I wanna be a motherfucking boss dammit!

Hey bro - it is your older (yet in a cruel twist of fate, much younger looking) sister just stopping by to say hello. I know that some of your past posts have addressed the trauma and the stress that you feel as a day trader, banging away at your keyboard, cursing incessantly at your 42 computer screens, while you try to be in your own words, "a motherfucking boss."

I hear you. In fact, after watching the interest rates on my credit cards soar after being one day late with a payment; after watching the gas and oil prices climb to near ridiculous prices; and while trying to figure out why a household with two adults making what I previously thought was a decent amount of money is often living paycheck to paycheck - I had an epiphany: I want to be a motherfucking boss too!

Imagine the possibilities.... "Eat your broccoli."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a motherfucking boss, that's why!"

"I'm not coming in today. Or tomorrow. Or next month."
"Why?"
"Because I'm a motherfucking boss, that's why!"

The best reason of all to be the motherfucking boss? Control of the jukebox!

Richard Wagner, "Ride Of The Valkries"

"Trader P" choice, and an excellent one at that.

Back in the day, like 8 years ago, "Trader P" would blast this whenever the market was taking a dive. That was back when the tech bubble was bursting, so we heard this one a lot.

Joe The Plumber

I'm really, really looking forward to Jon Stewart's take on "Joe The Plumber."

The RO Report, "R.I.P Market" Edition

Hours after the dust has settled on my trading day, I'm having a hard time accessing the emotional swings that I went through. I think this is mostly because right after the close I had a nice surf session with "Trader Z" until after the sun set.

There's nothing like a sunset surf session to clear the mind.

"Trader Z" has some sick board skills. Also, he's a really good surfer.

Anyway, what can you say about this market other than it's coming apart at the seams. I can't spin today's action in any positive way. The best I can do is say that we did rally 950+ points on Monday and that something similar will happen again... eventually.

A bull market will come again, I promise.

I'll say this about trading in general... the most important thing you can have is an open mind. All day long, until 3:30, I was buying stock and getting completely killed. Once I switched my bias and stopped fighting the trend, I made back all my cheese and became a Boss.

And I cannot overstate the amount of help I received from "Trader P." Never, in my entire 10 year career, have I put so much trust in another trader.

The end of the day really deserves its own post, but I'm too exhausted. To summarize briefly, at 3:30, I had no positions and was down 5 grand. My entire day had been a brutal beatdown... also, I lost lots of money. A mere 20 minutes later, I had built a little over a million dollars of short exposure, and I was making money faster than you can say, "Jim Cramer sucks."

In short, if you want to "be right" all the time, you're going to lose money trading.

Today deserves more of a post, I apologize, but I'm shot. Eventually, I'll have to write a book about this all and you'll just have to buy it, okay?

Out of 27 traders today, 16 traders were gross positive, or 59%. 11 traders finished up over $1,000 gross while 7 traders finished down $1,000 gross.

I was number 5 of 27 or, a motherfucking Boss.

Here are today's Bosses:

"Lucky Pierre" - Trader P, $34,755 on 282k shares traded.

2. Trader B, $28,853 on 517k shares traded.
3. Trader Z, $16,307 on 198k shares traded.
4. Trader C, $13,297 on 338k shares traded.
5. Trader S, $11,640 on 133k shares traded.

And the Manservants:

"Chambermaid" - Trader D, -$20,014 on 472k shares traded.

2. Trader H*, -$11,968 on 5,400 shares traded.
3. Trader 6*, -$4,727 on 0 shares traded.
4. Trader I, -$3,081 on 26,400 shares traded.
5. Trader M*, -$2,230 on 0 shares traded.

NOTE: There are a few swing accounts in the office. From here on out, I will mark swing accounts with an asterisk.

How It Felt To Be Bullish This Morning...

Complete Smoke

I got too big in CHK, couldn't take the pain, and sold the lows. Classic.

