Special Message To The Mods At Elitetrader

I've been graced with another link from your site.

You know, once before, I was linked and so I joined your site and just wrote a brief intro (in the same thread where I was linked) about my VO.

In return, my post was removed and I received a sarcasm laden message from your moderator who goes by the name "Magma" or something like that.... as in, "spew me with your hot magma." Perhaps it was "Magnum"... as in the condom brand.

Anyway, you guys are idiots. Quickly remove the link to my site before your readership finds another site worth reading.

"Selling Out" (Part 8)

(Note: Since I've gained more readers in the time that I first posted the history posts (months ago, I know, I'm sorry) I figured I'd link the two previous to this one. If you want to put this post in context, I suggest reading at least these two first.) Part 6. Part 7.

After my "interview" with Peter, conflict set in.

I grew up in a middle class household that placed zero emphasis on materialism; my mother was a nurse and my father was an educator. I went to public schools.

Somehow I managed to get accepted to an Ivy League college. There, for the first time in my life, I felt poor.

All of my new "college friends" had attended private schools and had connected parents and fancy summer homes. They didn't cook themselves pasta every night and get "work study" jobs so they could afford books. They didn't seem "normal" to me. They would get excellent summer internships because some guy owed their father a favor, while I got stoned and served up "fish'n'chips" all summer at a local Bennigan's.

It built character.

The point is, me working on Wall Street seemed kind of wrong. I felt like I would be "selling out" or joining this "culture of money" that I'd been observing, somewhat critically, from the outside. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to head in that direction.

I had drinks with my best friend Sam to express my concern. He told me I was nuts.

"Fuck it. Make money and then become a monk."

He worked for the State Department and was on his way to South America. "It's crazy down there." He explained. "Everyone wants to kill somebody."

I didn't have to worry about that stuff. I just had the plastic smell of my keyboard and the gentle hum of my computer to think about.

"Make money and then become a monk." It was excellent advice.

I was young. I'd have plenty of time to work out my life's details later. Sam and I drank a good amount that evening. As I watched him walk down a wet street in Brooklyn to hail a cab back to the city, I could never have guessed how different everything would be for us both in just a few months.

Now that I had worked out any lingering doubts about working on "the Street" I had to begin studying for the Series 7.

Studying for "The Seven" is an exercise in monotony and memorization. I didn't try too hard to absorb what I was reading, because I knew I wasn't going to be selling securities products; I just had to pass in order to trade. While the study book was gigantic and all the material completely new to me, I only gave myself three weeks to absorb it all and take the exam.

Those three weeks are more or less a blur now.

I'd study for the first few hours of the morning, then break at 11 to drink coffee, have a cigar (I started smoking cigars because I thought it would put me in a "Wall Street" frame of mind... kind of like method acting), and watch "carnies and fat people" beat each other up on the Jerry Springer show. After Springer, I'd study until Judy came home.

When I had taken every practice exam and memorized every question I set a date to take the test. I don't remember much other than the instantaneous scoring. It's a scary process. You study for weeks, sit and take a 6 hour exam and learn right away whether all that work was worth it or not.

Happily, I passed. I haven't smoked a cigar or watched Jerry Springer since.

The next day I was back at Anvil Capital in the small hot room "papertrading."

Radiohead, "Ceremony" (New Order cover)

Dazed And Confused

Here's my blotter for the day. I'm publishing the full thing to give you some idea of how completely crappy I traded.

JLL $115.81
MOS -$31.85
LDK -$41.75
BBD -$56.12
OSK -$60.34
MBI -$63.91
WNR -$102.47
ABK -$119.42
ITU -$124.64
TSL -$174.50
RWT -$240.89

Out of all the trades I made today, I think only two were in the money for any period of time. It's like I was completely wrong, over and over. I'll go through some of them. I don't really feel like writing colorfully... I'm exhausted and pissed off, so bear with the dryness.

First trade of the day. Buy 300 RWT at the open. Below you'll find a 1-minute graph.



You see what happened. It dropped over a point in that minute and then shot right back up. What could I do? I sold. I lost about 60 cents. Fine. Bad trade. Thin market with no size on any bid or offer.

Next!



You see the circled area? That's where I traded this stock. Solars were strong and TSL was breaking it's opening range. So I bought 200 shares at $50.88. The stock popped over $51 so I bought 100 more and was filled at $51.14. I moved my sell-stop up to $50.60. It traded back down, through my stop and filled me at $50.39. Loss booked.



ITU. Well, perhaps I shouldn't have been trading in the middle of the day. Anyway, I got into the trade just after noon when he looked like he was breaking the low of the day. This was happening just as the market was weakening further so I felt pretty good about it actually.

