Click here for a map that shows just how fucked certain states really are.
Nevada seems to be the most severely screwed, with nearly 50% of homes worth less than their mortgages. Also, two huge states, California and Florida, are near 30%.
No data for Wyoming however. Most likely this is because more than 80% of the state is Dick Cheney's bunker.
We enjoyed unseasonably warm weather around here the last few days and with it, the market has reentered its summer volume doldrums. We barely edged above the billion share level today on the NYSE. It was one of the lowest volume days since August.
That doesn't bode well for trading. It also seems to me that we're due for some consolidation here, another negative. However, as "Trader P" pointed out to me today, the VIX is still trading near 60, and that should mean the market in general is good to trade for some time. There will be slow periods, but the volatility isn't going away too fast.
The lesson here is that as an active trader, you need to pick your spots... don't overtrade a dead market. We'll have our chance again to trade like crack-addicted hyenas.
A perfect example of solid trading today goes to our #1 and #2 Bosses, "Trader A" and "Trader Z" respectively.
Trader A traded hard right out of the gate. He had a plan, it worked out and he took his money. Most of which was made in the first 15 minutes of the day. "Trader Z" on the other hand, stayed on the sidelines until just after 3pm and hit the close hard. Neither trader churned away precious profits or whittled away hard won confidence by trading the low volume middle of the day time period.
Anyway, overall, it was a fairly crappy day for the RO. Out of 26 traders today, 11 finished gross positive, or only 42%. 4 traders finished up over $1,000 gross, while 5 lost more than $1,000 gross. I was #6 of 26, or happy.
The Bosses barely edged out the Manservants thanks to afternoon trading.
"Lucky Pierre" - Trader A, $6,708 on 110k shares traded.
2. Trader Z, $4,527 on 41,200 shares traded.
3. Trader E, $3,026 on 39,800 shares traded.
4. Trader N, $2,138 on 23,000 shares traded.
5. Trader T, $775 on 3,600 shares traded.
And the Manservants:
"Chambermaid" - Trader D, $7,416 on 76,100 shares traded.
2. Trader R, -$2,520 on 60,000 shares traded.
3. Trader C, -$1,341 on 61,600 shares traded.
4. Trader B, -$1,131 on 225k shares traded.
5. Trader H*, -$1,089 on 4,000 shares traded.
See you tomorrow.
I've stayed away from the news for the last few days. The election is over, time to take a breath. Luckily however, I ran across Al Gore's recent piece from the NY Times. It reminded me why we should feel good going forward if we can finally get on the right path.
Below is an excerpt, click here for the full piece.
Here is the good news: the bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis.
Economists across the spectrum — including Martin Feldstein and Lawrence Summers — agree that large and rapid investments in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way. Many also agree that our economy will fall behind if we continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign oil every year. Moreover, national security experts in both parties agree that we face a dangerous strategic vulnerability if the world suddenly loses access to Middle Eastern oil...
...What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.
Volume today is already tracking very low and it's only 10:15. We have no major economic news all week and the indexes, unfortunately, could be setting up for some low volume consolidation.
This is probably good for you swing traders, but bad for active daytraders.
I'm just guessing here. Anyway, I'm gonna listen to some music and take it easy with the trade until I see some intriguing reason to enter the market. Enjoy.
Meanwhile, if you're not a fan of rock, and like trippy electronic music, be sure to check out that track by The Field.
As you know if you've been reading this blog, I think the Smashing Pumpkins suck. However, before they started to suck, they made one really great album which can easily bring me back to 1993, a good year for DT.
Smack dab in the middle of the album is this song, and the build from 1:50 to 2:45 (or so) is one of the highlights. Enjoy some real music for the weekend... however, don't watch the video too closely... way too many close-ups of bandmembers trying to look blissed out and spacey.
I won't be able to get the RO report up until late this evening or perhaps tomorrow.
UPDATE: Okay, as "Jd" or "Trader P" mentioned in the comment section, it was an ugly end to the week.
