Dinosaur Trader Provides Market With Liquidity

How I found time to trade 173,000 shares and blabber and make jokes all day on Wallstreak is confusing to even me. I think I type really fast.

Anyway, check out some of these graphs.

In the beginning, there was PCP.



See that third bar? That's where I bought. At $123.50 and $124 and $124.50. Now, in hindsight it looks great, but it had to be one of the scariest trades I've been involved in, ever. Why? Because I bought 500 shares to start, was filled at $123.50 and then the bid dropped to $115. Mentally, I wasn't really prepared to lose like $5,000 in two minutes. Why I immediately bought more is confounding. I guess I had lots of confidence that the stock would bounce at it's 50-day moving average.

It was extremely tempting to sell it all after it ran up to $127. But I was good and just gave the market dribs and drabs of my position all the way up until $132. It was my second best stock of the day, I net just under $4500 in the trade.

Here's another crazy one I got involved in only with far fewer shares.



I mean, what the fuck? Seriously!

I got long at around $106 with 400 shares. I sold half before $107. The other 200 I sold over $112. Then, to be piggish and greedy, I got short at $112.50 and covered around $109. It was wild.

But as the volatility can work in your favor, it can just as easily work against you. For example, I lost $1900 in TNH today playing it with 300 share positions.



And then there's TFX...



Stewie called this one out. These "Streetsmack" plays, or parabolic short scalp plays have been working like a charm recently. However, I got involved with TFX a little too early and perhaps too heavy at around $74.50. I had to cover around $76.25 for a big loss.

Then I got short again at around $77.50. Thing is that I got short less when it actually started to work. At one point I was down a few thousand in the stock and managed to trim my loss to -$1403. I'm short 400 into the weekend. The only thing that would drive this stock up 15 points in this environment is a fund having to unwind a short position... that's just a guess of course. I'd love to get anyone else's opinion.

Anyway, I just hope I don't become further fuel for that squeeze on Monday. We'll see.

Meanwhile, there was loads to watch all day. The fertilizer stocks (besides, ahem... TNH) were strong. Lots of money seemed to be moving there. The financials also bounced. In fact, my best stock of the day was AMG.



I was in and out of him aggressively all day long, trading over 22,000 shares of it alone. All of my profits came on the long side, most in the bounce between 11:00 and 12.

We'll see where this market takes us. Based on some of the wacky moves I witnessed today I feel like there are some funds being forced to cover positions. I expect more bad news to come out on the financial sector. I mean, all the banks and brokerages seem to be hiding the truth from themselves, their investors and the media. That doesn't sound good.

And I don't put much thought to the market when I'm not trading it, so I don't have any clue about what the Fed move means today, throwing dollars at the market like that. It smacks of desperation, that's all I can read. I mean, 3 moves in one day like that is "unprecedented?" That can't be good, right? They threw more liquidity on the market today than they have since right after 9/11. Odd, if everything is just fine, no?

(Note to Wallstreakers: I couldn't get on after 3pm or so...)

Anyway, here's the stats:
P&L, $10,528
Best, AMG, $6492
Worst, TNH, -$1892

shares traded, 173,000
44 stocks traded, 25 winners, 19 losers
708 trades