Follow-Up Failure

I stand corrected; today was my worst day of the year. The past 4 days in a row it has been the same thing, either my largest gains happen early in the day or my lowest losses and then things get continually worse. I figured I had at least weathered the worst of the storm yesterday, nope. Today the market really wasn't up, but guess what was, ISRG. Corn futures essentially reversed back down to their 330 breakout level which of course added to my losses. The added problem with no movement in either direction was the drop in volatility further hurting my option positions.

I am expecting the sell off to come at some point early next week as we go into month end and companies take their profits. It is likely we only have a day pull back as we get the profit taking then people hop back into positions for window dressing. I'll look to lighten or completely exit my positions into weakness. Ultimately I think we test 950-955 again but I am not sure if I have the patience given that everytime this week I have allowed my positions to work they hurt me. Even this morning I had a nice profit and figured I would let the market work but then we rally. If we get a pullback to 960 in the short term I'll exit.

This has been an extremely demoralizing week all around. I have lost all forward progress and reverted back to my worst levels since April. Obviously my return is still good overall but this drawdown is unacceptable and to think I could have avoided it by selling out at the morning on Thursday kills me. With losses comes smaller position sizes going forward so progress will likely be slower back up unless we miraculously got a gap down on Monday of a decent size. The even better thing is of course the fact that after the close the SPY was almost another half percent higher(note sarcasm). I will HOPE that this was hedging of short positions. Rallies don't last forever but they can last longer than I can take the loss so we will see. I assume a decent amount of people are in my position making me even more concerned that it won't happen.

Just a note about the return figures, they have taken a huge hit this week. Overall return is down a lot, my account is not down nearly that much since the total return is based off my initial starting balance. If I get the pullback I want on Monday I may just sit out for a bit and wait for better entries and take a step back for a while. Obviously the important thing is living to trade another day, which I am but it is as much(if not more) a mental battle as it is a capital battle.

Total Return for 2009: 123%