Bull market prep

What happens during periods of rate hikes?

In the first half of last year, on the weekly webinars, we spoke and gave out statistics on what the market tends to do in the second half of the year during years of multiple rate hikes and, more importantly, what they do in Q4.

In the second half of last year, on the weekly webinar, we discussed what happened in 1994 and the following years.
That historical information we could use to prepare ourselves going into 2023.

In October, we discussed possible lows in the market and, near the end of the month, took our first Q4 swing trade PLD to test the water and exited the trade with profit after a bit of choppiness initially on January 19 2023.
This gave us a feel for the market.

We started to axe our trades in November 2021, and most of our work was done in the first 4 months of that bear market.

While we are not confirmed to be in a bull market, much of our work has been done in the last few months, preparing our portfolio and, as Anne mentioned yesterday, rebalancing over this coming long weekend.

We have already started to make some executive decisions, and Anne will mention a couple in her swing trade update later today in TRC.

If we have a bull market unfold, amateur traders run around chasing trades and get excited with gains over small periods of time - but often miss the big picture and big moves.

Dynamic Traders, during the beginnings of a bull market, prepare, prospect and position before the big bull market gets going.

Our core positions, which we have kept since COVID lows, and newer positions have served us well in a short amount of time, and if we do go into a bull market, we should see a snowball effect.
If any of our stocks start to lag, we will take axe action.

Once a stock reaches its sell-by date, we will remove it.
Examples of that are:

•  The stock has done nothing much over a predetermined period of time.

• The story has changed with that stock (e.g. PYPL, PINS, META).

• The stock is lagging relative to our other stocks.

So over the last 2 days we have done literally nothing other than go for walks, watch a couple of movies - and relax.

At present, we are only partially invested and still have a long way to go to be fully invested, if that is an available option for us in the coming months and years based on market conditions.

Since the start of 2023, there have been quite a few positive days.

Monday's session gain below:

As you can see, it was a mixed market, but our stocks still managed to provide ok returns for the day.

The purpose of sharing this is to remind you all trading is simple, but if you don't take the opportunities, you have often missed them.
Trading after the event is often late.

I would rather be a little early and in the market than late and miss the market.

NVDA is a good example of being early and it was only a few weeks ago - but there are times we can be early by quite a few months.
This is a good recent example of us being early and was partly based on preparing for the conclusion of the September seasonal effect.
Price is up over 80% since then.

So if we do move into a bull market, and the business news channels confirm this, many traders will often be found to be arriving rather late.

We need to be vigilant, consistent and professional as a trader in the markets.
Taking time off from the markets or having opinions and beliefs will often prevent us from getting the most out of the market and miss the moves early on, taking away the big low-risk entries (e.g. NVDA above).

Be prepared and KYL.

Let's go trade!