Not to hurt any of this threads feelings, but I think it pretty much summaized the year. Everyone doubted the continual slow bleed up. Vix of 20, TWENTY. The only good trades to be made were overnights, which can be a crapshoot, or between 9.30am and 10.30am. Can't really criticize people's thoughts from March because it looked like certain death at the time. I even hedged myself at the time by saying not 'predicting' this, but it is a scenario that seems likely to pan out. Largely because of all the negativity. See the youtube death of hitthebid.com also kind of summarizes '09. Buy and hold on or there is nothing else. That's an impossible market to 'trade'. Thoughts for 2010, what I learned in 2009: Strongly question the obvious trade. Momentum. Stops, stops, stops. Press winners. + Vix will pick up as it always does in January. -T
Tide I tip my hat at you Sir, you started a great thread and made accurate, well thought-out and timely observations right at the bottom of the biggest market correction since 1929. I believe your experience as an institutional helped you see this coming way sooner than most technical traders like myself, who were waiting for a re-test of the bottom before eventually going long. If I were to sum up 2009 in a few words, I'd say this: trading psychology at its best. And the funny thing is that there still are many investors sitting on their cash waiting for the infamous pullback to get in. If the markets keep creeping up throughout the first semester of 2010, then we could really see more cash coming in. The closer we get to 2007 levels, the bigger the fear to miss out is going to be. Although timing a long entry in 2009 was very difficult, being able to hold during this low-volatility upcreep was perhaps even harder. Congrats to all those who bought and held.
tide, don't beat yourself up. It always looked so easy in hindsight. But it wasn't. Seeing all the wrong posters on this reminds me that the market is extremely hard to predict consistantly, just short of impossible. I think I'll stick to individual stocks.