A horrible week as we did not make pace with the market due to a human error.  Overall, the 5% move should have padded our earnings by 5% but mistakes do happen.  The move comes on the heels of a 5% sell off amid renewed confidence in many economic indicators though this past Friday the Non-Farm payrolls and unemployment report showed a 9.8 unemployment rate with only 39,000 jobs created.  The silver lining is that more people have returned to looking for jobs as there seems to be a belief that the economy is doing better (or that unemployment benefits are drying up).  Look for some early December weakness after this latest rally with a stealth move higher as we close out the year.

 I am not capable of adding much "Alpha" to the algorithm.  Its as simple as that.  The alpha I am speaking of is adding more return than simply following the market, in this case the algorithms were a lot smarter than me in identifying the 5% move we witnessed last week.  During this time, the overnight move was significant and in an attempt to not buy at 1195 (15 points above the close) I paused the system only to see the markets test 1230!  I lost sleep over this trade because it had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with human error.  Human error has cause more money loss this year than technical glitches, and at this point I have taken my medicine and fully trust the system (though I believe we will tweak it a bit over the holidays).  Instead of being up 35% we are only up 30% (and accounting for all human errors we should be up nearly 40%).  If we add in the January to February run we should be up well over 40% YTD (since we didn't start until March/April).

I look forward to closing out the year in a few weeks to discuss all that has been learned both technically and psychologically.