OYYY !!

                               Hey, I Said I Changed My Mind!!

 "Oy vegas, why’d I do that? Oy crap, ohhh no. vegas, why did you let me do that?”

Crazy markets get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t do. I used to stand next to a guy in the gold pit [later in the S&P 500 pit] who blamed me every time he made a big boo-boo. I helped him often because he reminded me almost every day to stay disciplined; something that is easier said than done.

Today gave everybody something to be happy and sad about almost at the same time. Gaps everywhere, prices flying all over the place, $2 - $3 / oz. moves in seconds, and that’s the good news.

The bad news is that if you got caught up in this uber stop hunt, and made the wrong move, you got metaphorically taken out back of the woodshed and shot. And as succinctly as I can make it, this is the reason non stop “scalping” is a chumps game.

Not only do you have to make the spread, you have to be right also. Do it over and over, and one mistake – JUST ONE – and those 5 scalps in a row where you made a little money just got obliterated.

I came into the day bearish, but volatility was so bad before 7:20 AM [Chicago time], signals giving buy/sell every time the market goes 50 cents, that I sat on the sidelines looking for some direction.

What happened at the open in the US session was a classic bear trap: prices gap down, come roaring back literally in seconds, and leave big players scrambling for the rest of the day. Be thankful you’re not the guy whose order started the avalanche; filled at the bottom and cover the rest of the day at successive higher prices.

And lest you think I have the “inside skinny” on stops, today was my turn to “feed the beast”. I got long on a break and when the market rallied, I raised the stop to insure a “free trade”. Within seconds, prices broke down exactly to the penny on my stop before roaring higher. I don’t mean almost, I mean the exact low before going back up big time.

Do I care? No. Why not? Because when you trade over a 30 year period, everything the market can throw at you, you will see and experience. Again, I don’t mean almost, I mean everything.

So I leave the day both happy and sad: happy I side-stepped a potential bloodbath, and sad it was my day to feed the dealer. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter if I’m happy or sad; what matters is am I up money? Amount doesn’t matter, am I up cashola?

Why yes I am, getting rich $1 at a time.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas