Hey Guys,
Yesterday I had three more options positions hit their profit targets, and then this morning I had two stock positions in my main account closed out for profits. What a nice turnaround from last Friday!
It's a great opportunity to examine what your trading experience was like between Friday and now from an emotional perspective. Friday we woke up to a huge market drop. A lot of positions hit stoplosses. I talked in my email commentary that day about how I was going to stick to the plan. And in this case, so far it's turned out that sticking to the plan paid off well. As of the time I'm writing this, almost all positions have come back up in value (with many options positions hitting profit targets). You can notice for yourself whether you stuck to the plan, and how hard it was to stick to the plan based on any tough emotions you may have been feeling on Friday. It's really helpful to live through a drawdown and see for yourself how it feels through both the downturn and the rebound. It's a challenge since there is real risk involved, but learning to ride those waves might be the key to your long term trading success.
To be clear, I'm not in any way saying we're out of the woods on the volatility yet! Even as I'm typing this the market is fluctuating.
I want to point something else out. With the low-priced account, I had a few losses in the last few days from stocks reaching their time limits. And a lot of my open positions in that account are down right now. This is despite the market going up. And that might speak to the fact that a lot of these smaller companies do not always move with the market. At times when the market is going down, that can be great. But at times like this when the market is driving upward, it means the smaller stocks don't necessarily move with it.
ZS is a stock position I have in my main account, and they are reporting earnings after the market closes today. If it doesn't hit its profit target or stoploss before the close, I'll hold the position overnight to honor my posted time limit. Things can get volatile during earnings announcements though, for better or worse, so if you don't like the sound of living through that volatility you can consider closing the position today before the close of the market.
I picked up new positions today. In the main account I grabbed NTES and JCI stock positions as well as an MES futures position and its corresponding SPXL position (the futures position was strategy MT 71 for those interested). I bought FLO and ONON in the low-priced account. I bought SPY options this morning in my extra options account (in conjunction with my futures trade) as well as options for NTES, CLX, and PG. Notice for the SPY options that it's a different expiration date than usual (it's one that expires Monday next week). I'm closing it by the end of the day this coming Friday.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.