Pink Floyd, "Money"

Bull Run

Ah well, get out of the way of the bulls (again).

I'm ready to buy stock again. Bernanke cured me of my bearishness. I'm more convinced than ever that this game is completely rigged in the bull's favor and that really, it's a big waste of time trying to short the market... at least longer term.

They always save the bulls.

Anyway, I'm shot. Oddly enough, I made my best trade of the day in the morning... on the short side in LAZ.



After the LEH numbers, all the financial stocks gapped higher. This provided and excellent and easy opportunity to get short. I got short LAZ in the high $41 area and covered when it slammed below $41 at around 9:45.

It's funny looking at that graph. I mean, why didn't I get massively long the stock at 2:15, right? I had to make things difficult by being all bearish. Silly me!

Anyway, after the FED pasted the bears, I got long UBB and made good money there too. It was hard not to...



Of course, I was still stupid and gave back money trying to short HXM... why would I try to short when the FED cut 50bp? I really, truly thought the market would panic on that news and that after that huge run that we'd pull back and go negative.

I really thought that and it crippled me from making huge money today. I was skittish in all of my longs and looking short!

This really strikes home the point about being neutral-minded when trading the markets. Look at the graphs and let them tell you what is happening in the market. Get any bullishness or bearishness out of your head and just trade.

Anyway, here's the stats.

P&L, $2757
Best, LAZ, $1023
Worst, HXM, -$432

47,200 shares traded.
18 stocks traded, 12 winners, 6 losers.
180 trades.

Virtual Office, $6156. Dow, +334.02, 13737.44.

Me, $2757 on 47,200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $1785 on 4 contracts.
Misstrade, $1260 on 6500 shares traded.
Bubs, $469 on 2600 shares traded.
Evolution, vacation.
OBAT, vacation.
Tapeworm, -$35 on 4 contracts.
Denarii, -$75 on 400 shares traded.

Has anyone else noticed that the higher the market goes, the shriller Maria's voice gets?

Clearly, today was a crazy fucked up bail out of the banking industry. 50 basis points, Yay! I mean, people make bad loans and the FED comes to clean up the mess. God Bless America.

Anyway, it was a good day for the VO. There was no "pullback." If you bought at 2:15 and held, you made good money.

Tomorrow should be great. In fact, the next 10 years should be good. Dow 20,000 here we come!

Also, if you are a NYSE trader, please see my earlier post from today about the new fees.

Meanwhile, my daily post will be late. I need to get out of here for awhile.

The FED Hates Short Sellers...

Wow. Well, so I covered my shorts and got long. Party on.

HPT Leaves VO For "Personal Reasons"

I'm not going to do a huge public "firing" of HPT in the mold of what "the Fly" does over at his site.

I'll just say that the intense pressure and whirlwind competitiveness of the VO finally caved this man psychologically, thereby causing him to blow up his account.

HPT leaves on amicable terms. When asked by a reporter why he was leaving he said, "to spend more time with my family."

Everyone at the VO wishes him well and hopes that, should we need a token futures trader again, that he will rehabilitate his account and be ready to do battle again on the "killing field" that is the VO.

Godspeed, HPT.

New NYSE Fees

Simply put, these fees could be a "gamechanger."

Here is the press release detailing the new fees that go into effect on October 1st. They were brought to my attention by "Jawbreaker" via the comments section of this post.

Here's the thing I don't quite understand. If you route your order to the NYSE and "take liquidity" away from the market, you get hit with a .08 fee per 100 shares. I need a good explanation of what "taking liquidity" away means. If it means using a market order, I'm screwed.

There is a silver lining. The key is figuring out how to exploit it. If you "provide liquidity" via NYSE ARCA, you get a .25 rebate per 100 shares traded.

I need to know exactly what type of orders to place, (market or limit) and exactly where to route them (NYSE, ARCA, other ECNs) in order to avoid the "monster fee" and take advantage of the "petty rebate."

I trade from home. If anyone works for a place where they are discussing these fees and how we can avoid them/take advantage of them, please inform us all via the comments section.

Meanwhile, if we can't figure this stuff out, October will be a little bit like this:

LEH Trading Up Pre-Open

I haven't even looked at the numbers yet, but it looks like I'm going to get squeezed like a schoolteacher in my LAZ short.



UPDATE: It's all good. Financials gapped up and sold off. I short a good amount of LAZ and made 40 cents. I short UBB and ITU as well. A good way to start the day, I'll probably take it real easy up to the 2:15 number now.