The $spx daily chart went bonkers today.
Bond traders in my opinion are the most informed traders in the game. This is even more so for those that trade the European bond market. With talk of on again off again hair cuts they have to be. If they're buying Spanish debt I'll be damned if I'm not buying American stocks. Don't get me wrong, there's a husky ass 200 day moving average that must be dealt with and by no means is a housing bottom in with certainty but price moves before certainty comes a lot of times.
There are problems for this market and they're not small yet they can be solved. It won't be easy but they hardly ever are. The single most bullish thing from today to me is the move in Apple. Look @ the trend day on this puppy!
This is a "find good stocks using your good system and buy them" type of signal we got today. Not laggers that didn't move with the market today but the ones that are leading in their industries. The ones that showed you today that they want to go higher. If you didn't participate today don't feel like you've missed anything because you haven't. This market is over due for a test of the October highs I think.
I had a talk a few weeks ago on twitter with a super capable trader named Linda Finelli (@justcharts follow her NOW! if you haven't already.) about how hard it is to change your mind on blogs after blogging about feeling the opposite way about the market. Some call it flip-flopping. I'll tell you like I told her in so many words, any trader worth their weight in chocolate chip cookies can and WILL change their outlook on the market in a heart beat. No one knows what tomorrow's market holds. If you were bearish yesterday you had good reason to be, and if your bullish today you equally have good reason to be. Pride and ego are the enemy. I don't care how loud you've screamed from the top of the mountain, you go right back up there and scream the opposite if price tells you to!
This market has been bipolar so I expect traders to be just as bipolar. Your trades shouldn't be. That's the key. You can't make huge trades one way and then make huge trades the other way and then make huge trades back the original way whipsawing yourself. That's the easiest way to lose confidence in your trading as the bigger your trades the more emotionally attached you'll be. When your thinking goes from bearish to bullish or vise versa your trading should go from bearish to NEUTRAL to bullish or vise versa. That means no trades for a bit and just watching while your emotions come back to neutral and your setups can develope or not.
For me personally it means super small trades @ first. Trades so small I can't make real money on them but I can't lose real money on them either. For me they build confidence. If I'm right I'll add, if not I'm out... One of my many flaws is that it's really really hard for me to do nothing. So when I'm trading bad and my emotions betray me I trade super small. I'm talking 5 or 3 shares of a $10 or even $5 ETF, ETN, or stock. If I do this once or twice and get burned it usually kicks my ass enough to just sit on my hands.