1) Dump all hubris, pretentions and stubbornness. It will only cost you money.
2) The market is always right, even if all the prices appear wrong.
3) Only buy the puke outs and sell the euphoria. Do anything in the middle, and you will get whipsawed.
4) Outright calls and puts are offering a better risk/reward right now than bull and bear vertical call and put spreads, which have a built in short volatility element. It is also better to buy stocks and ETF?s outright with a tight stop loss. This won?t last forever.
5) If you do trade spreads, you can no longer run them into expiration. If you have a nice profit take it, don?t hang on to the last 30 basis points, even if it means paying more commission. The world could end three times, and then recover three times, before the monthly expiration date rolls around.
6) Tighten up your stop loss limits. Not losing money is the key to winning in this market. There is nothing worse than having to dig yourself out of a hole. Don?t run hemorrhaging losses, like the (TBT) from $57.56 down to $43.11. It will get easy again some day.
7) Buy every foreign crisis and sell every recovery. It really makes no difference to assets here in the US.
8) Several asset classes are becoming untradeable for long periods (bonds, oil, ags). Stay away and stick to the asset classes that are working (stocks, foreign exchange).
9) Keep positions small. The doubled volatility will make up for your reduced risk. This is not the time to get greedy and bet the ranch.
10) Turn off the TV and just look at your screens and data. Public entertainers have no idea what the market is going to do, especially if their last job was sports reporting. Their job is to get you to watch the ads for General Motors and TD Ameritrade.
11) As the bull market in stocks enters its sixth year, too many traders, analysts and strategists have become complacent. You are going to have to work for your crust of bread this year. This is an earnings, technology and productivity driven bull, not a QE driven one.
12) It is clear that more money was allocated to high frequency traders this year. That is driving the new, breakneck volatility, increasing stop outs. A sneeze now generates a 250-point intraday move. It is no coincidence that they announced this week the end of pit trading in Chicago. The traders all retired, or went off to programming school. Get used it.
Better change your password to, from 12345 to DKFGGIDKFOKBJGELXPEVJBKDLKFBBJFCJCKVLBKGTY69!, and hope that the 69 doesn?t give you away.
