Stepping To The Sidelines

Made some money in TSL and EXM on shorts and I'm choosing not to get overly involved in this low-volume market.

As far as swing trades go, I closed my DE position at $148.70 and my FED at $50.27. I also initiated a LAZ short at $42.37. "The Fly" best be right about that one...

So for now, my swing account reads:

100 POT
100 NMX
-200 LAZ

The good news on my swing account is that (as of yesterday's close) I made $1135 in it for the month. Doesn't sound like much, I know, but considering that I was down $1500 in it right after the FED cut, I'll take it. Also, I only traded this account with small positions... 100 and 200 shares. I may try to build those positions slightly in October if the market is still cooking.

Going surfing.

Global Warming IS Real Afterall!

Hey, if Bush says it's true, it must be... right? True leadership!

Actually, now I'm beginning to doubt it.

CNBC And Their Damn Anchors

Melissa Lee has the worst voice on TV. It defines nasal.

Animal Collective, "For Reverend Green"

In their prime.

I listened to Strawberry Jam on my ride to the beach in the afternoon and then on the way back. Get it... it's explosive.

A New Appreciation For My Neighbor

My earlier post really says it all.

I only wish I had gotten home at 3:59 and not at 3:40... it would have meant $750 more in profits. Instead, I came home and was thrilled, shocked even, to see my P&L green and so I just sold out of most of my position near $31. I had also set limits to sell 400 at $31.20 and 400 more at $31.50 while I was out... amazingly, they too were hit. So upon my return, I had 1000 shares left and sold most of it around $31.10.


Believe me, I'm not going to complain too much about missing that last 65 cents.

You know, I said that I was doing that to prove to myself that I wasn't attached to money, but really, it seems like I'm more attached to trading itself than I am to money. I really "felt" that the stock was going to go higher but I "felt" even more that if I hung around to watch it that I'd screw it up.

Funny the way lessons can be learned.

Anyway, apart from my intraday number today, I made almost $600 in my "swing account" with gains in NMX (thanks Momo), POT, and DE. FED is dead in the water... if he doesn't move to the upside tomorrow I may bail on that one for a tiny loss.

Also instructive today is the fact that the other two positions that went against me, CNS (long) and LDK (short) would have worked out quite well had I let them be and not exited them for losses. I'm not saying that taking the losses when I took them was wrong, but I am saying that I should probably take smaller positions and give myself more room in them because it could be that I'm often on the right side of a position over a longer timeframe... I'll be exploring this more in the days to come.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $217
Best, ANW, $1007
Worst, CNS, -$544
23,200 shares traded.
14 stocks traded. 6 winners, 8 losers.
97 trades.

Virtual Office, $22,111. Dow, +34.79, 13,912.94.

Misstrade, $21,000 on 21,000 shares traded.
Momojuicing, $734 on 32,200 shares traded.
Tapeworm, $300 on 2 contracts traded.
Me, $217 on 23,200 shares traded.
Bubs, $97 on 1900 shares traded.
Evolution, may trade again tomorrow.
OBAT, -$8 on 15,400 shares traded.
Akalawoo, -$106 on 20 contracts traded.
Denarii, -$123 on 2400 shares traded.

Well, I guess I should address the obvious here... Misstrade did the heavy lifting today. I guess when you cover a chunk of your JRJC short at the low of the day you deserve those kinds of profits. Nice trade.

The rest of us slobs barely scratched out an existence today.

Anyway, volume sucked. I mean, seriously... the NYSE traded 1,180,687,000 shares today. That's like a summer Friday... is there a new Jewish holiday or something?

Looking forward to earnings season. Perhaps that will add some volume into the market.

My Neighbor

I hate his leaf-blowing, wood chipping ass.

Seriously the guy just blew some leaves into a pile (it's windy here... a rake could have done the job in half the time) and then proceeded to pick the leaves up in clumps, throwing them into his woodchipper, "making more" leaves.

Idiot.

Or, I could just be upset because I'm getting completely smoked. Currently, I'm down well past my limit which means I can no longer enter any new positions. So I'm left with this situation. I have 1800 shares of a thin, crappy stock. Do I sell it and accept my loss or do I just hold this piece of shit all day knowing that it's my only hope at regaining any of my lost money?

I could just go to the beach and let the chips fall where they may. When I get home I could either be exactly where I am now, -$1750 or down double that, or I could be positive again. My gut tells me the stock is moving higher today.

Since I've never done this before, and as an exercise in losing my attachment to money, I'm going to walk away and just post the graph here for your pleasure.



I'll be back at 3:59 to close the position. Wish me luck.


UPDATE: HA! HA!!!!!



I'm under no illusions here, I got pretty lucky. Okay, very lucky. Anyway, maybe my neighbor isn't such a bad guy after all, he drove me out of my house, into the surf and away from the computers.