Bad entry. It popped up and took my stop out up at $28.25. So it broke lower. Very frustrating. I got short again, this time with a smaller position size. It immediately popped back up to the figure and (breaking a rule) I doubled my position. This was around 1pm and the market looked like it was about to turn, so I covered, taking a small loss and.... I got long. I made a few pennies on the trade and... it went higher. Pissed that I had released my initial position, I bought again, pu near the high of the move. I sold half for a few pennies gain, but then sold the other half when the stock retreated again to the figure, for a 20 cent loss.

So, I churned the stock. Also, the stock was stuck in a pretty tight range. I didn't take a huge loss on this stock for the day, (-$125) but on a day where I couldn't find a winner, it stung nonetheless.

Anyway, those are my three worst stocks of the day. Frustrating losses.

But the real story of my day is that I just couldn't find any winners for me. That's why I left to go surfing. I was feeling defeated and I'm pretty sure you can't trade right when you're expecting to lose.

I don't feel like I can take too much away from today. Hopefully tomorrow goes better.

I feel like I'm braindead.

Here's the stats:
P&L, -$900
Best, JLL, $116
Worst, RWT, -$241

11,600 shares traded.
11 stocks traded, 1 winner, 10 losers.

Virtual Office, $5524. Dow, +41.13, 13,473.90

Misstrade, $8243 on 6000 shares traded.
Sanglucci, $784 on 30,800 shares traded.
OBAT, $294 on 6000 shares traded.
Wincity, no trades.
Akalawoo, no trades.
Denarii, -$3 on 744 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$194 on 1570 shares traded.
Me, -$900 on 11,600 shares traded.
Evolution, -$2700 on 6000 shares traded.

Solid volume at the NYSE today. We traded 1.7 billion shares. However, the VIX declined 1.12 to 22.47.

The FED opened up more liquidity to the market today, a day after cutting interest rates 25 bp. The market gapped up huge at the open and then sold off all day long. The sell-off accelerated at around 3pm and the market dipped into the red. The last 30 minutes saved the bulls.

Looks like it was a pretty great day to trade. I fucked it all up.

The silver lining is that Esignal worked like a charm today. Go figure.

Anyway, onto the daily post.

Going Surfing

Take that OSK trade, multiply it by 6 or 7 and you have my day.

I'm frustrated beyond belief. I need to clear my head.

There are waves today for the first time in weeks. While the water temp is a chilly 44 degrees, fuck it, I'm going surfing.

So the VO will be late. I'll be on the bottom.

Oh, and there's like a 90% chance that I'll have a "history" post up either later tonight or by tomorrow morning.

Frustration

The worst thing about this trade is that I thought I was being "careful." But man, it sums up my day.



I bought around $49 when it showed increasing volume and then I bought 100 more when it broke the OR around $49.30. I sold some up near the top, but then added more when it came back down to my original entry.

This time, the $49 level didn't hold and it broke through and stopped me out of my full position at $48.75.

So, I turned a winner into a loser. Very frustrating.

Bears On Fire

You only need to watch the first 30 seconds to get the point...

Schizophrenic Market

Wow, after we got drubbed yesterday, the futures have bounced 15 points. I'm happy I went out flat yesterday because with my bearish slant I could have easily gotten sucked into the market on the short side.



Meanwhile, Dummyspots gets it right again. I couldn't agree more, Will.

UPDATE: The FED just set the futures on fire. They will use swap lines and auctions coordinated with the ECB to address liquidity issues.

Virtual Office, $12,158. Dow, -294.26, 13,432.77.

Misstrade, $12,140 on 6500 shares traded.
Evolution, $3266 on 31,400 shares traded.
Me, $277 on 5200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $118 on 1 contract traded.
OBAT, $65 on 7600 shares traded.
Wincity, $56 on 260 shares traded.
Denarii, no trades.
Sanglucci, -$641 on 14,200 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$3123 on 3698 shares traded.

You can't expect the FED to save the market all the time, can you? I mean, if I recall, they didn't even want to cut 50bp in September. Then someone hinted that no more cuts were coming at all and the market sold off hard for a good part of November.

I think they're really worried about inflation. Recessions come and go... inflation could be more of a long term problem.

I think cutting by 25bp was a good move. Let the market do some of the lifting too.

I didn't do much the first part of the day. And once the news hit Esignal promptly slowed down making it nearly impossible to trade such a fast moving market... so I didn't do much the second half of the day either...what a nightmare.

A crazy day in the VO... big gains and some big losses. We traded just over 1.4 billion shares which counts as "decent volume" nowadays on the NYSE...sigh....

Anyway, let's hope this makes trading interesting again. It's great to have the FED out of the way. Frontwards!

NOTE: My daily post will be late.

UPDATE: Apologies, but no daily post. I fell asleep putting my daughter to sleep and I just can't go in and turn the computers on again.

