Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The RO Report, "They Ruined The Market" Edition

Man, I saw that Duncan guy on CNBC today saying that he plans on getting that short selling ban extended and it made me very depressed. Being a trader and not being able to short stocks... it makes no sense. It'd be like... imagine the porn industry banned oral sex. It's stupid.

Here's a link to Mr. Niederauer, CEO of the NYSE talking about the ban from the NYSE website.

Anyway, more and more stocks are being added to the "ban list" which means fewer trading opportunities. And that is beginning to show in the volume number. Today, amidst all this market confusion, we barely edged our way over a billion shares on the NYSE.

Folks, short NYX. Oh wait, YOU CAN'T! Fuck these market manipulators! Let us trade again!

It was a very quiet day in the RO. Out of 22 traders, 9 were positive, or 41%. I was #12 of 22, or slightly negative. Only 4 traders finished up over $1,000 gross today.

Here are today's Bosses.

1. Trader B, $4,926 on 200k shares traded.
2. Trader D, $2,422 on 28,700 shares traded.
3. Trader K, $1,340 on 129k shares traded.
4. Trader H, $1,260 on 12,100 shares traded.
5. Trader R, $840 on 33,400 shares traded.


And the Manservants.

1. Trader A, -$7,635 on 161k shares traded.
2. Trader N, -$935 on 12,800 shares traded.
3. Trader J, -$878 on 24,000 shares traded.
4. Trader F, -$760 on 14,800 shares traded.
5. Trader Z, -$598 on 22,200 shares traded.

7 comments:

SBTrades said...

DT: how is the number of shares calculated ?

Eg. If I buy 100 shares of AAPL and then sell 100 shares .. is that 100 shares or 200 shares, according to your stats.

I did 3800 shares and made $3248
Or is it 7600 shares. I used about 30% of my cash. Too scared to go bigger today.

Either way, seems to me like you guys are trading too many shares to get your returns.

200k shares traded in one day!! I do not think i have ever traded that much in one day. Even 33k seems high for one day.

SBTrades said...

These results do not seem like the results of the same people that made over 340k in one day last week.

Are you going to plot these wins and loses on a graph for us. It would be fascinating to see how real day traders perform over time? I am just an amateur, so I am fascinated by seeing these results.

Dinosaur Trader said...

SB,

Yes, share count is calculated as in your example. If you buy 100 shares and then sell them, you've traded 200 shares.

The market is trading 1/3 of the volume it was trading last week. There is no more short selling. Things have changed radically in a very short period of time. So the stats have changed also. Just look at the share decline for my office mates. Last week, Trader B was trading over a million shares a day... now he's at a fifth of that.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do much more with these numbers than I'm already doing. I work, surf, hang out with my daughter, bird, and try to write too... I just don't have any free time.

If you are handy with graphs though and you want to go for it, I'll publish what you come up with.

Thanks for reading,

-DT

Unknown said...

lol birding! DT you crack me up. im loving this down time, i could use the break personally....don't worry we arent done with crazy trading yet, it will return. Enjoy these slow times while you can, and take it easy! (read: don't get smoked!)----Trader D

Dinosaur Trader said...

You're totally right. Had I not smoked myself yesterday, I'd be enjoying this week too.

I hope you're right about more good trading days to come though, and soon. I want to keep some positive momentum going.

Let me know when you want to go birding.

-DT

SBTrades said...

Are you keeping these numbers in a excel spreadsheet or similar ?

I can make the graph for you in excel from the data easily.

Send the spreadsheet to me once you have a couple of weeks data in a spreadsheet. Trader ID down the left side, and date along the top should be good.

I do not do birding, so I can use my non birding time to make a chart :-)

Ray Pellecchia said...

Don't despair over the short-selling issue, DT. Duncan wasn't saying that the existing order will be applied to all stocks, but that it probably will be extended a few weeks until a solution can be found that can be applied across the market. His reasoning was that we should have different rules for different sets of stocks.

Hope that's of some help at least. And I hope the market treats you better today than it did yesterday. -- Ray