Another Person Who Shouldn't Trade

Failure to fully understand cause and effect relationships is a strong negative for prospective traders.

Nice & Smooth, "Cake & Eat It Too"

WTF? Are you guys trying to ruin my blog with this shit?

The RO Report, "Awesome Giveback" Edition

Early on, the RO was banking coin, making jokes, and having lots of fun. Between 2:45 and 3:40 however, we took massive pain and gave back a good portion of the day's gains.

Fights broke out, friendships were ruined, and a new trader, we'll call him "Trader 8" was sacrificed in a ritualistic killing involving a sexual act known as the "Angry George."

Don't even bother looking it up in the Urban Dictionary...

Anyway, it was a bruising experience. Many of us had nice gains on the day and gave them all away.

"Trader D" avoided the carnage by staying independent, and going against what the conventional wisdom of the office dictated... that we were going to bleed into the close. He sprayed, and now I have to post his bullshit music.

After the last two days, I'm shot. So let's just get to the numbers...

Out of 27 traders today, 12 finished gross positive, or 44%. While the top 8 traders all made over $2,000 gross, the bottom 8 lost over $2,000 gross, so it was a mess. I gave back nearly all my gains on the day and finished #10 in the office.

Given my stupidity, I'll take it.

"Trader D" kept the office in the green, so the Bosses get top billing.

Here are today's Bosses:

"Lucky Pierre" - Trader D, $37,754 on 497k shares traded.

2. Trader F, $19,478 on 182k shares traded.
3. Trader I, $5,747 on 102k shares traded.
4. Trader B, $4,653 on 778k shares traded.
5. Trader G, $4,515 on 50,700 shares traded.

And the Manservants:

"Chambermaid," - Trader C, -$14,343 on 216k shares traded.

2. Trader E, -$11,375 on 124k shares traded.
3. Trader N, -$4,022 on 34,700 shares traded.
4. Trader H, -$3,902 on 1,400 shares traded.
5. Trader V, -$3,165 on 68,534 shares traded.

October 20th Cover Of The New Yorker

Click this link to buy their current, "stock market themed" cover. Oh wait, I forgot, you have no money.

Art Cashin On The Daily Show

I hate to admit it, but Jorge was right... this was the better Daily Show clip from last night. Not only because it features Art Cashin (my hero) but also because it pokes fun at CNBC stupidity.

Goldman Injecting $2 billion Into Visa

You know, I saw this article a little over a week ago and I thought, "Well, that's the next shoe to drop," but with all the lunacy surrounding the market recently, I forgot about it.

But I just heard over the news wire that Goldman is injecting 2 billion into Visa.

Perhaps there is a shoe here, somewhere...

Great Depression Historian On The Daily Show

Oh, and the US is investing $250 billion into the banks and guaranteeing loans for the next 3 years. And the futures are ripping again.

Finally, here is a comparison of The Great Depression and The New Depression. One thing they left out... in The New Depression, the stock market rallies 1000 points.

Which ROer Do You Want To See Post To The Blog?

Just to fuck with my officemates, I've decided to apply a little pressure, Internet-style to get one of them to do a blog post.

So I'm starting a new poll... if you could read a guest post from one of these manly men, which would it be? Now, I'm limited in how many choices I can give, so I'll start with the ones who show up most often on the RO report. So, if you're dying to know more about Trader L, for example, you'll have to write him in...

You can vote for more than one trader... the poll is open for a week.

Go vote... this could start a good war.

NOTE: I offer no guarantees that I can actually get an RO to post. And even if I did succeed, the post would most likely be about Dirty Yeltsins or Sneaky Castros. In short, it's quite possible that the post would be unrelated to the stock market as most of the RO inhabitants are disturbed in significant ways.

Adele, "Hometown Glory"

Trader A with the win!

So the way I'm working it now is this... if a trader takes top spot in the RO for the first time, he can pick even if he doesn't do a 50% spray. However, after he gets his first "freebie" he has to spray to get the music pick again.

