Hey Guys,
The market came down during the course of the day yesterday but rebounded to some degree overnight. Yesterday the S&P 500 tested the 4200 level on the support side, and it held up. The S&P 500 is now at 4235.
I had a number of positions close for profits since my last email. FE hit the profit target. My Applied Materials options hit the profit target. I had two options trades that reached their time limits and were closed for profits (LVS and EDU). And this morning I had three stock positions that reached their time limits and were closed for profits (FIS, ENB, and ALSN).
Overall across all accounts this week, I had 14 trades close for a profit and 1 trade close for a loss. It's not typical to be that dominant with this trade strategy, so that's a week worth appreciating.
I've only picked up one new position so far today, and that was RELX in the low-priced account.
A note about that ENB trade that closed: I earned a dividend on it overnight, and that padded my profits on the trade. Anyone else who owned it overnight last night will also get the dividend. Most brokerages automatically credit the dividend to your account in the coming weeks after the dividend date.
LVS was quite a ride yesterday. In the morning the price of LVS just kept going up. My options got close to the profit target. Then it had an about face and lost all its ground right in the hours leading up to my time limit for the options trade, so by the end I closed the trade for a profit that was about a third of what it had been earlier in the day.
My first feeling when seeing this was one of frustration because I thought about how the profit disappeared. But what's interesting is that at the start of the week, I was deep in the red on that LVS trade, and at that time if someone had told me I'd end up with a profit, I might have felt happy.
So it's all a matter of perspective. And if I'm aware enough of what's going on inside of me, then I get to choose how I respond. Do I actually *want* to spend time thinking about how some profit disappeared in those last few hours? Or do I want spend time thinking about how the trade made a great comeback after starting out deep in the red? Or neither?
I chose neither. After I felt that frustration initially, I chose to think about how this trade was just a single trade in a huge haystack of trades, and how it fell within the bounds of the back tested approach. The individual trade itself therefore may not have merited a strong emotional reaction either way. And after thinking about that, the emotional charge within me just kind of disappeared, and I was able to move on with my day.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.