Hey Guys,
The market dropped yet again yesterday. This has definitely been a tough week for the market. The S&P 500 is around 4,350 right now.
Yesterday was a pivotal day for me since I had five options positions reach their time limits. We got a little bit of false hope early in the day yesterday, and then the market dropped about 50 points and left me in the red on all the options positions that had reached their time limits.
If you're feeling any sort of strong emotions regarding recent losses, one thing that might help is to step back and evaluate what's going on inside of yourself. If you're feeling fear or anger, you can try to dig deep and figure out why you're feeling those things.
Each person is different. For me, it all stems from when I was growing up. I wrote a blog post about it last year. I oriented myself toward performing, and even in my youth, I saw money as a score card that measured how well I performed. So when I first got started in the stock market, it would hurt so badly to see my account balance go down because it felt like my self worth was at stake.
It's taken a lot of introspection and effort for me to reverse that false belief (and it's still a work in progress). But being aware of it helps me, because if an intense emotion comes up, I can step back and identify what's really at the root of it. I can't control what the stock market does, but I have some degree of control over how I respond. And that's why it helps to know what is truly driving the emotion in the first place.
I picked up some new positions today. In the main account, I bought stock for CAT. In the double down account, I bought stock for TT and FTV.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.