Stock Earnings 07/23/2007

The following is a list of companies reporting earnings today. I got this list from Yahoo Finance. However, I edit it down substantially. If a stock is under $10 or has really low volume, it would not be included on my stock earnings list. I only place stocks on this list that might be worth watching to trade. This list does not represent any type of recommendation to buy or sell these stocks, it's just a list of stocks that could move (up or down) when they report earnings today.

ACI
ASTE
ATHR
CALM
CNH
RE
HAL
LEE
PFB
RPM
SVVS
SGP
TASR
TSU
WFT
WTFC

50-Day Moving Average Plays

Hey, I had some time to do some research this weekend and I figured I would share some of it with you lurkers.

The following is a list of stocks that report earnings sometime this week and are nearing or just past their 50-day moving average.

CMCO
WIRE
CPO
LH
NTRI
AMG
AMP
ANET
CPS
CVD
DCX
FISV
MDP
STE
CCE
CW
ELN
GIFI
ESI
VLCM

Family Guy: If Gore Was President

Deerhoof, "+81"

Very catchy.

Virtual Office, -$1264. Dow, -151.04, 13849.45.

HPT, $125 on 4 contracts traded.
OBAT, $24 on 6400 shares traded.
Denarii, $5 on 84 shares traded.
Bubs, no trades.
Misstrade, -$692 on 2000 shares traded.
Me, -$726 on 11,200 shares traded.

Well, you can read my brief story on the day below this post. It was just not the day to be buying stocks.

Maybe it wasn't an easy day to be selling stocks either! No money was really made today, and I'm not taking away from the guys who were green. It's just odd that on a day when the market moved so much that no one was able to pull some money from it.

Well, I hope everyone has a restful weekend. During earnings season were all probably at our desks too much. Get outside and have some fun.

Washed Out

Well, I got washed out early today, so unfortunately, I'm writing this post before I even get a chance to post the Virtual Office.

I must say, it's strange being on the sidelines while I watch the market reverse. And I'm pissed about it too, but I realize that I'm just angry at myself for letting myself get chopped too much this morning.

It was clear early that stocks weren't going up. Yet, for some reason, I kept looking on the long side. I bought, LNN, VMI, SFL and CF. Even more frustrating, when I finally decided to get short, I short AGU, NOV and WNR and these stocks squeezed me out.

So what I'm doing here by watching this reversal is taking my medicine. It really sucks too, but I think it's the best thing I've done in awhile. I'm out of the market and watching it. The reason why I'm out is because I'm following my rules.

Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication with my company. You'll recall that I asked them to shut me down if I went down $500 on the day. They thought I said, $1000. So I end up losing -$726 today.

Ah well. Overall it was a good week. It stinks to end this way but I'm being forced to learn a lesson and hopefully that helps me in the long run.

Enjoy your weekend.

Here's the stats:

P&L, -$726
Best, MA, $139
Worst, WNR, -$344

shares traded, 11,200
10 stocks traded, 3 winners, 7 losers
total trades, 65

Oh, and a hattip to ToddsTrade for helping me with my html. Now, when you click on a link it will open a new window instead of sending you away from here.

Los Campesinos, "Please Don't Tell Me To Do The Maths"

From their new E.P.

Also, if you happen to be in the NYC area, they'll be playing at the Mercury Lounge on August 9th and 10th.

The Aislers Set, "Hit The Snow"

Shipping Is En Fuego

I guess that's kind of a no-brainer with oil at $76 a barrel, huh?

Anyway, that was the story of the day although that wasn't clear to me at the open.

At the open, I was paying attention to "the Fly" pick VMI and I was looking for a quick pop in LNN (they are competitors) due to the strength of the earnings in VMI. I made a quick half point in LNN and moved on. Later, I would buy back and make another 20 cents, but in the morning it was a quick play for me.

I then got involved in a number of bad trades. I hate days like today, when the market gaps up and then immediately flatlines or heads lower. I'm feeling all bullish at the open and then you get all these failed trades. It's frustrating because you get long, you look at the indexes and they're all up, but you're losing money.

My worst trade at this point came in UBB. I was really watching it to hold the $130 level after the gap up in the morning.



I felt confident it would and I was actually afraid it wasn't going to pull all the way back down to $130, so I put limits in at $130.40 to buy some. I was filled and watched the stock sink lower. When it broke $130, I sold, taking a .40 loss on 300 shares. But here I got involved with some of my bad thought patterns. I reexamined the 15-minute graph, and was like, "Oh yeah, support wasn't at $130, it's really at $129.60 or so" and with this newly minted confidence, I bought again. And, I lost again. Then, I made the "support" at $129.40 and you can see what happened. I sold near the low of the day, right around $129.