Hey, Look Who Showed Up!

Too bad Esignal is busy "shitting the shower."

New Pet Peeve

Admittedly, I have many pet peeves, but this one is really annoying and it has to do with internet advertising.

Yesterday, "Secatogue Henry" sent me an email that included a video. I opened the video but somehow the audio just didn't match the footage. I had "rolled over" some damn "Gap" ad that immediately started playing a "lively" video, audio and all, ruining my internet experience.

The thing about these ads is that they're normally banner ads. They're strategically placed between your cursor and the address bar on your browser so they're really easy to roll over. So while I'm sure they enjoy a fairly high "play rate" due to their subversive positioning, I'm also sure they mostly piss people off.

Not that I needed another reason to hate "the Gap." I've hated that company ever since they (along with Starbucks) bought every corner of NYC, "laming up" the city.

NOTE: The spellchecker in Blogger doesn't recognize the word "internet." Ironic.

Fucking Robots

He's not very good...

The Libertines, "Cant Stand Me Now"

Slow Day, Slow Graphs

Listen, I've decided that Esignal has the worst customer service department in the country. My graphs are slow. That's about as basic a problem that a stock trader can have but still, they can't help me fix it.

So I ask you, kind internet reader, if you use Esignal and have some magic cure for slow graphs, please either email me directly or comment below.

So since I couldn't pull up graphs this morning I had a slow day. I didn't plan on trading much today anyway, so I guess in a weird way it works out.

My trade of the day came in DSL.



When the MBI news was pending this morning, I saw a lot of the financial stocks jumping. DSL was holding back, so I bought a little around $37.50 and decided to add some should it break and test $38. As you can see, this came to pass and I sold near the highs of the day, just as CNBC reported on a frozen BAC money market fund.

Other than that, I really didn't do too much. I can't wait for tomorrow to come and go. I have some money to make back before Christmas.

Everyone knows Santa hates poor people.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $563
Best, DSL, $495
Worst, ALB, -$59
3200 shares traded.
5 stocks traded, 3 winners, 2 losers.

Virtual Office, $1947. Dow, +101.45, 13,727.03.

Evolution, $1040 on 89,800 shares traded.
Me, $563 on 3200 shares traded.
Sanglucci, $553 on 13,200 shares traded.
Wincity, $70 on 300 shares traded.
OBAT, $65 on 7200 shares traded.
Denarii, $22 on 4500 shares traded.
Misstrade, no trades.
Akalawoo, no trades.
Dehtrader, -$366 on 4500 shares traded.

Looked like today was a great morning to trade the financial stocks. However, since I use Esignal I wasn't allowed to trade.

Yes, even though I "shut down and restart" like 5 times, my graphs just wouldn't speed up. When the whole "shut down and restart" thing failed to produce faster graphs, the customer service rep's head exploded. He was out of bullets.

So much for "computer science" majors, huh?

Anyway, you know the story. Everyone is waiting on Uncle Ben tomorrow. Volume was thinner than skim milk as we only traded 1.1 billion shares on the NYSE.

Still, the VO made lemonade out of lemons. We had a decent day.

Blowhard

Robots Looking To Take Over World

Another reason to hate robots.

Unfortunately, the writer of the linked article didn't mention the "hybrid market" as another robot that kills.

"The People" Versus Ragin Cajun

As some of you now know, Ragin Cajun (club name "the Rage"), stole from my site this weekend without crediting the artist known as "Secatogue Henry."

I posted "Secatogue's" response over in the Peanut Gallery.

Soon, there will be a contest in the PG to determine if any of its posters are worthy of "gettin' tabbed." Clearly, this theft was a lame attempt by "the Rage" to gain some popularity in the PG.

I am surprised that RC felt the need to "go negative" so early in the race to "get tabbed." Clearly, he understands that picking popular stocks and pasting crazy price targets on them (just because other stocks have made similar moves) won't win him internet glory via his own I.B.C tab.

While this theft is unfortunate it is not surprising coming from "the Gayjun." Sources tell me that in addition to being a serial plagiarizer, RC is also a hater of cute little babies, free market capitalism, and he doesn't "support our troops."

After consulting with "Secatogue" we decided that an intellectual property lawsuit against RC was out of the question. He just doesn't have anything worth suing over. While the fluorescent velvet Elvis poster was tempting on some levels, we let it go.

Instead, RC will get his comeuppance via internet revenge.

UPDATE: "Secatogue Henry" wins again!

Esignal Customer Service Sucks

Been on the phone with Esignal all morning.

They suck.

In the end, they told me to close down the program, turn off my computer, and turn it back on again.

It still doesn't work.

Perhaps they should spend less on their advertising and more on their customer service representatives.