"The Fly" Is ALIVE! Dead Weekend Open Thread

Have fun! Talk to us. This market is in trouble, let's hear your thoughts.

As for me, I'm in the city all weekend staying at a friend's apartment who is away. I'm loving it.

I'll try to throw some comments up, but until then, talk amongst yourselves.

UPDATE: Monday morning after a crazy weekend and I'm up to my eyeballs in shit. Meanwhile, "the Fly" is suppossedly "burning his blog to the ground" at 10:00am.

If true, I'll miss stuff like this a lot...

"In many ways, we are all stupid fucktards, trying to find our niche, our special skill-- to make enough money so that we can fly to the moon in a monkey suit."

-"the Fly"

Sweet.

Virtual Office, NYC Edition. $15,089. Dow, -223.55, 13,042.74.

Evolution, $3728 on 140,000 shares traded.
Me, $2281 on 86,700 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $1555 on 3000 shares traded.
OBAT, $255 on 12,800 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $114 on 3 contracts.
Wincity, -$62 on 300 shares traded.

What a wild friggin day.

I left the market at around 3:00 or so when it was down 92 points. I was extremely angry with myself for missing what I thought was going to be an easy rally to the close. I had to leave early today, to get to the city.

Anyway, I can't believe it sold off so hard that last 40 minutes or so... crazy stuff. Glad to see that next week will be another interesting one because I messed up some huge opportunities today.

I won't be posting a daily. I'm amazed I found the time to post this. Why do I feel a weird responsibility to this blog?

Congrats to the VOers for posting a great day.

Have a good weekend. I'll throw an "Open Thread" up. Please babble away.

Market Weaker Than Congressional Democrats

Perhaps this will change into the close, but for now, the market blows.

Should we close at the lows, stock up on food this weekend. And visit your local Walmart to pick up some assault rifles in order to protect your family from the "American refugees."

NOTE: After giving $2000 back to "mother market" I've lost my mojo. We'll be in the city all weekend and I may make an early exit. In that case, the VO will be very late tonight. I'm currently up $2150. If I drop below $2000, I'm gone.

Bloomberg Speculation... Again!

Now, if there was ever a year when a third party candidate had a real chance of winning this is it. Especially a third party candidate with a billion bucks to blow.

I mean, people hate Bush and people now hate the Democrats for not standing up to Bush.

We need a third party now!

The New Talking Point

The decline in the dollar doesn't matter for "real Americans," that is, those who buy their products in the US... unless they're out buying Gucci handbags.

I've heard that repeated by the talking heads all day. While I'm not an economist, I'm sure that's an oversimplification and that there are other ramifications.

REM, "Drive"

Stock Market Volatility

Yesterday I was, in a word, "de-balled." I just want to briefly touch on what it was like to be squeezed for over 50 points in FSLR.

It sucked.

Okay, moving on.

At around 3pm, my balls were handed back to me by "mother market" and I was able to resume trading. Actually, I was massively short at 3pm and got badly squeezed giving back $1000 of my then, $2500 in profits. "Mother market" is one fucked up chick.

However, due to the strength of that squeeze, I realized that it was probably a buy program. I took a look at C and GS, which were rallying hard, took a deep breath, and started to buy stock hand over fist.

Funny thing is that I really bought the wrong stocks. My largest positions, DSL, FLR and MTG all either shook me out or didn't move in a way that allowed me to profit. Instead, I made good money in smaller positions in CMI and FXI.

Basically, you could have bought almost anything and made money. That's my kind of rally.

Earlier, I caught the bottom in DRYS with 300 shares. I mean, not "the bottom" exactly, but close enough. I bought around $91.80 and sold at around $95.



Now, you can be a dick and ask my why I sold so "early" but the fact of the matter is that at 1:00 we hadn't entered "rally mode" yet and it still looked like the sky was falling. I thought it wise to take some profits and get ready for it to go back to the lows.

Anyway...

So, I'm a little shot right now. I'm going to let this post die and go play with my kid.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $5179
Best, DRYS, $971
Worst, GHL, -$422

82,100 shares traded.
22 winners, 11 losers.
461 trades.

Virtual Office, $14,940. Dow, -34.38, 13265.64.

Me, $5179 on 84,100 shares traded.
Evolution, $1542 on 125,600 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $967 on 3100 shares traded.
OBAT, $105 on 23,200 shares traded.
Wincity, $40 on 700 shares traded.
Denarii, $27 on 2200 shares traded.
Akalawoo, no trades.
Stewie, seen with a can of Macademia nuts... developing.

A "W" bottom.

Always nice to see the market get smoked and then come back almost 100%, no matter if you're bullish or bearish... it just makes you feel good.

I'd normally make fun of CNBC here, but I had my TV on "mute." I just couldn't stand to listen to Maria. Did she mention the MOC buy imbalances? If she did, I'll give her some credit but I kind of doubt she did.

