Monday, September 29, 2008

The RO Report, "Stock Market Crash" Edition

Well, not exactly. We were down 7% on the day, 777 points. Unlucky sevens.

For the RO, it was a bloodbath early, followed by good profits at the close.

This country has turned into a cartoon. You know, I respect all the "nay" votes today if those votes were speaking for their constituencies. However, I think it's posturing. If those fucking Congressmen really cared for their constituencies, this shit wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Voting for deregulation forever, this is what you get... so don't try to pretend suddenly that you're "saving" anything. There is nothing worse than hypocrisy.

I'm kind of speechless actually, so I'm gonna go get some dinner and clear my head.

Out of 20 traders, 17 finished positive. 16 traders finished up over $1,000 gross. I was #14 of 20.

Here are today's Bosses:

1. Trader Z, $85,146 on 378k shares traded.
2. Trader D, $81,178 on 902k shares traded.
3. Trader A, $55,406 on 732k shares traded.
4. Trader K, $22,995 on 130k shares traded.
5. Trader C, $22,727 on 210k shares traded.


And the Manservants:

1. Trader H, -$21,836 on 14,700 shares traded.
2. Trader 1, -$692 on 16,400 shares traded.
3. Trader T, -$252 on 5,700 shares traded.
4. Trader 3, $386 on 4,600 shares traded.
5. Trader O, $1,650 on 12,600 shares traded.

8 comments:

tan said...

Hey Dino,

I'm thinking about switching RO. Does your RO offer remote trading? I trade 3-4 Million shares a month. What commission rate would that get me? What platform do you use and how's the tech/speed there?

thanks,

T

Anonymous said...

Not sure I'm buying the deregulation excuse.

No doubt the waiving of leverage limits played a large role in this debacle, but so too did the government's pressure on banks to lower their lending standards so lower income households could qualify for a mortgage. That pressure wasn't an act of "deregulation."

I think the issue is more along the lines of poor policy decisions than it is deregulation, because the wrong kind of policies (lower lending standards) were just as responsible as the waiving of good regulations, i.e. leverage limits.

Denouncing deregulation may make for a nice sound bite, but it doesn't get at some of the root causes of the problem, the bad policies adopted and pushed to advance the "affordable housing" political agenda.

At the end of the day, well meaning but poorly thought out political agendas will ultimately result in poor regulatory decisions, because the politicians will bend the rules to advance their agendas. This, in a nutshell, is what happened with the housing and mortgage markets.

Those policy and regulatory issues, however, flow from a bigger problem, the government's belief that it can interfere in markets without creating unintended side effects.

The mortgage market was working just fine until the Feds got serious about the affordable housing agenda in the 1990s. As the feds involvement grew, so too did the potential problem.

Lots of people saw it coming, but the affordable housing advocates in Congress didn't want to hear it when times were good. Now, they're just shocked that things are as bad as they are today.

HPT said...

Nice trading DT. These are crazy times.

Bluedog said...

DT,
I'm speechless, too. We need to wipe these Republicans off the face of Congress come November. WTF. Seriously.

BD

Anonymous said...

Just a reminder for the partisan Dems around these parts, which I think is everyone but me.

The biggest opponents to reining in Fannie and Freddie were Democrats. The biggest proponents of lowering credit standards to push the affordable housing agenda were Democrats.

Republicans assisted these efforts by not being persistent enough on reorganizing Fannie and Freddie, maintaining the ill-conceived affordable housing agenda, and by waiving leverage limits for the five largest investment banks.

In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. If you believe Republicans are the only one's with any culpability, then your partisan loyalties have gone beyond the point of rationality thus making you part of the problem.

Finally, the vote against the bailout package also was a bipartisan effort with 40 percent of the Democrats and 60 percent of the Republicans voting against.

For the first time in this multi-decade debacle, I am actually proud of the bipartisan cooperation.

Dinosaur Trader said...

Tan,

I can't access your email from a comment, so can you email me directly? You can find it under my profile.

Thanks,

-DT

Unknown said...

yo Trader D in the house... gotta be careful out there, i had went negative 57 before i came up at the end of the day!

Complacent Panda said...

Dogwood, I don't know where you live, but I live in California, and many of the houses that people were buying up here aren't exactly what I would call "affordable housing". People kept buying these homes using easy credit, thus, increasing the demand and eventually the actual number of homes on the market. They flipped the house and other people purchased them at a higher price using easy credit. Affordable housing may have been a problem, but it was not the sole problem. From what I understand, easy credit was a major problem. And that was instituted by Alan Greenspan.

As for the real problem, I think Americans give too much worth to themselves for too little productivity and, on average, limited creativity. Now, I know there are people in the top maybe 20% (and I may be overly generous) who contribute through the use of their intellect: developing computers, robots, medicine, science, math, etc. But what about the other portion of society? We pay people $8+/hr (at least here in California) to serve coffee at a premium? People do not understand the worth of their dollar! We ship the manufacturing and other productive jobs overseas where we can have them done for a fraction of the price as here, and then we pay people here more money than we pay those foreigners, and yet, we require so little of our own citizens. This doesn't feel like capitalism. What are we paying all these people for? Some of the most lucrative jobs in California were construction jobs, which are obviously hemorrhaging. What are we planning on doing with these people? From what I understand, many of these people only have a high school degree, and fewer have any skills that can make them $20+/hr.

I've worked at Target, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, etc; and its ridiculous. The market is broken. There are far more people in the world than there is demand for (mediocre) people. Capitalism is going to destroy main street America because main street America cannot compete with the middle of the rest of the world, much less the top few percent. I almost feel that most of these people do not deserve the houses they dream of, because they do not provide enough work and productivity to make up for the homes' value. They don't produce anything. They are not special. The free market is going to destroy them. This feels like it is just the beginning.