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Not to be mean spirited Bill, but you have only yourself to blame. And if
anything could have been learned from last Oct 17, its that the "World Wide
Wait" cannot be depended on in a fast moving market.
Spending a little time every weekend brainstorming upcoming trading
scenarios and your reactions to them is a MUST if you are serious about this
game. You should never go into a trading day without a gameplan. Otherwise
you'll face costly indecision or execution glitches at critical junctures in
fast markets like today.
Moreover, unless you are so deep in the money on, and committed to what some
call "core holdings," having automatic stop losses in place is about the
only way to control downside risk. I own Freddie Mac, Johnson & Johnson, and
Microsoft in the single digits. Still, I managed to partially control my
downside even here just being short the S&P with AMEX Spiders. The only 1
day scenario I could imagine that would make me sell would be a nuclear war.
And if that was the case, it wouldn't matter anyway!
If you knew at what level you wanted out and had had the stops in place,
think how much nicer your day would have been with your wife too? Not having
stops on the pretext of being picked off is foolish and greedy. It happens
no matter how carefully you place them. I watched 2 large positions get
punched out by noon, 1 at a profit, 1 at a loss, only to see them almost
immediately reverse. Making you feel stupid is one of the market's great
daily psych games. Surprisingly by the close I was feeling like a wizard
though it was still an overall down day for me. I was lucky. Maybe tomorrow
the joke will be on me;-)
Instead beginning the day with "how much can I make?," start thinking "how
much can I lose?." The most important objective in trading is capital
preservation. Profits come later.
wishing us all better days,
Rick
Tokyo, Japan
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Saxon <bsaxon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Metastock EMail List <metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Fasttrack EMail List
<fasttrack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, August 05, 1998 8:00 AM
Subject: Fidelity failure
>I was out of the market last week except for two stocks, with the money I
handle
>myself. With this further deterioration I decided today to get out of
those two
>when the Dow was down about 175 pts in the afternoon. I could NOT get on
>Fidelity's Website after a half hour of trying. My wife was waiting
>(impatiently) for me to leave so I consoled myself with, "Maybe it will
finish
>higher". Now I wish I had just tried to make a phone call and pay the
price to
>get out. Anyone else have a problem? What happens in a real meltdown?????
>This cost me a couple of thousand, what if the whole wad rode on some kind
of
>account servicing???
>
>
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