I had probably the biggest day of the month yesterday - I was doing so well I had to stop trading because my ego was MRMARKET huge! It's funny, because it seems like I am usually the opposite of what folks post. Seems like I have a bad day and somebody posts about what a great trading day it was, LOL.
Usually I have found that some of our best days are when we had actually nothing to do with it--------some event or news takes place and we just happened to be on the right side of the trade for that particular event.
I am guessing that most traders on this forum are short-term oriented/no overnight positions (esp in futures); by the time the reality of the situation hit the markets, prices were pushed so far that traders would probably be more comfortable in fading the move rather than chasing. As most prices returned to pre-news levels, I don't think it's too surprising that many here had exceptional days. I'd say the risk of "blow out" are highest for those here when the market makes a huge move, and just keeps going and going . . .
I had 2 buy signals yesterday about an hour after the open in the retail sector and the home builders. I went long in both buying ANF ARO GPS HOTT PSUN AEOS BEBE for the retailers and TOL DHI RYL CTX KBH for the home builders and the only losers that I had were PSUN and ARO. Not a bad day....one of the best days of the year.
Took a small hit in yesterday's FTSE market but only enought to leave me in a bad mood. Annoyingly, I would have been fine if the markets had gone down and stayed down, it was the rally that caused the problems. Seems that many of the UK indices are making new multi-year highs today so clearly terrorist disruption is good for the UK economy.
Well truth be told i was already long before yesterday....But as the premarket gap began to shrink, and after the DOW being down 100 pts the prior day, i figured it would be dumb to sell....and way too risky to short. I went and bought RTSX yesterday morning....i liked the pattern and it met my criteria...its up nice so far today...along with 3 other of my positions....only one of my positions is down today ...NSTK....its been nibbling at my target for 3 days....thinking of getting out. Anyways....my account is up 10% in the last 3 months....for me thats awesome.
I got a play out of some Schwab 12.50 calls and got out before the stock got halted. It was my best trade in months.
Got stopped out of a short Euro position overnight because of the volatility. Broke even, so more annoyed than pained. As far as stocks go, yesterday was the fade that never happened. I think a lot of people just watched the market move higher.
So, on a wild day with a big range, nobody has breaks, or big stops and the results are either small losses or major up day. Pretty amazing set of results, not really believable though.