The RO Report, "Insane Rip" Edition

Truly, these are wonderful times to be a proprietary trader. How much longer will it last? Your guess is as good as mine.

I mean, what's gonna happen tomorrow? Do we drop 500 points to consolidate?

Volume today, compared to Friday's level, was simply lame. We traded just over half the volume we traded on Friday... to me, that means shorts covered, and some longs entered the market, but for a 936 rip on the Dow, I'm left a little unsettled.

I haven't felt so neutral on the market since I started this blog. Amidst all this volatility, that feels odd.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw a few words out here about the RO. What it is, and why we kick so much ass.

When I started this blog a year and half ago, I was a lonely trader, locked in the confines of a spare bedroom in my house, trading for a mean overlord who didn't appreciate my consistency or work ethic. I needed some trading friends. So I started this blog, and quickly roped a few bloggers into reporting their daily P&L each day.

I called it, the Virtual Office. It was very gay, however, I made some good friends doing it.

Anyway, last December, after a string of 5 or 6 bad days, my old company, run by ogres and shitheads, called me and told me to send them money. My account wasn't close to being negative, and I had been with them for years, consistently making them money. So I took this request for more capital as an affront and told them to fuck off. They told me I could leave if that's how I felt. So I split.

Coincidentally, I had re-ignited a friendship that I had long thought dead. As it happens, this friend also ran a trading company, and so I joined his office in January of 2008.

At the time, it felt awful. However, as so often happens in life, events that you at first judge to be negatives, can turn out to be positives.

The vibe in the office was so solid, with great chemistry among the traders. They shared ideas, and they shared P&Ls. Soon after I joined, I decided to scrap the VO. I mean, I now had traders who played my exact game, sharing their P&Ls. I quickly lost interest in seeing how I compared to swing traders or futures traders. I just wanted to improve my performance relative to the guys who were trading what I traded everyday... stocks.

So the RO ("real office," as opposed to the original "virtual" office) that I report each day represents the top 5 and bottom 5 traders in my actual proprietary trading office. They are gross figures and they are real.

Okay, I hope that explains it. Let's get to the figures.

Out of 27 traders today, 23 finished gross positive, or 85%. 21 traders finished up over $1,000 gross. A record as far as breadth of wealth in the office goes... I was #11 of 27, nicely positive.

The Bosses demolished the Manservants today, so they get top billing.

Here are today's Bosses:

"Lucky Pierre" - Trader A, $93,496 on 798k shares traded.

2. Trader B, $87,744 on 1 million shares traded.
3. Trader F, $55,583 on 316k shares traded.
4. Trader D, $49,273 on 682k shares traded.
5. Trader Z, $32,509 on 430k shares traded.

And the Manservants:

"Chambermaid" - Trader K, -$4,417 on 274k shares traded.

2. Trader 3, -$481 on 9,600 shares traded.
3. Trader X, -$460 on 23,000 shares traded.
4. Trader Q, -$43 on 20,400 shares traded.
5. Trader 7, $308 on 2,600 shares traded.

Smoked Myself Early

Thus the quiet blog.



But I want to relay a funny conversation today. Not long after my XOM destruction, "Trader D" was bemoaning the fact that he owned 800 shares of CME, 10 points out of the money.

Trader D, "I'm fucking down 10 points on 800 shares of CME."

Trader I, "Why the fuck did you buy 800 CME?"

Trader D, "I dunno! I was planning on "lightening" once I went 2 points in the money!"

And that's why I bought so much XOM. I was expecting a quick break of $66 and I would have sold some out immediately. However, that scenario didn't play out and I wasn't fast enough to act on a quick exit.

Trader D, on the other hand, probably made 20 or 30 points on CME, because he stuck to his guns. Looking back, with XOM now nearing $67, I wonder if I should have held on...

Incidentally, Trader D is currently the "Lucky Pierre" while I'm on a few slots away from being "Chambermaid."

It's a funny game we play.

