Listen to Cranky Old Men

For most of my life I've been looking forward to becoming a cranky old man. I figured it was a reward, indeed a right, for all I've gone through in life. It is, the final destiny.

I knew many old cranky men when I was a kid. They seemed to always know what type of person someone was (“that guy's an idiot!”), what the weather was going to be (“my joints are aching”),  how just about anything was going to turn out (“watch this idiot…”), and the proper words to describe any situation (<expletives deleted>).

If nothing else, my practicing for cranky old-manhood instilled enough apprehension in my spouses such that I was given leeway to do all sorts of things in my life, like writing trading newsletters at 4 in the morning.

As I'm nearing my “golden” years, I have been practicing to be a cranky old man. I've taken up cigar smoking, mainly to practice standing out on my deck and yelling out to imaginary kids “Get off my yard!”. I didn't realize how hard it is to actually bellow out something like that with a cigar in your mouth. It's taking so much practice, I've cut down to $2 cigars instead of the $8 ones until I get the hang of it.

Cranky old men just seem to get ‘feelings' about things, and darned if they aren't usually accurate. It's probably just experience talking.

I feel I'm on the cusp of cranky old-manhood because more and more when I get certain foreboding feelings about the market, they seem to come true. In recent years, I've learned to trust my intuition. If nothing else, it makes me more conservative and that is seldom a negative for an active trader.

Right now, my intuition is making me uncomfortable. Biogen, Berkshire Hathaway, Clorox, Disney, even Johnson and Johnson are continuously setting new highs. The sky's the limit.

But sunny skies can quickly turn into downpours. Having stared at charts with little green and red bars for more than 30 years now, all I can say is “this market's an idiot!”. Take profits, trim positions, buy protection, consider shorts and other bearish trades, and enter only smaller new positions.

Go out and buy a bottle of Maker's Mark or a case of a good Bordeaux (and maybe some of those good $8 cigars), and aim to be more of a spectator than a participant over the next several weeks. One of the best ways to increase returns over any 12-month period is by knowing when to cut back, sit back,  and wait for better setups.

Listen to the newest member of cranky old manhood. And get off my yard.

Of course, there's much more you need to know and many more stocks you can capitalize upon each and every day.  To find out more, type in www.markettamer.com/seasonal-forecaster

By Gregg Harris, MarketTamer Chief Technical Strategist

Copyright (C) 2013 Stock & Options Training LLC

Unless indicated otherwise, at the time of this writing, the author has no positions in any of the above-mentioned securities.

Gregg Harris is the Chief Technical Strategist at MarketTamer.com with extensive experience in the financial sector.

Gregg started out as an Engineer and brings a rigorous thinking to his financial research. Gregg's passion for finance resulted in the creation of a real-time quote system and his work has been featured nationally in publications, such as the Investment Guide magazine.

As an avid researcher, Gregg concentrates on leveraging what institutional and big money players are doing to move the market and create seasonal trend patterns. Using custom research tools, Gregg identifies stocks that are optimal for stock and options traders to exploit these trends and find the tailwinds that can propel stocks to levels that are hidden to the average trader.

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