One last thought...

I found this little gem of a video. It pretty much sums up my week.

Looking at it metaphorically, the market was dressed in blue and I, in red.



I'll finish up a "history" post this weekend and also work on the Virtual Office widget. Perhaps I'll look for an interesting link or two as well.

LTM, the Freaky Hybrid Trade of the day!

I haven't done this post in a few weeks, but today, I couldn't resist. Just look at this crap...



I'm focusing on the trading between 9:50 and 10:35.

At 953:35, the stock trades 100 shares at 50.44. 1300 shares and less than a minute later, the stock is trading 50.13. Almost all of the trading was 100 share prints smacking bids and lifting offers... there was no price correcting by specialists and their "algorithms" to stop the low volume dip in price.

I'm all for fast fills, but back in the day, 1300 shares was a print... a single trade. If a stock was going to drop 30 cents in 30 seconds, it wasn't pushed down by 13, 100 share orders.

Anyway, at 10:00 the stock is back to trading 50.20, but then get this... 2600 shares and 13 seconds later the stock trades 50. WTF?

For the next 25 minutes, the stock calmed down. It traded in a 27 cent range and traded about 14,000 shares. Decent activity. But of course, that couldn't last.

At 10:30:36, 100 shares trades at 49.92 followed by a 100 share trade up at 50.16. 100 shares pushing a stock 24 cents? You have to love a system that allows that to happen.

8 minutes and 14,000 shares later, the stock was up over 50.50. This would be fine if there was some type of "order" to the trade. It's the "airpockets" that exist with the Hybrid Market that make it very difficult to trade. Like the 2 minutes between 10:37 and 10:39 where 2000 shares spiked the stock up 30 cents.

I don't know. I guess you can ask Ray over at Hybridtalk how this type of trade benefits anyone. I can't figure it out myself. The Hybrid Market creates "airpockets" where there is no liquidity. When you hit one of these "airpockets" you get some unpredictable volatilty.

And unpredictable volatility does not breed confidence in a market, that's for sure.

A Good Bad Day

Sounds like a contradiction, I know. But here's the deal... nothing worked for me today. I traded 17 stocks and had only 5 stocks in the green. I just had no winners. Unfortunately, there are days like this.

I'm not going to beat myself up about it because I stuck to my rules and kept my losses small. I didn't add to any losing positions or get angry and fight the market. It was just one of those days where I died the death of a thousand small cuts.

So I'm taking the silver lining and I'm running with it...


Overall volume was lower today than it was for the last couple of days. I continue to be surprised with the way this market always bounces. What a crazy bounce it was too... between 10 and 10:30 there was a total "U" bottom... check it out. Anyway, that action kind of screwed with me mentally. I couldn't really get enthused about the rally due to the light volume.



Anyway, here are the stats:

P&L, -$480

Best: FED $154

Worst: DSL -$127

stocks traded, 17, 5 winners, 12 losers
shares traded, 20,000
total trades, 167

Virtual Office, $3207

TradeWhileWorking, $1667 on 2000 shares traded.

Misstrade, $1400 on 4000 shares traded.

NYSE Scalper, $426 on 68,600 shares traded.

Evolution Trader, $307 on 32,500 shares traded.

One Bad-Ass Trader, -$112 on 4800 shares traded.

Me, -$480 on 20,000 shares

A pretty solid day overall for the VO.

TWW, had a nice day while not trading much. Misstrade keeps on humming along, while the Scalper had a nice rebound from yesterday. ET took it a little easy today but booked some small gains.

Looks like it just wasn't the best week for me and OBAT. Perhaps we'll get our acts together for the earnings season.

Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Based on the pattern of my music video postings, I should be posting a song by a "new" band this week. But I'm just not in that type of mood.

So instead, I'm posting one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs.

Bonus points if any Pavement fans out there can tell me which lyrics from this song they lifted and put into one of theirs.