Hi Guys,
The market rebounded some after having three straight red days. The S&P 500 is around 6,630 right now.
I had four different option positions close yesterday after reaching their time limits. The trade for LOW weighed us down all week and offset some of our wins from earlier in the week. And the BIIB option trade played peek-a-boo with us. It had been pretty red as of Wednesday, then it went up almost to the point of breakeven early in the day yesterday, only to fall back down into the red by the end of the day.
That's a good example of why I typically try not to get too invested in a trade until it's over. The ride along the way can be like a roller coaster emotionally if I follow along closely, yet I'm going to stick to my trading plan regardless. So it's like a needless emotional ride that has no impact on the outcome of the trade.
Some people might say that that I should have closed BIIB when it was back to breakeven, and you can of course do anything you'd like with your own personal trades. I've traded long enough to know that at any time, you can't tell what's going to happen next in the market, and BIIB could just as easily have gone up further. In general, I like to avoid discretionary trading decisions because they add a lot more emotional charge to my trading, which in turn makes it harder to trade rationally. I prefer instead to stick to a plan, and I like this plan I use since it's based on such a deep history of strong backtest results. I accept that it doesn't always equate to the perfect exit on any individual trade, but I'm looking at the bigger picture and typical tendencies.
I took on one new trade today. I bought shares of TCOM in the stocks account.
If you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you.