"I survived the crash of 2:45pm"

  • Posted by
  • on May 9th, 2010

It was NOT a good week to be a trend-follower.  Although I don’t own many stocks, many went ‘splat’ – $CLNE $AMZN $TSL  are the main examples in my account. I tweeted their sales as I made them this week.

I still own $INTU $AAPL $DGP $SLW $SWKS $IMAX $IBB And $JMBA . I don’t have any short positions.

I am lucky that I don’t own many stocks lately due of time commitments on the road, because when breaks happen this fast, it is hard to take losses.  My friend Joe Fahmy  called me Tuesday and said he went all cash in a managed account he has of mine and my fund. He is a trend trader that was reading the tea leaves properly.

A few others I read were very well positioned and had blogged it. For example, Barry Ritholtz had gone to 100 percent cash for certain client accounts just a day before the event .

My friend ‘The Fly ‘ made money trading the volatility and more importantly for me, made me laugh while he was doing it.

Fred Wilson had a great wrap-up post of the plunge this week .

I know what I was doing at 2-45 pm this Thursday.  I had just landed from New York in San Diego and on the drive across the bridge to Coronado, I was checking in on the markets on my iPhone and saw the Dow down 519.  I still use a broker for certain trades as I am on the road so much and called him to sell some premium.  I even tweeted I was going to do that.  By the time I called, I was told the Dow had been down 1000 and now down 350.  I just did nothing.  That was not the case on the stream:

I was not on the Stocktwits stream, but within minutes, @jayzalowitz had tweeted out the quote , @chicagosean suggested a t-shirt and Justin ( @zerobeta ) at Stocktwits, had mocked up the t-shirts for sale:

The financial system is broken, but our financial and creative spirits are at all-time highs because of the social and niche (‘expert’) websites like Stocktwits. Events like last week just shine a bigger light on both.

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.

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