More On The "Big Day" Or...Irrational Fears

Okay... I've put the trading behind me. I mean, I made so many trades that it's hard to remember each one specifically.

I remember more the mood of the moment... like, "The market is going to zero, why aren't I short?" And then later, "The market is going unched... this stock looks overbought but, I'll buy more!"

Let's start at the beginning.

I woke at 4:45 to go surfing. I picked up my friend at 5:10 and drove the 25 minutes to the break. When we got there, the sky was gray, it was misty and cold and the surf was sloppy. There was an old guy in the parking lot waxing his long board. I've seen him at least 10 times before. I said "Good morning!" to him and he didn't even bother to look up. We decided not to get in the water.

To be honest, I'm developing an irrational fear of sharks. If conditions aren't perfect, I don't go in. My friend just thinks I'm picky about the surf, but really, I'm afraid of sharks. Now that I've gone and admitted that to the blogosphere, I'm bound to be eaten by a Great White soon. The story is too perfect. Perhaps I should just delete that line... no. It's too late. It's fated to happen.

"Obscure Blogger With Irrational Fear Of Sharks Eaten By Great White." Sigh...

Anyway...

So we went and got breakfast. Egg sandwiches and coffee and then we headed back to his place to eat them out on the porch. His wife and children were just waking up. I asked his 3 year old daughter if I could have one of her ears since she has two. She said no.

We ate our sandwiches and I said that I would have to put off my vacation for next week. The market had finally been giving me opportunity and I had to take advantage. He said, "Yeah, when it's quiet again, you can just fly somewhere."

Little did my friend know that I have an irrational fear of flying. However, this I shared with him. I told them that I never flew when I was younger. The first time I ever flew anywhere was just a few years ago and that was to Japan. I didn't realize that I didn't like to fly until we were halfway across Canada.

They had that map up that showed where you were in relation to where you were going. A little dotted line showed the route the plane was taking. For some reason, I was looking at that map and seeing that we were going to fly over the Bering Sea I immediately developed an irrational fear of the Bering Sea. I told my wife, "I think the plane is going to go down into the Bering Sea... it's going to be cold." She told me I was nuts and that I should listen to some music, drink some water, and apply some chapstick.

Long story short, we made it over the Bering Sea. However, on the return trip home when we were directly over the Bering Sea, I had a panic attack. This is all true. Anyway, so I don't like to fly.

Wow. I'm tired. I had other plans for this post, I promise. Need to sleep though.

Fatboy Slim, "Praise You"

A party song... forgive me.

A Big Day

At around 2:30pm, I thought it was 11:00am... no joke.

It's hard to begin this post. As you can imagine, I feel a little light-headed right now... almost shellshocked.

Look at the above graph of the Dow. I was long between 15k and 20k of stock at that point right when it decided to drop 200 points. I mean, I was in a bunch of stocks... I had no choice but to sell, because trust me, at 3:00pm, it certainly looked like we were going to test the lows of the day, we were only 50 points away on the Dow...

I liquidated every single one of my positions. And I called my wife up to ask her if I had enough "buffer" to trade the rest of the day. She gave me a big smile and said that I was doing fine.

I now know that I was up about $11,000 when she checked at 3pm. I'm pretty sure I lost close to $10,000 between 2pm and 3pm... with all of those positions, it was hard not to.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I should do this chronologically or what. Here's my best stock of the day, HXM.



Here are my trades from the last hour of the day in this stock:

15:17 Buy 500 @ 45.97 (500)
15:22 Buy 300 @ 46 (800)
15:24 Sell 100 @ 45.89 (700)
15:24 Sell 200 @ 45.88 (500)
15:27 Buy 300 @ 46.14 (800)
15:28 Buy 400 @ 46.26 (1200)
15:28 Buy 300 @ 46.41 (1500)
15:33 Buy 300 @ 46.56 (1800)
15:35 Sell 300 @ 47.13 (1500)
15:38 Sell 300 @ 46.82 (1200)
15:45 Sell 500 @ 46.86 (700)
15:57 Sell 200 @ 48.35 (500)
15:58 Sell 200 @ 49.14 (300)
15:59 Sell 300 @ 50 (flat)

This is less skill and more like, being in the right place at the right time. In fact, I'd love to have those 500 shares I sold at $46.86 back...

