Your Morning Propaganda Alert

"It has now been more than ten days since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates numerous federal laws; both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon's conduct; and Congressional inquiries are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce that it suspended its program."

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Los Campesinos, "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives"

Some Thoughts On April And Moving Forward

I'm not really a guy who looks back on my earnings trends with any kind of regularity. Actually, I normally only check my "sheets" when I think an error has been made.

But tonight, since I barely traded today, I thought I would take the time to look back on the year and attempt to set a couple of goals for May.

Trading is about making money, yes, but I also am the head of a household here, so I need to think about my sanity. So, what kind of win/loss ratio would make me enjoy this job? Ideally, something like 90%. But, that's a little out of reach right now (I'm talking on a daily P&L basis).

In April, I was positive 68% of the time, roughly 2 out of every 3 days traded. That's okay. For May, I'm going to do something unprecedented for myself and set a GOAL. I'm going to shoot for a 75% win rate, that is, be positive 3 out of every 4 days traded.

Another thing I realized about April is that I had a couple of blowup days. You'll recall that one day, I lost $1889. That was awful. In the last two months, since I started trying a new way of trading, I'm averaging about $200 a day... so I wiped out about 10 days of work with that there blowup... frigging awful.

Since I'm not trading nearly as much as I used to, and definitely with less emotion and spontaneity, I'm going to set myself a daily loss limit of $600. And I'm really going to try hard to stick to it... without any large blowups, my monthly P&L should improve.

Finally, I've averaged $200 a day with this new system trading in lots of 200 shares mostly. I'm going to try and average $300 a day in May and up my share size again. There are 21 trading days in May, so I'll just say my goal is to make $6000 for the month. That may be somewhat ambitious given the Memorial Day holiday, but we'll see.

I'm rebuilding. Honestly, I didn't think it would be so hard, but apparently, it's a slow process.

Finally, I'm still trying to reconcile how to deal with events like the S&P upgrade of Brazil today. I want to be in on those trades. Today, I missed the news, so I can't fault myself too much. The way I'm trading now, basing daytrades on daily chart price action coupled with intraday setups is a great way to trade day in and day out, but it will almost always miss the odd event. For as long as I've been trading, the "odd event," be it the California power crisis or the subprime news of last August, has been a reason to trade aggressively.

So ultimately, I want to keep my daily sanity by trading methodically, making the game profitable and boring, but leaving the door open to insanity... that is, not be too strict with myself that I don't jump on opportunity when the market is screaming. I'm still working on this...

Virtual Office, $5026. SPY, -0.63, $138.47.

Sanglucci, $4100 on 38,400 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $550 on 150 shares traded.
OBAT, $334 on 10,400 shares traded.
Me, $124 on 2400 shares traded.
Retardo, no trades.
Denarii, -$82 on 4800 shares traded.

Well, apparently "cake city" is somewhere in Brazil.

If you're a prop trader and managed to hear the news about Brazil getting upgraded by S&P to "investment grade" status when it came out, you probably made A LOT of money.

That is, unless you got all smart and tried to fade the move... (Note: As I wrote this, UBB dropped 6 points from its high, so there was money made fading as well...)

Sanglucci, current "cake king" around here, is learning Portuguese and moving to Rio de Janeiro. Congrats, Sanglucci. But let's not overlook our boy down south, Ainkurn. He says FSLR is his "bitch." He's thinking of upgrading and moving to Jackson, MS.

Ah, to be young and trading in the spring...

Anyway, the FED cut 25 basis points. The market rallied hard on the news and then reversed, all on mediocre volume. I'm always happy when these days come and go. I really don't like news driven markets... makes me feel dependent.

Just give me graphs.

FED Cuts Another Quarter Point

The initial reaction was bullish. But these things often reverse.

The Daily Show "Does" Scalia...

Pretty much from 1:59 on is the reason why I love the Daily Show. Fucking perfect.

Taking A Bike Ride

It's a nice day, so I'm heading out to take a bike ride. No reason for me to fuck around pre-FED during lunch hour.


Biker Gets Hit By Speeding Car - Watch more free videos

I've made a couple of trades and I'm up $200. No matter what, given that it's the last day of the month, I won't go negative. So I may just be done for the day.

FOMC Meeting Day

I'm gonna be taking it very easy today. I figure it's a good day to surf the web until the FED, in all its bearded wisdom, throws us a bone. So here's some reading.

• Take a look at that sea of plastic bottles... seriously, that shit's not going away. (h/t Wallstreet Fighter)
• Mrs. Edwards has my vote. I agree 100% with this OpEd piece.
• Iran says "fuck Barbie," but not literally, because that would be against the Koran.
• I hate the war and I hate its architects, but it must completely suck to be over there. Last week, a kid from my town was killed by a roadside bomb. That shit ain't right. Send the troops some support, because they're not to blame for our government's bad policy.