Your Relation To Money

Will over at Dummyspots asks a big question.

He's been blogrolled over there on the right for some time. However, if you haven't taken the opportunity to check out his blog, today is a great day to do so. He always writes thoughtful, clear posts and has also made a couple of great trading calls.

ORA On Wallstrip

That's right, go green! Great Wallstrip today, check it out.

Gusty Southerly

Surf has been flat or unrideable here since early Sunday morning. 4 days has been the longest I've gone without surfing since I began again a couple of months back.

My surfing buddy relies a lot on paid surfing reports and "models" that tell him whether or not it's worthwhile to drive out and get in the water. I'm more inclined to drive out and get in the water despite the reports just because I think there's no better way to start your day than with a dip in the ocean. And hey, if I manage to catch a crappy closeout wave or two, so be it.

Anyway, we spoke late last night and he told me that the "models" were wrong and that the surf was going to be a mess today. I told him I was heading out regardless and that if he wanted a ride, to let me know.

I woke a little late this morning and noticed that the trees were still. No wind! I clamored in the darkness for my clothes and kissed Judy on the head. "I'm gonna go see what's out there," I said. Our daughter was nestled up next to her in bed, looking warm and comfortable. I ran downstairs and out the door.

By the time I arrived in my town, only a few miles away, the flag was stiff with a gusty southerly. One look at the flag and I knew what the surf would be like. White water mush with strong currents.

At 6:00am, the only people in town are the sanitation department guys, running around in fluorescent orange vests emptying garbage bins and hooking large hoses up to the hydrants, to hose down the streets. Since not many people are driving through town every morning with surfboards on their car, they've come to recognize me, and I waved to them as I decided to turn around and head back home.

I turned on the teakettle and walked back upstairs to the bedroom. I slid into bed next to our daughter and buried my nose in her hair, the hair that we cut for the first time just yesterday. Since she's not going to nursery school until January now, every extra moment we have with her has taken on a new importance... even if we appreciate those moments before she wakes up.

As I listened to her breathe and smelled her hair, I thought maybe getting in the ocean isn't the best way to start the day after all.

The Dead - Billy Collins Animated Poetry

Buffet And The Bear

Well, well. If it isn't Uncle Ben saving the market's ass, it's Uncle Warren.



If the bears weren't scared shitless after the 50bp rate cut, they must be freaked out now.

Anyway, it was a pretty crazy day for me. Like I said in my earlier post, I got killed in CMI, but had good trades in LDK and TBSI.



In LDK, I was in and out a lot between 9:45 and 10:45 but always net short.



I got short TBSI when all the shippers started to collapse. He was lagging behind the fall.



I still overtraded today. However, I'm pretty damn pleased with the performance of my "swing" account. I'm now officially in the green there. Once I gain a little more confidence with that style I will start increasing my position sizes and daytrade less. That's my new plan.

The writing has been on the wall as far as me and daytrading for sometime. Really, since the beginning of the year and the implementation of the hybrid market. Simply put, I don't like trading stocks with limit orders and I hate the way the NYSE trades like a goddamn ECN now. So I'm working on adjusting my style.

Near the close today I added another stock to my "swing" account. 100 shares of FED at $51.11. There's a lot of economic data out tomorrow so I'm a little nervous about adding any more size to my current positions. I'm going to keep it mellow for the rest of September and see what October brings.

Meanwhile, does anyone miss me creating links to the stock profiles directly from this post each day?

Here's the stats:
P&L, $1155
Best, LDK, $1225
Worst, CMI, -$831

54,600 shares traded.
27 stocks traded. 16 winners, 11 losers.
194 trades.

Virtual Office, $3091. Dow, +99.50, 13878.15.

Momojuicing, $3412 on 11,800 shares traded.
Me, $1192 on 55,000 shares traded.
OBAT, $100 on 8400 shares traded.
Bubs, flat on 1200 shares traded.
Evolution, switching firms, no trades.
Denarii, -$136 on 3200 shares traded.
Tapeworm, -$355 on 4 contracts traded.
Akalawoo, -$487 on 15 contracts traded.
Misstrade, -$635 on 20,000 shares traded.

It was a wild day in the market. I'd love to know who got their hands on that BSC news at 10:45. That's when we had our first financial rally of the day led by BSC a few hours before the "news" was made public.

Anyway, volume was again crappy. You know, I use esignal and check $tvol to get my volume numbers. But someone told me the other day that leaves out ECN volume. If someone knows how to get the cumulative volume number on esignal, please let me know.

As it is, it looks like we traded just below 1,300,000,000 shares today. Blah.

Lots of eco-data in the morning. Should make for an interesting open. We'll see.

