My Daily Research Schedule

When I first started trading, 9 years ago, I'd wake up at 5:30, and be in the city by 6:30 sitting in the atrium of the JP Morgan building reading the newspaper while eating my breakfast.

I didn't go into the office right away because I didn't want people to bother me.

I sat in the JP Morgan building because it made me feel more "Wall Streety."

Nowadays, I sleep until 8:00. Or, when I wake early, I piss a lot of time away on email or reading idiocy on stock market blogs.

Well, new year, new company, new market. It's time for me to take this job seriously again.

In December, I deserved to lose money because I wasn't working hard enough. If I lose money now, it's not going to be due to poor work ethic.

Some things I can't control but my work ethic is not one of them.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to make a strict schedule of research that I adhere to each day. It will help me focus.

However, the first thing I will do each day is to create a simple "Good Morning" blog post. This will put at least a little pressure on me to get in and get the post up each day. It would be shameful to admit to myself and my 3 readers that I lost money because I got to my desk at 9:24.

So here, is my new research schedule:

1. Morning post.
2. Read IBD Big Picture.
3. Read Bloomberg breaking news headlines.
4. Read Bloomberg "Stocks On The Move."
5. Check front page of NYTimes and WSJ.
6. Watch Alphatrends daily "Stock Market Video Technical Review."
7. Read Briefing Live In Play from previous day's close.

Okay, that's a good amount of reading and background. Now for some graph work.

8. Check BigCharts' "big movers reports." Especially the largest % gain in volume.
9. Go through index graphs like SOX, XBD, XOI, etc.
10. Go through each stock on screen.

After all of that, (I figure it's 3 hours worth of work) I should have an excellent idea of the general tone of the day and what stocks could be moving. At that point, I'll head over to "the Fly's" blog and try to dwindle his readership by posting a nice soppy movie clip.

If you have any other suggestions for research, please let me know via the comment section.

Nice Trade, Richard

If only all trades could be this smooth.



Shame that you spent all of your proceeds on fast food though... Next time you have such an easy trade, but this book with your gains.

Ron Paul Supporters Try To Scalp Sean Hannity

After excluding Paul from the Fox News Republican debate despite the fact that he's polling at 10%, Hannity was forced to flee an angry mob of Ron Paul supporters.

This is great on many levels. Enjoy!

Jimi Hendrix, "Hey Joe"

While I punish "the Fly" with "lively" music over at his blog, I reward my readers with good kick ass rock songs all week as I work to get my mojo back.

Still In Simulation

I had the option of trading live today in an "office account" but chose instead to wait for my own account to be up and running. Thing is, my new software has such a great simulation platform that I may just use it all week instead of actually risking money.

I mean, today was a great market to trade, no doubt. However, it was also a little fast for me. It's amazing how your reaction time slows in just a few weeks out of the market. Also, I'm not "seeing" moves yet... just after the fact.

So I'm going to take it easy and be patient with myself. I'll work out my bugs using play money and when I feel fast and confident I'll start taking risk again. I won't simulate past this Friday, that's for sure.

Here's one trade I screwed up.



You see that circled area? I saw that heavy volume red bar breaking $110 and decided to get short. I was filled at $109.82. Instead of declining further, the stock dropped about 20 cents and then hung out around $110 before ripping up to $111. It would have been a bad trade for me had I been live.

Anyway, so my timing is still off I guess.

P&L, $0
no trades

Virtual Office, $9461. Dow, +27.31, 12,827.49.

Misstrade, $10,020 on 18,000 shares traded.
Retard, $808 on 16 contracts traded.
Sanglucci, $573 on 21,200 shares traded.
OBAT, $292 on 3800 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $180 on 3 contracts traded.
Wincity, $65 on 100 shares traded.
Me, no trades.
Dehtrader, no trades.
Denarii, -$105 on 600 shares traded.
Evolution, -$2372 on 181,400 shares traded.

The market is smoking crack.

That's the way it seemed today as I watched it all day for the first time in weeks. That 100 point rip in the Dow in a 15 minute span around 3:30 was insane.

In other words, it's a market that is offering lots of opportunity. However, as always, where there's opportunity to make money, there's also equal opportunity to get smoked.

Still, I'll take a market on crack over a market in rehab any day of the week.

Okay, well we had great volume today (when is the last time I said that?) as we traded over 1.7 billion shares on the NYSE. The VIX declined slightly to close at 23.79.

I chose to stay on my simulation account instead of trading the afternoon. Until that wild Dow move late in the day, it seemed as if most of the action occurred early when I was in Esignal Hell.

Hope you made some money.

Up And Running

Okay, well, I still don't have my account completely set up but I'll be trading in an "office account" this afternoon. These will be my first live trades since the middle of December.

I'm pretty excited about getting started again. 3 weeks has been the longest I've ever been away from the market since I started trading full-time, almost 9 years ago.

Perhaps because of the break, I'm feeling very optimistic about starting again.

In the trading room today a few guys made huge money (trading my type of style) and that always gives me hope.

Of course I'm going to start small. Hopefully, by next week I'll have confidence in the systems and my keystrokes and will be trading with my normal size again.

Also, I fixed my Esignal problem. If you read the comment section from the previous thread, I had some other software installed on my computer that was conflicting with esiggy. Normally, I complain about Esignal however today the customer service person worked patiently with me until we solved the problem. Of course, it's unfortunate that is the exception with Esignal customer service, but right now I'll take what I can get.

Esignal Sucks And Is Run By Robots

All it does, is crash.

I've been uninstalling and reinstalling the program since I got to my desk this morning (6:30, all ready for a new start) trying to fix the problem.

Esignal sucks.

Other than that, everything is fucking fine.