I urge you to find the studio version of this song. It's on this compilation which may be very difficult to find. However, if you do find it, you will be rewarded.
What he's saying is, "Without love, life is gone. Without life, love goes on and on."
There was a lot of movement in individual names today even if the indexes all closed close to flat.
Tha Latin American stocks like, ITU, UBB, CPA and CPL all had good gains. The steels and other metal stocks took hits. The Agriculture names like, DE, TNH, CNH and AG all moved well.
So, there was a good amount of opportunity out there today. And thus, I had some good winners. Unfortunately, I also had some decent sized losers.
My big winner was TNH. I caught a nice smooth long between 94 and 97. After the morning correction and squeeze, the stock ran up into the mid 94s, only pennies away from the high of the morning. I assumed that many people short the stock in the morning and were hoping that TNH wouldn't see 95. However, TNH being TNH, of course he'd see 95 again... he hates shorts.
With that in mind, I started buying in the low 94s expecting him to bust through 95. This went according to plan. My mistake was not letting the winner run more. I covered most by 95.5 and the rest by 96.5. While it was frustrating to see it run a couple of points higher, I was happy with the win anyway.
Another good trade I had was a short in SPG. After a hard and fast drop in the early morning, the stock trading back up to the 100 area. I figured this might serve as resistance because of the psychological impact of the even number 100 and also because it was testing the morning's opening price on a day that the REITS were downgraded. They've been weak now for the last week. And a glance at the daily chart of SPG shows a deteriorating technical situation (although here I've posted the 5-min).
Anyway, I ran into my normal mistake of taking losses by shorting strong names early. Thus, I suffered substantial squeezes in DE and MTW. I covered DE at *THE* high of the day... this added insult to injury because immediately after I covered, the stock dropped hard for almost 3 points. Sigh...
Despite making this mistake again, i.e., shorting strong stocks while they are still acting strong, I stuck to my new 3-trade rule and didn't get stubborn. So my worst of the day was a $441 loser in MTW. Bad? Yes. Debilitating? No.
Anyway, here's the stats:
P&L, $367
Best, TNH, $839
Worst, MTW, -$442
shares traded, 42,200
stocks traded, 23, 13 winners, 10 losers
total trades, 276
Misstrade, $1113 on 3700 shares traded.
Me, $367 on 44,200 shares traded.
Evolution, $226 on 48,600 shares traded.
Denarii, $69 on 600 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$803 on 6000 shares traded.
Well, it was a quiet day in the VO. This is somewhat expected on a summer Monday. Volume was very low today. The good news is that Denarii is on an 8-day win streak. Small wins often breed big confidence.
And yes, I'm a little upset I missed the rally on Friday. But the thing is, I like to watch volume. Friday's rally came on volume that was much lower than the volume shown during Thursday's sell-off and only equal to the volume shown on Wednesday's sell-off. So I probably wouldn't have been very aggressive on the long side anyway... My real point is that if we were to see another couple of sell-offs this week on higher volume it may be time to start thinking defensively near term.
Of course, I'm only a trader and thus, I suffer from severe myopia when it comes to forecasting the markets.
Anyway, hopefully we get some more volume and better trading conditions tomorrow.
As I traveled to the great north this past weekend hanging onto my CROX short from Thursday and pondering the squeezing I was enduring, I couldn't help but feel tiny amounts of hatred for every foot I saw clad in the fluorescent colored form that is a CROX shoe.
At the same time, I felt great pity for the people who were dressed in this manner. Clearly they are the fashion victims of the day.
In time, CROX shoes will go the way of parachute pants and leg warmers. The question is, are they recyclable? Or will one day our landfills resemble huge piles of M&Ms because of them?
Speaking of recyclable, I heard a very interesting report this morning on NPR about what happens to all those millions of plastic Poland Spring bottles. 33,200 are made each MINUTE! Check out the report here.
