Holding Our Position

It's becoming clear that the 3Q recovery in stocks was very thin, concentrated primarily in mega-cap Blue Chips, where the fund managers ran and hid after the big downturn in May and June. Unfortunately, these giant stocks rarely make significant up moves, so they can't help a trader like myself. I look among the mid-caps and tech stocks for fast movers. However, the growing uneasiness in the market about November's election results is starting to suggest more treading water for the next few weeks. All politics aside, the Democratic surge scares the market, and the media's eagerness to play up the Congressman Foley e-mail scandal doesn't help.

Another soldier died today: ASFI tripped its 7% stop loss. We only hold six stocks now, but I did double up my position on ICE, which has run up 10% in a week and still looks good, especially because of rising volume during the past three days. Overall, I'm still in the red. Which brings us to Rule Number Two (see the next post).