Lou Reed, "Perfect Day"

I'm in this video. See if you can pick me out.

Perfect Day

I woke this morning a little depressed that I wouldn't be surfing. Getting up early to go surfing has been a great routine. Wake before the sun, drive to my friend's house, and then drive east to the break as the sun rises. I've seen many colorful sunrises these last few weeks.

So I crawled out of bed a little later and did some extra research. With the CFC and BAC news, I knew the market would be gapping up. I hate trading the open when the market gaps up. Why? Because I often feel all bullish and buy a bunch of stuff pre-open and then lose 25 cents over and over again.

Perhaps it's because I feel fairly strongly that this recent move up is a bull trap, I don't know, I decided to fade the gap up. It worked pretty well. There were two exceptions, I got long FED and DSL at the open because I knew both have large short interests and so I figured they would squeeze on the CFC news. Great logic right? FED worked like a charm but DSL spanked me. So much for logic.

Anyway, after those plays I started looking for shorts. My best of the day was in LDK, a solar company.

The rest of the solars were down or weaker than LDK, so I threw in a short for 500 shares and was filled at $45.20. That was the best part of the trade. My covers were bad. I took 200 off at $45.10 (I was nervous, okay?) 100 at $44.60, 100 at $44.03 and the final hundred at $43.39. I think when things heat up again I'm going to increase my position size a bit so that I can cover a chunk of my positions early and let more ride.

Anyway, I had a bunch of other good shorts too. RWT, AGU, BID and OMG. The problem with all of these positions was that I only threw a few hundred shares of each out there so I didn't really capitalize like I could have. But I wanted to take it easy... heck, I should be on vacation right now!

So by 10:45 I was done trading. I went with my wife and daughter to a natural history museum, a puppet show and out to lunch. After lunch I got a call from my friend saying that the winds had shifted in our favor and I went out to surf for the afternoon. Then, when I got home we had a good friend over for dinner. All in all, it was as great day.

Again, sorry for the lazy and infrequent posting. All will be back to normal here after Labor Day.
Here's the stats:

P&L, $1008
Best, LDK, $397
Worst, DSL, -$197

13,400 shares traded.
14 stocks traded, 9 winners, 5 losers.
81 trades.

Virtual Office, $1567. Dow, -0.25, 13235.88.

Me, $1008 on 13,400 shares traded.
OBAT, $248 on 12,800 shares traded.
Misstrade, $118 on 600 shares traded.
HPT, $100 on 305 contracts traded.
Evolution, $43 on 28,000 shares traded.
Denarii, $30 on 400 shares traded.
Bubs, $20 on 900 shares traded.

Wow, look at all of that green! Everyone reported and everyone made money. Always nice.

The big news of the day was the Bank Of America investment in Countrywide. However, equally newsworthy has to be the way the stock reversed off of its highs to close at its lows.

Volume continues to be low. On the NYSE today we traded 1,375,722,000 shares. Since I think volume is so important, I'll start posting it here everyday.

Anyway, sorry for the late post. I was in the water...

NOTE: Daily post will also be late as we're having dinner guests.

My Site Slow?

Have any of you noticed slowness since I put all this new Feedburner crap on the site? If so let me know. It seems slower to me...

No Surf, Trade, Some Humor

Winds are just messing up the waves right now. I actually wrote a fairly long post last night about the waves and currents but it's not ready for the blog yet. Too sloppy... like the surf.

So this was the first morning in a week where I didn't wake at 5am to go to the beach. While I missed getting in the water first thing, I feel I benefited greatly from the extra sleep. Winds will shift tonight and I'll be back in the water tomorrow.

As for trade, that BAC investment in CFC is huge. If we can close today with good gains on strong volume, I may have to change my tune about the direction of the market.

Meanwhile, the video below should act as a warning to those of you who pay too much attention to the market and not enough attention to the world around you. Kind of... not really actually. It's just a Monty Python thing.

Enjoy "The Dull Life Of A City Stockbroker."