unless important support/resistance levels are broken and concentrate on individual stocks. For a disciplined trader who keeps close stops, days like today are worse than big down days. That's not an argument for being undisciplined but for taking smaller positions and giving stocks room to run on choppy days.

On the overall markets, its hard to discern where the markets want to go from here. The SPX does look bearish but I have lost count on the number of time the chart has looked bearish only to make a big move up in the last one year. Personally, I closed my SDS position that I entered yesterday a little more than 1.5% gain. It made little sense to me to be hedged today as quite possibly, one could have lost money on  both longs and shorts.

Take care and good luck!

2 comments:

Bill said...

tough day indeed, but my NVDA short is still doing very well, sold half of my position at 20.50, its nice to log a %400 gain every now and then since my netflix short is still down about %10.

Tomorrow will be better for the markets, jobs numbers will start to look better in the short term, but i doubt it will be prolonged as companies will quickly shore up extra cash on fear of lower sales due to immanent price increases.

PhoenixTrader said...

I would sit out for now...finally. I am a swing trader and feel that the recent run has been good, one can book profits and now get timid on the long side!