Anyway, it was a good day for the VO as everyone finished in the green. And finally... we got volume. 2 billion shares of volume. Now, I'm not sure if that means we put in some type of temporary bottom or not, but I will say that the 1455 level in the futures was also important in August. 13,000 may also be providing some kind of psychological support on the Dow. I think we've used up our Wombat for the next few days.

For me, this is good as tomorrow I'll be trading only a half day. We'll be in the big city all weekend. I'll try and get the VO up, but no guarantees. As you can see, Stewie was found in the corner of the VO today with a can of Macademia nuts and mumbling to himself. You recall what happened to Bubs... anyway, something may be up.

Animal Collective, "Cuckoo, Cuckoo"

Go ahead, throw on a few large positions in your favorite crazy "momo" stocks and listen to this song at the same time. I dare you.

The Price Is Wrong, Bitch!

Sniff The Wombat

The $40 Pizza, Part Deux

Read part 1, here.

It's a running joke among my family and friends that without Judy, I'd be in big trouble or perhaps, already dead. It had only been 2 hours since she'd left and already I had botched a simple financial transaction and managed to lock myself out of our house.

Why? You might ask, did I not have my key? Because the day before was Halloween and I didn't want a lot of shit in my pockets when we went trick-or-treating. I don't like carrying shit in my pockets. I removed the house key from my keychain and then, I had forgotten to return it.

I put my pizza down on my back porch and secured it in place with some rocks, so that it would not be blown by the wind. I walked down the block to get a spare key from a friend. She's an old woman who lives alone. We hadn't visited her in awhile. She opened the door with a big smile.

She just bought a new car. She proceeded to tell me all about it.

"I mean, you won't believe it. I say 'XM5' and the radio comes on. I mean, isn't that something? Can you believe that? Guess what color it is? 'Midnight Moon!'"

It was clear she hadn't seen another human being, in weeks.

She continued... "It has a 'spoiler' and I told the guy, 'Look, 70 year old women don't need spoilers! HAHA! And he winked at me and said, 'No, but 50 year old women do.' I mean, can you believe that?"

This kind of talk went on for some time while I imagined my pizza getting colder and clammier. Still, there was nothing to be done. I nodded... I said, "Really?" I fixed her printer, hooked up her DVD player and patiently sat as she showed me a number of chain emails she had received in order to help her determine the credibility of each.

"Don't send the money to Nigeria," I cautioned. "I think that one's a fake."

Then we drank some scotch and she showed me nude photographs of herself taken when she was 23 years old.

Anyway, by the time I got out of there, key in pocket, the dwindling light had faded and it was pitch dark. Luckily, I live in a neighborhood that doesn't suffer from excessive lighting. we don't have street lamps and most people don't use obnoxious floodlights to keep their asphalt and grass well lit while they sleep. I walked home, enjoying the stars.

As I neared our house I got excited about my "Mardi Gras" again, even though it would now have to be reheated.

Take a walk at night and you'll notice that your footsteps seem to make more noise than they do during the day. With all of the recently fallen leaves and beech nuts on the ground, I sounded like Autumn itself as I walked up the driveway. However, this peaceful rustling of my feet was soon overtaken by a commotion and a cackling twitter, taking place by my back door.

I stopped to listen. "Hey!" I said, in a stage whisper. There was no answer... I walked closer.

Something ran by me and I noticed a strong odor in the air.

"Tabasco?" I said to the darkness.

My $40 pizza had been eaten by raccoons.

When I got inside I called Judy.

"Please come home," I pleaded.

Pavement, "Frontwards"

Moving on...

Nighttime Reading

I learned a lot from this article.

Turn off those useless outside lights!

A True Trading Disaster

For the record, this is the first time I've ever been 40 points out of the money.



I'm not trying to be flip about this trade or anything... I guess I got short at $164 or so.

It's almost humorous. Meanwhile, we got a "cheap pizza" tonight... no "Mardi Gras."

It's a bad trade, it blew up my swing account, and I'm moving on. There are two lessons I take away from this:

1. Things can always get worse.
2. Should they "get worse" life still goes on. Gotta keep moving.

I will keep making money in my daytrading account, re-fund my "swing account" and hopefully not make this type of fucked-up mistake again.

Odd Nosdam, "Kill Tone"

If there's one instrumental you listen to this year, let it be this one. Featuring birds and "baby-baby" my daughter's favorite doll.



Meanwhile, don't expect a daily post tonight. I'm turning my crap off.

Virtual Office, $5034. Dow, -360.92, 13300.02.

Evolution, $1448 on 91,700 shares traded.
Me, $541 on 41,300 shares traded.
Denarii, $130 on 800 shares traded.
Akalawoo, $48 on 1 contract traded.
Wincity, no trades.
Stewie, no trades.
OBAT, -$68 on 14,000 shares traded.
Dehtrader, -$135 on 3480 shares traded.

Wow, well we blew right past those lows from October 19th at 13,407.

