What Really Happened At iBC

I know "the Fly" wants to blame Vinny and his wine, but of course, I have some exclusive footage of what really went down.

See below...  What happened? Mr. Gint (a paid employee of iBC) was busy typing some angry comment when he was disturbed by some random Peanut Gallery poster.  All hell broke loose and he took some servers down... Order was restored when Jeremy stepped in with the taser.



UPDATE: "the Fly's" blog is back.

Third Tier, iBC Machine, and Masterful Occurrences

I finished the day higher by a startling .4%.

Turrible, considering I positioned for this move down yesterday. I would have fared well but my port was chagrined via an inane PCLN upgrade. I shorted again at 131 intraday, and am ready to ride this bitch lower or get stopped out any higher.

Today was highly sensual from the perspective of a man long coal stocks. CNX (long a small boatload), WLT, FDG, whatever, just get drunk on wormwood and once you're blind buy 'em already you Canadian sissy. BTU anyone?

Other notes du jour:
LNN got slapped due to rising costs pressuring margins. And I quoteth:

The co is a little concerned that pricing is in an area where it may be making farmers reach some kind of a point of resistance that pricing is getting to a level where its causing issues in making effecting purchasing decisions. Co says though they haven't heard that farmers are ready to pull back or anything regarding a change of their buying behavior based on the current pricing.

You know what that says to me? Short DE, and do it mercilessly.

I added the emphasis to what is known as "corporate speak." No one in charge of managing a stock price, ahem, company will ever come out and directly say what the issue is, but if you listen closely and have an IQ > 40, you should try reading between the lines. IMO, if they "raise the concern," it is essentially a reality already.

Which also corroborates DE's shitty price pattern as of late.

Finally, the glorious iBC Machine Update. So glorious.

In case you ONLY read DT's blog (morbid curiosity?) and haven't yet ventured to our more fecund site, let me explain what the iBC Machine does.

It peers up the market's skirt in a masterful fashion and tells you what's up there, for better or for worse. I don't need to post my track record (I can't, our site is down) but it is impeccable, as it has called nearly every turn in the market with relative impunity.

Today was highlighted by distribution. It wasn't exceptionally heavy, but it was pronounced. This is good and bad. Huge distribution as per my machine might portend some kind of snapback rally, but what we get is death via papercut, rather than guillotine.

In other words, we're probably not done yet to the downside.

The iBC Machine is NEUTRAL meaning that momentum is slowing and more breakouts will fail. Cash and selective shorts should be added, while longs closely watched. A rising tide can't lift all boats when the tide is falling back--this alone week has experienced 50% more sell strength than buy strength, and this is on the back of last weeks 2:1 ratio of selling vs. buying.

The Machine's proprietary Overbought/Oversold oscillator is at 45 on a scale of 0-100, indicating we aren't at an inflection point.

Monthly breadth is still negative, which also indicates distribution. The slowest moving measure of The Machine is still bullish, though it is deteriorating, and is at its relative low.

The iBC Machine isn't signaling an edge for tomorrow's trade, but generally speaking, I am using it's warnings to build cash and shorts in gay ass homo stocks like TSCM.

I will note however that we may trade up into OpEx. Always a possibility. However, I will highlight that there likely won't be strength behind the move, and it should be met with skepticism.

The Important Matter of iBankChange

You see, there is a certain symmetry in this world. Call it Karma, if you will.

If you doubt what I am espousing, just click on iBankChange. Have a little look-see, to find where the link takes you.

Other than that, should iBankCoin not be back up, maybe I'll visit this godly site, and put up a post. Or maybe I'll just take the night off.

3rd Tier

I guess it's back to my old spot for now. To find me all you have to do is type in madstocks.com, and that's where I'll be.

Today I deserve 3rd tier status, as I found myself closing out longs instead of profiting from shorts. I also closed out my puts in PCLN, I now hate this stock more than POT.

I did catch a nice win in TTES, thanks to the guys at wallstreak. Be sure to drop by tonight, I will have a few updates.

......remember MadStocks.com

"The Fly" is Here

Finding myself back on a shitbox blogspot address is awfully humbling. My "Godly" site, iBankcoin.com has been deballed, thanks to the ineptitude of "Vincenzo the IT guy."

