Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A Slow Day

I didn't have a bad morning, but oddly enough, the first hour was completely dead. Most of the traders in my real office were smoked and everyone was complaining about lack of follow-through.

I felt the lameness of the market pretty early and I was only trading with small size. Still, even despite my caution, I couldn't get traction because I was taking on more losers (albeit small ones) than winners.

The market finally broke out of its morning range at around 10:45, but even then, violently chopped around for 30 minutes in a 5 point range on the futures. One five minute bar was up 5 points, then the next 5 minute bar was down 5 points. It was a slushy mess.

I was down between $200 and $300.

The market finally got through the wild chop and had a very tradeable rally between 11:30 and 12:20. The problem for me was that I was already tentative as a result of the morning chop, plus we were moving into a normally dead part of the day, so I entered only light positions. But I had some good ones, most notably, GES.

Note, the graph is far too marked up to make any sense of anything.



I also caught breakout longs in TEX and VLO but again, both with small size.

I took it really easy today. Not too much to report. Unless something changes by 4pm, this will be my day. I'm happy with it because I came back from a bad morning. Normally, I make money in the first hour and give it all away. Today I lost money early and was able to get my shit together and eke out a small gain.

UPDATE: I got chopped in the afternoon and gave back $200...

Here's the stats:
P&L, $112
Best, TEX, $167
Worst, UA, -$92


NOTE: Please stop by for the debate open thread tonight. I expect Hillary to pull out all the stops. Could be interesting.

6 comments:

JakeGint said...

I hear there are going to be ABC television execs in the audience.

They're scouting for an MC for their hot new game show pilot:

Who Wants to Steal from a Millionaire?

Bubs said...

I actually liked the action in the morning was able to catch GRMN and DRYS short. I took GES off my radar after it broke its daily price early in the morning but it did setup again nicely.

TraderCaddy said...

DT- So what do you think about Ducati's daytrading so far? Only one stock (GS) and make a few trades, then call it a day. I only trade a handful of the same stuff every day, but maybe I should just go with one to trade for the rest of my career. Assuming he keeps it up he will uphold the daytrading theory that less is more.

JakeGint said...

I'm short GES as of 3:50 this afternoon. At $44.70.

Dinosaur Trader said...

TC,

So far, impressive. Let's see if he can keep it up.

Bubs,

Yeah, I believe some other jackass caught those trades as well... nice job.

Jake,

That's where I churned my money in the afternoon. In that GES range between .50 and .75. I thought he was going to break .50 with the market weakness... then Charlie Fucking Gasparino ruined the downside momentum.

-DT

Unknown said...

Finally. Someone else who appreciates a 15 minute bathroom break. It's about the only time I get to relax and read my motocross mags. I don't see the problem...

AT