It's hard to really read how serious this sell-off is though because at this point, it's clear that so much volume is trading off of the NYSE that the volume numbers I report each night are basically irrelevant. We traded about 1.6 billion on the NYSE today. Good, but not worthy of this market move. I'm sure there was tons traded elsewhere that would really blow these volume numbers up.

If you were silly enough to watch CNBC at the end of the day you were treated to Maria making a fool of herself once again as she breathlessly explained that the market on close sell imbalances which come out EVERY DAY were going to take the market down in the last 10 minutes.

"I can only tell you that things are going to get worse in the next 10 minutes," she explained. I guess that first 320 points had nothing to do with us losing another 40 more there at the close. It's called a "trend" Maria, and it's going down. Please, CNBC... do something about her.

The VO did okay today, but really, I thought we'd have some big numbers.

I have shit to do right after the close so my daily post will be late.

UPDATE: I just blew up my "swing" account by shorting FSLR into earnings. In retrospect, that was dumb. The stock is up $30 afterhours. I was short 100 shares. Luckily, I covered the other 200 I was short before the close.

The $40 Pizza, Part 1

The other evening, Judy took our daughter out to a "book party." That meant I had 4 hours all to myself. The first thing I did, was to call in a "Mardi Gras." The "Mardi Gras" is a pizza, but calling it a pizza is like calling Melissa Theuriau a "woman."

To be absolutely clear, the "Mardi Gras" is the best pizza ever conceived by man.

It's loaded with shrimp, jalapenos, andouille sausage, tabasco, and onions. It's truly a "man's pie." In fact, it once made a less manly friend of mine cry... true story. After I eat a "Mardi Gras" Judy will avoid me for a full day because you don't digest a "Mardi Gras" as you do normal food... Instead, you sweat it out... you breathe it out.

Anyway, I drove the 20 minutes to "Pizzacatos." I hadn't been there in awhile, but I found an old promotion punchcard in my wallet... one of those things where if you buy 10 pizzas, you get the next one free. Ours had been punched 7 times.

I handed it over with $40 to the girl behind the counter (the "Mardi Gras is a $24 pie). She looked at the card like it was some weird crazy thing that confused her. She cocked her head, made a WTF? kind of face and walked into the kitchen holding my card up to the light as if to verify it was a real object. She also took my $40.

I stood at the counter and stared longingly at my pie sitting atop the pizza oven. A TV was tuned to Fox News and some lobotomized looking man sat at a table, watching the show and nodding while practically drooling all over himself.

"Fucking lemmings," I thought.

A fat woman swung open the kitchen door. "We don't take these anymore," she said, holding up the promotion card as if it were a toddler's dirty diaper. I stood there, blinking wordlessly for a moment while she continued, "Oh yeah, we stopped using them a long time ago" in order to emphasize the fact that I hadn't dined there in so long that I was completely out of touch with their policies and therefore didn't deserve much respect.

She was a big woman with many "creases."

She reached up, grabbed the pizza box and slid the pie across the counter to me, all the while staring me dead in the eye.

Due to the confusion with the card, the intimidation by the "creased" woman or my elation at having the pie in my hands, I forgot to pick up my change. Like a pervert buying a porn mag, I made a quick exit while averting any unnecessary eye contact with the other patrons. I walked nervously to my car and sped off.

I didn't realize that I had paid $40 for my pizza until I was nearly home. I thought about turning around right then, but instead thought of "the creased one" and told myself that I'd just call the restaurant and pick up the money the next time I was in the area. I was really hungry and just wanted to get inside to be alone with my "Mardi Gras."

I pressed a little harder on the gas pedal and made it home in record time, narrowly avoiding a raccoon as I made a quick turn onto my block. I bounced over the curb and parked hastily in my driveway.

"Mardi Gras" in hand, I marched triumphantly and purposefully towards the back door. I grappled my keychain with my right hand while holding the "Mardi Gras" with my left, all the while balancing on my left leg as my right held the screen door open.

As I stood there balancing, I realized the real problem... I didn't have my house key.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Freaky Hybrid Trade Of The Day! FLR!

Yesterday in my daily post, I highlighted how the Hybrid Market has ruined trading in illiquid names like BAP. However, lest you think that the Hybrid Market only wrecks havoc in low volume names, take a gander at this 1 minute chart for FLR today.

Really, is going from $144.50 to $151.50 in 3 minutes an orderly market in a stock that trades millions of shares a day?

Short answer is "no." They Hybrid Market is an abomination on many levels. We're almost at the year anniversary and I can already hear the NYSE getting ready to tout it's success with a big PR bash. However, I still can't find any traders defending this joke of a market. Where's the much promised "price improvement and matching?"

Meanwhile, I made money shorting FLR this morning... so don't go thinking I'm just bitter or something. I just can't stand what has become of the NYSE.

Strong Oil, Weak Dollar. Time To Horde Food

Nuts, dried beans...



Meanwhile, I'm not even going to turn on CNBC. I can't imagine they're saying anything useful.