BEST STOCK MARKET BLOG POSTS OF 2008!

Dancing on the grave of 2008 before it has officially passed may be in poor taste, but did 2008 care about you when it fucked your 401k account? NO.

2008 was a total dick.

The best thing you could say about 2008 is that it was a good year for blogging about the stock market. Everyday, some new scandal broke and some significant level was breached.

It was epic and that's why there are many great links here, all chosen by the people who wrote them.

One note... In an effort to increase the range of this post, I've "porned it up." In my opinion, the stock market blogosphere has a lot to learn from the success of the porn industry on the Internet, so I worked a little sex into the blog post descriptions that follow.

Meanwhile, any similarity between the descriptions and the actual posts or the lives of the people who wrote them is completely unintentional. Except Timmay's... If you want to see actual descriptions of the posts and not the "porned up" versions, click here.

One more note... if this is your first time on my blog, welcome. On the sidebar, you'll find an "Introduction" link. For you regulars, daily posting will resume on January 5th. Thanks to everyone for visiting.

Anyway, please get into the spirit of this post by checking the video below. It's 24 seconds long and somewhat safe for work...

UPDATE: My BSMBP "mentor" Jon Swift has completed his own "Best Blog Posts of 2008" post. His has a political slant and probably took the entire month of December to compile. He's kind of like, the grandfather of Best Stock Market Blog posts, so check it out.



Dinosaur Trader - "Another Lesson In Perspective" A young stock market blogger takes to the sea on a search for perspective. A wild storm washes him onto an island inhabited by nothing but dirty little whores!

The Fly - "The Important Matter Of Mother Market" A week before graduation "Professor Tropicana" finds himself in a moral dilemma. Is raising the grade of a failing student in exchange for sex worth the guilt he will have to live with? What the hell, this little slut has Mother Market's permission and is offering to give it up!

Hybridtalk (Exchanges) - "The Difference Between NYSE And Nasdaq: Who Is Master, Man Or Machine?" Watch the hottest, most willing but nonetheless "innocent" robots perform some of the nastiest sexual acts on Wall Street. Just when you thought robots couldn't move any faster, they moan and scream for more speed!

Wall Street Warrior - "Simple Analysis To Understand Fibonacci" A woman whose husband leaves her is sexually frustrated by the absence of a lover in her life. Avoiding the lecherous advances of the men she meets, she finds that her son's interest in her exceeds the accepted limits of their relationship. They spend the rest of their adult lives in therapy!

Danny - "Bro, I Totally Feel You" Danny is a naive 15-year-old who is preoccupied with sex. He develops a crush on the new 30-something, French housekeeper who looks after him while his father is out of town for the summer on a "business" trip. Later, Danny realizes that he enjoys being "tortured" by his sister's Barbie dolls!

Trader X - "Fibonacci Lines, Indicators, And The Holy Grail" In 1957, a young man named Jason drowns while at the Crystal Lake summer camp. The camp closes. Years later, the camp reopens and a series of bloody murders take place. After the majority of the staff are killed, a woman appears who claims to be the mother of the drowned boy. She is later decapitated and a throng of angry anarchists show up to have sex with her skull!

Daily Options Report - "Who Has That Box Of Plus-Ticks?" A dude goes golfing. He accidentally hits his ball deep into the woods. There, he meets up with a gaggle of septuagenarian female golfers dressed in pastels!

Afraid To Trade - "How I Set Up My Charts" Watch as every "tight stop" is hit with abandon on these filthy little stock charts!

Wall Street Fighter - "10 Most Vulgar Ticker Symbols" If you fetishize about older babes getting pounded while calling out dirty stock symbols, then this is the stock market post for you!

Attitude Trader - "Attitude Adjustment Series: What Am I Looking Forward To?" In an effort to get his "Attitude Index" to rise, this blogger attracts the attention of some young sluts and changes their attitudes about "positive thinking."

Dogwood - "This Is Why They Suck" 15 different girls, 15 different cars! Enough said!

Jon Swift - "Great Moments In Election-Year Blogging" Mrs. Roberts has just lost her husband and needs comforting. Good thing the neighbor’s kid is grown up and back from college. He gives her more than just a shoulder to lean on…

Alphatrends - "Some Historical Bear Market Perspective" After breaking up with her boyfriend, distraught, helpless and "shy" Vanessa decides to take a hike into a deep and dark forest all by herself. How many bears will she find there? More importantly, how many can she handle?

Howard Lindzon - "Commodity Boom... OVER?" Two men enter a fast food place. One orders a burger with fries, the other orders nothing at all but gets gangraped by the hot voracious female employees!

The Big Picture - "On Writing" A sensitive pianist with a secret side is exposed in this raunchy tale of debauchery and sexual delight.

Slope Of Hope - "November" A man arm-wrestles for the custody of his son.

Zen Trader - "I Am" This "pious zen monk" stumbles from stock graph to stock graph in search of the perfect set-up. In the end, he is met by a dozen horny nuns that redefine his notion of "mindfulness."

Stewie - "My PnL Excel Sheet" Edward is a rich, ruthless businessman who specializes in taking over companies and then selling them off piece by piece. He travels to Los Angeles for a business trip and decides to hire a prostitute. They take a liking to each other and he offers her money if she'll stay with him for an entire week. Then they get married.

