Black Moth Super Rainbow, "Sunlips"

Excellent video, great song. Has a touch of Wes Anderson in some of the shots.

Blood On The Streets? Hardly.

Perhaps it was just too much to have the anniversary of Black Monday and the 50 year (or something) anniversary of the Wilhelm Scream fall during the same week.

Whatever. Relax. The market will go back up next week. It always does.

As "Tradercaddy" sagely pointed out over at "the Fly's" to make today like the Friday before Black Monday, the market would have had to close down 3500 points (or something).

Anyway.

I was largely out of the market today due to "technical difficulties" at my company in the first 30 minutes of trading. So I was actually on the phone with them at 9:31 when I should have been hitting the market with all of my force. I called in a "locate" on DRYS near $126 (no joke) and they never returned my call. It's service like that that makes a man consider trading for a new company.

My best trades of the day came in DSX which didn't really follow the rest of the shippers down early, but "caught up" around 10:30.


I also made a bunch of points shorting FXI and some good money shorting PMI.

That was it. And it sucked. Today is my type of day and I missed it.

Here's to Monday!

Meanwhile. It was a crazy week. I will put up an "open thread" this weekend. Come share your trading stories for the week. Tell a joke, link whore yourself, whatever.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $2314
Best, DSX, $1097
Worst, RWT -$218

45,600 shares traded.
14 stocks traded, 9 winners, 5 losers.
182 trades.

Virtual Office, $31,329. Dow, -366.94, 13,522.02.

Me, $2314 on 45,600 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $610 on 12 contracts traded.
Tapeworm, $320 on 4 contracts traded.
Denarii, $52 on 1600 shares traded.
Momojuicing, no trades.
OBAT, -$98 on 7800 shares traded.
Bubs, -$196 on 1500 shares traded.

Wow. If you thought CNBC was stupid before today then after today you must think the entire network has gone braindead.

Listening to Maria rattle off the Market On Close "sell" orders as if they were some new element of the market melting down really pissed me off. Every day at 3:40 the market get hits with these "imbalances" and every day by 3:50, those "imbalances" are corrected.

Today, Maria made a big deal of reading off the MOC orders (though she only focused on the "sell" orders) and then made an equally big deal when many of them were filled at 3:50 (this too, happens every single day). She claimed the fact that the MOC sell orders were being filled meant that the market was "stabilizing."

Pure and utter stupidity. The best thing was that you could hear someone trying to explain to her what an MOC order actually was in the background. Like, in her decade working on the floor of the NYSE she hadn't noticed these things before...

Anyway, sorry to go off on a tangent like that. The point is, don't get your information from CNBC. Watching the TV is only useful if things are blowing up somewhere.

Misstrade made almost $3 per share traded today. That's... amazing. Almost beyond comprehension. Perhaps he will share some of his trades today via the comments section down below. Congrats, MT. Send a steak, okay?

Meanwhile, the rest of the VO really fucked around. Every single stock I "borrow" was nearly impossible to "locate" this morning, pre open... next time that happens I will take it as a sure sign that the market is about to nosedive.

Have a great weekend everyone. I will have an "open thread" up late tonight. Please come by and tell us about your week.

NOTE: This from a comment over at the Fly's site. "Ragin' Cajun said... I happen to like Maria"

And this is why his blog is "third-tier. In fact, I refuse to re-link his blog here as a "punishment" for such idiotic support.

Why Is FXI Still Halted On The NYSE???

To borrow a phase from Trading Goddess, "Wow, look at that volume!"

And all without the NYSE.... hmmm!

Oh! Look Who Showed Up For Breakfast!

By the way... just want to say one thing to all the bloggers who are like, "I don't trade OpEx days." You're silly...



NOTE: My company really sucked today.

Office Prank Gone Terribly Wrong

Had a hard time waking with all the gray and the rain. Meanwhile, this guy will have a hard time sleeping anytime soon.



Anyway, nothing too interesting in terms of earnings stocks to trade. I'll watch CAT to see if it has any effect on DE, CNH and AG but other than that, my attention will be elsewhere.

I just don't trade GOOG or ISRG even though they will be the big story stocks today.

NOTE: Meanwhile, if things are slow today I may do a "spontaneous" live chat midday. Just to shoot the shit.

The Blow Up Artist

In case you missed it, here's a great article about Victor Niederhoffer from The New Yorker, one of my favorite magazines.

Mareva, "On roule a 160"

This video meshes like 3 of my childhood fantasies into one event... slot cars, saucy, "dominating" women with short skirts, and metal necklaces. Don't ask.



