TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

I hate the Steve Miller Band but for some reason that song popped into my head today after I went flat across the board early this morning.

You can see the Tradestation Chart here which is one of the places I trade. I have accounts in multiple places for several reasons. First and foremost, I have a backup in case something screwy happens at one of them I can offset positions in the other if need be. Second, I trade different methods in different places. Third, some are IRA accounts. Usually when I take a trade in futures I take the same trade it at least 3 different accounts.

I had established a short term target of 1060.50 and had a resting limit order to exit if we hit that price which we did this morning. I had mentioned I was keeping a short leash on this trade due to it being against the trend. As a result, this is where I got out. I also had 9 individual stock trades on top of the EUO etf trade which mirrored my Euro short trade. Below is just a snapshot of the screen that has the trades, you can click on it and get a better view of them. I had established individual price targets for the stocks as well and several of them went right to them this morning. A few did not so I just did what I call the CASH REGISTER exit on them. This means I just went to the register and took the profits across the board. I am thinking we bounce is here or coming and we are against the primary trend.

All told about 36k in profits this week so not too bad for a couple days work. One thing that had bothered me about this group of stocks is that they are not normally ones you would expect to move alot. They are not high fliers like AAPL for example. DIS ( Disney ) for example, is not generally a stock that is the ideal candidate for a quick 3 day profit move. Also combined with that the stops were a little larger than normal so I wound up with stocks that generally don't move much and smaller size in them due to the large stops. I selected them because they conformed the best to the patterns I look for and the high fliers did not. This is not a great combination for a big windfall, so when I got a decent move in the futures I thought it best to take the money.

Yes a judgement call, what can I say I am guilty as charged.

Here is the window showing the individual trades in stocks

The next chart is where I made a good trade money wise, but exited incorrectly and it cost me alot of additonal profits.

This is the EURO and you can see where I shorted it and where I exited. Although the profit money was alot here, I should have held for a bigger target since being with the trend. I think in general you go for more profit with the trend and be more nimble against it. I violated that rule here and it cost me an additional 7 or 8k in profits I should have had. Oh well, a blunder I make em too!

Yesterday I had said that what I thought would happen was a mid day PPT rally attempt that would fail and we get get a plunge at the close. This was pretty close to what happened. Where it was off was the last 10 minutes we got a good bounce which was just short covering. I do not believe that was the PPT. It is awfully hard to predict intraday price swings like I tried especially when you have a market that is artificially being pushed in one direction. Any call for end of day weakness is a best dicey now since we have probably rallied in the last hour of the day over 80% of the time this year. I took a shot.

NOW WHAT?

Has the bubble we have so steadfastly inflated here popped? In spite of the commentary that we have one of the greatest economic recoveries of all time underway, we know that under the surface there are still several very big problems. What is going on in Greece is of course Barry's plan for us. Why wouldn't you want to model an economy after that? Can anyone honestly say that could never happen here? Of course not, people are people and when it comes down to surviving they will do whatever they have to including taking to the streets or crime to survive. The more entitlements there are the bigger problems there are. Since it is our nature to just inflate one asset class after another, and we have done so once again in stocks, can we keep them up here in the face of some of these brewing problems?

In spite of the economic issues, the trend is still decidedly up, so these dips are buying opportunities for now. Whether or not this Greece situation is a catalyst strong enough to put this top in that we know is coming is anyone's guess. For now I am going to say that I do not think so and after some downside we are going to march along again. For the near term I am hoping for a sharp 2 day bounce to get short again.