Am I the only idiot that got caught short NQ into the late buying, only to get out for a big loss right before the cash close, only to have NQ lose four handles immediately after the cash close, followed by four more handles lower from that? nitro
this market is so crazy - by the action going in to the close you might have expected good news tonight who, besides someone forced to cover, would buy aggressively after oil closes near $66 and there is no general positive news around? wtf is going on?????
While I didn't get caught it was only because I overrode the system in question. There's been a lot of that kind of stuff of late. It's almost like someone sat there and said: "Everyone is short because oil went out at the high. Let's nail them into the close." ...and they had the money to do it with. It certainly makes a mockery of the idea of stops. Hypothetically, Dell missing on the top line seems to be the culprit that took it down after the runup...
how can "investors" be long this market? earnings have been juiced by ultra low interest rates - yet multiples are still high, inflation is creeping up because easy money has created asset bubbles all around, there is a growing threat of catastrophic terrorist attacks as technology (and the broken USSR) allow proliferation of wmd's to smaller groups of crazy people, more debt than ever makes a potential downturn more dangerous than ever before, yet everyone seems happy to own "beta" - how can you sleep? how can you even sit there for a minute without selling? i guess it will just keep going up until it crashes... how do you know that you will be able to get out?
My $.02: 1. OPM makes managers careless 2. Low returns YTD makes hedge fund managers in particular nervous. They are grabbing alpha any way they can. 3. GSPAN has created an environment where there is no "Fed" risk. The various government agencies are pouring out "understated" numbers regarding inflation and "overstated" numbers regarding GDP growth. 4. Consumer spending is still strong. 5. Earnings were "OK" as was guidance. On the surface, things look decent. Finally, it never pays to stand in front of a train no matter what your personal beliefs are -- I learned this one the hard way. As to getting out, I am a firm believer in flat at the EOD or hedged...
Agree emphatically on Points 1, 2 & 3. Point 4 is a trickier one, but I will assume it's probably accurate. Point 5, in general, probably accurate as well. As I have mentioned in other threads, the overall market trades like a macro hedge fund getting liquidated in an assortment of asset classes. Correlations have broken down across the board and it seems to have exacerbated the brief bursts of volatility and illiquidity.
Nitro: I figure MMs have computer programs that indicate to them exactly where savvy discretionary traders are initiating their trades and were most if not all of the stops are placed. We are not trading against other investors like in the times of Livermore, or even Steinhardt, but against computers whose job is to fuck us. And they are doing a hell of a job... Just mo.