I had a shocking revelation this morning.
It is hard to believe, but it is November 9th already and the end of the year is around the corner. I have two vacations planned between now and the end of the year plus trading will be muted around Thanksgiving and Christmas. It occurred to me this morning that my trading year is about complete.
For me personally, there is no point in winding my account back up with new positions since I’ll likely have to wind it back down again before my vacations.
Being brutally honest, my efforts trading lately have been somewhat futile. A lot of time and very little progress. If you follow my blog, you know I am a conservative trader and that I don’t have years of 100% gains but I also don’t blow up my account. My return this year is approximately around 13-15% (through today so it is a little higher on an annualized basis). However, most of those gains came from January-May. June and July were loser months and August, September and October scored modest gains. If the money was flowing in like it was in the first and second quarter of 2009, I might try to trade while I was away on vacation. However, since I’m churning away right now it seems like it is a better opportunity for me to step away, lock in a double digit return for the year and enjoy my vacations.
I do enjoy writing this blog and I also believe it is hard to write this blog effectively without having any skin in the game. With that in mind, my plan is to limit my trading to ETFs through the end of the year. My posts may be less frequent while I’m away on vacation, but I will definitely continue posting.
Today looks like it will be a bullish trend day. ES continues to trend up to resistance at 1087 after breaking out of its overnight range. TRIN has been very bullish the entire day.
I closed out my GLD long position today as well as my long USO position. GLD is starting to look extended and I am becoming suspect of all commodities in light of the Dollar approaching support. Note that oil still looks good technically and I did keep my position in XLE. In fact, if USO can breakout here I might even jump back in.
I mentioned in the comments section that REV blew up on me. I was stopped out of that one early this morning. I also decided to take profits on PVTB and open a short position in STRA.