Fear of a catastrophe - a permabear's complex

Quote from OldTrader:

I think what he's telling you is that there was no technical reason to be playing the long side on 9/10. Think about it....we were trading at new lows for the week, month, and year that day. That's as much technical weakness as you will ever see.

OldTrader

Yes but sometimes we make mistakes and on this day, it would had been a major one.

However, whoever shorted on the previous day collected a fortune.
 
Most of us thought the first crash was an accident and so I bought the first selloff. Shame on me. Didnt have much to due with technicals.
 
Quote from OldTrader:

I think what he's telling you is that there was no technical reason to be playing the long side on 9/10.

Or at all. There hadn't been a higher low for a year. Why be long?

LC
 
Quote from Neet:

When I trade big positions, I'm a permabear.

Simply because of fear of a catastrophe in the stock market. This of course limits my entry opportunities by roughly HALF therefore cutting my potential gains severely. Especially during a bull market.

It also gives me peace of mind and that in my humble opinion is priceless.

You might ask yourself why would you limit yourself like that ? Good traders should be able to play the market both ways. Well, I've never seen a market spike up all of the sudden for an insane number of points. On the other hand, there has been many documented crashes in history. Frankly, I've never been caught in one of those awful moments. Honestly, when was the last time you woke up to a 10% upside move in the indexes.

Yes, market crashes are rare but when they happen no market stop order will save you. Especially when trading futures.

Imagine doing 10-20 or more contracts long and all of the sudden a catastrophe occurs. That would certainly wipe you out.

I'm not advocating this trading style. Simply confessing and looking for suggestions.

Any comments appreciated.

if you can make enough by only trading short - i see no problem. at least as long as you can stay objective (as long as you don't see a short signal where there is none).

if you want to add long trades to your style - then try hedging maybe.

if you feel very uncomfortable in a long trade - then do yourself a favor and simply let it be.

good luck
 
Gerry,

Absolutely, I keep a set of indicators, if they don't issue a short signal, I don't trade.

Thank you for your input.
 
Quote from Bearbelly:

Most of us thought the first crash was an accident and so I bought the first selloff. Shame on me. Didnt have much to due with technicals.

I thought you were a "permabear". Isn't that what you said?:D I mean here you and Neet are, both bear biased evidently, and you were both buying on 9/10???? Should have been a picnic for a bear, right?

Here's the bottom line. "Crashes/catastrophies" typically occur after a period of technical weakness. Just like the 9/11 situation. 9/11 was easy to avoid if you were simply paying attention to the technicals.

Now, if you were bottom picking...then you have every right to be worrying about a "catastrophy".:D

OldTrader
 
Old,

Maybe he became a permabear after the 9/11 incident. As far as myself, I was not trading during the 9/11 incident.
 
Thank you very much for the elaboration OldTrader.

Like he said, crashes come after a sign of technical weakness because someone always knows about the crash beforehand and positions himself for it with selling.

I wouldn't be surprised if many people knew about 9/11 before it happened (terrorist agents, cells, etc) and heavily shorted airline stocks. The SEC probably helped capture some terrorist allies by seeing who heavily shorted before 9/11. The fact is, someone knew about it, and that explains the selling and technical weakness in the charts.

Although none of us knew what was to come, the technical indicators were there and they showed bad things to come. There was clearly no reason to be long in that market.
 
Historically SEPT and OCT are the weakest months for the markets. So you were fighting seasonality by trading from the long side when the attack happened.
 
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