Ragin Cajun - "Don't Be An Asshat!" Summertime. The beach. It's the place where a guy can get more than an eyeful of tanned, curvaceous bodies barely covered by the teeniest of string bikinis. But when young, innocent Rajun makes his beach debut, the temperatures really start to rise! This nubile virgin is looking to lose it, and he has no problems finding plenty of virile studs to accommodate his wanton desires.

High Chart Patterns - "Excerpt From (What Will Be) Today's Newsletter" Debbie gets a spot on the roster of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. One day, Debbie is approached by her boss, Mr. Greenfeld, who first offers $10 to see her breasts, another $10 to touch them, and finally another $10 to suckle them. She realizes that with $30, she can buy 400,000 shares of Citigroup!

MovetheMarkets - "3 Live Scalp Trades On The ES Futures" A girl saves a piglet from slaughter and he grows up in a barn full of animals and befriends a spider named Charlotte. They all have "no holes barred" raunchy spider sex! Imagine, 8 legs!!!

OONR7 - "Same Old Story" In the not too distant future a secret government re-animation chemo-virus gets released into conservative Sartre, Nebraska and lands in an underground strip club. As the virus begins to spread, turning the strippers into "Super Zombie Strippers" the girls struggle with whether or not to conform to the new "fad" even if it means there's no turning back.

Complacent Panda - "Making Money With Simple Point And Figure Support & Resistance Trendlines" Watch as CP finds desperate amateur models willing to do anything to become famous. He takes these cute young angels and breaks their little halos right before your eyes!

OBAT - "Monster Stocks" Department store owner OBAT finds that several of his employees are unionizing to get more money and better working conditions. In order to find out who the organizers are, he gets a job at the store as a shoe salesman. Not realizing his true identity, he's befriended by the two ringleaders, and a charming older woman with whom he develops a romance. They go to dinner and become close friends!

Timmay! - "Ashley Dupre Girls Gone Wild Pics, aka It Never Ends" Enjoy watching this stock market blogger take not just one dick in the ass, but two dicks in the ass! That is correct my friends, double anal in every scene for over twelve hours of pure hardcore ass-action. TimRaw indeed!

FX - "Gamblers State Of Mind" Daniel is new in town, and is getting picked on by the local bullies, who all are adept in karate. Determined to stick up for himself, Daniel begins to teach himself karate, only to discover that the caretaker at his apartment seems to be a grand master in karate. Agreeing to teach Daniel, Mr. Miyagi shows Daniel that there is more to karate than violence. Daniel competes in and wins the All Valley Karate Championship. Afterwards, an orgy breaks out among the cheering crowd!

Stock Hunter - "Trading Results For 10-01-08, And A Hunting Story" Something about men that hunt attracts older women. Watch as these experienced whores teach this stock market blogger that there are better things to do in the woods than shoot animals.

The Essentials Of Trading - "The Secret To Trading Success" The Navy needs more men, so they enlist five voracious sperm-swilling babes to entice every man they can get their hands on to join up. Full of naughty Navy costumes and patriotic fervour!

Stock Rookie - "Poker Discipline" Rocky Balboa is a struggling boxer trying to make the big time. Working in a meat factory in Philadelphia for a pittance, he also earns extra cash as a debt collector. When heavyweight champion Apollo Creed visits Philadelphia, his managers want to set up an exhibition match between Creed and a struggling boxer, touting the fight as a chance for a "nobody" to become a "somebody". The match is supposed to be easily won by Creed, but someone forgot to tell Rocky, who sees this as his only shot at the big time.

Another Lesson In Perspective

Last night, I caught the best wave of my life and it taught me a lesson.

The wave taught me the following, (I'm paraphrasing) it said, "DT, stop being such a dick."

All day, my head was full of fuzz because some poor Hispanic dudes were outside cutting down trees. All day I forgot that I have a healthy family, live in a beautiful spot in the world and altogether, have it pretty damn good.

I just forgot and I let some bullshit trump the larger picture.

I paddled out into uncomfortably large surf. The report put the swell at 5-7 feet but it was clean and deep (high tide) so it felt even larger. All of my close friends were on the beach as were my wife and daughter. We were all eating dinner when I decided to "go take a few."

Earlier, some kid in a pink ocean kayak tried paddling directly into the break. Within 2 minutes, he was separated from the kayak and getting sucked out by a strong rip current. On the shore, no one seemed to notice.

I was talking to a friend about nothing... he was there, talking about real estate, and I just started walking away, following the kid's head as it was pulled out deeper with the current. He was probably 20 yards out, past the main shorebreak, but getting rolled by the constant white water from the larger waves breaking further out. I watched, feeling pretty helpless, as I walked down the beach closer to where he was.

He started to flail his arms and panic.

Jesus Fucking Christ, I thought.

I bumped into a hot blond in a pink bikini taking pictures of the whole thing with a fancy camera. I couldn't take my eyes off of that head. I was just walking completely transfixed and terrified. I couldn't swim out there and get him, even though I surf, I'm just not the strongest swimmer. I mean I can swim well, but I didn't have a board, or any flotation device... it would have been a questionable procedure.

There were surfers out to the right. That's where the "takeoff" is. The wave rolls in and peels to the left (surfers right) and basically ends close to the where the rip current was pulling. So it was maddening to watch 3 or 4 surfers pull off of waves not 20 feet from the kid and not even notice him there.

Thank goodness for the fat longboarder.

