Here's the Right Profit Plan for This Wild Market

We've seen the Dow swing from 29,100 to 26,763 since the highs of Sept. 2 - and if that's not "volatility," I don't know what is.

That's probably pretty scary for buy-and-hold investors, but the thing is, as traders, we absolutely need that volatility; if stocks won't budge, most trades just won't make money - definitely not the kind of money that frees you up to spend an hour trading and the rest of the time doing what you want.

So we need markets to swing around a bit, and that means we also need a good plan to stay on the winning side of those big moves.

It turns out "plan your trade and trade your plan" is an old Wall Street saying for a really good reason.