Trade Alert – Bidding below for fruit but not booking the Facebook yet

Yesterday I wrote this:

Apple’s slow bleed of death continues — can you believe it was at $350 earlier this year though? I’m waiting to add the next tranche until either the slow bleed of death stops or until we get a major capitulation by the longs on a single day’s decline of say 3% or so, if that were to happen.

We need to let the markets, the economy, sentiment and our analysis of all three of those things weigh on our trading decisions. Great Bottoms (caps intended again) come when the markets are down big (check), the economy for corporate America and thusly earnings are growing (check with the caveat that the growth has slowed markedly) and when sentiment from the bulls is terrified (Are we there yet? Answer the poll), the bears are cocky (been a while since the bears were actually cocky, huh?) and the headlines are full of explanations and reasons for the panic to continue forever (the lack thereof being the topic of today’s column).

The upshot is that we don’t want to let our wishing for a bottom to color the fact that not all the elements for a Great Bottom are here quite yet.

Today is much the same. Apple’s slowly bleeding lower, down more than 2% actually. I’m going to put in bids below the market for some calls, March and April, $650s and above, and add some common here near $510, which would be about that 3% down day target I was talking about yesterday. Not forcing it.

Apple’s down 25% since its the iPhone 5 launch. I’ve owned and told my subs to be long Apple since it was at $7 and I’ve seen it drop 25% or more several times. It’s sickening every damn time. It’s sickening this time. But it happens.

Btw, I also got my iPhone 5 a couple weeks ago and last night I got my iPad Mini LTE and I will never use an Android or Windows system again. Both have been so easy to use, so much fun, so addictive…anyway, my opinion about those items isn’t going to turn the stock. Who knows what will at this point.

Facebook’s back up a bunch again today, near $23.50 and those calls we bought back when it dipped below $19 a few days ago are really profitable. I’ve got a pretty big position in FB and those calls make me get longer as it goes higher. I’m not selling any of it yet.

No matter what you do, don’t let your emotions dictate your trades.