There is a lot to unpack in that image. A lot has been going on, and this typifies exactly why I invented the slinky strategy. For years I would always get frustrated at how I would decide on a stock, watch it go up, and be feeling good about it, only to have periods where it would flop like this, and set me back months, if not years sometimes. The strategy I follow now focuses on capturing gains when you can so that these ups and downs help rather than harm.

Why the worried 😬 emoji? At this point in time, I was actually a little bit worried because my positons with AMZN were actually in a SHORT position. This means that the more AMZN went up, I was actually losing a little each day. I held on though, because I had some post-earnings strategies ready to go if it did stay up. My ideal target price was actually just a couple $ lower than where it was on Thursday. After Hours on July 31 however, AMZN somehow shocked the market, and people went running for the exits. My short position suddenly converted back into a long position because of the swoop, and with the -8% drop that day I was able to capture some gains on all of the short positions that were previously in trouble. Some of them became almost 100% gains overnight. 

It’s not all rosy however, the long side got hammered, so any positions that were present on the long side got punished hard. Rather than panic though, I view those as if they were simply long positions like simply owning the stock. They become part of “The Bag” and we look at it as if I will be “holding the bag” on AMZN for a while on those positions.

Here’s a look at how things are working out after 90 days, comparing the simply “buy and hold” versus owning and trading.