When is a loss bullish?

Free After-Hours Analysis: 

Thursday was another wild session for the S&P 500. Overnight futures traders abandoned ship and sent the index tumbling at the open. But rather than join the dash for the exits, big money started buying those discounts and it was all uphill from there.

As I often remind readers, it’s not how we start but how we finish that matters most. And by that measure, Thursday’s 0.3% loss was actually a very bullish performance. Rather than join the selling, most owners shrugged and kept holding. That resilience is always a good sign. If this market was overbought and as fragile as the cynics claim, we would have opened low and kept falling. Instead, the selling stalled out of the gate and the index recovered almost all of those early losses by the close. For a down day, it doesn’t get much better than that.

The market loves to convince us we are wrong moments before proving us right. And now that we moved past the “convincing us we are wrong” part, it is time to get on with “proving us right”. As I said above, if this market was weak, we would be challenging the lows, not bouncing back toward the highs. 4,100 is still very much in the cards.

As for trading this morning’s weakness, if a person was tricked out by those early losses, there is nothing wrong with that. More important is we stay nimble and open-minded after getting out. Sometimes the next buying opportunity is only hours away. And today was one of those days. As easy as it is to get back in, we should never let ourselves get left behind if the market tricked us with one of these false alarms.

Sign up for my FREE email alerts so you don’t miss the market’s next big move

If you find these posts useful, please return the favor by liking and sharing them!

Sign up for FREE Email Alerts to get profitable insights like these delivered to your inbox every evening.

What’s a good trade worth to you?
How about avoiding a loss?
For less than $1/day, receive actionable analysis and a trading plan every day during market hours

Follow Jani on Twitter @crackedmarket