It all started when my IT guy, Vincenzo, took a nap inside of iBC's cold room---where our servers are stored. Unfortunately, he left a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs (with extra gravy) on top of one of our equipment racks, with an open bottle of "vino" next to it. Next thing you know, I stormed into his fucking office, via kicking down his door. Startled, he woke up from his afternoon siesta, scared shitless, and bumped his head into one of our racks: knocking over the "vino," spaghetti and meatballs with sauce all over our high tech stuff---effectively destroying our website, indefinitely.

To make matters worse, he proceeded to clean up his fuckery with a rag, soaked in extra virgin olive oil. I began screaming at him, with the furious fury of a mountain lion inside a gay bar. As a result, he fell on the floor (again) and knocked over an oversized barrel of balsamic vinegar, resulting in immediate power loss at iBC's HQ.

Fucking absurd.

In short, iBC will not be up and running for awhile. Stay tuned.

In other news,"The Fly" made ridiculous coin today, via short sales in CATY, EWBC, PACW,CSE, FED and BBT. In addition,some of my long positions, which include FTK, RIG and PCZ, bucked the downtrend, yet again---enabling Senor Tropicana to close the day higher by 1.9%.

My theme is simple and concise: get long energy and short everything else.

Fuck the banks and the assholes who buy them. Which reminds me, Doug Kass aka "Fucktarded short only hedge fund manager who is long bank stocks," is dead wrong and will lose his entire book of clients, if he is not careful here.

To sum up this post, DT is unbelievably lucky to have "The Fly" grace his 3rd tier blog with such succinct rantings. Upon seeing my site down, immediately, DT emailed and begged me to guest blog. He even donated $100 to my favorite charity: "The Tent for House program," located in Southern California.

Be well.

Fly

Virtual Office, $456. Dow, -131.24, 12,029.06.

Timmay!, $631 on 10,500 shares traded.
OBAT, $9 on 2600 shares traded.
Me, -$27 on 4400 shares traded.
Tokyo, -$61 on 3216 shares traded.
Denarii, -$96 on 3200 shares traded.

A sleeper for the VO.

Not so much for the market however... we tested 12,000 and bounced nicely, only to retrace much of that bounce into the close. Volume was mediocre, but better than yesterday, which admittedly, isn't saying too much.

After I made the mistake of letting our wonderful president raise my blood pressure by watching CNBC (always a mistake), I spent the day getting through the mass of material for my 55 exam on Saturday. Now I just memorize the practice exams for the next 2 days. Fun.

In other words, I don't have much color on today's trade. However, apparently you can shave coal down and make crack and cure cancer with it all at once... Will these stocks ever take a breath?

More bad music, forthcoming. And perhaps some hot guest blogging.

UPDATE: Just got my office numbers... about 2/3 of traders were positive. The range was $7150 to -$799. On a whole, the office did very well.

Surprise Guest Blogger Imminent...

Developing... perhaps.

Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A Changing'"

A rare, midday music video... but I thought this was appropriate.

"Your old road is rapidly agin'. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand."



Lyrics here.

Keep Drilling... Idiots

George Bush: "We've raised fuel efficiency standards to ambitious new levels."


Har... Har... Har... LIAR.

Here's the truth about CAFE standards... we're worse off now than we were in 1987. Largely because of your beloved SUVs.

"The US fleet average peaked in 1987 at 26.2 mpg. In 2003 (latest data available), the average new vehicle (fleet) mpg was 25.0. Why? The proliferation of inefficient SUVs and the increase, as a market share, of light trucks. "

So go ahead and announce that you want to lift the ban on off shore drilling. It will make it that much easier to beat McCain in November. You don't like the high price of oil? Perhaps you should have thought of that when you bought that SUV. The cumulative effect of all you idiots buying those hulking monsters has added to the wild demand that has caused gasoline prices to skyrocket.

It's not just demand out of China and India, as some news stations would have you believe.

The US uses twice the oil of China and India, COMBINED. Fact. Check out this nice pie chart... And you, who I imagine espouses the merits of personal responsibility... you don't think your SUV plays a role there?

Anyway, speaking of McCain, this is just the beginning of his problems... see below.



