Thursday, April 10, 2008

Sell-Off At Close

This is a rather predictable pattern. Just before the close of the market, day traders (like me) will liquidate their positions so that they can sleep nights. Others will liquidate if they are over-extended on their margin accounts so that they don't have to maintain higher margins overnight. I don't have this problem. However, it creates a typical sell-off at the close of the market. I take advantage of this by selling in the closing minutes and then liquidating my position within the last minute or two of trading. Soybeans came very close to reaching the limit up price again today, as it did yesterday. This closing sell-off can be extremely profitable. In this case, the price dropped 20 cents in just about 6 minutes, and it never slowed down! Apparently, the soybean bull is back and in full force!