This week, I’m spending time with my father, the trading manic, deep in the Tennessee woods. At age 14, he got me my first job in this business as a COMEX runner. I literally ran all the handwritten orders into the ‘pits’ of the screaming brokers. And I must say, I was enthralled by the energy and attracted to the remuneration.
However, for some reason, upon college graduation, I tried avoiding the ‘family business’ by working at an advertising agency. After a year, I realized that selling and marketing wasn’t for me. If someone said “no,” I said “OK” and hung up the phone. Haha. So, I quickly got back into trading.
I started as a clerk on the trading floor, then as a proud badge-wearing buccaneer, slinging everything, soybeans, corn, and bonds on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). I also had a badge as a member of the both Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and Chicago Mercantile Exchange, welcoming the engagement of my young legs sprinting back and forth across the tube connecting the two trading pits.
From there, I moved to NYC. Then eight years ago, I moved to Florida. But, my Chicago Mercantile trading style remained the same: Find a good/risk reward set up and ignore the daily noise.
The idea of movement, for its own sake, be it momentum or meme stocks, may play out longer than expected. However, ultimately fundamentals will matter. The issue is, as the old saying goes, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
It now seems, with the Fed on a path to normalizing monetary policy and the possibility of a recession looming, that valuation and rationality are returning to the market.
Over the past few months, the Options360 Concierge Service has been tilted toward short-term trades with a high degree of leverage. I may now shift back toward a longer-term (2-4 months in the options world) for new positions in the coming weeks. I now want to see the forest through the trees and catch some larger trends.