(h/t bloggerdotcom)

An Easy Day

I really chilled out today. It was easy because my first trade of the day was also my best. All the damn banks gapped down again... any stock that had to deal with mortgages or anything like that gapped down.

All except one. RWT.



Somehow, this idiot managed to gap up close to a point. He even had a giganto bid hanging out at $30.50. If you had balls, you could have gotten short thousands of shares. It's the most liquidity I've seen displayed at one price since the inception of the hybrid market.

Unfortunately, I only got short 400 shares. But still, I made close to 2 points on some of those shares.

After that, I had similar trades in ANW and PMI. Similar in that I caught decent moves in the stocks with only small share size. It's too bad that I tend to catch bigger moves when I'm trading with smaller size. I'm sure there's some psychological lesson to be gleaned from that information, but I'm not digging it out today.

Anyway, that was it. My day was done. The only other thing I did was churn small positions in FED making him my worst stock of the day. Seriously, look at that graph... it would have been stupid to lose $20 in that stock today... much worse to lose over $200.



Look, because this post is short why don't you take the extra time I'm "giving" you to email your entire address book and tell them to read this damn blog. I write about licorice, stocks, surfing, the media... I mean seriously there's something for everyone.

Go "favorite" it or vote for it somewhere... I dunno.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $933
Best, RWT, $512
Worst, FED, -$269
17,200 shares traded.
11 stocks traded. 8 winners, 3 losers.
97 trades

Virtual Office, $6663. Dow, -3.58, 13,888.96.

Momojuicing, $3432 on 8400 shares traded.
Misstrade, $1675 on 9400 shares traded.
Me, $933 on 17,200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $340 on 10 contracts traded.
OBAT, $187 on 9400 shares traded.
Bubs, $156 on 400 shares traded.
Tapeworm, $95 on 2 contracts traded.
Denarii, -$47 on 5800 shares traded.
Evolution, -$108 on 50,600 shares traded.

Sigh... volume between 1.2 and 1.3 billion again.

Anyway, Momo gets a new floor and he starts posting fancy numbers. Go figure.

It was a pretty good day for the VO considering that the market threatened to put anyone who took a glance at it to sleep today. Bad sentence, eh? But really, it felt dead to me today... that is, unless you were trading the shippers again. What a sector!

GOOG reported and spiked 20 points in either direction. I wonder what that does to Akalawoo's "strangle?"

Gotta go. I have a date with a Kookaburra bag.

P.S. Vote on the poll or lose your "privileges."

Licorice

I'm not like, a big eater of licorice or anything. I find it odd that I'm even writing a post with the title "licorice."

It all started last week when I was playing Candyland with my daughter. I landed on a "licorice spot" and lost my turn. It got me thinking about licorice and how I hadn't had any in awhile.

I mentioned this to Judy and the next day, she surprised me with a bag of Kookaburra Licorice.



Licorice. Licorice. Licorice.

It's a weird word, no?

Anyway, the licorice was great and I finished the entire bag in short order.

Okay, so fast forward to yesterday. Yesterday sucked. I didn't get up from my desk all day... I didn't stretch... I overtraded... and, if you recall from my daily post, I had my mother-in-law in my office watching Mary Poppins while my daughter ripped small pieces of paper into smaller pieces of paper while chanting the word "NO."

So after dinner I said to Judy, "You know, I'm in a bad mood. Let's go into town and get some of that licorice, that'll cheer me up." So, we packed our daughter into the car and drove into town. We were too late. The stores had closed. However, undeterred in my quest for licorice, I stopped at a 7-11 and picked up some Twizzlers. "Whatever, licorice is licorice," I thought.

Wrong. WRONG. In short, Twizzlers are shit.

Look, do yourself a favor and try some of this Kookaburra Licorice. I'm not kidding, I just bought 16 pounds of the stuff from their online store. It sounds crazy, I know. And to be honest, I feel a little nervous about it but when it arrives I know I'll be very happy with my purchase.

I told Judy. All she said was, "You know, some things are left better in small quantities. You're going to get sick of it... 16 pounds? No..."

"Sweet," I said. "They sell it in bulk for a reason."

Radiohead, "Videotape" (remixed by SKEW)

Already the remixes are coming out... great song. Love this remix too.

Vaccines

Off topic I know, but I saw this article on Yahoo.

Seriously, I had chicken pox when I was a kid, I enjoyed it. I played all day and ate ice cream.

Why should it be MANDATORY that my daughter receives this vaccination? Who the fuck dies from chicken pox? If I have to lie about my religion to empower myself to make decisions for my own family, well, then that's just a consequence of silly laws.

No vaccine should be mandatory unless it's for a disease that's killing people. If that makes me ignorant, so be it.