My second best stock of the day was PCP. I made $3900 in him. Again, mostly in the last hour. I had 500 shares for the entire move.



And then, there's UBB...



I traded 26,000 shares of UBB alone today. I basically built up a really nice position for the run from $92 to $100. Of course, I didn't hold it all... I was selling on the way up. But here's the part that sucked. I never saw it trade $100... and really, the next thing I know it was trading $96 again. 4 points gone in less than 5 minutes. I added at around the $96 level and had over 2000 shares when it plummeted down to $94. I got out, cursing. I had just given between $5,000 and $10,000 away in the stock in very short order.

However, I did buy back, quite aggressively, though not until it traded back up to $96. I was too battered in the stock to be buying when it was $93... at that point, I was sure it was headed back to the lows. That's about the same time that I called Judy in to check my P&L. I was really dejected at that point because I knew I had just thrown thousands away. In fact, and I know this may seem crazy now, but I asked her to check because I thought I might be close to negative on the day.

Anyway, while these were my 3 big winners of the day the real deal is that I had 12 winners for over $1000 today while my biggest loser of the day was $761. That's how the numbers added up like they did.

So TBSI was my worst. The reason? It just didn't bounce! I mean, it did have a move from $26 to $28... but I didn't catch it. Luckily, I never had more than 400 shares of the stock. I got chopped multiple times in him.



Sorry this post is lame but I'm shot. I'm walking away from the computer now and going to get dinner with friends. Perhaps after dinner I'll be able to reflect some more. Right now, my head is still spinning.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $28077
Best, HXM, $4239
Worst, TBSI, -$761

shares traded, 211,400
49 stocks traded, 33 winners, 16 losers
903 trades

NOTE: If you haven't already, please vote in my poll. Thanks!

Virtual Office, $32,581. Dow, -15.69, 12,845.78.

Me, $28,077 on 211,400 shares traded.
HPT, $2200 on 175 contracts traded.
Bubs, $1057 on 2900 shares traded.
OBAT, $723 on 12,200 shares traded.
Evolution, $524 on 58,200 shares traded.
Misstrade, no stock trades.

Wow.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the Dow rallied 300 points in the last hour of the day.

Needless to say, the market is freaking crazy right now.

Well, hey, why should the fun stop now? Just because the market ripped here doesn't mean "sub-prime" goes away.

We could get rate cuts, hurricanes, who the heck knows?

The VO kicked ass today. Bubs had his best day ever and I had my best day since the heady days of the year 2000.

NOTE: Oh, and for those who voted the Dow would hit 12,500 before 14,000 you can't declare victory just yet... the low of the day was 12,518...

"Someone Set Us Up The Bomb"

"You have no chance to survive. Make your time..."

Dow And Dinosaur Getting Smacked

Blogger not allowing me to post pictures right now... but Dow is down over 300.

I have no shorts. Instead, I've chosen to nibble at longs and I keep getting slaughtered. It's a bloodbath. Thank goodness for the risk manager.

We'll see how this ends. I'm just trying to stay in the game long enough today so I can catch the bounce.

The entire market is getting flushed.

Clarence, "The Rodent Of Stock Market Volatility"

Somehow, he eluded our traps and is back, scampering around on the floor of the exchange.



Check out the VIX. It's a traders market. However, that said, there's a good chance I'm a little smoked right now. I got wildly bullish just after 10 and took some losses. It'll be a day of big gains and big losses. It's gonna be tough.

No Waves

At least not in the ocean. A swell is suppossed to come in for the weekend, but the water will be too crowded for me then.

So we went down, looked at the water, watched a couple of guys paddling around, sipped coffee and swapped 9/11 stories. Fun!

Anyway, more bad news this morning. Just about everything on my screen looks to be gapping down. However, if I were a betting man, I'd bet on a bounce at some point today.