Gone Short!

1. Finally gone short

After talking and talking about it, I have finally gone short in my portfolio. This is in line with the view that: 1) if we are still in an uptrend, we are in a final leg whereby the upside is capped about about SPX 2170 and 2) there is a decent chance that the bear market has already begun (although the rally later in the week shows the bulls still want to give it a good go).

Not too much change in the portfolio. Total year-to-date profits went down by a few hundred dollars from last week. If you think about it, this can be accounted to the commission charges when I exited some of my positions. The size of the portfolio has also been scaled down (to using almost zero leverage currently) pending confirmation of the trend change. Once we are very clear that we are in the bear market. I will upsize my positions again.

Not what I meant when I told you to go short.

2. Using IG Markets

Progress continues in my plans to integrate a second broker in my trading, for counterparty risk purposes. My eventual plan is to park all my bearish positions with one broker, and all the bullish positions with another. What I have done viz-a-vis IG Markets so far is that I have parked a thousand dollars into their account and will start executing a few small trades to test out their interface. When I have suffiicent liquidity in my savings account to put up full trading positions, I will migrate half of my positions to IG Markets. This is of course assuming that I am happy with their trading platform.

3. Penang

This post comes a little late as I am actually away on a business trip in Penang. Back in Singapore tomorrow. Updating this blog had to take a step back behind other matters I had to attend to. Well the weather here is either very hot or rainy so I'm very happy to hole myself up in the hotel when I have free time to chip away at my long to-do-list, nap, get some exercise done and listen to TED talks and Eckhart Tolle whilst other colleagues are out golfing, drinking or having Penang char kway teow and Penang laksa. In the face of limited time, life is about choices huh?