for long term investors who have some money on the sideline waiting to buy stocks on a correction, the market is setting up for a very good entry using trailing buy stops. When the mkt was way up there nobody wanted to buy because it was "too high." They said they would buy on a correction. Well, here we are and nobody wants to buy on another big down day. A simple strategy is just to enter a trailing stop to buy. (it also works for short term trading, but you already know that.)
Still no volume for all the doom and gloom entertainment. There isn't any volume selling. Blah...I think it goes nowhere.
if it goes nowhere, a trailing stop to enter will keep you on the sideline until it does finally start moving up. Although long in a mkt going nowhere at least pays 2% dividend.
I do always keep around 10% cash on hand. But that's in case the market crashes and I didn't get out. The 10% cash is like a lifeline. http://investingtrack.com/
long term, that cash is a real drag on your account. It was one thing when cash was paying 4% ob. I have an asset allocation fund which always keeps 60% in stocks, 30% in bonds and 10% in cash. I reallocate once a year on my birthday. It's nice to have that dry powder, but it has severely underperformed any 50/50 portfolio. Who knows? Maybe someday my Prince will come.
my point was, for those looking to get in on the long side, a trailing buy stop to enter looks good if you get the stop right, and if you are a bull like me you can even get a little sloppy on the stop.
Maybe its because SPX is still "too high", its only down 9% from the peak, thats hardly a correction. The S&P's decline is relatively shallow given the fact that most other markets are down at least 20% from their peaks, its not a particularly cheap market either so I don't think buyers are particularly enthusiastic atm.
so if you have money to invest, and you know eventually you need to get long, set a trailing buy stop to enter. If you guess right on the stop you could get in much lower than where we are now, but you won't miss it if it starts going up again. There's no one good strategy that works all the time. I have a million of them. But for a conservative long term investor this looks like a good strategy at this particular time.