Monday, April 23, 2007

Quite a losing streak

In the grand scheme of things, I am in a small slump within a bigger slump. Lots of slumps. Great name for an animal, no?

Anyway, I lost a little money today. Actually, it's been so weird lately how I'm trading so much but coming right in around unched on many days. Trading not to lose and making it impossible to win? Perhaps. But today I had a fat loser that wiped away some decent gains elsewhere.

I'll talk about my good trades first.

I was thinking about ET's day on Friday when I saw oil began to rally this morning. That's when I figured he was probably shorting those airline stocks he loves. So I gave it a shot.



At 10:30 or so, I sold short 500 shares at 28.86 because I felt the general market weakening and oil strengthening. When the trade worked in my favor, I added 200 more shares to the position at 28.72. From that point on, it was simple. Oil kept rising, the market continued to weaken and AMR just slid slowly down. I covered a couple hundred in the 40s, some more in the teens, and then my last 300 at 27.80 at 3:36. It was one of the more relaxing trades I've been involved with in some time. And I remembered that when things work in your favor, this job is much more relaxing than when you're constantly battling.

I had a second good trade in the afternoon. This came in CMI. Let's forget that I missed the 10 points on the long side.



I short 200 shares at 86.91 at around 1:45 because well, for no other reason than I just couldn't believe the stock was up so damn much. I'm nothing if not honest. No reason to lie here.

Anyway, the stock fell immediately and I covered 100 shares a few minutes later at 86.13. Problem was that the stock them ripped straight up and I covered the other 100 shares at 86.95. That kind of hurt. It hurt more when the stock immediately went back down. Angered, I short 200 at 86.08. This was a mistake and I realize that I made the trade more because I was angry that I covered than because I thought it was a good entry. Stupid, but I realized the error of my ways and covered at 86.50 and 86.45 and took the loss. This was smart because the stock ultimately "squeezed" way up into the mid 87s. I was happy that I hadn't held.

But the squeeze into the 87s came on light volume and the stock began to collapse. When it broke through 87 on the downside, I got short again, 200 shares at 86.74. The stock dipped, the trade felt right, and so I added 100 more shares at 86.53. The trade from this point on was fairly smooth to the downside. I covered 100 shares at 85.72, 100 at 85.54 and another 100 at 85.74 making almost an exact point on all shares.

My bad trade of the day was in RAS. I hate to even write about this because this stock has been the bane of my existence for a week. I'm churning the stock. Perhaps writing about it here will help rid me of it's spell.



One lucky trade led me to make many bad trades in this stock. My normal entry size in stocks lately is 300 shares. For some twisted reason, I entered trades in RAS with 1700 shares (the lucky trade that worked in my favor), 2300 shares, 1400 shares and then 2200 shares. It's simple revenge trading. It's stupid and I will not be doing it again tomorrow.

I lost $571 in RAS. That hurts on a day where I'm barely down. What it means to me is that absent all the boneheaded trades in RAS where I broke my rules, I would have had a decent day. Now for the stats:

P&L -$27

Best, AMR $441
Worst, RAS -$571

stocks traded, 16, 4 positive, 12 negative
shares traded, 38,600
total trades, 148

Virtual Office, $4636. Dow -42.58.

Misstrade, $2892 on 9300 shares traded.
NYSE Scalper, $712 on 20,800 shares traded.
EvolutionTrader, $653 on 56,600 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $447 on 42,000 shares traded.
TradeWhileWorking, $101 on 1700 shares traded.
DenariiTrader, $76 on 6200 shares traded.
Me, -$27 on 38,600 shares traded.
One Bad-Ass Trader, -$218 on 17,600 shares traded.

Lots of green in the VO today!

Misstrade started off this week where he let off at the end of last, with more green. The Scalper seems to be gaining some momentum with his disciplined style and EvolutionTrader had another nice gain. Dehtrader had a nice bounceback day and TWW has put a stop to the bleeding. And Denarri also found himself on the good side of the ledger.

On the downside, I had a weird day in that I finally had a few decent winners (I haven't been able to find any recently) but one bad loser and many small losers sabatoged my good trades. OBAT seems to have had that "one bad trade" that led to a down day.

All in all, an excellent way to start the week!

The Noon Glance

P&L $95




NYSE Downgraded

Given my heavy criticism of the Hybrid Market, I thought the GS downgrade of the NYX to SELL was pretty interesting today.

11:09 (Dow Jones) Nasdaq (NDAQ) will continue to take market share from NYSE-Euronext as the exchanges implement SEC's Reg NMS, Goldman Sachs says.Upgrades NDAQ to buy from neutral; downgrades NYX to sell from neutral. NDAQ will benefit from Reg NMS as a low cost provider and robust electronic trader,firm says. Sees NYSE continuing to lose hybrid market share as it implements the new regulation in an "increasingly challenging environment for specialists," Goldman says. NYX down 4.1% to $88.57; NDAQ up 3.5% to $33.27.(CWH)

In other news, a 6 mile long asteroid just smashed down near the Yucatan Peninsula.

Heavy dust clouds have blacked out the sun here and this Dinosaur is feeling a little chilly.

Swing trading may be in this Dinosaur's future.

The crap that drives me nuts and makes me poor



This is the stuff that's doing me in right here.

I saw that on Friday WCC was stabilizing and I thought there would be a little pop off the open as it broke a minor trendline that was in place for the past couple of trading sessions. I put in a buy stop at the trendline and as the stock opened above the line, was filled at the opening price of 62.35. To add to my conviction, the stock was upgraded pre-open.

On the opening print of 23,300 I was the 300. The opening print hit my tape at 9:30:53.

3 seconds and 2200 shares later, the stock is trading 61.86 and I am down a half point or, $150 on my first trade of the day. Thank god I've cut my size... I ask again, absent of not trading the open, how can a trader manage intraday risk in the
Hybrid Market?

Pre Hybrid Market, stuff like this just didn't happen. How could I have avoided this loss?

Ray, from
Hybridtalk, if you're reading, really, WTF?

I just don't know...

Earth Day

Well, it's that time of the year again. The time when everyone in the US sits back and reflects on how much carbon they've released into the atmosphere in the past year. Families get together, sit around the table and calculate their emissions, trying hard to imporove on their numbers from the previous year.

NOT!

Ah well, perhaps in the future. For now, check out this map of the US.

Click on your city to see how "green" it was in the last year. The cities are ranked from 1 to 72 or so...

Happy Monday!