It was a good week until Friday...

After a good gain on Monday and up and down days on Tuesday through Thursday, the week looked okay.  That was until the massive sell-off on Friday.  Not many of the securities that I held went below the 50-day moving averages but some of them did sell on Friday after I had set stop-losses under them to protect the gains I have already made.  After having a great January in 2013 and then losing it all in the following months, I am trying to do better at conserving gains once they are made.


At the end of this week, I am still 71% invested and the rest is in cash, ready to deploy.  I was down .67% for the week overall, while the Dow, by comparison, was down 3.5% for the week.  If the market continues to slide, I will, no doubt, sell more things as they hit their sell signals, and I can always buy them back later when the buy signals come back.


One thing about using moving averages is that you want the market to pick a direction and keep moving in that direction for a while.  That way, the averages have time to catch up and new buy or sell signals can be set up.  If the corrections are too short-lived, the buy and sell signals come quickly after one another, and it is a bit frustrating.  While I am not  exactly trying to 'time the market', I also don't want to sit in securities while they plummet - it can take months or years for them to come back, if ever.


I still hold many precious metals securities - HBU (gold bullion), HGU (gold stocks), ZJG (gold small cap stocks), YRI, K, and MTO.  I also own other miners like TKO (copper), PDN (uranium), S (various), FM, and LIM (iron ore).


My holdings are rounded out by DWI (sold some at higher levels, then bought it back after it dropped), EMA, LTS, LW, and MBT.


For Monday, there are a few securities that are at buy signals that I am looking at, depending on how the market looks - HBU (considering buying more, because even if the price of gold moves up, gold stocks could easily get caught in the downdraft), HOU (oil is looking stronger), HSD (down goes the DOW), XVX (has the TSX-V exchange bottomed?), and TLM (takeover rumours, but stock is near its recent highs).


With the way last week ended, I am a little skittish about putting more money into the market BUT buying when everyone else is selling is a great way to get the securities at lower prices.  You know the old adage - "Stocks are the only thing that people don't want to buy when they are on sale".  It is hard to go against this, but following the moving averages does help to take much of the emotion out of investing, which is one of the keys to good profits.


For 2014, I am up 8.28% YTD, so I am still pretty happy with that.