Markets Held Damn Well for the Sequester...

Two big numbers next week: Napalm (ISM) and NFP… I left the day off bullish, felt 60/40 to 70/30 about it for at least till noon on Thurs, if not for the week as a whole…

What methods do you use to decide whether you are bullish or bearish, Lockheed? It seems like you change your mind daily. If you are day trading, perhaps that fits your time frame, but what indicators do you use to make that determination? Because from here it sounds like you are all over the place, bullish one day, bearish the next, bullish for the afternoon, etc…

That’s not necessarily inappropriate, provided you have some logic to your decisions, but I tend to be bullish or bearish over longer time periods, because - most of the time - I have no clue how things are going to go over time frames less than a week (at minimum, most of the time it’s not even that).

As for the sequester, I guess everyone was expecting it and not expecting any immediate world-blowing-up. Those who were investing based on sequester decisions probably got out last week when the market was contracting. Roughly the same effect as the market will have on Easter, when it’s discovered that the Easter Bunny is a complete fraud (i.e. we all knew it already).

Extremely short term, as I trade weekly options a lot. Use fundamentals as a general anchor both macro and company/sector, and current indicator surprises as a catalyst, but during the intra day, looking at NYSE Tick, Advance Decline, Spread, Sectors, and as for the security, the tape, volume, the implied volatility of the options, as well as daily and 5 minute charts with ema’s. Also, really dependent on unsystematic risk of particular underlier. In this case (GS). I have some bearish positions also (CAT) based on their recent earnings and FY13 as catalyst, construction spending, etc, but my total deltas going into next week are largely positive, so I’m about 60-70% bullish for Friday expiry. But I almost always end up closing my position before that, if the moves happen too quick.

Of course, you’re right, this could change almost daily, (as it did on Thurs/Fri) but the only number that I’m really concerned about next week is NonFarm Payrolls on Fri, and good chance I’ll be flat or limiting my risk by the end of Thursday.

I do have to stop posting ‘bullish/bearish/neutral’ because it is not helpful given the time horizon of my biases.

I could list all the positives and negatives, for a bull case, with varying weights on each element, some technical, 4th close over 14000 on DOW, reversal doji crap, some fundamental (housing sales, not so bad gdp revision, muted response to IMF lowering forecast, Bernanke’s help, etc.) It’s not the strongest wave to catch, but enough to ‘not sit on the sidelines completely’.