Now it's the 22nd, 3 weeks later and we've given our late August picks enough time to mature (like fine wines) and now we'll uncork them and see how they came out! The last day we reviewed was August 9th and we had begun shorting Russell Futures (/TF) at 1,050 and they were up $2,800 at the time of the review (9/1) but, since then, the market has recovered – A LOT – and the Russell is back to 1,069.
Hence the transient nature of any trade reviews – they work until they don't and they don't work until they do. The real trick is learning to take a profit – when and if they come along. In the first 10 trading days of August, we had 50 trade ideas that were NOT part of one of our virtual portfolios and 42 (84%) of them were winners as of Sept 1st. As you can see from the IWM chart above, the end of August was a choppy mess. We'll see how we did on those picks but it's hard to imagine such a strong average in that kind of chop.
Aug 12: Monday Momentum – Quadrillion Yen Stimulus Not Enough to Keep Japan Going
From a Fundamental perspective – our expectations are higher because the market is higher and we have to look at this incoming data while asking ourselves the question: "Is this data good enough to justify all-time market highs?" Of course we know the market is "juicing" on Economic Steriods – that's not the point because it's not "illegal" and they're not going to have to stop using stimulus - but all-time highs are the big leagues. They are the playoffs, in fact, and now they have to be turning in performances that are the best of the best or else the fans (investors) can turn on the markets very quickly!
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