GAIA En Fuego

Closing in on a new all-time high up at $24.68. I always love it when you can make investments and feel good about them at the same time. This company promotes yoga, healthy living, sells organic clothing and furniture and also sells solar stuff.



It's my longest term holding ever, so I'm pretty happy about the strength of the last two days.

As for today, I'm a little disappointed in myself. I thought I was having a great morning and expected to be up a couple of grand. Unfortunately, it's more like a couple of hundred! I just got a little more chopped than I thought in some crappy trades today, like LNN and RWT...

I'm going to go finish the book I'm reading, Maverick's by Matt Warshaw and come back in the afternoon.

UPDATE: You can read Howard's post about GAIA here.

A Nice Morning Of Clean Surf

It was beautiful out there... however, my toes are starting to get cold. It may be time to start looking into "booties."

Check out this really cool site. Basically, it shows in slideshow format images that are being downloaded to blogger. It's just random, but fun to watch.

Anyway, time to get my trade on. Dow 25,000 here we come!

Pink Floyd, "Money"

Bull Run

Ah well, get out of the way of the bulls (again).

I'm ready to buy stock again. Bernanke cured me of my bearishness. I'm more convinced than ever that this game is completely rigged in the bull's favor and that really, it's a big waste of time trying to short the market... at least longer term.

They always save the bulls.

Anyway, I'm shot. Oddly enough, I made my best trade of the day in the morning... on the short side in LAZ.



After the LEH numbers, all the financial stocks gapped higher. This provided and excellent and easy opportunity to get short. I got short LAZ in the high $41 area and covered when it slammed below $41 at around 9:45.

It's funny looking at that graph. I mean, why didn't I get massively long the stock at 2:15, right? I had to make things difficult by being all bearish. Silly me!

Anyway, after the FED pasted the bears, I got long UBB and made good money there too. It was hard not to...



Of course, I was still stupid and gave back money trying to short HXM... why would I try to short when the FED cut 50bp? I really, truly thought the market would panic on that news and that after that huge run that we'd pull back and go negative.

I really thought that and it crippled me from making huge money today. I was skittish in all of my longs and looking short!

This really strikes home the point about being neutral-minded when trading the markets. Look at the graphs and let them tell you what is happening in the market. Get any bullishness or bearishness out of your head and just trade.

Anyway, here's the stats.

P&L, $2757
Best, LAZ, $1023
Worst, HXM, -$432

47,200 shares traded.
18 stocks traded, 12 winners, 6 losers.
180 trades.

Virtual Office, $6156. Dow, +334.02, 13737.44.

Me, $2757 on 47,200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $1785 on 4 contracts.
Misstrade, $1260 on 6500 shares traded.
Bubs, $469 on 2600 shares traded.
Evolution, vacation.
OBAT, vacation.
Tapeworm, -$35 on 4 contracts.
Denarii, -$75 on 400 shares traded.

Has anyone else noticed that the higher the market goes, the shriller Maria's voice gets?

Clearly, today was a crazy fucked up bail out of the banking industry. 50 basis points, Yay! I mean, people make bad loans and the FED comes to clean up the mess. God Bless America.

Anyway, it was a good day for the VO. There was no "pullback." If you bought at 2:15 and held, you made good money.

Tomorrow should be great. In fact, the next 10 years should be good. Dow 20,000 here we come!

Also, if you are a NYSE trader, please see my earlier post from today about the new fees.

Meanwhile, my daily post will be late. I need to get out of here for awhile.

The FED Hates Short Sellers...

Wow. Well, so I covered my shorts and got long. Party on.

HPT Leaves VO For "Personal Reasons"

I'm not going to do a huge public "firing" of HPT in the mold of what "the Fly" does over at his site.

I'll just say that the intense pressure and whirlwind competitiveness of the VO finally caved this man psychologically, thereby causing him to blow up his account.

HPT leaves on amicable terms. When asked by a reporter why he was leaving he said, "to spend more time with my family."

Everyone at the VO wishes him well and hopes that, should we need a token futures trader again, that he will rehabilitate his account and be ready to do battle again on the "killing field" that is the VO.

Godspeed, HPT.

New NYSE Fees

Simply put, these fees could be a "gamechanger."

Here is the press release detailing the new fees that go into effect on October 1st. They were brought to my attention by "Jawbreaker" via the comments section of this post.

Here's the thing I don't quite understand. If you route your order to the NYSE and "take liquidity" away from the market, you get hit with a .08 fee per 100 shares. I need a good explanation of what "taking liquidity" away means. If it means using a market order, I'm screwed.

There is a silver lining. The key is figuring out how to exploit it. If you "provide liquidity" via NYSE ARCA, you get a .25 rebate per 100 shares traded.

I need to know exactly what type of orders to place, (market or limit) and exactly where to route them (NYSE, ARCA, other ECNs) in order to avoid the "monster fee" and take advantage of the "petty rebate."

I trade from home. If anyone works for a place where they are discussing these fees and how we can avoid them/take advantage of them, please inform us all via the comments section.

Meanwhile, if we can't figure this stuff out, October will be a little bit like this:

LEH Trading Up Pre-Open

I haven't even looked at the numbers yet, but it looks like I'm going to get squeezed like a schoolteacher in my LAZ short.