16 billion barrels off shore. Total. Not going to get it all out in one day to increase supply immediately. Not going to do a damn thing to ease prices. This is simply a short term political mistake.

What will ease prices? Demand destruction... brought on by EVEN HIGHER PRICES.

Keep focusing on drilling more. You'll pay at the polls. The winner in November will be looking towards the future of our energy policy and needs. Not the past.

We've put men on the moon. We built "the bomb." We can figure out a better energy solution and lead the world again.

Either that, or we're doomed to be led.

Okay, back to studying...

The Series 7 and The Series 55 Examinations

For those interested in learning more about these exams (and all the other fun exams you can take in the financial industry) check this site.

INXS, "Suicide Blonde"

So painful... I better get back to making money... this posting of bad music thing on losing days hurts me very, very much.

I've started a new designation for when I am forced to post "bad music." It's under "bad music" so that it doesn't screw up my "music videos" label. Clever, eh?

Virtual Office, -$48. Dow, -108.78, 12,160.30.

Tokyo, $205 on 6605 shares traded.
Denarii, $122 on 3000 shares traded.
OBAT, $74 on 2000 shares traded.
Me, -$449 on 8200 shares traded.

Looks like we're back in the volume doldrums for awhile. Last week I got prematurely excited about the volume coming into the market. We reached (gasp!) 1.4 billion shares a couple of days, and I thought for a moment that perhaps we would avoid a summer slowdown.

Wrong. Today was one of the lowest volume days of the year as we failed to reach even 1.1 billion traded on the NYSE.

And naturally, this has changed the trading landscape somewhat. Today, the market chopped lower, grinding its way back below 12,200 on the Dow.

I should have listened a little closer to the message that the market sent me yesterday. While I didn't have any one disaster, almost every position I entered failed. That's just a clear sign to wait this market out... however, the rest of the VO did well. And the last information I have for my RO was pretty good... about 2/3 of the traders were positive, and the range was $7853 to -$1003. I was #20 of 26 today which accurately reflects my poor performance.

Meanwhile, no word from Timmay in two days... and this after I streamed his damn live show all day on Friday... could a firing be imminent?

I'm not sure if I'll have a daily post up this evening. I'm heading off to the beach for a full moon chanting session. Clearly, Judy is in the driver's seat around here... so I'll just post the bad music now.

Chopped Again

Man... this is not a market for breakout trading.

Volume is lame and I'm just getting chopped. So, like I said yesterday, instead of swimming against the current, I'm going to focus on taking my exam. I scheduled my test for Saturday, which means I pretty much better start studying... like, right now.

The blog will be somewhat "no frills" for the next few days as I focus on studying, but once I take the exam, I'll be able to trade the "4 letter names" again, which in theory, should let me be much more selective about the trades I take, since I should be able to find many more opportunities.

I'll be posting the VO each night as usual, and daily posts if I make trades.

Baracknophobia

The Daily Show (unlike U2) keeps getting better with age. This clip is ostensibly about all the false rumors being spread about Obama, but really, it's about how much the mainstream media, especially Fox, sucks salmonella-encrusted tomatoes.

Bloggers... we are the future.

Art Cashin On CNBC, June 17, 2008

Here's a brief paraphrase of Art's comments with Joe and Carl this morning... As you know from reading this blog, he's one of the only useful CNBC contributors.

CNBC: Art, what's most intriguing to you today?

Art: Well, first of all, the possible rate hike died at 8:30 Friday morning when the unemployment numbers came out. They can't raise rates with rising unemployment. If they did, they'd probably face riots.

Also, crude oil had a frustrated breakout attempt yesterday. I'm watching all the hearings about trading in crude and speculators.

CNBC: Art, why is "speculator" such a dirty word right now?

Art: I don't know... I remember Bernard Baruchs comment about speculators looking ahead. They try to figure out what's on page 13 today, that will be on page one tomorrow.

CNBC: Headline inflation came in at the fastest pace in 6 months. What can the Fed do?

Art: The Fed is trapped for now. They want to jawbone it... inflation is going up all over the world. The romance countries are saying, our economies aren't doing that well, put that gun (raising rates) back in your pocket.

