Stocks opened sour on Tuesday with all three big indexes in the red, trailing Asian and European indexes. What happened?
Mostly, traders seemed nervous ahead of the Fed minutes for the Aug..7 the meet, that put its fed fund rate at 5.25 percent for the 9 straight time. Fed watchers are hoping for a rate cut come September 18th during their next gathering (The Street.com).
There was some more bad news in the credit story as the Financial Times reported that Barclays was holding millions of dollars worth of bad debt linked to Saschen LB, the German lender. However, Barclays has denied the report’s findings. If you remember, Barclays is in a bid for Dutch bank, ABN Amro any credit issues at Barclays could mean a downing or that takeover. A rival bid is being tabled by a RBS-led consortium which includes Spain’s Santander, and Belgium’s Fortis.
Merrill Lynch downgraded Citigroup, Lehman, and Bear Stearns from buy to neutral – that could be another reason for gloom on the Street today.
I found this nice link to “Assessing Your coping style as a trader,” on Afraidtoblog.com. Its about assessing how you handle adversity in the markets – whether you win or lose. Do you usually do better after you trade poorly or after a winning streak. Looking at previous perfomance is an excellent way to learn about how you are trading and the coping methods that you are using to trade effectively. Not all the techniques listed there are all good or all bad, but the trick is to be aware of which one you’re using.