Is Daytrading Gambling?

I thought this would be a fun poll question since it's a debate people often (foolishly) engage me in.

Go vote.

REM, "Fall On Me"

Dow Gain Is Largest In 4 1/2 Years

Isn't that silly? C'mon. Are things that good? Has the dollar suddenly regained it's footing? Has everyone who was poor gotten rich overnight so that they can pay their mortgages? Is Maria Bartiromo going to take off forever?

Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions is "no."

I didn't get short into this rally even though I think it will ultimately fail. I mean, when the Dow finds the strength to rally almost 600 points in 2 days it throws enough bullishness into the mix to make the bears doubt their situation. It's kind of like Exxon spending all those billions to make people doubt global warming. But the reality is, things haven't suddenly gotten better (and indeed, global warming exists).

Instead, in a few months, we'll look back on these 2 days and say, "Man, that was a great spot to get short. Remember that? BIDU at $368? And hey, remember snow?"

Anyway, I didn't do too much today. I bought ALB at the open and held for a point and made a little over $500 in him.



I did the same in MTG and KMT and I was up a little over a grand by 10:30.

Then I went surfing.

Before I left, I bought a little OSK, CNS, and KMT expecting them to trade higher. My plan was to get home by 2:00 when they released the Beige Book. Unfortunately, all of my positions sucked and when I got back, I was up about $750.

I assumed with the market up a gazillion points into the Beige Book that it would have to sell off a little after the release. I short a little FLR into the number.



Wrong again. After that, I decided to stop trading and be in a bad mood.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $648
Best, ALB, $527
Worst, FLR, -$197

9600 shares traded.
8 stocks traded, 4 winners, 4 losers.

Virtual Office, $3179. Dow, + 1Gazillion, 13,289.54.

Evolution, $1592 on 109,400 shares traded.
Me, $648 on 9600 shares traded.
OBAT, $188 on 8600 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $78 on 2 contracts traded.
Denarii, $63 on 600 shares traded.
Wincity, -$32 on 100 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$2295 on 4000 shares traded.

I feel it coming... the market is ready to go into "suck mode."

It's gonna suck from here until that damned FED meeting which, no doubt, CNBC will remind us about every 5 minutes until December 11th.

Fuck CNBC and their cheerleading "anchors."

Anyway, what a nice day, huh? America made money, you walk outside and it smells like leaves and burning fires, Maria Bartiromo was off again...

Actually, I think today sucked and I'm in a bad mood. It's the whole thing about people asking me how I did and me feeling like I did shitty because the market is up a gazillion points. And now, suck mode. You heard it here first.

See you in January, market.

Ah... I Miss The "Fake News."

The Big Bad Bounce

I thought maybe we'd be up another 50-100 points today...



300+? That's a little rich for my taste. This reminds me exactly of September... remember we had a big run-up into the FED meeting and then they surprised everyone with 50bp and we ran a little more... all on lighter volume.

Of course, everyone knows what happened next, we plummeted back to the August lows. Why? Because ultimately, FED cuts can't save us. So really, to use a technical trading term, this rally is "silly." Of course, you'd also be "silly" to fight it.

Let the market take a dump and clean the slate. You can't fight psychology forever... however, I guess you could try really really hard to change it.

Anyway, I made some early money and then managed to park my money in 3 of the lamest stocks for the last 100 points on the DOW. OSK, KMT and CFC...

I mean, how do I manage to lose money while I'm surfing when all the market did was go up? Sigh. Anyway, I'm happy to be up because as I've mentioned here before, I hate days where we gap up big.

More importantly, I got some good surf in. "Cleaning my slate" so to speak...

The Robots Win Again!

Apparently, my suspicions after 10am yesterday were correct. That was some real buying we saw yesterday, not just short covering.



The way it works (at least according to IBD) is that we now would need to see a "follow-through" attempt to confirm yesterday's rally. A "follow through" would be an advance of more than 1% (I think, maybe 2%) in any of the indexes over the next week or so on juicy volume.

Naturally, this nascent "rally" would be declared dead if the major indexes undercut yesterday's lows.

We shall have to wait and see. Now will either be a great time to initiate new short positions or initiate new longs. If you get on the right side, you win a new house... if you choose wrong, all of your worldly goods will be taken from you and your friends will stop hanging out with you.