Honestly, I had never seen this dude before. He was fat like a dumptruck and on a huge yellow and pink longboard. The thing must have been over 10 feet long, wide, and thick. The first thing he did after splashing off the wave, was to go over to the kid and let him grab onto his board. Then the two of them proceeded to kick together out of the rip and towards the shore. They got completely pummeled by the shorebreak... but made it to dry sand.

The kayak kid just bent over at his knees and heaved for about 30 seconds. The fat longboarder walked right by me. He had a face, wide, dark, and deeply carved, that had seen a lot of sun.

He came from the ocean and he saved the guy's life.

There was no applause. No one slapped him on the back. No one had even noticed. And I was lost in a state of bewilderment. I couldn't believe that someone could just die like that, so easily, on a perfect summer night, on a beach full of people eating grilled chicken and drinking white wine.

But man, people die all the time. And why should we deny it?

I couldn't stop talking about it for the rest of the evening.

"Did you see the dude on the pink kayak?" I'd say.

No one had.

So I had this all on my mind when I took that same rip current out to the lineup. I paddled right over the spot where that kid had flailed. The surf was big for me and my heart was beating faster than it really needed to.

Just then I heard a familiar voice. "Hey DT!" It was a relatively new friend of mine and he was paddling up next to me. "You look like you saw a ghost, man. What's up?"

"It's huge out here. I'm just a bit out of my league." I explained.

"Ah, you're fine. Enjoy this. It's not going to be here much longer." And off he paddled, the picture of insouciance.

As he said this, someone in the lineup yelled "Outside!" and the horizon seemed to lift. A huge set was feathering out there and was sure to break before it reached us. It did, heavily and with a rumble that gave the water some extra texture. With a deafening hiss, the white water rushed to where I straddled my board.

Now I have a longboard. It's thick and buoyant. When a large wave breaks over me, I have to "turtle roll" which means I paddled towards the white water, take a deep breath, and then grasp both rails of my board, and roll over with it into the wave, fin side of the board facing the sky.

Then, with my legs, I kick towards the wave for all I'm worth.

I rolled through that first wave and looked around. Heads were popping up here and there, many separated from their boards, and a foam was sizzling on the surface. Oddly, and I remember this exactly, it smelled of fresh laundry.

The second wall of white water rolled toward me with the same force and speed as the first and I "turtled" under it as well. Man, my heart was thumping. I saw my friend paddling further outside, i.e., away from the shore, towards the open ocean horizon. The third wave just swallowed him and I was forced to roll again.

After that huge set, a calm descended onto the scene.

In the setting sun, most surfers looked kind of yellow. Due to all the white water, the surface of the sea was soft and foamy and the rising air bubbles touching the face of the water made a cool "shhhhhhh" sound. In this peaceful moment, I began to paddle for the next wave.

After the last set, the wave didn't seem like much. But it was my perspective playing games with me. It was large enough. I paddled and the wave picked me up easily. I slid down the drop and just saw it stretch out ahead to my right. A slowly building wall of light green water, and white foam.

I didn't "work it" by tearing up and down it like a maniac. I managed a couple of turns up and down the face of the wave but quickly realized I needed more speed if I was to continue along the line without getting "closed out" on. So I stepped up on my board, gained speed, and tore down the line.

The wave changed character as I moved closer to shore. What really happened, is that I had reached the rip, and so the water rushing out to the horizon from the shore met the wall of water that I was on, which was racing towards the shore. At this point, I got completely "destructed" as the wave picked right up and threw me down, hard.

Under the water, which was now, quite dark and gloomy, I searched for light to find the "top." It seemed like forever under there, always does, and I wondered if anyone was watching my drama unfold from the shore, as I had watched the pink kayak guy. But you know, it wasn't all that dramatic afterall, I quickly surfaced, in the rip of course, and was lucky enough to jump onto my board just before another avalanche of white water pushed me to shore.

That one wave was my entire session.

I pulled myself out of the water (which, given the circumstances of the shorebreak and the rip, was quite difficult) slid my board under my arm, and walked over to Judy.

"You see that?" I said, all excited.

"No. What?" She was brushing some sand off our daughter's butt.

"That wave I caught! It was massive! My best ride ever!"

"No, sorry... it's hard to watch all the time. By the way, Frank's birthday is gonna be this Saturday. Jill just told me."

And I thought then about that kid on the pink kayak again. And about perspective. And the difference between being out in the rip, in the waves, and standing on the shore. And the horizon, and how even it changes and is inconstant.

And just writing this now, I think about my best friend, who died almost 9 years ago, suddenly, and I wish that he could've been there tonight, standing on the shore with his kid and Judy, not watching me catch the ride of my life.

And I figured that most of the time I'm a selfish fuck, but every now and then, you catch a glimpse of light. And how important it is to remember what the light looks like when things go dark so that you know how to find your way back up to the "top."

May 2008 Monthly Trading Review

DTs monthly results in graphical form... nerdy, eh?

 

(h/t Tyro for helping me with the chart)

At the end of April, for the first time in my 9 year stock trading career, I took a stab at setting some monthly goals for myself. Apparently, forecasting isn't my forte.

I didn't get even remotely close to meeting my modest monthly profit goal, of $6000. In fact, I was down on the month, to the tune of $675. Not good. I'm new to this "setting goals" game, but I guess I should roll my profit goal back somewhat for June.