Thursday Stock Earnings

Again, no stocks that I love to trade.

You've all heard about the big BK miss... BAC miss... there are other banks out there reporting today as well. WM, BBT, CBH, PNC and STI.

I'll also be watching SPWR pretty closely. That solar sector has been acting like a flaming ball of death to the shorts.

Finally, just for movement, I'll check out CTXS, ILMN, SYK and PH.

Could be a fun day. Especially if FXI goes to $0. DIE!! FXI! DIE!!

DSL: Short Squeezes Don't Always Work

With over 40% of it's float short, I figured someone would be covering with all the bad news that has hit. Nope! And it's downgraded again today.

FXI: Price Target $37.64

But I'll take $190 too.



UPDATE: I covered 100 shares of my 150 share short position at an average price of $206.25. Meanwhile, the stock is still halted on the NYSE for whatever reason...

Will You Vote For Steven Colbert?

If you're where I'm at, then you probably understand that it doesn't matter who is president. I'd much rather have someone up there who would be fun to watch.

Can you imagine Hillary or Guiliani for 4 years? No thanks. Glumsville.

So, the new poll question is:

"If Steven Colbert really did run for President of the United States, would you even consider voting for him?"

I mean, have fun with this, okay?

Here's an op-ed written by Mr. Colbert outlining his positions. (h/t L.C)

Fox Business Network Will Fail

If you people know anything that is.

You answered the poll question "Will You Watch Fox Business News?" with a resounding "no!"



Out of 58 total votes, 31 of you said you wouldn't watch the propaganda network. That's 53%, or, a landslide.

Of the 27 or 46% of you who voted "yes" I assume you were really just voting against CNBC. I understand your frustration.

Colbert For President!

Finally! Someone I can vote for!

I mean, this is the first time in my voting life where I'm seriously considering not voting at all. What good will it do us to elect Hillary? or any of the front running Republicans? Nothing will change.

What we need is radical change. Steven Colbert will provide us with radical change.

In fact, he's probably the only man that can deliver our country from the embers of Iraq and make us smile about it.



And now for the new poll question. If Steven Colbert really did run for president, would you vote for him? It will be up shortly. Go vote.

"Washing Machined"

Click below for the proper sound effects while reading this post...



When surfing, if you get hit by a big wave and then held under for a few seconds, my friends and I call it getting "washing machined." Maybe you're more poetic, fine. Whatever, share your thoughts below.

Anyway, I made money today but still, I was "washing machined." In the morning I came in and made a lot of good trades. My best were made shorting EXM.



Still, when I checked my P&L around midday I was down. WTF? Well, I got slammed trying to short FXI a few times and then I lost over $500 in DSL. Again. I think DSL has been my worst stock for the last few weeks. In fact, I can't remember the last time I even made a good trade in the fucker. Off the screens!

So that kind of messed with my head... thinking I was up when actually, I was down close to $500.

The next thing that messed with me was Judy telling me at 11:00 that her mother was coming over in an hour so that she could go and teach her yoga class.

Now, normally I have wonderful relations with my in-laws. But when I'm losing money I don't really have good relations with anyone.

As it turned out, my daughter wanted no part of grandma today. When Judy left, all she did was cry for me. So I'm upstairs watching the market deteriorate (just after noon) and building short positions in all the "strong" stocks while I'm listening to this complete shitfest downstairs.

So, I went downstairs, grabbed my daughter and told them both to come upstairs in the office (where the only TV in the house is) to watch "Mary Poppins." So that was life at 12:30 here, trading large positions of strong stocks while my mother in law and my daughter were 4 feet away watching Mary Fucking Poppins.

Washing machined.

Anyway, somehow I managed to focus enough during this time to make some money. At one point, I was up over $1500. However, once the afternoon hit I got this urge to start shorting FXI again. That's when I started throwing money out the door.



The worst thing is that I short 50 shares in my swing account. I was filled 4 points away from the market, at $213. I called in to complain and they told me the trade would stand and that I'd have to write to some dude to try and get my trade fixed. Great! But what do I do with the shares now? "Act as if the trade will stand."

So, I got filled 4 points away from the market and the NYSE tells me that's the way they do business. Thank you Hybrid. There needs to be some accountability there... it can't all be robots. Why? Well, remember February? Robots sometimes fuck up.

Anyway, so I'm a little crazy in the head right now because FXI is ripping my face off after hours too. It'll probably open at $230 effectively blowing up my "swing account." So much for that experiment.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $739
Best, EXM, $755
Worst, DSL, -$514

70,600 shares traded.
28 stocks traded. 12 winners, 16 losers.
267 trades.