We had a Hell of a start to the month.
As the market bottomed at the end of September, we had 59 trade ideas in two weeks and only 8 of them were misses for a very nice 86% success rate. That only took us through October 4th, when the S&P was at 1,675 and on the way down to 1,646 on the 9th so here comes a tricks couple of weeks (hopefully we get to 3) where we start on a downturn and finish making new highs. This is always exciting for me as these are our untracked trade ideas, so I always wonder how they turned out!
Keep in mind, these are fairly arbitrary snapshots and we make both bullish and bearish bets on a regular basis and the trick is to keep a generally balanced portfolio so you can take advantage of moves in either direction. When we are bearish, it's 60/40 bearish or 70/30 bearish but not 80/20 bearish! BALANCE is very important in trading, and in life...
Remember, our core philosophy is to BE THE HOUSE - Not the Gambler (which was, in fact, the subject of our October 6th post), so we sell premium on both sides and that means we will win some and we will lose some and then we try to work out of our losers while continuing to sell premium on the other side of them. Over time, that puts the odds well in our favor and USUALLY markets go up AND down, and we profit on both ends. This year's market has been a lot more up than down - so far.
October, however, was marred in the beginning by the Government shut-down.
Oct 7: Monday Market Meltdown
Sometimes, all it takes to end a wicked bull run in the markets is a nice, cold splash of reality and what can be more real than the idiocy of the US Government?