UPDATE: It's all good. Financials gapped up and sold off. I short a good amount of LAZ and made 40 cents. I short UBB and ITU as well. A good way to start the day, I'll probably take it real easy up to the 2:15 number now.

Sue Teller Mashes It Up

I guess this will count for your "music video" today...

Quiet Before The Storm?

Man, this stock has ran 20% in the last 5 sessions. Clearly, money is being put to work in the name, but still, it needs to take a breath soon.

Unfortunately, today wasn't the day. And, I got short...



So I got smoked, losing about $750 in LVS, the gambling stock. How apt.

Anyway, otherwise, I did well today. I got short LAZ at around $41.90 and made a little over a half point in the guy.



I also stayed short some overnight. Hopefully, LEH posts a bomb, freaks the market out therefore allowing me to cover with a quick gain. My worry is that this trade seems almost too easy and obvious... we'll see. Heck, the Fly" is short... as long as the same "fat mountain bitches" who run CWTR don't run LAZ I think it could work out.

Other shorts that worked in my favor were KMT, DSX, HXM and AMG.

I traded lightly today... just trying to have a positive day before the storm tomorrow. I need to rebuild confidence here since we may be headed for some volatility.

Also, I don't remember whether or not I've brought this up here earlier, but I think the market is fucked tomorrow no matter what happens. It's run back up here on really light volume. I bet tomorrow we'll see a sell off on higher volume despite what Uncle Ben does for us.

Anyway, go vote on my damned poll. Also, if you're a stock trader and want to join the VO, email me. I need to shake it up a bit.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $250
Best, LAZ, $524
Worst, LVS, -$742

14,000 shares traded.
8 stocks traded, 6 winners, 2 losers.
70 trades.

Virtual Office, $3747. Dow, -39.10, 13403.42.

Misstrade, $3390 on 11,500 shares traded.
Me, $250 on 14,000 shares traded.
Denarii, $182 on 4000 shares traded.
Tapeworm, no trades.
Akalawoo, no trades.
HPT, AWOL...
OBAT, vacation.
Evolution, vacation.
Bubs, -$75 on 1200 shares traded.

Damn the VO was lame today. The majority of the traders took off, leaving it up to Misstrade to make money. Ah, to be Misstrade... the man has had like, 3 down days since March.

Volume today was pathetic enough to actually make me angry with the market. We traded a lousy 1,103,448,000 shares. That's like, 1998 levels or something silly like that.

I mean, that volatility in August looks like a big tease right now. I hope we heat up again after the FED announcement tomorrow otherwise I'm going to go back to worrying about my future.

So despite a heated debate about "R" today, not much happened here. All eyes will be on the FED tomorrow. I, for one, can't wait. I'M SICK OF ALL THE FED TALK!!!

A New Poll

I've always made fun of the "hillbillies" over at MovetheMarkets for measuring their trading performance in "R." Currently, we are having a friendly debate about "R" and it's usefulness. At least I'm being friendly... I can tell Richard hates me.

I've always found dollars and cents to be a perfectly fine metric for measuring how good or bad a trade was. It works like this... if I make a lot of money, it was a good trade. If I lose a lot, it was a bad trade.

Anyway, I'm interested to see how many of you measure your trades in terms of "R" as opposed to dollar value.

My feeling is that unless I can pay for my daughter's college education with some type of "R" certificate (Dino-Dollars?) that I'll stick to measuring my performance in dollars and cents.

So, here is the poll: Is "R" a useful tool for measuring the success of a trade or does your account total already do that?

"Bears Are Godless Killing Machines"

I'm extremely bearish going into the FED meeting tomorrow. Someone give me some good bull arguments to even out my trading. I'm missing every long...

The Market, 5 Billion Years From Today

It seems that Ray and the NYSE are already planning ahead.

Note the dig on NASDAQ... I loved that!

He needs a spot on Conan.

Me and LVS

I got short LVS this morning... a little "early."

This is what it felt like...



Hopefully it won't see $124 or above for the rest of the day. If that happens, I'll take off the rest of the afternoon and wait for the fireworks tomorrow.

How Could You Censor Gidget?

That's right! Censoring in the USA... watch those opinions, people!

FOX is the fascist network... If you watch it, fine, just understand that you are watching propaganda and propaganda only.

Libraries Rule

I recently discovered that I can log into my local library's main search engine from home.

They are part of this huge lending network. I can search the database, find DVDs, CDs or books that I want and request that they be sent to my library.

In short, I'm amazed that I can get all this stuff for free, legally.

Go hug a librarian.

Blue Dog

Hey, sorry that I still haven't posted the VO for yesterday. I just haven't been in the house to blog much these past couple of days.

So my buddy "Blue Dog" from Wallstreak has started a new stock blog. Check it out!

He will be updating the blog regularly. Perhaps he will enter the VO soon? We will see...

Virtual Office

Evolution, $1462 on 34,600 shares traded.
Me, vacation
OBAT, vacation
Akalawoo, no trades
Misstrade, $0 on 4000 shares traded.
Denarii, -$69 on 14,000 shares traded.
Bubs, -$190 on 12,000 shares traded.
Tapeworm, -$312 on 10 contracts traded.

Well, a pretty lame day for the VO. Pretty lame post too... but I'm on vacation.

My hands smell like lobster and my hair smells of saltwater.