Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I got creamed

OK I admit it.. I got creamed by the market today. All the broad indexes fell by about 5%+ today. The S&P is now at 805. My invested capital fell by about 10% and my total capital by about 6%. I have four choices now:

1: Close out all long positions and move to cash.
2: Close out all long positions and go short.
3: Open a new short position for a hedge and if we go lower from here dump my longs and increase the hedge, if we go higher and break 820-ish on the S&P on volume then remove the short hedge.
4: Do nothing, wait and see what today (the 21st) brings.

Here's what I think is happening. We are in the middle of a Presidential rally - that will probably peter out at 950-ish. I was expecting 1050 last week, but after today's decline I don't see the market breaking the high of January 6th.

The problem is where is the bottom of the current move downward. If it's here or 790-ish, it makes sense to sweat it out. On the other hand it could very well be around 740-ish. In which case I should go with 1 or 2.

I am long from 850 and I could bear a drawdown to 790 - but anything more would be stupid. So here's what I am going to do if we break today on volume I will dump all my longs and be on cash.

So for today it's #4.

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