impristine..
actually this has been a traders market for a while now...
the masses are buy and hold folks, as they should be...unless you trade for a living like most of us do here and on other threads..we are in traders heaven..
volitility is the keyword for us..we need and want it...makes it a bit easier to make money...
however, that said..i do have long term portfolios that have taken a hit here...when i bailed out in 87, at the bottom, that Mon..i lost $60,000 in one day...
it shook me up..i did not understand what was going on...it hurt me, but i lived thru it..and now understand a bit better about these events...
what a lot of people misconstrue, is our real cost basis in most of these buy and hold big cap stocks...about 93/94 time frame...i decided to get back into the frey in earnest....be cause in hindsight..87 was one hell of a buying opportunity...my wife and i sat down and recanted the entire set of events...we said lets just do it...
quick story..in 86 around August i bought 1000 shares of CPQ at $12.00...i wrote on a wall calendar do not sell for one year....in those days i was in the construction biz, and money was flying in like there was no tomr...mid to late 80's Reganomics was in full bloom<G>...
anyway i did sell CPQ that next Aug of 87, for i think 74/75 bucks...i was one happy dude...so i dove in the market with both feet thinking hey, " i am one smart cookie"...i was even trading the MMX the Major Market Index options...like a nut case even then...i think it was called the MMX..or MMI...whatever...
then low and behold here comes OCT...there were warning signs everywhere..i do remember Eliane Gazarilli<sp>, on tues of that week, on Moneyline, saying" my indicators are 92% negative", why not buy some protective puts????
not me..i was smarter than she was...of course we all know what happened...
my point to all these ramblings is this...on MON afternoon, into Tues am that year...CPQ went down to 26 bucks...i looked at it...thinking gee whiz..what happened????? TWENTY SIX DOLLARS???? how could that be??? it was just 75 on THURS of last week???? what's going on here...
i did not have a clue..i couldn't get it thru my dumb thick skull. THAT NOTHING HAPPENED...ZERO-NADA-ZIPSKI...CPQ wasn't going out of business...were they????
so i am pretty immune to these crashes anymore....and at some point i will take some cash and continue to buy these dips for the longer term port..just adding and adding over and over, again and again...
i do it calmly...heck i swear i'm scared when i do it..but i just do it...hindsight is the bestest teacher of all time...
anyway, i trade these markets learning everyday in everyway, how to protect my capital, so i can live to trade another day...it's a hard road for someone like me...but i force myself to try and understand the mechanics of it all...i am a better trader, albeit with a bullish bias that has, and will cost me money...can't help myself...
when it's good, it awesome...and when it's bad..it's just not that bad anymore...
so i'm headed over to the NEW # 1 thread on SI...i only hang around at the top...<vbg>
THREAD MORONS HERE I COME....:>} |
