Sunday Night Market Insight, March 09 2008

One useful way I’ve found on disciplining myself….absolutely limit orders or buy/stop orders. NO market orders (unless you like giving your broker $$$ to hand over). I don’t trade options, and setting the stops (albeit they can become high maintenance) there are a lot of factors to consider, mostly market & price volatility.
I like the notes on tight stops. I’ve also begun setting my “buy” price around these conditions on the buy stop trigger and wait until some momentum kicks in on the stock. If the momentum is not there, the stop is simply not triggered to buy the security.

I completely agree the market right now is Continued Downtrend. I bought some stock into a rally then found myself a little off and suffering once I did not scalp right away after the market turned, so I’ll at least be looking for at least some momentum before purchasing, whether it be a couple of market up days or some positive/substainable item coming from the financials, but alas so far no luck last 2 weeks.

I just had a trailing stop sell go off on AUY this morning. Maybe I should have held it in advance of the Fed’s supposed cut… at any rate, I hope that the price might fall under 17 where I can pick it up very quick

I used to own POT (not now thankfully), and it just amazes me how these have come down (even the small and mid caps).
One note that makes sense to me after watching the news, is that many are having to sell their winners to make up for the losers (imagine a portfolio with a fincancial stock [leaving company names out of course to retain autonomy hehe] & POT), your only winner.
The margin calls on hedge funds got really bad from what I can understand introducing more volatality into the market, so I’m awaiting a correction at this point and admittedly, although I missed some short spurts am about 75% cash at this point.

good call on the ETFs btw, and these are less volatile then individual stocks (which is why the options differ as well I always thought)…

[...] Not much has changed from last week. [...]

Your blog is good and it discussed about economic affects.
What is ‘Recession Proof’?

You can almost hear the wallets snapping shut. Folks are cutting back on their spending every way they can. According to those who know, we are either in a recession, or are about to be. I would hate to be trying to sell real estate or new cars right now. Talk about hitting your head against the wall. Ouch!

That got me to thinking of what businesses make sense during a recession. Certainly health care does. Baby boomers are going to need every kind of health care imaginable. For all I know, economic bad times makes people sick too.

Other types of businesses that should be recession proof include vital home repairs, like plumbing, electrical, and roofing. Folks can’t put off fixing a clogged toilet or a leaking roof just because they’re a little short on cash.

And you know what they say about death and t.ax.es. A well-run funeral home or a tax consulting business shouldn’t be hurt by an economic downturn.

But all these jobs require training, and even certification. And that takes time. By the time you’ve learned one of these trades, the recession may well be over. That got me to thinking about one business that’s truly recession-proof, and you can get started almost immediately: Day Trading.

Day Trading refers to the buying and selling of stocks within the same trading day. I know what you’re thinking: how can a day trader be successful when the stock market is down, day after day? Well, day traders profit from volatility - when there are big swings in stock prices, there is money to be made.

It used to be that Day Trading was only done by financial institutions with access to technology and information. Now, almost anyone with Internet access can become a day trader, if they know what to do.

Manny Backus