We have broken a rather dubious record for unemployment today as more people are unemployed than anytime in the last 26 years. In addition, consumer spending is slowing and, for the first time in 50 years, consumers have begun to pay down their debt. There are a number of lengthy explanations for this, but one could summarize the phenomena by saying people have become very risk averse.
Yet with all of this less-than-rosy news, the market chugs right along, ignoring all the negative news, at least for the time being. It is a vexing situation, as the market seems to be defying gravity.
As for trading, today was fairly decent, but we still have some very long bars in the market swings and the potential for getting caught in one of these monsters is ever present. I traded fairly successfully today and avoided most of the chafe, but did find myself stopped out on a long bar that formed in what seemed to be microseconds. POOF….stopped out.
I have trimmed the number of contracts I am trading to 2 to offset the inherent market volatility and that has seemed to work pretty well, along with paying close attention to the volume readings as the market nears pivots, support and resistance. Gosh I long for the old days when the market used to swing in a semi-coherent fashion….let’s hope it isn’t too long before the whole situation settles down.