In May, I set a target of $300 a day. In June, I'll set a target of $250 per day, or $5000 for the month.

Another goal I set and missed was my "win/loss ratio," that is, positive days to negative days. Look at this particular stat as a measure of my sanity. I figure if I can just be green 75% or 80% of the time, I'll be generally happy with work... it won't feel so "grindish." So for May, I set a goal of 3 green days for every 1 red day.

Instead, I was green 11 days of 21... about 1 to 1. Pretty awful. I was probably in a bad mood for most of May. Indeed, reflecting on my actions during the past month, I was a dick.

Nevertheless, in June, I'm going to keep the 3 wins for every 1 loss goal.

So how did I get here? I started the month in a total tailspin, losing 5 of the first 7 days. I lost $915 on my worst day of the month. That's too much. One of my goals for this month was to limit my worst day to -$600. The silver lining is that my second worst day was -$509 and after that, every loss was sub $500 and most, far smaller.

So I limited my losses quite well, overall. I didn't have any crazy blowup days that saw me screaming, red faced, at the computer. That's a positive as far as health and mental stability are concerned, surely. And that's important.

I've started over, basically. Trading a completely new style almost exclusively for the entire month. And it's not just the trading style that's completely different. Trading style goes far beyond watching exits and entries and figuring out which stocks to watch. Trading style also effects the pace of your trading day, and your expectations throughout the day.

Early on in my career, and up until very recently, I actively traded the open, somewhat like a madman. I just don't do that anymore, and I feel the "extra space." Sometimes it feels like boredom and a lot of the time, frankly, it has felt like lost opportunity. It's definitely made it harder for me to focus... because without positions, I feel my mind wandering.

Just look at the statistics. In February, I averaged 24,800 shares traded per day. By April, I had dropped down to 12,900 average. In May, I averaged just over 10,000 a day. So I'm trading half as much as I did just a few months ago. And last year? In May of 2007 I averaged nearly 40,000 shares a day. So transition is occuring. Change is happening, and relatively quickly.

And don't forget... I'm doing this on my own. This blog is my sounding board... I trade remotely, without the benefit of talking to other traders each day. I sometimes wonder if I traded in an office if I wouldn't already be out of this slump. The point is, I think change goes much slower when you do it by yourself and without the group dynamic that an office provides.

However, later in the month, I started to feel like I was finally getting used to the "extra space." I can see how, in the near future, it will be an asset. I'm starting to feel less pressure on the open to be active for activity's sake. I'm slowly becoming more calculating and watching for eventualities and waiting for scenarios to develop and play out. It's a mental shift. I watch fewer stocks, more actively, instead of watching many stocks with less focus devoted to each.

If I can get through this summer and come out in September a more confident, stable, profitable trader, these months of indecision and worry will be worth it. If September comes and I'm not seeing any improvement in my trading, I'm really going to have to start considering a second stream of income. That will be the theme of this blog for the next few months... me continuing to work out the kinks, hopefully getting leaner and stronger as a trader, and all the while imagining what else I could possibly do for an income.

It'll be interesting. Let's see what June brings.

Anyway, thanks to Tokyo Trader, you can see a spreadsheet of the VO members and our stats for the month, here. (Just click over to where it says "VO May 2008..." The first page is just my stats.)

I'm not good with graphs and stuff, but if anyone can explain how I can make a graph of my P&L showing the cumulative results as the month wore on, I'd make it and share it as well.

Some Thoughts On April And Moving Forward

I'm not really a guy who looks back on my earnings trends with any kind of regularity. Actually, I normally only check my "sheets" when I think an error has been made.

But tonight, since I barely traded today, I thought I would take the time to look back on the year and attempt to set a couple of goals for May.

Trading is about making money, yes, but I also am the head of a household here, so I need to think about my sanity. So, what kind of win/loss ratio would make me enjoy this job? Ideally, something like 90%. But, that's a little out of reach right now (I'm talking on a daily P&L basis).

In April, I was positive 68% of the time, roughly 2 out of every 3 days traded. That's okay. For May, I'm going to do something unprecedented for myself and set a GOAL. I'm going to shoot for a 75% win rate, that is, be positive 3 out of every 4 days traded.

Another thing I realized about April is that I had a couple of blowup days. You'll recall that one day, I lost $1889. That was awful. In the last two months, since I started trying a new way of trading, I'm averaging about $200 a day... so I wiped out about 10 days of work with that there blowup... frigging awful.

Since I'm not trading nearly as much as I used to, and definitely with less emotion and spontaneity, I'm going to set myself a daily loss limit of $600. And I'm really going to try hard to stick to it... without any large blowups, my monthly P&L should improve.

Finally, I've averaged $200 a day with this new system trading in lots of 200 shares mostly. I'm going to try and average $300 a day in May and up my share size again. There are 21 trading days in May, so I'll just say my goal is to make $6000 for the month. That may be somewhat ambitious given the Memorial Day holiday, but we'll see.

I'm rebuilding. Honestly, I didn't think it would be so hard, but apparently, it's a slow process.

Finally, I'm still trying to reconcile how to deal with events like the S&P upgrade of Brazil today. I want to be in on those trades. Today, I missed the news, so I can't fault myself too much. The way I'm trading now, basing daytrades on daily chart price action coupled with intraday setups is a great way to trade day in and day out, but it will almost always miss the odd event. For as long as I've been trading, the "odd event," be it the California power crisis or the subprime news of last August, has been a reason to trade aggressively.

