Oh no.

The US markets staged a recovery two days ago but couldn't sustain it. Fresh news that a French Bank was shutting down two of its funds exposed to the US mortgage crisis - scared the frack out of people.

The US market fell heavily and people are anticipating another 5% decline.

The central banks have to step in to prop up liquidity. The crisis is now not just confined to the US but spreading to the rest of the world.

All kinds of scary worse case scenarios pop up at this stage. At the top of the list are bank failures and the USD collapsing. All of which will most likely not happen- cos if it did- everyone would get screwed bigtime. I mean, everyone.

As for me, my cough returned back. I woke up kinna sick. And just stayed in bed. I didn't have the heart to trade this morning. I couldn't get into character so I stayed out. Didn't sell. Didn't buy.

The market took a predictable nose dive in the morning but its stabilizing now (thankfully). I've got a lot of hot positions out but I'm not hitting the sell button.

Made a judgement call and decided to just hold.

But at the heart of it, is this shitty feeling that I alway seem in the shithole when it happens. Got caught out in the 1997, 2001, 911, crashes. And now I'm caught yet AGAIN. Its a damned lousy feeling. A sensation of paranoia hits in, it feels like someone out there is out to get you.

But a good sleep and a nice hot cup of tea - followed by a healthy dose of perspective - usually fixes it up.

The trend is your friend- as my mentors always say. How many times they tried to drum it into my pedestrian brain and yet it fails to register. I should have followed the powerful upward trend in SGX. It strongly rebounded in May. Which is what I planned to do until I got spooked by that double top formation on the China markets- and bailed out. Fine. Fine. No problem being cautious. But I didn't get back in when the DT fear dried up. Now look at me - my portfolio is down 10%.

As it is- I have a lot more learning to do.