Harsh day so far

Most of the major indexes are down between .5 and 1%. The biggest harshness that's been done to my portfolio is that HLF has dropped some 20% after they announced that their sales growth in Mexico will be about half what expected, but they reiterated that their earnings will be on par. I think the 20% drop is too harsh, and I'm waiting to listen to their Q4 conference call to rush to any judgement, but at any rate I'm not going to sell into the panic. If nothing else, we'll get a bounce in 2-3 days I can sell into if I decided it's not worth holding onto.

The main concern for me is if this is a buying opportunity (their earnings are supposed to be the same since they have higher than previously anticipated margins), of in the case of HLF, which is a growth stock, is this the beginning of a growth decline. I'll need to decide this soon, as I'll either need to buy more down here to bring my cost basis down or sell off my position in 3-4 days when we get the bounce once the heavy selling panic is over. I'll feel better one way or another once I hear the conference call.

All in all it's been a slow day for me. Fridays I tend not to do a whole lot, and this weakness hasn't been pronounced enough for me to do much buying. So far today I've just initiated trades in AMAT, CAKE, and MYGN. AMAT and CAKE are pretty short term trades with very tight stops while MYGN is a bit longer term. As a reminder, for me trades are usually short term (days and/or weeks, but almost never months) where I just look to take advantage of oversold stocks or ones with good charts that I think I can catch a quick 2-5% gain on usually with about 1-2% downside risk. These are not names I'm buying because I like their long term prospects necessarily (although sometimes I do).

I also added to my longer term positions in HAL and GFIG today, both on weakness. Not much more to say than that, I may make another update after the markets close tonight, but I'm really not looking to do much this afternoon.

-Rizen