So ultimately, I want to keep my daily sanity by trading methodically, making the game profitable and boring, but leaving the door open to insanity... that is, not be too strict with myself that I don't jump on opportunity when the market is screaming. I'm still working on this...

Score One For "Old DT"

(long, rambling, not properly edited post alert!)

So I've spoken in the last couple of months about the trader that I used to be versus the trader that I want to become. But just in case, for whatever reason, you somehow overlooked what's happening here, I'll briefly summarize.

"Old DT" was the DT of the last 9 years. I was a very aggressive prop trader, taking whatever the market would give me, whenever it would give it to me. My game was mostly one of managing risk and hoping for gains. And it worked, quite well, for a very long time. Even last year, my worst year, I averaged about ten grand a month. However, once I dug a little deeper into my year, I realized that more than half of my gains came within only a few weeks in August. For the rest of the year I was mostly churning, making a little money, and getting very frustrated.

I blamed the hybrid market for much of my trading distress and I think that's fair... the mechanics of the market completely changed and so adjustments were necessary. However, I was slow to change and I haven't really been able to adapt. In addition, with all the new NYSE fees, my commissions went up drastically. So why fight it? Why trade a billion shares a day when my margins have been squeezed?

I figured it was time for a real shift in my style. That whole process took about a year. I'm just too old to want to fight the market and adapt to its new focus on super-speed. I like making a little money each day... that I can handle. I don't like having the drawdowns. That was something I never had to deal with pre-hybrid with any kind of regularity.

I know some new traders who love the hybrid... but for the guys who learned trading with "teenies" and "bids stepping up" it's been difficult. Many "old school" traders have struggled with the changes.

Anyway (this post is already way too long) the thing is, today was just one of those days where it paid to take extra risk and not necessarily wait for perfect setups. Sure, they were out there, but it was a day to trade sector momentum. When whole sectors trade in lockstep, irrationally, as the agriculture and fertilizer stocks did today, it sometimes pays to just jump in and get dirty.

So my best trades today were catching the bottoms in CF and MOS. I made a few points in each. Now, since I don't trade like this anymore, I only had a couple hundred shares of each. So my feeling is, on days where there is wild shit happening, I still have to throw down "old DT" style with smaller size. For the rest of the time, I'm going to stick to the calmer, more calculating, "new DT."

The problem with the "old DT" trades is that there's not much to discuss... it's more a "feel" game. CF "felt" overdone this morning when he bladed down below $136... there was no setup. It was a matter of playing a change in momentum... of sellers getting exhausted and bottom pickers moving in.

So I'll just discuss one "new DT" trade that I took in GS. This was an HCPG watchlist play. They were looking for a run to the $185 level.



As you can see, the stock based a bit around $182.50 and broke out. I didn't get involved because there wasn't good volume trading. However, once he moved over $183, volume came in, so I bid and hoped for a pullback. The guy came in, just under $183 and then ripped for the rest of the day. So here there was a plan, based on the daily chart in conjunction with the intraday, that worked out. Very specific, very controlled.

So I have this love/hate relationship with the "old DT." Last Thursday, for example, "old DT" lost $1400 trying to catch a top in CLF. The difference is that last Thursday there was no "juice" in the market, and CLF was acting completely different from the rest of the metals. So what I need to do, is pick my spots better for when "old DT" is gonna come trade. The "new DT" is gonna trade every day, and try to get the consistency back. With the consistency (which is already improving drastically... I've had 11 green days this month, and 6 down days) will come confidence. Then I'll start throwing size into my trades again.

Rambling, I know, but I'm not going back to edit that shit. Apologies...

In other news, the summer people are already starting to show here. My "neighbor" (he hasn't been in his house since last August) showed up today with his goddamn dog. It's out there barking right now. I hate dogs. But really, I hate owners who let their dogs out in their yard to bark all night.

If any of you happen to have a dog, and you leave it outside at night, and it barks, just let me know what that's all about, so I can better understand my neighbor. Perhaps if I understand why people do that, I'll hate him less and not shoot his dog.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $932
Best, CF, $665
Worst, BG, -$96

14,600 shares traded.
11 stocks traded, 6 winners, 5 losers.

NOTE: I just went through and realize that I've had 3 big down days this month that account for about $4000 in losses. I've only had one day where I was down over $500 and came back... so maybe I should really just stick to a -$500 daily loss limit. If I'm having a good day, it normally starts good right away.

What Is The VO? And Why?

I literally get thousands, no, tens of thousands of emails a week from people asking me questions about the Virtual Office, or VO. How much money do they need to send me to join? What is it? Is it true they'll get laid more as a member? etc... etc...

So I decided to make this quick post to explain the VO.

First, a little history... way back when, I started this blog due to my frustrations with the NYSE hybrid market.

I hated it.

At the time, I was trading at home, alone, with no contact from any office full of traders or Internet chatrooms. Indeed, this was before I took up surfing again, and sometimes I would go weeks at a time without seeing anyone other than my wife, daughter, and a small group of friends.

I was a mostly a hermit, and as far as work matters went, I was 100% a hermit.

Looking to bitch/learn about the hybrid market, I found Ray's blog, (where I learned that many people hated the hybrid) and from it, NYSE Scalper's blog. I noticed that each day, Scalper would post his P&L. He had an extensive blogroll, and from there, I found a few other traders who posted their daily numbers, most notably, OBAT and Evolution.

