Sonic Youth, "Teenage Riot"

Stock Trades Add Up To Small Gain

I had another green day today. When you're down on a month, green is good, no matter what.

My best trade of the day came early, in V, an HCPG watchlist stock. They were looking for the stock to trade down to $78. I saw it was relatively weak off the open and so I was watching it closely. Volume wasn't great yet, but the weakness was enough for me to be transfixed. It traded down near $79 quickly and then bounced, but rolled almost immediately.



I covered quickly after the first move down. I missed the real move when it bounced back up to $79 before cratering down to $77. $79 on the bounce was a perfect reentry... just afraid to enter. I made another good entry on the stock around 11:30, through $78. Again, my exits were fucked up. I covered way too early and missed a nice 2 point move down close to $76. Not sure what it's gonna take for me to start holding for these larger moves.

Probably desperation, brought on by extreme poverty.

Anyway, I then managed to fuck myself up trading BTU short. I got stubborn, added to a losing position, and blew out near the top of the move (classic) for a $200 loss. I also had smaller losses in DVN and SLB. So despite my initial good trade, I was down and had some fighting back to get through.

I saw a couple of trades that didn't have "daily spots" but were trading with good volume. STP had a nice flat base and I felt safe entering at $47. I was hoping for a quick pop down. Had it popped up to $47.10, I would have taken the loss. This was a perfect entry. Volume came in and the stock quickly plummeted. Again, I fucked up the exits. See below...



I saw another opportunity in BTU, the same stock that I screwed up earlier. So I cut my size to 100 shares and gave it a shot.



This was a good trade despite the small size. BTU had visited the $76.25 level three times on the day and had met resistance there continually the prior two days. So when he bounced weakly off that level while running into both the intraday downtrend line and $77 resistance, I thought it was a good entry spot.

My worst stock on the day was SLB. Again, just a case of me not covering when I'm wrong. I'm really beginning to see that if I just cover when shit doesn't work immediately that I'll do myself much less damage than if I hold and wait for it to return to my level. Just cover. If necessary or applicable, reenter later. Just cover and take a small loss.

On the other side, respect the stops... if the position doesn't move against my original entry, I should try to at least hold 100 shares for a larger move.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $165
Best, V, $161
Worst, SLB, -$85

9400 shares traded.
9 stocks traded, 6 winners, 3 losers.

Virtual Office, $938. SPY, +0.09, $139.57.

Timmay!, $515 on 1700 shares traded.
Me, $165 on 9400 shares traded.
Tokyo, $156 on 811 shares traded.
Denarii, $90 on 2000 shares traded.
OBAT, $12 on 4400 shares traded.
Retardo, zippo

My plan of firing the entire VO so I could be on top of the shit-heap is almost working! Soon, I will unleash the "paid services" section of my site, so you too can make $200 a day from the stock market! I just need to shake that Tim Sykes guy... developing...

Anyway... all the activity was in the morning today. Volume really tailed off into the afternoon and I can't help but wonder if tomorrow is gonna be completely dead ahead of the long weekend. I know I'm planning on trading for about 45 minutes. After that, I'm going to the store and stocking up on supplies, so I can huddle in my house and avoid the "city people" this weekend.

Look, we're in a tough environment for active traders. The VO is definitely reflecting that. Active traders need volume and VIX. This environment is better for swing traders it seems. Not sure what's gonna change that. Grind it out.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Cablevision Customer Service

They're still the worst...

My Internet has been going in and out the last hour making it impossible for me to trade with any confidence. So I called and got this wonderful message:

"We are experiencing a higher call volume than usual. Please call back another time. Thank you."

CLICK.

Fuck you too, Cablevision.

Dubai And Our Gas Dollars

Insane... put it on mute though... worst music ever.


Did You Know: Dubai And Our Gas Dollars - Watch more free videos

PDO... No Fucking Locate!

This had to be one of the most obvious trades of all time, and I couldn't take advantage because I could get a locate.

As you know, I've been watching MXC and PDO for the last few days. They've been trading together. This morning, MXC opened and immediately dropped 15 points. Or, it lost nearly a third of it's value in the first 5 minutes of trade. And it didn't gap down either... IT TRADED DOWN! Check the intra...



Now PDO gapped up and reversed as well, but there were a few precious moments where you could have sold up over $27... it lagged MXC, importantly, by a few minutes. 5 points, EASY.



Look at the daily on this thing... unbelievable! Gotta love the AMEX.



But perhaps it wasn't so easy after all... Timmay! got a little clipped in FPP, another stock that has run with these psychos.

Blog Post Confidential

Here's a huge article about blogging from the upcoming NYT Magazine. I haven't read it all yet, but it sounds like it's interesting.

Mass Layoffs In VO Lead To Violent Protests

I mean, tens of thousands of people are being laid off from the major brokerage houses, so the VO was bound to suffer as well. Goodbye to Ainkurn, Dehtrader, Evolution and Sanglucci.

I expected some anger, some outrage, but not an angry mob of people being whipped into a frenzy by a union agitator



After this speech the VO was ripped to shreds. It may take weeks for it to be operating normally again, but we need to stick to our principles. We've been through adversity before however, and I'm confident that we'll emerge stronger.

Meanwhile, the layoffs may not be over just yet...