Giant Sand, "Shiver"

Great song, great album, great band.



p.s. the first 6 seconds of this video are just black screen

Fare Thee Well (for now) NYSE Scalper

I was a little shellshocked to receive email from the Scalper today informing me that he was suspending his blog for a little while.

He was the first person I invited into the Virtual Office and reading his blog inspired me to start my own, so I owe him some thanks.

Good luck Scalper! I look forward to seeing you resume your blog and only hope it's a short hiatus!

-DT

I Just Missed IT

My day was dominated by TNH, so I will post here all of my trades. This will give you an idea of how close I came to hitting this one out of the park today. I'm not taking anything away from my day today. I'm very happy with the results, but I just missed a real breakout for myself and I am a little frustrated. I'm sure that may sound a little obnoxious given the profits I made today, but when you trade day in and day out, it's also about trading well. I mean, just feeling like you did a good job, made some nice trades. There's a satisfaction in that separate from the money made. Yellow indicates short sales, my position size is reflected in the parentheses to the right of the trade.

9:37:33 Short 200 @ 99.72 (-200)

9:39:27 Buy 100 @ 98.88 (-100)

9:50:05 Buy 200 @ 98.85 (100)

9:50:17 Sell 100 @ 98.53 (flat)

9:51:54 Short 100 @ 98.50 (-100)

9:52:40 Short 100 @ 98.34 (-200)

9:53:59 Short 100 @ 98.06 (-300)

10:10:25 Short 100 @ 96.69 (-400)

10:13:45 Short 200 @ 96.95 (-600)

10:18:54 Short 100 @ 97.45 (-700)

10:30:56 Buy 100 @ 95.46 (-600)

10:33:06 Buy 200 @ 94.52 (-400)

10:35:07 Short 200 @ 96.20 (-600)

10:44:12 Buy 100 @ 95.26 (-500)

10:45:18 Short 100 @ 95.90 (-600)

10:52:01 Buy 300 @ 96.94 (-300)

10:58:46 Short 200 @ 96.31 (-500)

11:07:28 Buy 100 @ 94.83 (-400)

11:32:45 Buy 100 @ 96.20 (-300)

11:38:43 Buy 200 @ 94.99 (-100)

11:50:30 Short 100 @ 96.30 (-200)

12:00:41 Buy 100 @ 95.36 (-100)

12:50:38 Buy 100 @ 96.47 (flat)

13:27:03 Short 100 @ 96.79 (-100)

13:45:22 Short 100 @ 95.36 (-200)

13:52:35 Short 100 @ 95.68 (-300)

14:07:57 Buy 100 @ 93.48 (-200)

14:47:29 Buy 100 @ 92.24 (-100)

15:15:13 Buy 100 @ 92.24 (flat)

15:18:56 Buy 200 @ 89.10 (200)

15:19:06 Sell 100 @ 88.50 (100)

15:20:21 Sell 100 @ 89.36 (flat)

15:23:35 Buy 300 @ 88.80 (300)

15:24:26 Sell 100 @ 88.64 (200)

15:25:10 Sell 200 @ 88.41 (flat)

15:30:48 Short 200 @ 88.52 (-200)

15:35:35 Buy 100 @ 88.74 (-100)

15:36:09 Buy 100 @ 88.76 (flat)

15:47:49 Buy 600 @ 84.92 (600)

15:48:07 Sell 300 @ 84.56 (300)

15:48:31 Sell 100 @ 84.50 (200)

15:50:18 Sell 100 @ 85.53 (100)

15:50:35 Sell 100 @ 85.42 (flat)

Total Profits in TNH $2786 (net).

Anyway, so that was my day in TNH. For the record, I lost over $2000 in him on Friday. I was a day early on Friday. Looking back, that really screwed me up today because I was so nervous trading the stock. Had I not lost that confidence in him on Friday I may have had the nerve to hang on to more shares. It was so obvious to me today, even in the morning when he wasn't trading down aggressively that the buyers were gone. Bids would appear and then get hit, or step back. On Friday, a bid would send the stock up 80 cents...

This was a near miss. But I think I learned a lot between Friday and today. I hope it will benefit me next time I see a monster trade like this.

Anyway, here are the stats:

P&L, $3340

Best, TNH, $2786

Worst, AG, -$495

shares traded, 49,600

stocks traded, 17, 5 positive, 12 negative

total trades, 324

Virtual Office, $6807. Dow, +20.56, 13346.78.

Misstrade, $3730 on 2400 shares traded.
Me, $3340 on 49,600 shares traded.
Evolution Trader, $373 on 34,300 shares traded.
Denarii, $50 on 1000 shares traded.
One Bad-Ass Trader, -$305 on 14,500 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$381 on 38,600 shares traded.

Besides Misstrade and Dinosaur there was not much happening in the VO today. For a beautiful spring Monday, there was some interesting movement, and that gives me hope that the volatility will begin to rise again. This is a strange market we're trading. Even today on a day where I felt the market was going down all day, it was up.

Something has to give soon... stay tuned and keep your ear to the ground.

Wilco, "Side With The Seeds"

I can't really explain this "video" that was put up on YouTube, but who cares, it's a great song. Their new album is due out soon, and even though Pitchfork panned it today, I still may pick it up. I just like this band.