Another late report, slow erosion, Grace C+

The US stock market continue lower, feels worse than the monthly numbers indicate. I lose a bit. Here are a few ETFs 2023 year-to-date:

QQQ Nasdaq 100 34.4%
SPY SP500 12.5%

GLD gold 5.3%
EEM emerging mkt 1.5%
IWM Russell 2000 1.3%

SLV silver -2.0%
TLT US20 yr -8.2%

My trading account +15.8 for 2023, good not great. I have a large cash reserve. The portion invested leans towards big cap tech. Bonds are leading the way lower. I started building a small long position in TLT and was way early. I delta hedge a bit by selling way otm calls, but the decline has been too steep, so TLT is one my few losing tickers for the year.

Adding longs becomes a lot more interesting if we get to a 20% decline from the recent top. In rough round numbers that is 370 for SPY, 310 for QQQ. At -20% bear market news gets real popular. The headwind from bonds is real.

Like I wrote last month, adding QQQ longs on dips seems like a solid way to proceed. 350 is approximately 10% off the recent high. A seasonal play is to look to buy stocks making 52 week lows at the end of October to December. Looks for solid companies that may be seeing tax selling.