For The "Maria" Voters

Listen... I've been watching CNBC daily for 8+ years. Not once... NOT ONCE has Maria Bartiromo said a damned thing that helped me make any money.

I know that most of you don't listen to what she says. You're there, clacking away at your keyboard, starting at your computer monitors, looking for cool video clips on Youtube and trading stocks. CNBC is background noise. You really keep it on just in case something happens to blow up somewhere. Sometimes you glance at the TV and, oh yeah, she has nice eyes. Big deal.

Wouldn't it be nice if the news anchors were informed? I mean, we're going through a financial crisis and they haven't said one smart thing this week. Ratigan is good and Erin could be good (if they let her). Instead, all most have done is cheer the market on as it bleeds to death.

Anyway, watch how Maria gets owned by Anderson Cooper in this celebrity Jeopardy death match. Don't want to watch the whole thing? Fine... they GIVE HER fake money at the end so she can participate in Final Jeopardy.

Lou Reed, "A Walk On The Wild Side"

FLASH: Maria is surging in the poll. She's up to 14%. Perhaps she has her own plunge protection team.

Dinosaur Trader Provides Market With Liquidity

How I found time to trade 173,000 shares and blabber and make jokes all day on Wallstreak is confusing to even me. I think I type really fast.

Anyway, check out some of these graphs.

In the beginning, there was PCP.



See that third bar? That's where I bought. At $123.50 and $124 and $124.50. Now, in hindsight it looks great, but it had to be one of the scariest trades I've been involved in, ever. Why? Because I bought 500 shares to start, was filled at $123.50 and then the bid dropped to $115. Mentally, I wasn't really prepared to lose like $5,000 in two minutes. Why I immediately bought more is confounding. I guess I had lots of confidence that the stock would bounce at it's 50-day moving average.

It was extremely tempting to sell it all after it ran up to $127. But I was good and just gave the market dribs and drabs of my position all the way up until $132. It was my second best stock of the day, I net just under $4500 in the trade.

Here's another crazy one I got involved in only with far fewer shares.



I mean, what the fuck? Seriously!

I got long at around $106 with 400 shares. I sold half before $107. The other 200 I sold over $112. Then, to be piggish and greedy, I got short at $112.50 and covered around $109. It was wild.

But as the volatility can work in your favor, it can just as easily work against you. For example, I lost $1900 in TNH today playing it with 300 share positions.



And then there's TFX...



Stewie called this one out. These "Streetsmack" plays, or parabolic short scalp plays have been working like a charm recently. However, I got involved with TFX a little too early and perhaps too heavy at around $74.50. I had to cover around $76.25 for a big loss.

Then I got short again at around $77.50. Thing is that I got short less when it actually started to work. At one point I was down a few thousand in the stock and managed to trim my loss to -$1403. I'm short 400 into the weekend. The only thing that would drive this stock up 15 points in this environment is a fund having to unwind a short position... that's just a guess of course. I'd love to get anyone else's opinion.

Anyway, I just hope I don't become further fuel for that squeeze on Monday. We'll see.

Meanwhile, there was loads to watch all day. The fertilizer stocks (besides, ahem... TNH) were strong. Lots of money seemed to be moving there. The financials also bounced. In fact, my best stock of the day was AMG.



I was in and out of him aggressively all day long, trading over 22,000 shares of it alone. All of my profits came on the long side, most in the bounce between 11:00 and 12.

We'll see where this market takes us. Based on some of the wacky moves I witnessed today I feel like there are some funds being forced to cover positions. I expect more bad news to come out on the financial sector. I mean, all the banks and brokerages seem to be hiding the truth from themselves, their investors and the media. That doesn't sound good.

And I don't put much thought to the market when I'm not trading it, so I don't have any clue about what the Fed move means today, throwing dollars at the market like that. It smacks of desperation, that's all I can read. I mean, 3 moves in one day like that is "unprecedented?" That can't be good, right? They threw more liquidity on the market today than they have since right after 9/11. Odd, if everything is just fine, no?

(Note to Wallstreakers: I couldn't get on after 3pm or so...)

Anyway, here's the stats:
P&L, $10,528
Best, AMG, $6492
Worst, TNH, -$1892

shares traded, 173,000
44 stocks traded, 25 winners, 19 losers
708 trades

Virtual Office, $11,131. Dow, -31.14, 13,239.54.

Me, $10,528 on 173,000 shares traded.
OBAT, $446 on 6000 shares traded.
Bubs, $157 on 900 shares traded.
Misstrade, $0 on 2000 shares traded.
Denarii, no trades.
HPT, no trades.
Evolution, vacation, no trades.

Wow. Well, I guess I provided the market with a lot of liquidity today...

Most of the Voers were on the sidelines today. For those who dipped their toes into the market, it was complete lunacy.

The story today isn't one of the indexes. Take a look at some of the individual stock moves today. They were insane. I mean, I hope someone can help explain these moves eventually. I'll show some graphs on my daily post, but I'm assuming some funds were just unwinding positions and that led to massive moves in some stocks.

Anyway, let's see what Monday brings. The FED dumped some dollars on the market today. These are strange days. Be careful with your long term positions. There's no reason to be a hero.

Quick Note To DiTech

You can stop running those damn commercials now. Thanks.

Complete Wackiness

I caught both stocks well. Meanwhile, there are two songs I can't stop listening to right now.

Dedicated to the market, "Slippi."



And, dedicated to the financial companies... "Not A Problem."

Wallstreak Posts Embedded

Because today will be a little nuts, I'm embedding my Wallstreak posts over on the right sidebar. They are delayed, so don't buy or sell anything based on them, but I thought it could be interesting to follow along.

It'll be there for at least today. If you find it interesting, I'll leave it up. Lemme know.

UPDATE: I took it down because it was slowing down the site.

Blood On The (Wall) Streets

Europe down 4%, everyone on CNBC now thinks we're headed for hell in a handbasket. Peter Shiff finally gaining some respect... it may be time for a bounce at some point today. Not "the final, coast is clear" bounce, but expect a couple of tradable rallies here or there.

I kind of remember Mark Haines saying it wasn't so bad yesterday.... hmmm.

Oh, look who showed up to play in the market today!



Be careful today. If you can't follow stop-loss rules if you lose a lot, then automate it or don't trade today.

Good luck. It will be busy so this may be my last post until things chill out.

UPDATE: Wasn't it just a couple of days ago that CFC said they had 187 billion in liquidity? Now they're freaked out? Oh wait... someone says the market is "overreacting" to their 10-Q... move along, everything is fine! CFC to $100! God Bless America!

And by the way, who can ever trust Goldman again after that bullshit from Wednesday afternoon. Rumor that their Quant fund is going under and the market drops 200 points from its high. They come out and are like, "Shucks, what's everyone freaked out about? The Quant fund is fine!" So the market rallies back up.... However, yesterday, they said another one of their $700 million funds is going belly-up... talk about a lie of omission!