After the carnage of Wednesday and Thursday, we welcomed a little buying off the open which was followed by a fairly steep midday sell-off and then some ultra low volume consolidation heading into the afternoon.
The fun really began after 2:45.
Obama was giving his first news conference as "President Elect" on the troubled economy and the market seemed to be holding its breath. Just before he spoke, the Dow ripped 100 points. Then, when he began to speak, it dropped a quick 200. Finally, at the conclusion of this speech, the market decided to rip 200 points back to the highs.
So, if your strategy was to position for a continuation of the trend of the morning, you were frustrated and quite possibly, "ass-mangled" in the wild afternoon chop.
Anyway, out of 23 traders, 13 were gross positive, or 57%. That's not awful. The problem was in the extent of the losses. The bottom 7 traders all lost over $2,000 gross, while only 6 traders finished over $1,000 gross. You see the math doesn't add up well for the bosses... I was #5 of 23, or bossy.
Given the fact that I had 3 hours sleep and a sick kid, my bossiness should serve as a rebuke to the entire office.
Here are Friday's Manservants:
"Chambermaid" - Trader D, -$20,344 on 305k shares traded.
2. Trader B, -$19,010 on 365k shares traded.
3. Trader N, -$6,018 on 65,400 shares traded.
4. Trader C, -$5,350 on 124k shares traded.
5. Trader V, -$2,369 on 36,200 shares traded.
And the Bosses:
"Lucky Pierre" - Trader A, $10,456 on 144k shares traded.
2. Trader H*, $6,701 on 2,100 shares traded.
3. Trader F, $1,653 on 25,000 shares traded.
4. Trader M*, $1,485 on 0 shares traded.
5. Trader S, $1,223 on 18,400 shares traded.
I haven't written a post about my now well-documented hatred of robots in a long time. But this came across my desk and I felt I had to warn the general populace once again about the dangers of these metallic beasts of hell.
Really funny...
Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are (h/t "Pete")
First he tanks the market and now this. It was a miserable night at DT's lair as my daughter was up all night with an earache.
Currently, she's high on Children's Motrin and singing songs about blue bunnies.
Anyway, the good news is that the last time I traded without any sleep, I made money.
If I make money again today, I'm just going to forego sleep for the near future, as a trading experiment.
Meanwhile, I want to send this anonymous message to the children in my daughter's nursery school class: You are a bunch of germ-ridden shits.
Nearly impossible to find an "embeddable" copy of this godforsaken song. Still, hats off to "Trader C" for his "Lucky Pierre."
Apparently, Barack Obama and the fucking Democrats, are ruining our country. Two days as "President-Elect" and already he's bankrupting the stock market. This is all his fault.
I hope you naive socialist shitheads who voted for him are happy. How's "Hope" taste? I hope good, because when you can't afford food anymore, you're gonna need something.
Anyway, what a shitty day. I guess you could say the RO is full of counter-trend trading crackheads, because we were all smoked early buying this market that has no bottom. The only time people started to make money back was in the afternoon, when we got short.
I'm a bit rushed, and frankly, since the comment section of this blog has been way too quiet for my taste, I'm not going to put too much work into making this post any more witty or funny than it already is. Stop being such lurkers. What's wrong with you people? Don't you know it's creepy to just hang around and watch all the time, without participating? Damn...
So let's get to the numbers. Out of 25 traders today, 14 finished gross positive. There were some impressive comebacks today. For example, "Trader B" was down $50 grand at one point and managed to get back to gross positive. Nicely done. Also, kudos to "Trader C" on earning his first "Lucky Pierre." Enjoy that. I was #16 of 25, down but well off my lows.
The Bosses pulled out a win with some spirited end of day trading.
"Lucky Pierre" - Trader C, $10,452 on 102k shares traded.
2. Trader H*, $8,117 on 3,400 shares traded.
3. Trader Z, $3,789 on 96,896 shares traded.
4. Trader F, $3,739 on 60,400 shares traded.
5. Trader A, $3,397 on 149k shares traded.
And the Manservants:
"Chambermaid" - Trader P, -$4,325 on 83,312 shares traded.
