Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"

Dedicated to market volume...

Market Snoozefest

Apparently, Christopher Columbus wasn't a trader.

Not even a billion shares traded... what is this, the AMEX?

Anyway, I'm going to make this really short. Today, I was given a gift.

See that big green bar at around 10:00am? Just before that happened I said to my fellow Wallstreakers, something like, "I like that KMT. If it breaks the highs from Friday, I bet it will run." The fact that I was ultimately completely wrong doesn't matter. For 3 minutes, I was right. And I was smart enough to take my profits and run. Now if I had only been smart enough to short it then I could have made some good money.

Anyway, I also made decent money shorting BAP and TSL.

On the downside, my biggest loser of the day was WNR for $66 dollars. I wish I could keep my losers in line like that everyday... it makes your winners count that much more.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $839
Best, KMT, $413
Worst, WNR, -$66

12,000 shares traded.
15 stocks traded, 6 winners, 9 losers.
69 trades.

Covered 50 JRJC @ $35.04.

I took half back. It's looking like it could bounce here for a day or two. If it does but stalls out in the low $40s, I'll reshort. I just didn't like the way it's selling off on low volume and I had some good profits so I took some.

Here's what the swing account looks like:

300 DSL

100 NMX

75 LDK

-50 JRJC

Virtual Office, $1750. Dow, -22.28, 14,043.73.

Me, $839 on 12,000 shares traded.
Evolution, $737 on 30,200 shares traded.
Misstrade, $694 on 2800 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $245 on 9 contracts traded.
OBAT, $128 on 8600 shares traded.
Tapeworm, $45 on 2 contracts traded.
Bubs, no trades. A day at the dentist.
Momojuicing, -$938 on 12,000 shares traded.

I think today may be the lowest volume day of the year. I know it's a holiday, but I'm beginning to feel that we'll never see 2 billion shares again. Damn it's been quiet.

Anyway, not much to say today. The shippers moved a lot, the chinese stocks moved a lot, the solars moved... but really it was tough and choppy.

Not a bad day for the VO all things considered. Let's see if we get some volume back tomorrow.

Looks like we traded about 850,000,000 shares today. Yawn.

Bought LDK @ $38.80

I mean, really, what gives?

A disgruntled guy leaves the company makes all these allegations and the stock loses half it's value? Then Barron's jumps on the bandwagon.

What's an investor to do?

Well, I bought 75 shares at $38.80. That should underscore how confident I am that everything will turn out just fine for this small Chinese solar company.

Or, I'm just guessing it's way oversold and due for some type of small bounce. I'll add to the position if it can show some signs of life. I'll sell when either the sun burns out or they discover the oceans are really made of oil.

So for now my swing account reads:

300 DSL
100 NMX
75 LDK
-100 JRJC

New Reserve Display Requirements

Last week, the NYSE implemented a new rule that Ray over at Hybridtalk posted on.

You can check his post here.

From a daytrading perspective, it doesn't sound good.

If I understand it correctly, it means that if a customer wished to execute say, a 10,000 share buy order at a specific price, that they don't have to display the full order, instead, they can choose to only display a portion of that order (that would be shown on the tape) and hold the rest in "reserve." Essentially, this protects the customer from tipping his hand and letting people to trade off of his order.

Sounds great, if you're a robot or a huge institution with larger orders to execute. However, for the small fries and humans, it sounds like we're getting the shaft again.

This seems to be the overriding theme of the Hybrid Market since it's inception. Great for the large institutions, bad for the little guys. And really, since I'm sure the overriding percentage of the daily trade volume is coming from the mutual funds and large brokerage houses, I can't blame the NYX for this kind of stuff. However, that doesn't mean I'll like it.

I guess the days of seeing a huge market short stepping down or watching a huge bid "step up" are over. It's time to just get used to the fact that the tape will always read 1x1. No one is going to show the size of their orders if they don't have to.

Goodbye market transparency, hello robots.

Sold POT on Friday

So amidst my smoking on Friday I sold the last 50 shares of my POT position at $106.79.

My swing account currently reads:

300 DSL
100 NMX
-100 JRJC

I made over $800 in the swing account on Friday. Even with some mild losses today, I've more than doubled the money ($2000) that I originally started this account with at the beginning of September.

I'm really pissed that I sold out of WNR though... it's really running now.

The Obvious Economic Call Of The Day

This from the market wizards over at Briefing.com. Meanwhile, full disclosure, I hate Briefing because their customer service is awful. Still, I take in some of their free "analysis." However, as Dick Green (what a name) proves with the following quote, you get what you pay for:

"The outlook is good so long as the economy does not enter recession."

Thanks, Dick.

Poll Closed, Deathmatch Over

"Who will win the deathmatch?" Or, in other words, will JRJC go up or down?

For the 15, or 65% of you who knew that in the end the man known as "Dinosaur Trader" had to beat on the man known as the Ragin Cajun, you can share in my glory.

For the 8, or 34% of you who voted against me I'll assume that you were having a bad day when you voted or that you're new to the blog and didn't realize what was going on.

JRJC is gapping lower again this morning, firmly below $39 now, so my $42 short feels pretty good here. If on the other hand you had bought at $39.65 you'd be thinking about eating corndogs for a full week.

Anyway, I need to talk to "the Fly" to see if I can borrow his "internet laser beam" next time I engage in a deathmatch. It would have been much more satisfying to "melt" Ragin's blog. Instead, he's still over there, plunking away, telling unsuspecting readers that JRJC is a good buy and wooing future employers.

NOTE: Ragin Cajun runs a 4th tier blog.

The Black Kids, "I'm Not Gonna Teach You"

Early morning low-fi. I know I'm still a bit fuzzy.

Virtual Office, -$1411, Dow, +91.70, 14,066.01.

Momojuicing, $867 on 8400 shares traded.
Bubs, $554 on 2700 shares traded.
Evolution, $443 on 41,200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $18 on 1 contract traded.
Misstrade, no trades.
Denarii, -$304 on 3800 shares traded.
OBAT, -$339 on 18,600 shares traded.
Tapeworm, -$390 on 6 contracts traded.
Me, -$2260 on 10,000 (?) shares traded.

So anyway, as you might expect, given my performance and then the lunatic weekend that followed, I wasn't too eager to come back up into my office and turn these computers on. Hence, the extremely late VO posting.

Weird getting a VO first thing on a Monday morning.

Columbus day too... I wonder if it will be slow today.

Since I never posted a daily post for Friday's performance, I'll sum it up like this. I got short UBB, lost a good amount and between it and FXI got pushed over my max loss limit ($1000) on the day. So I called up my company and asked for $500 more in allowable losses. They agreed and I immediately short more UBB and got squeezed quickly for another point. At that point, I basically covered near the high of the day, around $145. It all happened very quickly.