Trade 1 of 187 on my Quest to Invest to a Million

On my quest to make a million dollars in 187 trades (by selling every stock that I buy once it has recognized a 2% gain), I'm down 5.6% and haven't been able to sell Trade 1 yet.  I've been at it for a little over a week.

Seth Godin would call this The Dip. I downloaded the audiobook this weekend from the itunes store, http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes
so maybe I set myself up for the predicament I'm in right now.

Nonetheless, it was an excellent book.

So, some good news today for Chevron, it's up 0.86% today. Pretty lame that I'm excited about that, but you take what you can get right?
http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=cvx

Status update: I bought it at $87.82, today it's worth $82.87. I'm down 5.6%. I have a really high tolerance for risk and there is a dividend light at the end of this tunnel, so I'm gonna continue to hold. There's a big night tonight and a big day tomorrow that has the power to move the markets significantly.

The investment world waits with baited breath tonight for results from the US midterm elections and the US Federal reserve announcement tomorrow and the expectation is that another round of quanititative easing short for "money printing" in an effort to stimulate the stagnant US economy.

Republicans are expected to gain control of the US house of representatives but fall short of taking control of the US senate. This is generally viewed as "friendly to the market" as republican policies are more business oriented. The US Feds decision to buy more US Treasuries should keep interest rates lower and drive bond prices higher.

All these major themes of course "baked into" the market so tomorrow will probably be a classic case of buy the rumour, sell the fact, which sets up for some fairly volatile trading action on any surprises to the aforementioned themes. Viewing the charts ahead of these announcements is always interesting. Scanning the Dow 30 tonight gives me the distinct visual impression that we're gonna break hard lower tomorrow. I'm seeing very few breakout patterns or bullish continuation candlesticks, instead there is lots of dark cloud cover, shooting stars, dojis, and bearish engulfing patterns.

http://stockcharts.com/scripts/php/candleglance.php?AA,AXP,BA,BAC,CAT,CSCO,CVX,DD,DIS,GE,HD,HPQ,IBM,INTC,JNJ,JPM,KFT,KO,MCD,MMM,MRK,MSFT,PFE,PG,T,TRV,UTX,VZ,WMT,XOM

I'm looking for areas to counter-trend trade and right now there are four major markets where the air is getting just a little bit thin. Those areas are the US dollar, US bonds, gold, and oil. These are all "one-way bets" with lots of solid rationale why the current trends will continue, US dollar (down), US bonds (price higher, yield down), gold (higher), and oil (higher). Trees don't grow to the sky. All these puppies are gonna end badly and I wanna be on the other end when these markets reverse.

Gold's run defies logic. It's a yellow metal, I repeat a yellow metal, and not much more than that. It doesn't generate cash, pay a dividend, or have a smart management team, and as Mister T aptly noted, a single person can only carry 45 pounds around their neck.

GLD gapped lower about a week ago has reversed to fill that gap technically, and today put in a fairly negative candlestick.

http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=%20gld

Good spot here to short GLD with a fairly tight stop at $135. This may not be the top, but the first good sign in the last couple of months that we could be rolling to the downside.

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