LIVING IN A LAND OF NO OPPORTUNITY
In my mid-30s now, I have developed (or perhaps regressed?) to a point where all sense of uncertainty with respect to what I will be doing from one hour to the next has been removed. Yes, I live a very regimented life. With the exception of an occasional vacation or getaway, I can tell you what I will be doing at any given point two Sunday's from now. My time has been segmented into small windows that I devote to different things in my life that matter to me the most.
Every single day a couple hours after the market closes, like clockwork, I perform my daily routine of looking through current positions and attempting to locate new candidates. I have a number of scans and filters that I use. I also look through about 80 different charts day in and day out. With the exception of when I took a three year break from the markets after closing my hedge fund in 2006, I have been doing this, without exception, since 1994.
From 1995-2006 I would look through approximately 400-500 charts per day without missing a single day. I took that number down substantially when reentering the markets due to modifications in my methodology and focus. I decided to get more micro rather than being macro.
Just because I am not mentioning my research doesn't mean that it is not being performed. It is one of those things where I feel like if I miss a single day, there is potential to miss the next SYNC or PTGI or SPRT or AUTH. Any number of the opportunities that have come along this year, leading to substantial profits for myself and hopefully some of you as well.
And it literally comes down to a single day. If I don't follow my discipline in research then that filter that triggered SYNC back in March, as an example, won't trigger it the next day or even the next month. That opportunity is then missed. There goes a 100% gainer and a good percentage of my gains so far in 2012.
There simply isn't any opportunity out there. I mean it is bone dry. Fairly typical for the summer trading months. Nevertheless, it is frustrating. Even my current positions, with the exception of SPRT, aren't performing well enough to consider adding to winners as I like to do.
As far as my trend indicators go, my short-term indicator is close to turning negative, while my intermediate term trend indicator is close to turning positive. Meaning that even my mechanical, quantitative models have no idea what to make of the past few days of slop.
Perhaps it is for the better then that I am frozen in a sea of nothingness for now. My discipline in attempting to find new opportunities, however, never wavers. Be assured of that.
