Investment BS Thread - Stocks/Futures/Mutual Funds/Bonds/Commodities/Options/ETFs/401ks/Etc

More than a couple of percent? Youre in penny stocks though right?

 

Thats just ebb and flow of it all you'll get used to that. You could have been me... And gotten a call from the margin risk department! I accidentally left myself short on an option assignment, and they dont allow naked short positions. Had to make some money moves to shore it up, but a down day is a perfect day to buy stock!

 

So I'm not going to make a weekly market guess since I am already 2 trading days into this week, but I will make this guess...
If you think that you missed the boat from this most recent market pullback I say be patient. I am still sitting in cash (only partially - long stock positions are staying, but I am not purchasing anything additional right now), and I truly believe that the S&P will get down and flirt with $2,400 again here in the next 2-3 months. I went back and looked at all of the major pullbacks that we have had since the 60's, and there is (at least historically) a lot of volatility after a large pullback like this most recent one. I am going to be patient and remain positive for now. I am still actively trading options in reaction to more acute and recent events though.

**Not advice - just a look at how I am playing my cards.

 

Well... There are a whole lot of geopolitical forces at play that will influence how our market moves, but strictly statistically the answer to your question is yes. I plan to play the next pullback pretty hard (provided that it shows up), and was honestly a little bummed I missed this most recent one. I would have been all over it, but I just had some other life stuff going on so I didn't have a good pulse on the "why" for the drop which kept me unsure of where to sock the money. I may use this current pop off of that bottom to reallocate some funds to some of my favorite stocks that should be less impacted by a drop, but I don't plan to introduce any new cash for a minute.

Here's a few timestamps to look to see what I am looking at:
May '62
April '70
October '87
Feb-Sep '01
Oct '08

There's more situations like these, but these are just a few for you to wet your whistle on what I am talking about. Just look at the waterfall drops, the immediate pop off of the bottom (large recovery in less than 2 weeks), and the activity that came in the months following. I do my best to keep my emotions out of trading, so I geek out on this type of shit instead. The only type of bandwagon trading I do is some occasional volatility long stock trading intra-week. I have kinda put most of that activity on the back burner as of late though.