Market Overview

Looking at this picture makes me sick. There are very few days when you can see almost every sector in the red. If that’s not a sign of a bear market I don’t know what else is.

I do have to say that I was not expecting that kind of sell off today. In fact, if you listened to our morning meeting I had a bit of a positive bias for the open. Overnight, Asia and India had the first uptick in a few days. In the US we saw a strong rally the day before and we were able to hold above those closing levels in premarket. All these things put together lead me to believe that we had a pretty good shot of going up; the only thing we needed was confirmation from the box that we were going to rally strong today. However, around 9:35-9:40 I could see that the bidding was not stepping up in the SPYs, QQQQs and the stocks I was watching; that was not what I was looking for!

I think one of the hardest things for traders is to be able to switch their bias based on what they are seeing on the box. From watching my trading recordings in the days that I struggle I know that the only reason I get tossed around is because I ignore the tape. The tape can clearly tell me that my bias is wrong and that I should consider switching it to get onboard the money train and not the pain train.

It is days like today that can put a dent in a trading account. I am sure there were a few people that got completely faked out by the reversal. Staying mentally agile allowed me to dodge a bullet; unfortunately the market took a couple percentage hits. Times are hard for the economy…