For now, central banks around the world are dealing with rising inflation and weak economies.

Electric Super Car

I've always hated cars... Okay, maybe I don't hate them, but I've never been too interested in them. I view them in purely functional terms. I've never thought a car was "beautiful" or wanted to "take a drive" in a friend's new "baby."

That said, here's one that I find interesting.

U2, "Mysterious Ways"

I lose money and must post bad music as punishment...

I hate U2... always have, and always will, since they just keep getting worse with age.

The Streak Comes To An End

I've spent more money pruning trees and raking leaves in the last 3 days than I have trading.

I've been looking for trades early, taking them if they're there and then heading outside at 11am or so. I do yardwork, as I attempt to limit the tick population around my house, and then come back around 2:30 to see if anything has set up for the afternoon.

So it's been slow. At the same time, it hasn't been a bad kind of slow, because I haven't wasted time staring at the monitors. I've been productive. It almost feels like a mini-vacation or something.

Anyway, the yard is pretty damn clean now, so I'm going to focus again on studying for and taking the Series 55. We're at a slow time here in the market. Volume seems to be on the wane and we're a few weeks away from earnings season. People want to be outside, the beach weather has returned... thoughts are drifting away from Wall Street.

Seems like a good time to trade less and study more...

This morning I forced trades and paid the price. My worst was in WG, which I bought at $46.10 hoping for a run to $47. The problem with this trade wasn't really my entry (although I was later than I had to be), it was my exit and position size.

I wanted to buy at $46, but looked away for a moment. The next thing I know, it was trading $46.10. I bought 500 there, kind of in a panic. What I should have done, since the stock was already past my buy point, was reduce my size. 500 is about my max right now... I should have gone with 300 after I missed my ideal fill spot.



So I bought and the stock immediately reversed. I was slow to sell. I waited until it traded below $45.85 and received the bulk of my shares around $46.75. So I lost 35 cents on 500 shares. It was totally avoidable, and it's the reason why I finished in the red today.

Too bad since it broke my recent winning streak. I had 9 green days in a row there... can't remember the last time that happened. Despite today's loss, I feel that I'm on the right path. In addition to my recent string of green days, I haven't lost more than $100 in a trading day in almost a month (last time was May 19th). That means that even if I'm only pulling $100 or $200 a day from the market, it's adding up.

It's only a matter of time before I have a nice $500+ day again... and since I'm keeping the losses small, it will really count.

Looking forward to it. However, I'm keeping my patience. The market feels kind of crappy right now for trading and I'm not going to force anything.

I want to make one more point about my day. I screwed up the WG and let it effect a couple of other trades I made. I had an excellent entry on CF at one point, got scared, and took 5 cents only to watch it run 2 dollars more from my entry... so I wrote the following down. I'm including it among my "stock trading rules" tag, even if it's more psychological than anything else...

"View each trade as a separate event. Do not let one bad move (or good move) influence your next decision."

Anyway, the worst part about my loss is that it means I must post bad music tonight...

Here's the stats:
P&L, -$89
Best, MON, $65
Worst, WG, -$73

4000 shares traded.
5 stocks traded, 2 winners, 3 losers.

Virtual Office, -$435. Dow, -38.27, 12,269.08.

Denarii, -$1 on 3400 shares traded.
Me, -$89 on 4000 shares traded.
OBAT, -$121 on 4800 shares traded.
Tokyo, -$224 on 3124 shares traded.

Wow. Everyone lost money. The volume was light and my main office also pretty much sucked, I guess it just wasn't a day to trade.

Half of the traders in my RO (real office) made money, and half did not. The range was $3296 to -$1156. I was number 13 of 22 today.

Perhaps everyone is waiting on the earnings news from GS tomorrow. Who knows, but the script that has been leading the market for the last few months remained intact... long coal, long ag, long oil and natty gas.

The HCPG guys took this week off. Perhaps they're onto something there... I'll be taking it easy until trades begin to show themselves again.

Barack Obama's Father's Day Speech

Happy Monday. I'm dusting off the cobwebs. I was busy all day yesterday drinking and philandering.

Great speech by the way. Please check it out.



NOTE: The VO will be up around 5pm.