Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Doing Nothing is OK ... Sometimes

I often don't think doing nothing is OK.  Most of the time, it is better to make forward progress and then correct later.  I take this as a general approach when determining if I want a piece of software to go out or not.  Often times, people fall into the perfection syndrome.  They hold on to releasing because there is one last bug or one last feature they want to shove in.  This is often the wrong approach and leads to stagnation.

But right now, doing nothing is the exact right thing to do in an ugly market.   The market is too volatile.  I keep trying to find a good place to come in, but the market moves so fast that I can't find a place to get comfortable.  I'm 70% in cash and I'm feeling good about it.  I might be only earning a little more than 3% on my cash, an in reality I'm losing money when you throw in inflation, but it is certainly better than losing double digit percentages which is exactly what will happen if you are on the wrong side of a trade in the market.

If you have to be something, be short.  The market still has about 7%-10%.  I will look to get into the QID if we have a relatively flat or slightly up day in the market tomorrow.  If you HAVE to be long something, I still want to be long the dollar, UUP.   If you are thinking long term, I would want to be in the financials soon.  Not quite here, but soon, because these stocks have been battered.  You have to be in a stock that has no chance of going out of business.  A company like Goldman Sachs.

So if you haven't been able to figure out what to do, like myself, consider yourself lucky.  You probably saved yourself a lot of money.

2 comments:

  1. I'm also not doing much either. I don't know enough about the market to gauge what to do when there's so much volatility.

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  2. I'd do nothing if you don't want an ulcer. With this crazy market, save yourself the anxiety and don't do anything.

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