Radiohead, "Sit Down, Stand Up"

Slower Than Humid Southern Cities

Man... just over a billion shares. What the freaking heck?

A couple of weeks ago I thought we were waiting for the FED meeting to get back to normal trading volume. Now, it's waiting for "The Big Employment Data" tomorrow. Next week I'm sure it will be "we're waiting for earnings season to begin." In short, volume is leaving this market. It's all apparently headed to China. Anyone know where to surf in China or is the sea there a liquefied vat of poison?

Anyway...

I more or less took some profits early today and ran with them. I detailed my DSX trade in an earlier post. Of course, I managed to churn some of my profits from that trade away, but still it was my best stock of the day as I managed to net $958 in it.

My other good trade of the day was a short in UBB.



Here are my trades in UBB:

9:32:32 Buy 200 @ $135.79. (200)
9:35:53 Sell 100 @ $136.43. (100)
9:36:00 Sell 100 @ $136.41. (flat)
9:36:58 Short 300 @ 137. (-300)
9:37:14 Buy 100 @ $137.24. (-200)
9:37:28 Buy 100 @ $137.28. (-100)
9:38:05 Short 200 @ $137.17. (-300)
9:46:33 Buy 100 @ $135.85. (-200)
9:49:59 Buy 200 @ $134.46. (flat)
10:13:01 Short 200 @ $135.87. (-200)
10:14:15 Buy 200 @ $135.66. (flat)

Net profits, $765.

So my back is shot. I'm getting away from this computer for awhile to lay down.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $1564
Best, UBB $958
Worst, DSL -$205

12,800 shares traded.
10 stocks traded, 6 winners, 4 losers.
61 trades.

Virtual Office, $5191. Dow, +6.26, 13,974.31.

Misstrade, $2700 on 6000 shares traded.
Me, $1564 on 12,800 shares traded.
Momojuicing, $483 on 6000 shares traded.
OBAT, $362 on 6000 shares traded.
Evolution, $197 on 42,000 shares traded.
Akalawoo, no trades.
Bubs, -$115 on 3000 shares traded.

You know volume is light when I start challenging fellow traders to "deathmatch" trades via stock message boards... sigh.

We traded, 1,100,122,000 shares today. That's like, nothing. A sigh in the markets.

Anyway, the consensus over at Wallstreak today was that the market was quiet because everyone is waiting on the eco-data tomorrow. Of course, my guess is that CNBC formed that consensus and repeated it over and over again but I don't know that for sure because happily, I didn't have that particular channel on today.

Meanwhile, DIE JRJC, DIE!!! Go vote in the poll.

Stock Gender

Are the stocks you trade male or female? Momojuicing asks the tough questions on a sleepy day in the market.

Swing Trades

Okay, since I was AWOL for most of yesterday, I didn't have a chance to update my swing trading.

On a general note, swing trading is going well. Though I started small, I've almost doubled the $2000 I started with at the beginning of September... and that's after getting smashed in QID into the FED cut.

Anyway, here are the updates:

Yesterday, I short 300 ANW @ $37.21. I covered 100 @ $37.18 and 100 @ $36.24. The last 100 I plan on letting ride.

I covered my LAZ short. 100 @ $45.22 and 100 @ 46.08.

Today I added to my DSL long. 100 shares @ $59.09.

Today I short 100 shares of JRJC. 100 shares @ $42.03.

So for now, my account reads:

-100 ANW
-100 JRJC
50 POT
100 NMX
300 DSL

UPDATE: I covered my last 100 shares of ANW @ $34.72... I guess I need to work on patience... but really, I'm happy with that drop for the day. Ahead of employment numbers I don't want too much exposure.

Complete Chaos

Let me tell you, if you've never witnessed four, 2 and 3 year old children fighting over 1 chair (in this instance, a highchair, they all wanted to be the "baby") you have thus far missed out on a "tiny hell" that parenthood can throw your way.

Congratufuckinglations.

The "playgroup" that descended on my house yesterday just after the close was, in short, my worst kind of nightmare. Normally, I can be jovial and have fun with the kids. But yesterday, my plan was to get the heck out of here and head down to the beach since we have a great 4-5 foot swell running. However, I knew I was in trouble when at 4:01 I heard a male voice downstairs... a "Dad" had brought a kid... what the? And that meant I was compelled to stay.

It's like, you can't leave another guy in a house full of mothers and screaming children. It's part of the code... you just don't do it or you'll end up living in a trailer park someday with 11 red-headed step children and an ex-stripper as a wife.

A poorly aging ex-stripper. With tattoos in bad places that aren't as "taut" as they once were.

Anyway, that was yesterday. And the complete chaos that whooshed into my quiet and humble home kept me from the surf and from blogging.

Thus, I woke an hour before the sun to make sure I'd get some waves in this morning.

It was worth the lost sleep.

The waves were beautiful. It was a cloudy and gray morning here and 4 and 5 foot sets were rolling in from the mist. There was one guy out when I got there, an old guy who rides a beautiful wooden board. He was way outside, but I quickly realized that that was where I had to be to avoid getting rolled by the larger sets that were occasionally running through.

I had the best ride of my life today. I was straddling my board, bobbing around when I saw a set forming out in the gray. The winds here are calm, so it's been hard to really pick out the waves with ease... you need the winds to be a little offshore to make spotting the waves easier, but there was no mistaking the lines I saw forming out there.

The first one came and I let it through, the old guy jumped on it and I watched as he disappeared on the other side of the wave, the only thing visible to me was the churning water behind the break. That's one of the cool visions of surfing... most often you have the perspective of the waves breaking before you. When you're outside, you can see the back of the waves and the way it looks after they break. It's hard to describe, but you see the wave crest and then once it breaks it turns white and then the whiteness grows and spreads out into the surrounding water.

Anyway, I had only a second to appreciate the beauty of that first wave when I was picked up by the second. I barely paddled and got right up on it, very high on the wave and caught a nice 5 foot drop into the belly of the wave. The funny thing is that normally the break is a left but here I took a hard right to ride down the face and then did a left bottom turn to ride the wave in. It was a powerful wave with a good push and I must have been on it for a couple hundred yards because it was powerful enough to reconnect me with the inside waves. It was an amazing ride.

When the wave died, I laid back down on my board and started to paddle back out. With that first paddle, I also did a slight turn, to move the nose of my board into the incoming waves. That's when I felt the pull. My upper back simply gave out.

So, as I type this, I have an icepack strapped to my chair. My back is sore. It's not spasming anymore (it was no easy feat to paddle back in, luckily because my ride was so huge, I was only 50 or so yards from the beach) but it's uncomfortable. And I have to say, that after a ride like that and knowing that this swell should continue for at least one more day, that I'm really hoping it's feeling better by tomorrow morning so I can get in there again.

In March and April when my back was out, it was a nuisance, but no huge deal because I wasn't doing anything active anyway... now however, I find this injury to be completely frustrating... I just want to get out and surf again.

Anyway, so I got back to the desk really late. I made some great short trades this morning, most notably in DSX (the shippers tanked) and UBB.



I'm up nicely. Now, I'm going to lay down with ice, continue reading "The Dogs of Winter" and try to heal as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, I hope my daughter is the only toddler I see all day.