Bonnie Prince Billy, "The Way"

Beautiful song, mellow video of some guy surfing.

Meanwhile, the guy with the camera annoys me too...

Volatility Has Dried Up

Yeah, it's feeling more like August now. In the market at least... what's with this weather? 57 degrees? Damn!

Anyway, I lost some money today. I never explained yesterday either, so I'll start with that.





See that second 5-minute bar? Well I got short around $104.50. The stock spiked up to $105 on like 300 shares. I was pissed and so I doubled my short. Then, it spiked up to $106.


Booyah.


So I hit my $1000 loss limit for the day. I called my company and asked for $500 more. They obliged. I got short again... initially, it worked, but then it ran to a new high and stopped me out up there. So, I lost another $500 and then the stock tanked.


Of course.


Anyway, I basically did all the wrong things on the trade. It set off all kind of alarms here and I came into today confident that I wouldn't do anything stupid again. However...




See how AG ran up to $40? Well the other stocks in the sector were weak (and AG is no leader) so I got short at $40. I covered at $40.30. I was pissed and then pulled a revenge trade and got long. I got out at $39.80. Ugly all around folks. I lost almost $500 in the stock.

Basically, my head is out of the game. I was supposed to leave for vacation on Sunday but cancelled and hung around in case Hurricane Dean hit the oil rigs and the US. Meanwhile, it didn't. So while I'm here physically, mentally I think I'm on vacation. Instead of beating myself up over these last 2 days, I'm going to focus on the last few weeks and take some time. Perhaps I'll try a few swing trades or take only a couple of longer term trades each day. We'll see.

Here's the stats:

P&L, -$640
Best, UBB, $241
Worst, AG, -$464

shares traded, 38,000
24 stocks traded, 11 winners, 13 losers.
244 trades.

Virtual Office, -$443. Dow, -31.70, 13089.65.

Evolution, $548 on 37,400 shares traded.
HPT, $400 on 75 contracts traded.
Bubs, $241 on 1800 shares traded.
Denarii, -$2 on 1600 shares traded.
OBAT, -$375 on 13,000 shares traded.
MT, -$615 on 3000 shares traded.
Me, -$640 on 38,000 shares traded.

Another red day for the VO marking our second in as many days.

Once the FED cut that discount window rate the volatility dried right up. So for the time being, it's smart to be more careful with your trades. You can't expect the big moves that we had last week and the week before. You have to pick your spots better... and probably pick fewer spots.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'll be taking it very easy from here until after Labor Day barring anything insane happening. That said, I'll still post the VO every day. I'll also probably take one or two trades a day just to keep myself in the game a little bit.

So while posting will dry up with the market volume here, it won't be completely dead.

Volume Has Dried Up

Yesterday, according to the IBD, the volume on the NYSE declined 38% from Friday's level. Today, I think we'll probably decline another 20% from yesterday's light levels... it's slow and choppy and time to either trade extremely lightly or just take off until after Labor Day.

That little piece of wisdom cost me $2500 over the last 2 days. Stocks are dead.

So here's the deal. I'll continue to post the VO each day however, don't expect much more stock news from my site for the next couple of weeks. I don't plan on trading much unless something wacky happens.

Instead, I'll be outside. I'll be surfing a lot and spending a lot of time with my daughter. She's starting nursery school in the middle of September. She's my first child and in a way, I'm a little sad that she's already off to "school." More to the point, I'm downright bothered by it.

Imagine how I'll be when she gets her first boyfriend.

Anyway, so if I post anything here it will be more like, "around the house" or "my history" posts.

Please don't let my feelings on the market effect your trade. Evolution and HPT are on a nice little streak and OBAT continues being quietly green on most days. I'm sure there is money to be made. I think that after the last few weeks I'm just a little burnt out. In fact, I was burnt out before the last few weeks. The last few weeks I was simply on overdrive.

See you.

Back To Reality

I'm happy that in the midst of all my money-making in the last few weeks that I didn't lose clarity and think:

a) I'm a genius

or

b) The Hybrid Market isn't so bad after all...

Basically, I'm still an idiot and I still think the Hybrid Market sucks. Sure, maybe it's okay when everyone thinks the financial system is going to collapse, but when people relax, it sucks.

Anyway, after yesterday I'm taking it much easier today. The mistake I made was trading like it was last week. However, things have chilled significantly. I can forget about the multi point trades with size and get back to hoping for and taking smaller pieces of pie.

Back to the grind in other words...