Given the far more volatile state of the stock market these days, I've decided to spend a little more time watching the share price gyrations and buying in low and selling out high whenever the opportunity of a quick profit presents itself.
There seems to be no rhyme nor reason in the way the market moves, but more times than not, if it's going to be a down-day, it'll start with a sharp fall in the morning, then a bit of a lull at lunchtime when everyone has gone to the wine bar, and then a very gradual recovery in the afternoon, before dipping down again towards the four o'clock close. And the opposite is true on any up-day, and any other day when the market behaves in a seemingly irrational way - which is every day!
In other words, there's no way of telling what's going to happen from one day to the next, and it's more important to know about your own pain threshold than any economic data or the state of the world.
Of course, there's always an outlier such as Trump who, whenever he and his cohort want to make millions, make some stupid earthshaking announcement, buy in low, then say the exact opposite and sell out high. I was going to buy up big after spreading the word that the world is coming to an end, but the Global Warming brigade had beat me to it.
It's ten past four in the afternoon, the Sydney Stock Exchange shut its doors, and I've taken off my cufflinks. BHP reached an intra-day high of $55.33, which is about the same as New York's close this morning at $55.25. At the end of today, it closed lower at $54.75, but that's still 73 cents up on yesterday. I did four trades: on one trade I pressed the SELL instead of the BUY button which cost me a couple of thousand, but the other three made a profit of fourteen-and-a-half thousand, leaving me comfortably ahead. LESSON LEARNT: PRESS THE RIGHT BUTTON!
