Beach House, "Master Of None"
Great song, but a pitiful lip-synching performance in the vid.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A New Start
Okay, so today was my first day trading real money with my new company.
What I really need to do is give everyone some more background on how I started with this shop. I have a gigantic and dramatic pre-history with many of the people trading there, not all of it good. However, it has been a really long day, so I can't get into it now.
Anyway, I had a good day today... mostly. If I could only take back my trades in GGP I would have been very happy with my performance trading a volatile market with new software after such a hiatus. No mulligans in trading however. I lost $500 in the stock, mostly churning it every time it got up near $34 and failed.
Sickening to look back on it now. Why couldn't I just wait for a clean break? Instead, I'd buy at $34 and sell at $33.70. Remarkable...
My best trade of the day was in DSL.
I bought just before the spike at 3pm. It was forming a flag/pennant/triangle. Actually, maybe that's nothing, but I had a feeling if it traded over $27.65 that it was a buy. So I bought and caught a nice ride for close to a point.
Other than those trades, I had a lot of 100 and 200 share churn positions. I'm still getting accustomed to my new keystrokes and the feel of the market. True, I watched it for the last few weeks, but that's absolutely nothing like trading it.
The "chatters" (as I'll call my new chat room office friends) made huge money today.
I'm hoping this positive office experience will soon rub off on me. If the market stays this volatile, I'm confident it will.
Here's the stats:
P&L, $169
Best, DSL, $303
Worst, GGP, -$494
24,200 shares traded.
21 stocks traded, 12 winners, 9 losers.
Virtual Office, $9586. Dow, +117.78, 12,853.09.
Misstrade, $6987 on 21,200 shares traded.
Sanglucci, $1474 on 29,600 shares traded.
Evolution, $849 on 137,000 shares traded.
Retardo, $510 on 25 contracts traded.
Me, $181 on 24,200 shares traded.
Denarii, $170 on 1000 shares traded.
OBAT, $72 on 9400 shares traded.
Wincity, -$58 on 1600 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$599 on 300 shares traded.
It's a trader's paradise.
We traded over 2 billion shares on the day and were lucky enough to have not one, but two significant news events drive big moves in the market.
The first came at noon with the pre-release of Uncle Ben's speech that hinted at "substantive" FED moves to come. It shows up on the above graph just after 12:00.
Then, just after 2:00 came the news that BAC is in advanced talks to buy CFC. Again, the market loved this and ripped.
The traders who have been primed for this market are making "cheddar," plain and simple.
The VO had a pretty solid day. Evolution has had a nice turnaround from his beginning of the year swoon. When you hit a rut, the best thing to do is cut your size, get your confidence back with small wins and then worry about the big days. Evolution is doing just that. Well done, ET.
Anyway, sorry this is so late. I went to pick my daughter up at 4 and then we were invited to stay for dinner. We'll be back on schedule tomorrow.
An Oldy But Goody
Man, after reading this post I wrote back in April 2007, I remembered that day perfectly.
Funny.
Meanwhile, the VO will be a little late today as I have to pick my daughter up at 4pm from a friend's house.
It should be up by 5pm. Apologies.
China Freezes Energy Prices; Bans Plastic Bags
People don't like inflation? Oh, okay, we'll just freeze the price of gasoline.
Someone has to pay that bill eventually, no?
By banning plastic bags, China will save an entire week's worth of oil consumption, or 37 million barrels in one year.
Interesting...
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