Up since 2am local time to update my price chart/ data for testing, time delay in the site I get it from made me forget to do it earlier on after the close. It’s one of the challenges of being trader mom, my kids almost always want me to be on to something, and then I also had a newfound commitment to get fit! Add some advance reading for my language-challenged kids and their bedtime also becomes my bedtime. Ting ting ting ting… fortunately my body clock seemed to have known about this (someone must be so committed!) so I woke up just before 2am before the data gets reset, and I get to watch some market action.
It’s also my way of putting my foot on the US session seeing if being “awake” can help me get more attuned to the market because I am feeling wary of the direction at the moment! But then again it’s June and this kind of volatility always shows up. And as it turned out, I only got a teeny weeny problem because compared to professional fund managers who got to make money for other people, they get not just the problem but also the stress … yeah, they are two different things!
Here’s “Bazillionaire’s Guide to Stress Relief” by Michael Lewis which I found to be very refreshing article. Not a lot gets written about the stress management that every trader / investor needs to be doing. There’s even a video on this article so you can see how important this is! I can’t say I will follow the one about sitting on fat kids currently, I still got a fat behind to sit on.
My solution for this “directionless” market is one of those nifty tools in Options – Covered Calls to profit from volatility and time decay while the market gets its footing. Or when expecting a big jump in either direction, more Options strategies like straddles or even some kind of spreads.