Stock Correlation Coefficients

As you know, the market is in constant flux. So it's important to constantly search for new ways to make money in the market.

I'm assuming that soon, this "crackhead trading market" that we're currently enjoying will give way to a kinder, gentler market again. One that rewards actual research.

One thing I have always found extremely important when I'm grouping my stocks on my screen, is to place them with other stocks that trade similarly. For example, I don't have JPM with XOM and IBM. Instead, I have JPM with the other bank stocks, XOM with the oil stocks, and IBM with the tech stocks.

One easy way to find out how "correlated" stocks are, is to use robots. Check out this link, type in a bunch of symbols, and you can find out how closely correlated their movements have been over the last 60 days. I've now blogrolled that site.

Here's an example of a search I did. As you can see, PFE is not at all correlated with the ferts.

Anyway, it's a good tool to use. Check it out, once things settle down again, you might find it useful.

Dinosaur Trader "Premium Content"

Because some of you have asked, I thought I would expand the RO just this once, to show the entire office, and also to show how many trades each trader executed on Friday. I won't be publishing this data again, since honestly, I have a lot of other shit to do on a weekend. But since Friday was historic, and the RO has generated a lot of buzz, I figured I'd appease the masses.

That said, given the current crisis, and the sudden zeal for scapegoating, I'm considering changing the format of the RO away from the actual P&L figures to something more based on relative performance and a point system. I mean, can you imagine the furor if some idiot took some of these figures out of context to make a point about speculators? Call me paranoid, but the political winds are shifting, and I'm just being prudent until this all blows over.

So anyway, I'm just going to do this list in the following format... Trader, P&L, total shares traded, and total trades. From that, you can do some division and figure out average position size, profit per share, etc. Enjoy!

Trader B, $299,723 on 1,516,780 shares traded. 5,880 trades.
Trader D, $175,271 on 1,047,600 shares traded. 3,765 trades.
Trader A, $61,677 on 588,192 shares traded. 2,258 trades.
Trader F, $41,831 on 314,800 shares traded. 1,975 trades.
Trader S, $23,140 on 119,800 shares traded. 775 trades.
Trader E, $22,010 on 229,100 shares traded. 1,361 trades.
Trader G, $14,653 on 161,000 shares traded. 1,279 trades.
Trader P, $11,009 on 495,100 shares traded. 2,122 trades.
Trader L, $10,107 on 102,200 shares traded. 669 trades.
Trader J, $8,122 on 93,000 shares traded. 714 trades.
Trader K, $5,936 on 181,200 shares traded. 964 trades.
Trader X, $5,191 on 26,000 shares traded. 149 trades.
Trader C, $3,609 on 420,300 shares traded. 1,992 trades.
Trader H, $1,570 on 500 shares traded. 1 trade.
Trader O, $649 on 26,200 shares traded. 175 trades.
Trader Q, $534 on 10,600 shares traded. 78 trades.
Trader 7, $322 on 5,200 shares traded. 67 trades.
Trader M, -$860 on 0 shares traded. 0 trades.
Trader U, -$1,064 on 0 shares traded. 0 trades.
Trader 3, -$1,289 on 5,000 shares traded. 39 trades.
Trader T, -$1,294 on 6,400 shares traded. 52 trades.
Trader R, -$1,616 on 103,482 shares traded. 650 trades.
Trader I, -$2,083 on 53,200 shares traded. 383 trades.
Trader 6, -$2,136 on 0 shares traded. 0 trades.
Trader Z, -$2,651 on 671,310 shares traded. 1,954 trades.
Trader N, -$3,046 on 23,200 shares traded. 166 trades.
Trader V, -$5,526 on 95,600 shares traded. 535 trades.

NOTE: Traders that show "0 shares traded and 0 trades" are swing accounts that didn't execute on Friday.

The Government Marries The Banks

Let's see how this turns out, shall we?



Also, when I get some time this weekend, I'm going to post some bonus stats from the RO from Friday's trade.