Not so fast!
We did get over 1120 Monday but it was illusionary - it was created by premarket magic when the S&P 500 immediately opened at S&P 1125 before a quick run to 1130 in the opening hours of the week. From there it has been all down hill.
I do like to review all trades after the fact to see what, if anything, should have been changed. Sometimes the answer is nothing and the market just "gets" you - which is what happened this week. My tight stop losses hit (as they should have) and 3 of my shorts were dumped in the opening hours. While I would not change the process (since all these stocks broke over resistance), in retrospect I got punked. It happens. I suffered losses of 2-5%, whereas in retrospect if not for the Chinese yuan announcement most likely these stocks would of not jumped like Mexican jumping beans and looking at them now I would have had very nice winners on 2 of the 3 positions. The third, Discover Financial Services (DFS) had an earnings report last night so I would of been out of the position ahead of that since earnings risk is not my thing.
These 2 are carbon copies - you can see how I was fleeced Monday morning and since then all downhill. CE especially hurt since my stop loss was for 2% and the stock gapped so strongly I got taken out at a 5% loss.
This 1 was an anomaly due to earnings; I don't take earnings risk from the long or short side 90% of the time so we'd have cleared deck ahead of the announcement. Would have been a flattish trade.
Like I said, these things happen over the course of time - but when anyone says being short in a downturn is easy.... well, not so much.
No positions
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