Eventually, the stock rebounded. Actually, it bounced right after I sold and I was so angry that I thought hard about injuring my cat. I didn't want to kill the cat, but I thought about snapping a rubber-band at him or something... but I didn't.

Instead I moved onto the shippers. "Stewie" and "johnson" over at Wallstreak were watching DRYS and GNK which were both up strong and ripping. So I bought into a couple of the shippers that trade on the NYSE, EXM and SFL.



SFL is not a very volatile stock, so I felt comfortable buying a larger position than I've been trading with lately. I picked up 800 shares right around $30 a share. After a brief correction, the stock moved smartly up, mirroring the strength in the rest of the sector. I sold some in the $30.35 area, but held the rest and ended up netting over a half point in the trade.

This was good for me mentally for a couple of reasons. When things were good, 800 shares was the way I liked to start positions. It was nice to get back to that number of shares and have a trade work in my favor. Felt like the old days, even if it was just for a half point.

Anyway, I'm very happy with the way I've rebounded after the disaster I had from last Tuesday. If I can keep this up for the rest of the month, I should be in a good mental state heading into the vacation month, August. I've also noticed that I'm kind of settling in with making just under 100 trades a day (50 trades, open and shut) and trading around 15,000 shares. I think this consistency in my raw numbers is a good sign, although I don't know why.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $464
Best, SFL, $433
Worst, UBB, -$399

shares traded, 15,200
12 stocks traded, 7 positive, 5 negative
total trades, 92

QUESTION: Does anyone who uses Blogger know how to create links so that when the user clicks on the link it opens a separate window instead of navigating away from my site? Replies may be made by email (see my profile) or in the comments section. Any help is appreciated.

Virtual Office, $4005. Dow, +82.19, 1400.19.

Misstrade, $3240 on 16,000 shares traded.
Me, $464 on 15,200 shares traded.
HPT, $226 on 26 contracts traded.
Denarii, $152 on 1200 shares traded.
Bubs, no trades.
Evolution, -$30 on 25,500 shares traded.
OBAT, -$74 on 8200 shares traded.

A nice day for the VO as the Dow closed higher, right at the 14,000 level.

Honestly, I can't wait until we trade away from this level, one way or the other.

If you were checking on Wallstreak today, then you were probably involved in the hottest sector out there, the sexy and volatile Shipping sector. Huh? Shipping is sexy?

That's right, led by a strong earnings report from DRYS and GNK, the shipping sector skyrocketed with big advances also in EXM, SFL, OSG and TBSI. It's always great to see money moving en masse into an entire sector. Makes this job easier.

Anyway, we have options expiration tomorrow and a summer Friday. Should be fun!

Pissed Jeans, "I've Still Got You (Ice Cream)

A high-energy song to get the market going.



UPDATE: It worked! Who needs oatmeal?

Gunkhole

When "nature calls" I walk the 15 feet to my bathroom and crack open a dictionary. That's right, I keep one right next to the can. While I am doing my "business" I look for funny words. This is just another perk I get from working at home.

Anyway, I've decided to share some of the funny or interesting words I find. I think it's important for you to read these posts and understand that I was taking a crap while I found them. Sorry mom.

Today's word is "gunkhole"!

Gunkhole: n. A small, sheltered cove for anchoring small watercraft - vi. -holed, holing to make a series of short pleasure trips by boat, as from island to island.

So, enjoy calling a co-worker a "gunkhole" today. When they get pissed, explain to them the definition with a smug smile ("Ha! Dickhead! I was just calling you a small sheltered cove!"). Then you get to call them a moron. This is why I never made friends when I worked in an office.

Steam Pipe Explosion

Having been downtown for 9/11 I can say that I'm very happy I wasn't around for this one, even if it wasn't terrorism related.



I mean, this should highlight the irresponsibility of the administration for terrorizing us with terrorism. When Michael Chertoff is going around telling the entire fucking nation on the Sunday morning talk shows that he has a "gut feeling" there will be an attack soon because "it's the summer" I'm sure people listen.

For example, here's a quote from a Yahoo news story:

"We were scared to death. It sounded like a bomb hit or a bomb went off, just like 9/11. People were hysterical, crying, running down the street," said Karyn Easton, a customer at a salon a few blocks from the site of the blast. "It was really surreal."

I watched some other videos of this where people were completely freaked out. When they think the end of the world is coming every other week, you can understand why.

Slaraffenland, "Polaroids"

Interesting...

