Hey Guys,
The market exploded upward yesterday and overnight today. The S&P 500 is around 4,160 right now.
And the market's tide carried a lot of my positions up with it. I hit a lot of profit targets since my last email: SNAP, FXI, and ORCL options, as well as ICE and INTC stock positions.
This is good news, right? But the interesting thing: I felt more frustration this morning with trading than I have in a bit.
And the reason is that I have a number of positions that diverged from the market. In particular, companies based in China and companies in the energy sector went down even though the market went up. I took a loss on my HES stock position, and my HES and BABA options are way down.
One of the things that can light up emotion for me in trading is when the market is booming and my positions aren't all going with it. I'm in the fortunate position of having traded for a long time, though, and so I can recognize when it's happening and make a choice how to respond to it.
This morning, the way I handled it is to slow down my rapid-fire thinking and let the emotion in. I just sat with the feeling itself and welcomed it. And in my case, the feeling of frustration turned into a feeling of sadness, and then it dissipated and I felt grounded again. By letting that feeling in and giving it the time and space to be felt, it was almost like a way of accepting the circumstances. And the sooner I accept them, the sooner I can go back to my grounded state and ensure I'm not trading from a state of extreme emotions.
I picked up some new positions today. In the main account I bought stock for BHP and ABB. In the double down account, I bought stock for BHP, VLO, and RIO.
I have a few options positions that reached their time limits today. I'll be manually closing those near the end of the trading session today unless they reach a profit target or stoploss before then.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.