Wednesday 2 November 2011

Golden prospect

Golden stairway to heaven? 
The Hong Kong saga continues. I attempted to sell my remaining shares at about 2am and again the system failed. But system failure does not always work against you. The market had fallen at the open and with it my shares so I wanted to cut my losses. By the morning there had been a big recovery and prices were back up to the levels where I would have sold them on the night before. TDW offered to put the trades through manually but I decided to hold on. The futures situation looked good. They would not have owed me money anyway. They say they have fixed the problem and we may see tonight. But with the recovery in the markets I could hold on. (They're fading a bit as I write.)

Apart from this I am doing nothing. The 11720 support level is holding so far and the Dow has had a good day despite the best efforts of the Greeks. By now you will know that I give little credence to the notion that such announcements have much long term effect on the market. It was due for a correction and that's what it got.  We are in for a period of uncertainty until the market decides to continue its rise above 12284 or to dive below 11520. Best to sit on the sidelines until it is clear what the next move will be. During the last run inside the channel, I thought that down was the most likely outcome and I lost a lot of money betting that hunch. In this phase I am agnostic about the direction of the breakout so the temptation to fiddle is not strong.

On the other hand I am glad that I stuck with gold and silver They have recovered and are showing promise. Both are climbing up stepwise from their sharp fall. A courageous strategy would be to build my stake each time the price reaches the bottom of its channel and taking profits each time it gets to the top. I wonder if I can manage that?

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