The S&P 500 crashed at Monday’s open and the selling accelerated through the day. Luckily, a last minuted bounce prevented it from turning into the worst day of the year. And wouldn’t you know it, those Monday lows were as bad as it got. From there, it was all uphill and the index actually closed in the green for the week.
Talk about a wild ride. For traders playing offense, it actually turned into a fairly profitable week. The pullback that started two weeks ago chased anyone with a sensible trailing stop out of the market and they missed all of the carnage that wrecked so many traders this Monday. And just when the masses were bailing out of really good stocks at steep discounts, the opportunistic trader sitting on a pile of cash was licking his chops and getting ready to pounce.
Monday’s late bounce gave the aggressive trader an opening to put on a partial position and the subsequent strength on Tuesday and Wednesday was good enough to add to that initial position. By the end of the week, there was enough profit in the trade to move our stops up to our entry points and now we have a low-risk trade.
Maybe the bounce sticks or maybe it doesn’t, but for those of us that got in early, it really doesn’t matter. Collapse and I get out at my entry point and get to try again next week at even lower prices. Or keep bouncing higher and I’m sitting on some nice profits while this week’s sellers are riddled with regret and being left behind.
To the victor goes the spoils and in the market that means the people willing to act when everyone else is either too complacent or too scared.
(And for those that have been following this free site, I’ve been laying it out all in real-time and hopefully some of you had the courage to profit from this volatility too!)
Bitcoin got punched in the face when China came out and outlawed cryptocurrency trading. But to be honest, a 5% loss following such dramatic headlines seems fairly insignificant. This remains above $40k support and at this point, that’s the only thing that matters.
If this can shake off these headlines, it is hard to imagine what it will take to actually hurt this thing. I’m not a cryptocurrency fanboi, but it is hard to deny this unshakable resilience.