So to answer the trivia question, "who were the 4 original members of the VO?" the answer is myself, Scalper, OBAT and Evolution.

So why did I start the VO? To create a community where it would be easy to learn from the gains and losses of other traders. In a real prop office, at the end of the day, you find the guy who made the loot, and you ask him how the fuck he did it. The guy would point at a graph, show you where he bought and sold, etc.

And naturally, as the market giveth, it also taketh away, so you'd find the guy who lost a ton of money (you'd easily find him, because his desk was surrounded by tech guys who were busy installing a new keyboard and mouse while quietly removing the smashed plastic remains of his old ones) and offer him up some hollow platitudes, "You'll get em tomorrow!" etc. The trader would give you a quick sideways glance, canine in nature, and get back to looking at graphs.

You don't want to be the pile-up on the side of the road for too often in a prop office...

The VO was my attempt to regain some feeling of camaraderie about trading (while leading my otherwise hermetic existence), and also, to engender a friendly spirit of competition among the participants. And from a logistical standpoint, I found it somewhat annoying to run to each blog each night to check for stats. Most often, they were in a different spot on each blog, and I thought having them posted at the same time each day (between 4:00 and 4:15 EST) in one central standardized spot for them would be a good thing for the stock blogging community.

And speaking of community, each member of the VO blogs daily about their trading day. So you come to the VO at 4:15, see who made the loot, and then click the link to their blog to "virtually" look over their shoulder to see how they made their money, or alternatively, blew up.

While some may disparage this "focus on the past" it's only by understanding your past trading errors that you'll be able to prevent them in the future... in theory, anyway. Also, it's one thing to write about stocks you think should be bought or sold, but it's another entirely to discuss the actual profits you made from those trades.

So that is the VO or, Virtual Office. It's a place where stock market bloggers post their daily profits or losses and from which you can learn where the money is being made (or lost) in the market each day by full time traders.

Back To Third-Tier Blogging

Hey, how's it going?

Good... good...

Okay, first things first. Ainkurn did an amazing job of posting the VO each day. Collecting 10 emails a day between 4:00 and 4:05 and then writing an intelligible post about them and the market in 5 minutes can sometimes be difficult... especially after a bad day of trading.

I really appreciate the work he did and I would like to reward him with as much traffic as I can muster. So go visit and if you're a fan of the VO, thank him for keeping it alive for the last month.

I had a nice vacation away from the blog and I realized a couple of things.

First of all, I won't be posting 5-10 times a day anymore. My life is just too busy. If you have ever had a 3 year old living under your roof, I'm sure you understand.

Secondly, I really like the blog. It keeps me thinking creatively. However, the VO will be the only post that I put up at the same time every day. In fact, there may be days when the VO is the only post... those days will be dark and lonely for you. Indeed, you may be forced, on those days, to visit inferior trading blogs.

So instead of posting like a drunken lunatic all day I'm going to try to raise the quality of the blogging while lowering the quantity. I mean, I have this idea about making the whole thing more linear and story based, but time is in short supply.

That said, if one of you out there wants to offer me 100k a year to blog full time, just step forward.

Anyway, I'm sure you're wondering how my March went trading-wise. I made a little money, $5000, which isn't bad since I basically threw my old style of trading away. Well, I didn't totally throw it away, but I can say with certainty that there are trades I would have made on February 29th that I wouldn't have made yesterday.

The most important thing was my win rate... there were only a handful of days where I was down, and my biggest loss day was less than $1000. Since I was trading with a new style, I kept my size really small. Had I been trading with normal size, I would have been up a multiple of $5000.

I don't really feel like getting into it all, to be honest, but I urge you to check this link and sign up for their free one month trial if you like to make a few trades each day. Note that I'm not easily impressed, but these guys have their shit together. Their system is well thought out, easy to understand, and they're consistent.

Okay, so welcome back. Thanks for waiting and sticking around.

I'm Taking A Break

The hybrid market is just over a year old and this blog is a year old in a little over a week.

No coincidence there. I started the blog because immediately after the hybrid began, I lost my ability to pull money out of the market consistently. After yesterday, I've gone back into the red for the month of February which means I've had a year to adjust to the hybrid, but something still is wrong with my trading. So instead of doing basically the same thing I've been doing for the last year and expecting something to change, I'm going to force a big change.

The fact of the matter is, I'm exhausted. While on paper you could look at my earnings last year and say I did okay, the number isn't telling the full story. I made over $100,000 last year, but $28,000 of that total came on one day in August. And half of it came in a three week period. The point, is that of the 250 trading days last year, I struggled for 80% of them.

That's a lot of bad trades, lots of stress, and lots of confidence-whacking.

For the last 9 years, whenever people have learned what I do, they normally have the following reaction, "You're a trader?" I guess I don't fit the stereotype of what people think a trader should be. For one thing, I look like I've lived in the Maine woods for about a year.

But really, people are just confused. They think traders are brokers... some of my closest friends still think I have "clients..." I don't think I have to explain the stereotype of a stockbroker, it's not pleasant. But traders don't want to sell things to people, and many, aren't overly interested in money. Traders are independent thinkers who want to test their ideas with action and be proven correct in the market. That said, there is nothing worse for a trader than to constantly be proven wrong, because it also means you're losing money.

