I'm employed by a US broker Dealer as a salesperson, not an investment advisor. Compliance monitors all my communications. I would like to continue to be a sponsor on Elite Trader and employed, so I can't do that. I like my job more than my desire to give trading advice.
In a quick response to this part, predicting changes in market direction or short term trading has never been my strong suit. I was an Options Market Maker. That was my training. I was more apt to respond to order flow and predict future IVol of the options I trade based on the past and current order flow than pick a direction. Now, I'm more apt to find a small number of stocks - both small and micro-cap that I follow and take a longer-term position in them and trade around it keeping a core position at all times. I like to take a lot of risk with a fair amount of just my Roth IRA and much less risk in the balance of my net worth. Most of that is either in CASH or near cash or invested in 2 hedge funds as a passive investment. I'm very risk-averse with most of my net worth at 60 years old. Just looking to have a little fun with my Roth and maybe hit a few doubles or triples. So far so good.
I'm long cannabis stocks, plus recent breakout plays riot fcel mara etc... but also long inverses in case we get a selloff. A good question to ask is, how will you trade a drop if it happens this month, or in February?
Play the price action not bias or opinion. SPY could run to 500 without a serious pullback. Nobody knows. Tesla is proof of that. $500 million in profits all from carbon credits, 1% of the market yet is nearing $1 trillion market cap and is valued more than all the other automakers X 2. If you respect key support and resistance along with key moving averages you survive in this game.
I'm curious as to why you would keep a core position at all times. I also consider myself very risk adverse. My strategy is to be out of the market when it doesn't act like I expect it to. I wouldn't call it market timing, rather capital preservation. It is basically trend following with a tight stop. The strategy has put me in cash several times since the tech wreck. If the market crashes again I'll be 100% in cash. Every position I have has a stop. I'm not really concerned yet as my junk mail is full of predictions about the upcoming downturn. I'll get really concerned when Ken turns bullish.
I'm buying some stocks that I expect will "more" than double to pay me for my risk on these small-cap stocks. I'm right as much as wrong. I always want to be in the game, until I want out. I can't time big moves. Sometimes when a stock I own goes up, there are in a better situation than when I started, and I want to add. I do not sell a stock just because they go up if they have not met my expectations unless the value of the positions becomes too large vs my account size. I have stock right now where my average is about $1.50, trading at almost 9. Since 7.50 I have been selling, because the dollar amount is too large for my risk tolerance. By 10 I hope to be out of 40% of my stock. I have sold 20% so far. It is a better company IMO at 7 than when I bought it at 1.50. I want to hold this one for years. No, I can't provide more details.
Lol... I'm selectively bullish dem/biden sectors like cannabis solar ev. Ive been too focused on inverses bc payoff potential is so big, eg I bought TVIX 56 sold 940. Still have a hard time believing ath rally during pandemic unemployment earnings misses etc. Good point re stops, I always scale down at 2dlows and up at 2dhighs. Like TSLA, when mkt drops it'll be dramatic.