United Healthcare Stock (UNC) moves higher on news of a security breach, Nivida’s market cap surpasses the size of the Canadian Economy, and WingStop hits all time high

Well if the title doesn’t sum it up for you I’m not sure what will. Some days in the market are just like this, there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or a reason to what’s going on. Of course it always seems obvious in retrospect but by the time the closing bells rung you’re usually left hung up and dried out. It’s okay to feel frustrated, confused, or on the brink of giving it all up. If you haven’t yet, you surely will. The market has a funny way of humbling everyone. Some things I’ve picked up along the way to help me ride out these bad days mostly have to do with perspective and sticking to the plan. For example when trading earnings calls it’s important to remember good results do not always mean good stock returns, and bad results don’t always mean downward stock returns. There’s never good or bad, it’s always better than expected or worse than expected. And before you take that and run with it let me remind you that even that isn’t necessarily true. Just because the earnings call came in with better than expected results, doesn’t mean the stock will move upward. Sometimes there’s a “well yes the companies doing well fiscally, but our C level employees are leaving in droves for another competitor” narrative that’s still on the table. Or yes we killed it in sales this year with record profits, but there’s a huge pending lawsuit that may determine the companies fate. There’s almost always more than meets the eye. I’ve noticed from listening to enough quarterly calls that board members and investors are all very skiddish, sometimes even bi-polar. Any little thing could set them off in a whole new course of action. So it’s important to really research the narrative, the companies pain points, and the bigger picture. Even then when you think the stars have aligned, a majority holder could exit his position weeks before the call and dissolve any price action you had planned out. Often I reach a point while trading where I feel it’s all impossible, in those times I try to focus more on risk management and finding a better narrative.