Point is, despite my earnings, it's been a rough year, because I hate being wrong.

Anyway, the other thing people invariably say is, "Isn't that the most stressful job going?"

To that, I've always answered, "No. You know what stresses me out? The mere idea of having a boss." Trading never stressed me out because I was in control of myself and my profits. I rarely had down days, I could make my own schedule... it was easy! I couldn't figure out why everyone wasn't doing it.

Well guess what? That's changed. I'm a little stressed out right now and have been, for the better part of the last year.

So what's the plan?

First of all, I will not be blogging for the month of March. I've been posting for a year, a lot, and I've never really taken time away from it to catch my breath. I love the blog, I've learned a lot from it, and I've made many good "Internet friends." On a certain level, I hesitate to do this since the traffic here is growing every month (I'd argue I'm out of the third-tier, actually) but hopefully, you'll all be back with me in April.

Once you began to blog actively, it permeates your thinking. I mean, if I'm browsing the web and see something interesting, I save it so I can post it on the blog. If I accidentally pay $40 for a pizza, I think about turning the experience into a blog post. Just because I won't be posting for the next month doesn't mean I won't be thinking this way, and I imagine that come April there will be many "lost" Dinosaur Trader blog posts that I'll be able to share with you.

As for trading? Well, I'm lacking in discipline. I find myself making the same mistakes over and over despite my understanding that I'm making a mistake. Hope isn't a good trading strategy (sorry Barack). This is unbelievably frustrating and I credit this blog with raising my consciousness about my trading to the point where I realize I need to step back and look at things anew.

For March I will be trying a completely new strategy which I will discuss more when I come back in April.

As for the VO, I've been impressed with the blogging of new VO member Ainkurn and he's graciously accepted the burden of "herding the cats" each day and compiling the post. I'll track my results each day and post them here on April 1st.

Thanks for reading. See you in a month.

My Daily Research Schedule

UPDATED: 02/12/08

When I first started trading, 9 years ago, I'd wake up at 5:30, and be in the city by 6:30 sitting in the atrium of the JP Morgan building reading the newspaper while eating my breakfast.

I didn't go into the office right away because I didn't want people to bother me.

I sat in the JP Morgan building because it made me feel more "Wall Streety."

Nowadays, I sleep until 8:00. Or, when I wake early, I piss a lot of time away on email or reading idiocy on stock market blogs.

Well, new year, new company, new market. It's time for me to take this job seriously again.

In December, I deserved to lose money because I wasn't working hard enough. If I lose money now, it's not going to be due to poor work ethic.

Some things I can't control but my work ethic is not one of them.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to make a strict schedule of research that I adhere to each day. It will help me focus.

However, the first thing I will do each day is to create a simple "Good Morning" blog post. This will put at least a little pressure on me to get in and get the post up each day. It would be shameful to admit to myself and my 3 readers that I lost money because I got to my desk at 9:24.

So here, is my new research schedule:

1. Morning post.
2. Read IBD Big Picture.
3. Read Bloomberg breaking news headlines.
4. Read Bloomberg "Stocks On The Move."
5. Check front page of NYTimes and WSJ.
6. Link-love post.
7. Morning stretches.
8. Breakfast and shower.
9. Watch Alphatrends daily "Stock Market Video Technical Review."
10. Read Briefing Live In Play from previous day's close.

Now for some graph work.

8. Check BigCharts' "big movers reports." Especially the largest % gain in volume.
9. Go through index graphs like SOX, XBD, XOI, etc.
10. Go through each stock on screen.
11. Write "one idea" post.

After all of that, (I figure it's 3.5 hours worth of work) I should have an excellent idea of the general tone of the day and what stocks could be moving.

If you have any other suggestions for research, please let me know via the comment section.

My Daily Research Schedule

When I first started trading, 9 years ago, I'd wake up at 5:30, and be in the city by 6:30 sitting in the atrium of the JP Morgan building reading the newspaper while eating my breakfast.

I didn't go into the office right away because I didn't want people to bother me.

I sat in the JP Morgan building because it made me feel more "Wall Streety."

Nowadays, I sleep until 8:00. Or, when I wake early, I piss a lot of time away on email or reading idiocy on stock market blogs.

Well, new year, new company, new market. It's time for me to take this job seriously again.

In December, I deserved to lose money because I wasn't working hard enough. If I lose money now, it's not going to be due to poor work ethic.

Some things I can't control but my work ethic is not one of them.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to make a strict schedule of research that I adhere to each day. It will help me focus.

However, the first thing I will do each day is to create a simple "Good Morning" blog post. This will put at least a little pressure on me to get in and get the post up each day. It would be shameful to admit to myself and my 3 readers that I lost money because I got to my desk at 9:24.

So here, is my new research schedule:

1. Morning post.
2. Read IBD Big Picture.
3. Read Bloomberg breaking news headlines.
4. Read Bloomberg "Stocks On The Move."
5. Check front page of NYTimes and WSJ.
6. Watch Alphatrends daily "Stock Market Video Technical Review."
7. Read Briefing Live In Play from previous day's close.

Okay, that's a good amount of reading and background. Now for some graph work.

8. Check BigCharts' "big movers reports." Especially the largest % gain in volume.
9. Go through index graphs like SOX, XBD, XOI, etc.
10. Go through each stock on screen.

