Two-A-Days

Two posts in a single day? Probably a first ever. I just felt compelled to weigh in on the trading day. I took nearly all profits today close to the high of the day because many of the stocks seemed to be behaving toppy and having a hard time exceeding previous highs. My plan was to buy again on a pull back to 790, which ended up happening today but I was gun shy in pulling the trigger thinking "will buying the dip work again?" It did work and now I am kicking myself. In reality, I could have approached my profit taking a little differently and scaled out as usual to still remain somewhat long but I thought it would be irresponsible to not take some profits. I have one position open and am standing on a 77% profit for 2009.

I think the entire action today was simply positioning ahead of the GDP and jobless numbers tomorrow. My expectation is that the numbers are better than expected, I am taking the patient approach now and will wait for the market to confirm the continuation of the trend, if we break above 825 we will go to 850 in short order. Had we broken above it today I feel that the better GDP numbers would have been built in and it would be a sell the news, with the pull back mid day today I feel like there is still upside and the market will want to get to 850. I am aware of the developing oversold condition so if the above happens I will likely shift to a more short bias.

If the other side happens and things are worse than I think or it still is a sell the news scenario I obviously feel good about being patient and taking some profits. Overall, taking profits still netted me money except on one position. If things want to continue higher it's likely I'll roll into different options to help lock in profits and look for good setups.