Fed Up

Here's the thing. I was going to start this post like this, "Well, it was another slow summer Fed day..." or something, but that's not really the case. There was a lot of stuff moving today. I mean, just check out my first trade of the day, in LVS.



WYNN reported good numbers and LVS just forgot about the law of gravity and ripped right off the open. Of course, I missed the rip but took a look at the daily and quickly made the decision that the stock was "overdone."

So I sold short at $106. Really nice. The only problem was that I covered at $105.30. Also, since I had convinced myself that "it's a Fed day and therefore slow" I only sold 200 shares.

What I'm getting at is this. I complain all the time about people on CNBC and other news outlets saying the same crap over and over again and it just being false. However, it gains momentum and people keep saying the same crap anyway, just because it's accepted... that doesn't make it true... I mean, just take the "conventional wisdom" that got us entrenched in Iraq... "greeted as liberators," "the insurgency is in it's last throes," etc... etc... etc...

Anyway, for a recent example from the financial world, how many times have you heard the following in the last few weeks on CNBC as a partial explanation for the increase in volatility? "Lots of traders are on vacation right now so it's 'thin trading' out there which leads to greater price swings." What crap! Volume has been huge these last few weeks.

Yes, traders may be on vacation but robots never vacation... anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent. Still, while I'm on the subject of robots I will note that if I'm driving with my wife and I ask her to listen to the lyrics of a song (I'm a lyric guy) so she can tell me what she thinks the song is about, she invariably will say, "Robots." Okay, moving on...

The point is, you can take yourself out of the game by telling yourself stories that may or may not be true. I took myself out of the game in March and April by telling myself that the market was going down when all it did was go up. So, if you look at today objectively and not through the lens of it being a Fed day, it was pretty volatile and there was loads of opportunity.

Lose the story and deal with what's there in front of you.

It's pretty late, and I can no longer access all of my trades so I can't go through them here. Basically, I made money in the first half hour, lost it all in the next hour and then made it all back after 2:15. I made a good chunk in ITU at the end of the day because I noticed that it was very weak in comparison to it's brethren, BBD and UBB and I assumed with the strength in the financials he would catch up. For a while he did and I got out at good prices when I had the chance.

Hope all is well with you.

Here's the stats:

Oh wait... I can't access them. Good night!