The Duchess & The Duke, "Mary"

The RO Report, "Solid Move" Edition

While I was expecting a run up to the 50dma in the Dow, I'll admit I wasn't expecting it to happen today. The 50dma was at 8,940. We hit that level in the first half of the day, pulled back, and then made an audacious stab at another important psychological level, Dow 9,000.

That's where the bears really took their stand at the end of the day throwing a 150 swoon into the Dow during the last 20 minutes of the day. I'd expect us to be a little sticky here.

In fact, a pullback to 8,700 or so would be great, if it came on low volume.

I don't watch the VIX much, but does anyone else find it suspicious that it only dropped a little today with all that upside on the indexes? Thoughts from any of you seasoned VIXers?

Anyway, the RO had a sweet day. To really make it special, Trader D "chambermaided" himself.

At one point today, it looked as if we might have our first 100% profitable day... for now, it'll have to stand as a nice goal. Out of 23 traders today, 20 finished gross positive, or 87%. 15 traders made over $1,000 gross while no trader lost over $1,000 gross. Nice. I was #9 of 23.

"Lucky Pierre" - Trader B, $30,684 on 501k shares traded.

2. Trader C, $23,586 on 528k shares traded.
3. Trader 10*, $13,689 on 8,700 shares traded.
4. Trader N, $12,888 on 176k shares traded.
5. Trader A, $10,757 on 105k shares traded.

"Chambermaid" - Trader D, -$959 on 446k shares traded.
2. Trader 3, -$169 on 10,400 shares traded.
3. Trader U*, -$31 on 0 shares traded.
4. Trader 11, $5 on 12,600 shares traded.
5. Trader K, $38 on 0 shares traded.

Here it is, your daily "heatmap."

John Thain's Brass Balls And Tin Ears

-Sure he looks dorky, but he has brass balls and tin ears.

Despite the fact that MER stock has plummeted from close to $60 to around $14 in 2008, John Thain is asking for a $10 million bonus.

They used to call him "robot" or something like that... and as I alluded to in the post title, there are some parts of his body that are indeed made of metal.

Anyway, I look forward to a time when bonuses are awarded based on performance again.

DT Wins Again!!!

While lesser bloggers talk about the end of the world, I'm over here wrapped in cozy winter blankets, wearing my Ugg slippers, sipping frothy coffee drinks and nailing bottoms.



As predicted, we've hit the 50dma on the industrials this morning. I now switch my stance from bullish to short term neutral. I feel we're going to do some consolidation here.

Unfortunately, I think this makes for some dull trading for the rest of the week.

Another Person Who Shouldn't Trade

A good stock trading rule is the old, "where there's smoke, there's fire."

In this case, you could say, "if someone is going to use your back as a springboard to do a backflip, AND they have barbed wire strapped around their foot, there's gonna be fire." Smarten up, dude.