Democratic Debate

Only one person on the stage talked sense.

Meanwhile, after watching it, it's hard to know why Hillary is so far ahead in the polls.

Plastic Bag Ban in NYC?

A refreshing piece of news? Check it out, via Buzzfeed.

Depeche Mode, "Clean"

Nothing to introduce tonight... just some good ole nostalgia.



Off to work on my Halloween post. A true ghost story.

Shippers Sink Market

First of all, let's give it up for WCG. It's not often that you get to see a stock go from $125 to $22 in 4 trading days.



And yes, I lost a little money in it today.

Today was an odd day. For the first time in a long while, I didn't mess with the open. I had no feelings about which way stocks "should" be going and I had no confidence that if I bought something it would go up or that if I sold something, it would go down. So I just sat around, getting "yellow."

I finally made some trades and promptly lost money. The main culprit was CF. I lost good money on both the long side and the short side.



After blowing through $500 in him, I decided to trade with only 100 and 200 share lots for the rest of the day. Everyone on Wallstreak was complaining about the day and it just felt mushy out there. So I made a bunch of small trades and basically churned water.

The most exciting thing that happened during the day was when I brought my lunch up to my desk. I made myself a big bowl of pasta. Just as I went to put it on my desk, it slipped out of my hand and the whole damn thing landed on my tatami rug. Marinara sauce and tatami does not mix. Now I need to buy a rug to put over my other rug. Cleaning up kept me busy for the middle of the day.

Then, finally some action as DRYS seriously, "shit the shower."



I made a couple of unprofitable long trades in DRYS. However, because of it's weakness I short both DSX and ANW. I covered both early but made enough in both trades to completely turn my day around. At 3pm I was down $400 or so. In that last hour I managed to make back all my losses and turn a profit.

Tomorrow will be interesting. Everyone seems to think they're going to cut 25bp and that will make the market rally. Normally, when everyone thinks the same thing the market chooses to do something different. Remember, the market loves to disappoint.

It's late. Here's the stats:

P&L, $583
Best, DSX, $810
Worst, CF, -$485

35,400 shares traded.
21 stocks traded, 9 winners, 12 losers.
203 trades.

Virtual Office, $7076. Dow, -77.79, 13792.47.

Akalawoo, $1288 on 19 contracts traded.
Me, $583 on 35,400 shares traded.
OBAT, -$18 on 19,400 shares traded.
Denarii, -$37 on 1400 shares traded.
Tapeworm, -$130 on 4 contracts traded.

Wow... the day was boring... boring... boring... and then WHAMMO! Look out below! A selloff sparked by the recently hot shipping sector sunk the market late in the day.

Volume was like yesterday, shitty. We traded just over 1.2 billion shares on the NYSE.

I mean, what's to say? We're all waiting on the FED now. Tomorrow has the potential to be a wild day however, it may be the kind of "wild" that is not good for trading. What we need is a strong move in one direction or the other. FED days generally feature strong moves in both directions in quick succession. Makes it tough.

Anyway, we'll see. Sleep well tonight!

Meanwhile, it looks like half the VO took off today...

NYSE Trying To Bring Back Big Block Trading

And in time they will realize that 1x1 bids and asks that update 10 times per second isn't a good idea either... here's the article from the WSJ.

And Mr. Neiderhaur, this quote kind of bugged me... "The market structure we've ended up with is great for trading, but it's not great for investing." I don't know one trader who prefers the hybrid to the old way of trading.

So I'd like to change your quote to "The market structure we've ended up with isn't great for trading, and it's not great for investing.... so we kind of fucked up there."

Panspermia

I haven't posted a vocabulary word in awhile... This from Webster's New World Dictionary.

Panspermia n. a theory holding that the seeds of life diffuse naturally through outer space.



I'm not quite sure how to use it in a sentence. Perhaps something like the following would work:

"I don't know where Dick Cheney came from. But maybe the theory of "panspermia" is true and he flew in on some asteroid from some far off galaxy where the people suck."

Stock Earnings For Tuesday October 30th

There are a lot of good ones today.

Here's a short list of the ones I'll be watching.

AXS, CF, SOHU, SPN, VMC, AG, BEC, MGM, PMI, X, UA, VNO

Still, like I said yesterday, I think action will be crimped ahead of the looming FED meeting tomorrow and the jobs data on Friday.