Meanwhile, Gasparino on CNBC is really sticking his neck out by saying that the Buffet news is most likely false... props to him either way...

Sold 200 of 300 DE, Bought 100 NMX

Well, the post title pretty much sums it up. I took the quick and easy gains on the DE, selling 100 at $143.51 and another 100 at $144.37. I'll hold the other 100 until it breaks my entry.

Also, taking a tip from Momojuicing, I picked up a little NMX for the swing. I love the daily chart on it so I figured I'd give it a shot. I got 100 at $129.17. A break of $130 would be sweet. As for downside risk, I'd be out if it broke the low of the day, around $126 or so...



So with these transactions, my "swing" account currently has these 3 positions.

100 DE
100 NMX
100 POT

One Semester Of Spanish Love Song

Good stuff.

Wild Morning

All I wanted to do was relax today, but the market wouldn't let that happen.

In short, I got smoked in CMI and made some good trades in LDK and TBSI. I also caught the rally in the financials led by BSC starting at 10:50 or so, but the exit was ugly.



So I'm up, but heading out to the surf shop to pick up my newly repaired board.

Also, despite losing 75% in my swing trading account on my first two trades, it has now turned the corner and I'm nicely positive in it thanks largely to my DE overnight position.

September Sessions

Okay, so I watched the Jack Johnson "movie" September Sessions last night. The first thing I noticed, just as I was getting comfortable on the couch, was that it's not a "movie" at all since it's only 26 minutes long.

Which leads me to the next thing I noticed. I was happy it was so short. The surfing is pretty amazing but it's also pretty repetitive with guys on short boards getting barreled and making sharp turns up the face of the wave and then riding it back down.

There's also no dialogue, just voice-overs mainly with the star surfers explaining how stressed out they've been on the tour circuit and how stoked they were just to get a chance to make this movie which apparently is "all about the stoke."

I mean, it's fine to watch but you have to go into it knowing that it's really short. I'm not going to harsh on it too bad because the footage is amazing but, it's not a movie... more like a short collection of surf footage collected over a couple of days without a story to really hold it together.

So here's the 3-min trailer. Imagine 23 minutes more of the same and you've got the movie. Pretty cool for what it is.

Bob Dylan, "She Belongs To Me"

"She can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black."



BTW, you can skip the first 1:30 of this video... it's just backstage stuff.

Working Less

I didn't trade too much today. Instead, I built a position in DE and sweat.

I don't have my work computer up anymore, but I think I lost $300 in him. There were times I was up $800 in him and other times when I was down $1000 in him. It was a lesson for me, to hold a position the whole day and not churn in and out of it.

The thing is, I think I can trade less and make more if I put my mind to it.

August was great for me... it was a market that asked to be traded heavily. However, September is completely different, volume has declined and the swingers seem to be raking it in. And you know, longer term I think that swing trading would be healthier for me... and if I could put on a few positions and not have to obsessively watch them, I could probably "work less" so to speak.

Working less is one of my goals in life.

Work less and write more. Write less about trading.

This is all developing of course. I'm just thinking here...

Anyway, it was great to read some of the posts on Wallstreak today. Some of those guys really did well today. If you're the type who can build a position and be confident enough to let it run for you this market has been great.

So I'm going to try to do more research in the morning and make a watchlist of like, 10 stocks and look to trade them only...

We'll see. Time to watch a movie. I got September Sessions through my local library. I'll report back on it tomorrow.

No stats tonight... I'm keeping that work computer off.

Virtual Office, $9023. Dow, +26.50, 13,785.56.

Misstrade, $8125 on 17,600 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $563 on 42 contracts traded.
OBAT, $370 on 6400 shares traded.
Tapeworm, $135 on 6 contracts traded.
Me, $67 on 16,600 shares traded.
Evolution, switching firms... no trades.
Momojuicing, -$53 on 8000 shares traded.
Denarii, -$59 on 2800 shares traded.
Bubs, -$125 on 5200 shares traded.

Well, it's one of those days where the indexes don't really tell the full story. Today was a day to look at sectors and individual stocks to gauge the strength or action in the market. On the NYSE it looks like just over 1,200,000,000 shares will trade. Less volume than yesterday's already zombie-like trading.

Still, over at Wallstreak, guys were making gobs of money trading CROX and the solar companies.

Remember, ever since the Daily Show detailed the "dirty secret" about CROX that stock has been on fire.

Anyway, I have to get out of here quickly, so I'll post my "daily" and video later this evening.

UPDATE: YOU PEOPLE AMAZE ME. THE CNBC "SEX POLL" IS UP FOR 4 HOURS AND IT ALREADY HAS MORE VOTERS THAN THE "R" POLL GOT IN A WHOLE WEEK.