Wednesday 7 March 2012

Wrong

So I was wrong. Hasty reappraisal of tactics. Swift implementation of stop losses. Winding down of positions and then sitting back to tend to my bruises with an enhanced war chest. Wondering whether I should hedge with some short positions. Too early to tell.

And then this morning. One of the pleasures of holding some Hong Kong shares is that I can get up in the morning and see what has happened overnight. I could have gone to bed leaving sell orders but I decided not to. I don't have an automatic feed for Hong Kong so its a question of manually looking up each share.

First though I looked at the futures market which was expecting a 30 point rise on the Dow. Then the HSI - the Hong Kong index was only down 150 points. Not bad for an index that can easily fall several hundred points when its feeling peaky.And then I went to look at the individual shares I own. 6 out of 9 were up.

Futures are indicating a 17 point fall in the FTSE. Not massive. So here I am sitting on the fence. I think I'm going to do this: Wait for the open and see how black the clouds are looking. If they are dark I shall do a bit more pruning of the portfolio and throw in some small shorts (how do these puns find their way into my head?) and I shall do the same with the US market. The HK market has about an hour to go. If my position starts to deteriorate between now and then I'll take some profits.

Nil desperandum.

1 comment:

David said...

Hi Paul,
I didn't post a comment to your blog yesterday as I am too long in the tooth for that!.
I don't think you were necessarily wrong...and I think the actions you suggest you would take were good ones. The fact is that every bull market must have a pullback...and as we look at it this morning, that appears to be all it was. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the action of the past two day and that of the futures market this morning suggest that the VERY BULLISH attitude of the participants in this market is still intact.
Good luck with your endeavours
David