He's been very quiet since around mid-Oct...I think that he realized that the "short at will" market that was chopping lower in September was gone for awhile...Plus, he has a deranged cyberstalker that relentlessly reminds him of his bad trades (even though he had a string of good ones).
whenever I trade or invest long without high conviction in the bull story (which is a lot since 2000) I try to use this method "putting in orders and not watching" and it works well for me. But it is extremely hard for me not to watch my positions constantly using this method. During my second best bull stretch (1995-1999 was best) I intentionally started renovating houses while trading/investing and worked in the rehab house during trading hours with a small makeshift office set up in the first bedroom I rehabbed. This was 2002-2008. At the beginning of the week I would study the market, setup my positions and put in orders and then start on the house. Working on the house limited my second guessing, constant watching of the market and most importantly, thinking too much and trying to build my logic into the market (such as "what could possibly go wrong with sub prime"). It also put my trading thought-process into a more long term process (kept me from processing short term noise and day to day market games). I am not naturally a bull but this distraction from minute by minute market watching helped me to stay long when all of my natural logic says short the market. I may get back to that method shortly. With spreading into positions I think its possible to do this. I am still tweaking my details on the spread angle. Thats why I asked you about the Russell. I am thinking it may not participate from Aug going forward and I would use it as the hedge against long NDX positions. Looks like NDX will go the distance. Also, holding longer-out ES contracts long and using cash SPX as the other side of the spread seems to be working (like long bond verses the 1 year spreading). i960 was commenting about longer out ES contracts verses SPX and it seems to be up his alley. Hoping he may comment more on this at some point.
Very interesting stuff...It matches my experience as well...My biggest gains were always on positions that I didn't "micro-manage", but it is very difficult to just sit on positions (but the alternative is getting stuck in the noise)...Personally, I just won't sit on outright futures positions or unhedged ETF's. I always find a way to play it with options, normally some type of spread (albeit I always prefer to leg-in, if possible, to mitigate decay issues and/or to give me a more favorable basis)... The other thing that I would like to do, but it seems that it's more difficult to accomplish with order entry systems, is have limits it at extreme levels for options trades (with a contingent exit if filled), but that requires a workaround since it's not possible to have both entry and exit in the system simultaneously...
Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, good day to take time and appreciate what many times we take for granted.
gotta love how things happen with a full on suspect world equity shell game.... scurry around at night during US holiday trying to hide the shell with the pea.... like rats after the lights go out oh well, I will hold my nose and buy at the open....stay long til the wind blows the smell away...like the soot over singapore in the fall