LOL!'s Market Timing Newsletter

My trading Roth IRA is up over 12% YTD and has cash in it since selling IJS. Since I see that some bond ETFs have dropped today a little bit, I used all the cash in that account to buy some bond ETFs. 524

The IJS is another account that was purchased last Thursday is simply building on its gains today. Thank goodness yesterday's limit to sell was not executed. With such nice gains, I have less anxiety about it and have no plans anymore to sell for a little while.

Update: Maybe I spoke too soon as something has happened and caused IJS to drop, but the bond ETF shares I bought are already up. The Fed's Powell must be talking today.
 
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I've missed some great opportunities to sell the rest of the IJS that I bought back on 6/11 and have not wanted to sell at these prices which would still be a gain, but not as large as before. However, I am also getting sick of waiting for IJS to march back up to where it was, so have decided it is time to sell if I can eke out a 4-figure gain which might be possible. I've submitted a limit order to sell today and will update later. 970

Update: Order not executed. Try again tomorrow.
 
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It is time to try to sell some IJS again since it has been up quite a bit today. I've submitted a limit order, but may switch to market order.

Also, I've decided to cut back on VTI (total US stock index) bought back in March in a rebalancing move. 324 The main reason is that I don't see any good news happening in the next week. I'll probably be wrong about that as I didn't expect that even today the stock market would be going up.

Update: I'm done selling for the day.
 
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Oh, well, sold too soon for sure. 516 But the portfolio still has lots of equities, so the news isn't all bad.
 
That little pop in IJS that I mentioned is over and IJS is now trading below where I last sold it for. 620
 
Sorry folks, but I thought the market was going to get away from me, but lo and behold it has come back down and dropped below me. 053 My plan it is to continue hoping for the worst. :)
 
It has been a few weeks where I made no trades and missed out on some upticks as the market went up and down, but mostly up. I've decided I need a little more of international stocks, so I bought some VSS (foreign small-cap index) etf shares this afternoon. I don't have any idea of where markets are headed though, so I didn't do this with any real conviction. 082
 
i'd like to say that the last trade on 7/28 was a great success since VSS is up 3% since the buy, but all stocks are up 3% since then, so it would not have mattered at all what I would have bought last week. 404
 
I noticed I was now overweight in foreign small-caps, so I sold all of the VSS shares I bought on 07/28 for a small profit even though foreign stocks are trading down about 1% this morning. 077

I'm not sure what I will do with the money, but I have my eye on US small-cap-value ETFs.
 
It seems to be a good day to buy something, so I have started to nibble at MTUM which has dropped about 4.4% or more today. 456 I also put in a limit order to buy more shares and may adjust later.

Even so, the things I sold in the past month are still trading higher than I sold them, so I haven't done well with market timing recently, so I have no confidence in my trades today.
 
And here near the end of day I decided to buy lots more of MTUM and added VTI (total US stock market) to the mix. I sold total US bond index shares to get the money for the equity purchases. I will either look brilliant or will go down with the ship. I sure cannot predict the future.
 
Well, yesterday's purchases are not working out. That means another buying opportunity is coming up. Oh, well.

I thought of a "bright side": All those bond fund shares I sold yesterday are not participating in the losses of those same bond funds today. :0
 
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Disaster avoided (in a sense)!

Since bond funds were down about 0.6% today and I sold bond fund shares above their closing value yesterday (avoid the drop in those shares) and bought VTI below its closing value yesterday and VTI sort of recovered ... the calculation is that I am down less than 0.1% over doing nothing as far as VTI goes.

But don't ask me about MTUM. Ugh! 758
 
Huston55 said:
I’m not usually a bettor, unless I’m at a BJ or Craps table in LV with $100-$200 to lose or double. :cool: So, this is my first time posting in this thread.

About 5 wks ago, I bet on the S&P500; I used about 5% of my investable portfolio (tax advantaged accounts) to buy SPXL, a 3X leveraged fund. Now, I’m watching to decide when to sell...which I expect to be in quite a while. But, I must admit that it makes me more interested in the market on a daily/weekly basis.

OK, got that out of my system! :LOL:
Click to expand...



After a great run up, I stopped out of SPXL last week. I’m a very happy camper who needs to decide where to put those funds. [emoji41]
 
Huston55 said:
After a great run up, I stopped out of SPXL last week. I’m a very happy camper who needs to decide where to put those funds. [emoji41]
Click to expand...

Perhaps SPXS? :)
 
And I have lost a 4-figure sum in the trades I did last week. Oh, well.
 
In a bit of market timing behavior, I decided to retain my SPXL proceeds in cash for now; maybe through the election. It makes my AA a bit more conservative than my target (50/50 vs 60/40) but, I think I’m OK with that for now.
 
I always like to buy on a day like today, so I sold some bond ETFs shares and bought IJS (small-cap value) ETF shares, but only about 1% of total portfolio value. The plan is to unwind this trade after IJS goes up by 10% tomorrow. Somehow I don't think the plan is going to work though. 80
 
Sold all the IJS I bought a couple days ago. It went ex-dividend today, so I captured the dividend as well, but since this is a tax-deferred account, no taxes. Thus I made a lot more money than any CD or savings account is paying over a full year. Of course, the trades were not without a lot more risk than simply holding cash. 358
 
Sometimes getting lucky is better than market timing! I had no idea there would be such a big down draft today, but I got out just in the nick of time. Woo-hoo!
 
It has been awhile since I made any significant trades, but last night I noticed that with the recent massive run-up in market values that the portfolio has hit a rebalancing trigger on the high end. So I sold some Total US Stock Market index ETF shares and [-]have a limit order to buy[/-] bought some Total US Bond Market Index ETF shares. This is in an IRA, so no tax consequences.119
 
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I agree that the market is getting quite frothy. Time to be on the defensive.
 
And the markets have marched even higher since I sold some shares last week. Oh, well.
 
Several option contracts expired in-the-money last Friday, causing me to let go of quite a bit of some hot stocks.

Stock AA is now down to 55%. Yet, the whole portfolio is still up 1.07% today, vs. the 1.62% increase of the S&P. Oh well, it's not bad for that AA.
 
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