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Well, we had conflicting signals again. We had a sell signal on a
short-term indicator for yesterday morning while our longer-term signal is
still up.
Here's what we did, and I'm not happy I waited.
With regards to our S&P future contracts, my brother closed all of his
yesterday around 1504 (I believe). I, OTOH, waited until today to close all
of the rest and closed them at 1398. Not a really big different and still
profitable. We're on the sidelines with respect to S&P futures. We've
learned our lesson from Jean Jacques and others in that we're not going to
let our profits disappear. Sort of like a visual stop.
My brother unloaded all of his semiconductor stocks (except MU and TSM) last
Monday and looks like a genius. I wish I had done the same. I closed BRCM
and WATR this morning when the NASDAQ was only down around 60, again
deciding to keep some profits. I also kept my TSM and MU as well as my QQQ
January 80 calls. My brother sold his calls and his QQQ on Monday. Again,
he looks like the genius and I look like the family dummy.
Now, on my behalf, there was a reason why my actions differed from my
brother's. I download all of my prices from Reuters. After checking these
downloads manually, I made the assumption that this data was accurate. I
then manually transfer them to my Clipper databases and run the longer-term
systems there. It appears that Reuters provided me with bad data on 10/11
and 10/12 that impacted my calculations. So while my brother had a sell
signal after Friday's close, which was confirmed on Monday as another short
term sell for Tuesday morning, I didn't. Normally, I would have caught this
when my brother and I email each other or speak nightly, but for some reason
he emailed me Sunday and we never spoke. My ISP suffered a massive power
surge on Sunday, which wiped out his Internet access as well as his mail
servers. He got the DSL service up late Sunday, but lost the mail servers
and will take up to 10 days to recover the lost emails. I never got his
email about the sell, and since Reuters passed on erroneous data, never had
them myself.
The reason my brother didn't have the same problem is that he manually
enters this data based on the exchange settlement data. Guess who is going
back to that the same approach. I had always done it this way, but for some
reason totally switched over to Reuter's data.
Bottom line is we are on the sidelines with regards to the S&P futures and
still have some equities. My brother bailed on most of his portfolio (he
was fully margined and when he got the sell signal, he decided to take his
profits). He is now un-margined. I took a few profits in equities this
morning, but still held on to the remainder of my stocks. I am un-margined
as well. The reason I didn't react is that my equity trading is tied to my
longer term signal and will wait this out (at least for a while). When I
get a short-term buy, I will jump back in and add to my positions on a
margined basis.
Guy
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be
changed regularly and for the same reason.
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