After all of that, (I figure it's 3 hours worth of work) I should have an excellent idea of the general tone of the day and what stocks could be moving. At that point, I'll head over to "the Fly's" blog and try to dwindle his readership by posting a nice soppy movie clip.

If you have any other suggestions for research, please let me know via the comment section.

A Brief Introduction To Dinosaur Trader's World

I started this blog way back in March of 2007 because I thought the Hybrid Market was quickly making all daytraders extinct. Boy was I wrong!

Anyway, while a lot has changed around here since then, much has also remained the same.

Here is the current "publishing schedule."

Monday - Discuss a specific trade from the prior week.
Tuesday - Discuss a chapter from a classic book about trading.
Wednesday - History post
Thursday - Around the House or Humor post
Friday - Linkday! Some interesting links I found on the web in the last week.

The "anchor" of this blog is the "RO Report" which I post each evening at around 4:30. It consists of market commentary from a daytrader's perspective and the actual P&L totals for the traders in my office.

Now, I don't actually trade with people in an office... I trade (and in fact I'm writing this post) from a spare bedroom of the house that I share with my wife and young daughter. So I also write a bunch of posts about what it's like to trade from home... I call these my "around the house" posts.

Other posts I'm somewhat proud of are my history posts, which I will be focusing on in 2009. My ambitious goal is to publish one per week.

Finally, other interests of mine include politics, music, humor, surfing, the environment, and hating CNBC and the mainstream media in general. All of these topics work there way into my posts on a daily basis.

Thanks for visiting.

Moving On

I just severed my link with my company.

After 6 years of being with them (with 3 total down months, in March, April and June of this year), I guess I expected more than a phone call 2 minutes before the open and the threat that "should you lose much more, we'll shut you down."

I lost $700 more yesterday and today they shut my account down with nary an email or phone call.

So I called them.

"Send us another check and we'll be more than happy to open you back up," they said.

Nope. While I understand it's a cold business, I simply expected more.

While trading is about numbers, it's more about psychology.

I can only assume by their actions that they were basically asking me to walk away. Traders are people and if you have a business that revolves around traders, you need to learn to help them manage difficult times. I would have found it helpful simply to receive a phone call now and then, just so it seemed like they were watching and showing some type of concern about my struggle.

Instead, the only time they called me was when they wanted to shut me down.

Like I said yesterday, I had contacted them a number of times since April in search of help. They were always nice, saying things like, "If there's anything we can do to help, just call," but other than sounding helpful, they didn't help me at all.

The one thing that did help was when I put a loss-limit on my account. In the end, that didn't even help me, since none of my days this month were your typical trading blow up day (a la HPT ZING!) as Moom mentioned yesterday in the comment section, my recent downturn has been steep, but minor if looked at in the perspective of my trading year.

So whatever, fuck them, their loss.

I contacted an old friend and hopefully, I'll be up and running again by January 2nd.

The Dinosaur Trader Personality Test

Not really, it's an external link to "the Spark" or something like that.

But whatever.

Look, I'm feeling introspective tonight after my staggering market loss. I want to know more about "you people." Also, I'll be surfing early and won't have a morning post up. This will have to do.

So take the test and tell the world what your personality "flaw" is, in the comment section.

It takes about 7 or 8 minutes to take the test. First, you have to sign up for an account... they want your email but you can opt out of getting bothered. The thing is, if you take the test and complete it, you can check at the end to see how compatible you are with other people who took it. So, if you want other people here to know how compatible they are with you, write the email address that you gave to "the Spark" in the comment section along with your test results.

Most of the time, I hate people... let's see if I hate you too.

Just follow along with the first comment... which I will post.

Click here to take the test.

UPDATE: I'm 35% greedy.
UPDATE II: I'll live to age 73.

A Note On My Labels

It's hard to know what people do when they come to my site... it's harder yet for me to organize everything so that it's easy for you to find what you want to read.

The "Virtual Office" is easy enough. It comes up everyday normally between 4pm and 4:15 and it takes a second to read. It's a snapshot into how real traders performed trading the market.

My "Daily Trading Statistics" post, where I discuss the trades I actually made, comes up later but normally by 9pm or so.

Finally, everyday there's the music video. However, since not many of you deadbeats have expressed much interest in my musical tastes I've tried to broaden this out to some spoken word as well.

And then there's all the other stuff.

The "my history" posts (which I promise to start again soon) are my attempts to describe what it was like starting out as a trader in the big city. All names have been changed.

The "around the house" label encompasses my attempt to share portions of my life. I trade from home and sometimes it's hard to concentrate. I have a young daughter and a wife who are both in the house all day with me as I curse the markets.

The "surfing" posts describe my experiences surfing, but also include short readings about me buying egg sandwiches and stuff.

The "humor" and "politics" posts are pretty self explanatory. The "stock market humor" posts deal specifically with (gasp!) stock market humor!

One label that is quickly growing is the "CNBC stupidity" label. I mean, if you're forced to watch CNBC all day, you get to hear lots of stupid stuff. Here, I regurgitate that stupid stuff for your reading pleasure.

The "freaky hybrid trade of the day" posts have been dwindling lately. But they detail my specific frustrations with the NYSE Hybrid Market.

So I encourage you to go check out the right toolbar. There are many other labels there as well.

While they may not "make you money" they will keep you entertained as you trade and curse the markets along with me.