I hope everyone had a great holiday and new years!
It’s time to reset our profit counter to zero and start looking for new profitable trades along with managing our current open positions on our small cap stocks which we continue to hold with gains of 66%, 35% and 10%.
Last year was a tough one as the stock market chopped around in a very large range giving off buy and sell signals every week and some times every other day… If you understand how to trade options then these conditions can make you a boat load of money.
Those who follow me or trade with me through my trading newsletter know how conservative I am when looking for low risk setups in both ETFs and stocks. And no doubt agree there were some extended periods of time when we did not have any trades because the volatility on a daily basis was making it the risk higher than what I wanted us to take, thus we waited for setups instead of chasing prices. We still locking in some solid gains with 8 winning trades, but feel we can better this year especially if we get less chop and more of a trending market.
It’s safe to say some people just do not like being in cash, hence the reason so many want stock picks and trades all the time. But to be flat out honest, I love being in cash or at least holding a good chunk in cash waiting for a high probability opportunity to pop up on my charts before committing my hard earned cash. It’s better to be wishing you were in a trade than to have all your money tied up in losing positions just because you wanted to be active… Because I give you only the trades I am making with my own money, I think that is the reason things are slower paced, unlike some other newsletters in this industry which fire off new trades each day or week just to keep those addicted (wanting stocks picks all the time) happy.
Anyways, 2011 should be a great year for trading, investing and education. Last years fast paced market I know either took your money and got you really frustrated, or you made money and was able to use the difficult conditions to fine tune your trading and money management stills like I did. 2011 feels like it’s going to start out similar to 2010 where we get a move up into mid January, but once earning season starts the market sells off on the good news for an 8-10% correction.
The good news is that after last years fast paced market and my constant refining of my strategy and money management rules, we should be able to catch the majority of the trends this year both up and down using stocks, regular ETFs and Inverse ETFs.
As much as I would like to forecast what I think will happen this year, I have decided to take the market one quarter at a time to keep everyone more in tune with what’s happening now and a glance forward up to 2-3 months.
Take a look my SP500 charts for the next 3-8 weeks below.
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