2. Trader I, -$3,053 on 10,800 shares traded.
3. Trader D, -$2,623 on 337k shares traded.
4. Trader 6*, -$2,544 on 0 shares traded.
5. Trader M*, -$1,871 on 0 shares traded.
* denotes swing accounts
I've had another rough start to the day. Not sure how much longer I can count on the afternoons to bail me out.
I was working on reversals again all morning. My worst losses are in complete piece of shit stocks... DFT, MIC, VCI and SVR.
What I've learned is that playing these extreme moves works best when the market doesn't have a clear direction (today it does, down) and when the stocks don't have earnings news.
I won't get blown up tomorrow morning making the same mistakes I've made the last two days.
UPDATE: At 12:39, only 6 ROers are gross positive... not good.
UPDATE II: At 1:44 we're down to 4 gross positive... and one of them is a swing account...
I know I said no more political posts for awhile, but this is just too good.
Let's just forget for a moment that Palin didn't know Africa was a continent. I mean, sweet Jesus... but what I love about this piece is that even after this guy basically lays out that she's an ignorant idiot, he says, "Still, she's fired up the base and many are looking for her in 2012."
Perhaps by then she'll get that 3rd grade education that we require from our VPs.
NOTE: Trader Z pointed out that the reporter uses the "word" "knowledgeablity" not once, but twice. Fox News makes up facts, and sometimes, they make up words. Nice.
I already saw a headline on Yahoo that said something like, "Dow Drops As Investors Ponder Obama Presidency." Oh, so that's why we dropped? Funny. I don't recall him getting credit for the 300 point run yesterday.
All you need to know about today's drop, is that it was bound to happen no matter who won last night. We were overbought from the most recent bottom. 1500 Dow points in 6 trading sessions is overbought... anyway, I just wanted to clear that up.
Still, I titled the post "Consolation For The Idiots" because you'll find some over at "the Fly's" place whining about socialism etc. This tank was for them, so they can feel like they were right for one last time. It'll be fun to ignore the extreme right again for the next 4 years at least.
Anyway, but like I said earlier today, I won't be talking politics for awhile. That battle has been won.
So I'm back to talking stocks. Unfortunately for me, I had a rough day early, and only came back to close green at the very end of the day due to a REIT short that I started around 3pm and held to the close. The RO however, had a great day despite the low volume.
Out of 25 traders, 19 finished gross positive, or 76%. The top 13 traders all finished up over $1,000 gross. The bottom 3 lost more than $1,000 gross... however, 2 of those 3 were swing accounts. I was #11 of 25, or happy to be green.
The Bosses took it to the Manservants today, especially "Trader B." He sprayed nicely and will be posting this evening's musical selection.
Here' are today's Bosses:
"Lucky Pierre" - Trader B, $21,266 on 351k shares traded.
2. Trader F, $9,810 on 85,820 shares traded.
3. Trader J, $7,256 on 109k shares traded.
4. Trader Z, $7,175 on 61,940 shares traded.
5. Trader C, $5,117 on 232k shares traded.
And the Manservants:
"Chambermaid" - Trader M*, -$2,273 on 0 shares traded.
2. Trader 6*, -$1,430 on 300 shares traded.
3. Trader I, -$1,177 on 27,400 shares traded.
4. Trader U*, -$329 on 0 shares traded.
5. Trader L, -$147 on 43,800 shares traded.
After a night of revelry and bacchanalian celebration I came to today's market with little energy. The market sensed my weakness and gave me a shitty stock to lose $1,000 in... So I'm currently "manservanted" and given that volume is lame, I'll be biding my time until the afternoon, when hopefully, I'll be able to cut my loss a bit.
Meanwhile, I was buying this piece of shit from 10:00 on. I finally blew out around 10:45. Most likely, I sold near the lows.
Congrats to Obama, to all his supporters, and to America.
Now let's move forward.