Falcor The Urinator

Since my cat recently started to urinate outside the box again, I got a kick out of this video. We called the vet and told him about the problem. He offered to bring the "blue juice" and end the problem (no kidding!) but we're not ready to kill "Doc" just yet.

So picture a small room filled with screens radiating heat. It's 90 degrees and humid. I'm sweating onto my keyboard and probably trading TNH. My daughter is having a tantrum downstairs because she wants "the red cup, not the blue cup" and the thick odor of cat urine is wafting up the stairs and sitting in the office with me.

Actually, it's not just sitting in the office with me... cat urine has more of a presence. It's kind of tapping me on the shoulder saying, "Hey, I'm cat piss and I'm the least of your worries". Just putting it all into perspective for me.

I offer that picture in case you ever thought about working from home.

It's not all clear starry skies. And with that, meet "Falcor".

The Besnard Lakes, "For Agent 13"

A rainy and grey song for a rainy and grey day.

I Bleed, The Market Bleeds

For whatever reason, I traded like a complete fool this morning.

First off, I tried to short CPL while it ripped up.



There are a couple of things wrong with this trade. The first, shorting strength, is obvious and it's a mistake I make regularly. It's not a recipe for making money unless you see some type of topping action. Shorting into spikes because you're expecting them to "spike right back down" is a losers strategy. I'm getting it now. So, while I made this mistake I realized it and didn't get overly stubborn. I traded it twice and lost twice for a total loss of -$133. Nothing awful.

The other mistake with trading CPL is that it's just too "thin". Pre-hybrid market I found a real advantage to trading "thin" stocks because the tape was always really easy to read. Buyers couldn't hide and neither could sellers. Large "bids" moved thin stocks as did large "offers". I made a lot of money trading these stocks in the past. However, with the advent of the hybrid there is no longer an advantage to trading these stocks. In fact, there's a disadvantage because the spreads are often much wider than on thicker stocks.

Another bad trade was made in CPA. I made all of my trades in this stock between 9:45 and 10:15. Okay, now take a look at the graph... see anything? Nope. Me neither.



I made the trades in this stock for another bad reason... I told myself a story. The story went like this. TAM Airlines had that awful crash yesterday in Brazil. For that reason, people are selling TAM which I guess could have some justification. But then they went and sold GOL and CPA too.

This I felt, was unjustified.

So I got into the trade because I thought people would realize this was a silly reason to sell and buy the stock. Instead, I should have waited until there was some actual buying occurring, or until some sort of trend developed. As you can see, between 9:45 and 10:15 there was nothing but chop. And I, accordingly, was chopped.

Let's talk about a good trade.



I noticed pretty early on today that ARD was not joining in the big oil bounce that happened today. Stocks like WNR and NOV gapped down and then powered forward all day. ARD traded down and stayed down and then went into a flat base until the late afternoon. I actually bought this stock early, like around 11:00 when it first popped above $57. However, instead of panicking and selling when it dropped below $57 I held and added more when it finally popped around 3:30pm. So, I recovered from an early loss in the stock and managed to make it my best winner of the day, at $254.

Anyway, I'm never happy with losing money but I can live with $100 loss.

Here's the stats:

P&L, -$104
Best, ARD $254
Worst, CPA -$153

shares traded, 16,400
13 stocks traded, 5 winners, 8 losers
total trades, 88

Virtual Office, $3379. Dow, -53.33, 13918.22.

Misstrade, $1982 on 7800 shares traded.
HPT, $1000 on 57 contracts traded.
Evolution, $410 on 34,400 shares traded.
Bubs, $78 on 400 shares traded.
OBAT, $9 on 4400 shares traded.
Denarii, $4 on 400 shares traded.
Me, -$104 on 16,400 shares traded.

It was a good day for the VO though largely quiet... volume was down.

Earnings season has finally kicked in which is providing some entertainment if nothing else. The name of the game today was "Energy". Oil stocks moved as did the solars. If you were in those areas today, you were in the right place.

Like I've said in the past, it's always good to see the large majority of the VOers in the green. It means this is a good market to trade.

Apologies on the late post. I've had a crazy day.

Ass Pennies

Gash

I ripped my right arm open this morning while surfing.

Right now I have it all taped up but I'll have to go for stitches later.

The point of this is, as a trader, your arms and fingers are very important. Moving my mouse is painful right now. Amazing, in that 12 hours ago I never thought I'd have a hard time moving my mouse...

I remember in the 1980s, Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight had her legs insured for like, $1 million each.

Perhaps while I'm in this slump I can get my arms insured really cheap...