Misstrade, $3070 on 8000 shares traded.
TradeWhileWorking, $1341 on 2600 shares traded.
NYSE Scalper, $300 on 66,600 shares traded.
Evolution Trader, $104 on 54,500 shares traded.
One Bad-Ass Trader, -$137 on 10,800 shares traded.
Me, -$878 on 32,800 shares traded.
So, on the first day of the Virtual Office, Misstrade comes in to takes the cake! Go check out what made him successful today.
The entire VO was into the green for the day at $3800.
I woke up late this morning, threw a half hour of research together after the long weekend and started trading. Not the way to do things.
But you know, it didn't hurt much. I was down a couple hundred dollars all day. Nothing too bloody. No awful trades. But I wasn't paying attention. I was surfing the net. I had a really loose attitude all day. And in the end, I paid the price.
It all started at around 1:40. That's when I realized that CNS was up a point from where I entered. It had trended up nice and easy from where I bought at around 40.07 but I had sold AT MARKET at 40.05 and 40.06 because I was nervous about it. I really had no other good reason. Just that things weren't really going my way, I had no big winners or no big losers and I believed the same would happen with CNS, so I just sold. So at 1:40, when I realized I left a point on the table for no good reason, I was pissed.
Then, a stock I was long, POT, crashed (definitely Freaky Hybrid Trade-Worthy). In a matter of minutes, I went from being down between $100 and $200 to being down $500. I made matters worse by churning POT a few times before he broke lower. Anyway, when he finally did break lower, a little before 2pm, I looked and saw TNH, another fertilizer stock, selling off. I also noticed that AGU and MON were both up... so, with POT and TNH breaking I thought it was only a matter of time before AGU and MON broke too, so I started getting short.
Again, wrong decision.
Interesting, that one poor decision led to a chain reaction of many poor decisions. Definitely something to watch out for.
There are a couple of old sayings that come to mind... one, "Don't throw good money after bad" is nice and clean. Another, more appropriate goes something like "If you shit in bed you only make it worse by trying to kick it out" is much dirtier, but really more to the point. I went down kicking... and as it turns out, screaming.
Once I got squeezed badly in AGU (and of course, I had to throw extra shares onto my position to make up for my losses in the other stocks) and MON I was down close to $1000. At the time, I was kind of shell-shocked... how did this happen? Now, it all seems very clear to me.
I was never on my game today and so I was easily thrown off... not even by losing money at first... just by simply recognizing that there was money to be made and I "missed it". POT just threw fuel on the fire and the rest is history.
If you're going to trade everyday, you need to focus everyday.
Almost forgot the stats:
P&L -$878
Best: MTG, $166
Worst: POT -$324
shares traded: 32,800
total trades: 195
Nothing comes easy here... when it does seem to come easy, it's only because you're prepared.
Well, it has been a long weekend here at the cave. I had big plans too. I was going to get some work done around the house. Update the blog... Instead, on Friday when I was working with my Dad, pulling wallpaper down in one of our bathrooms, my back, for no obvious reason, just went into painful back spasms.
They haven't really quit yet.
So, no "history" post, no updating of the blog... and I apologize. I just couldn't stand to sit at the computer, I spent most of my time laying down. By the way, back spasms are a concept that toddlers simply don't understand. And it's awful because they want you to play and do stuff but you just can't... makes it mentally as well as physically frustrating.
So anyway, it gave me an idea. Perhaps one of the reasons my back is in such poor shape is because I sit here at the comp all day, lurched over like a vulture searching for opportunities. My wife who is very much a yoga/movement person has been telling me for years to "get up and stretch" and stuff like that. So now, I see she is right.
Check out the clip below for easy ways to keep your back healthy even if confined to a chair all day!
Finally, do any of you have an excellent office chair to recommend? I have this crappy one that offers no back support whatsoever that I've been using for years. Time to trash it.
This video is pretty bad, but it's the only one I could find on Youtube so far...
Go Isles!
On Monday, I'll start posting the P&L totals for myself and 4 other bloggers here on my site. I'll be calling these posts the "Virtual Office" posts and eventually, I hope to create a little grid on my site with our numbers and volume totals that will update daily. For now, I'll be posting the totals at around 4:15 each day.
As a trader who worked for a long time in a large office and is now trading alone in a dark, wet cave, I miss the comaraderie of working with other traders. In an office, at the end of the day, there was always that one guy who had a good day. Often, a group of 4 or 5 traders would be surrounding his work area and he'd be sitting there in a chair pointing at graphs and telling the group how he made his money. That's the type of spirit I hope the Virtual Office can engender.
So, for now, you can start checking here on Monday and you'll see the P&L stats of the NYSE Scalper, One Bad-Ass Trader, Evolution Trader and myself all in one handy spot. When you see one of us has had a good day, click on their name and you can go to their site where they'll tell you the full story of their riches.
If you are a trader and are interested in having your totals posted here, just shoot me an email or comment on this post and we can set it up.
UPDATE: Misstrade over at Trading for the Masses will also be joining the VO.
"I'm a digger of holes in a land of holes."
-Wolf Parade, from "Dear Son's & Daughters of Holy Ghosts"
I can't tell you how prepared I was today to take it easy. I said it to myself, I said it to others. I said, "I'm going to take it easy today."
By 9:45 or so I was up a couple hundred bucks and had no positions. I could have taken the rest of the day off and started the long weekend a little early with my confidence intact ahead of the big earnings weeks to follow.
But no. I had to make things interesting.
Not sure how many times you need to "learn" a lesson in the market before you truly "learn" it, as in, you stop making the same bone-headed mistakes. I have no idea how many times I have tried and failed to "anticipate" a bottom in a stock. I know why I do it. I do it because I'm so afraid that once the bottom is in that I'm going to miss the entry. I'm afraid that I'll look back and say, "Oh man, that was such an easy trade to catch. Look how it ripped straight up off that bottom and I missed the whole thing!"
What's worse? Missing a "good trade" or being involved in a "bad trade". The answer is being involved in a bad trade. By a long shot.
Anyway, so I made a lot of mistakes in MON today. I was down over $2500 in the stock by noon. Between noon and 1:30, I built a 3500 share position in the stock as it consolidated. During this consolidation, the stock broke a downtrend line that had been dogging the stock since the afternoon yesterday. The best thing I did today was to NOT sell the stock when it finally started to move in my favor.
I was overjoyed when the stock finally broke upwards at around 1:48. It would have been a mistake for me to sell here even though I desperately wanted to take some profit. Instead, I held and watched as the stock took a quick plunge back to the figure. This time however, instead of breaking the fig which had been acting as resistance for the last 2 hours the stock bounced right back up to 57.17 or so. At that point, I realized that a new sheriff was in town. The bears were gone and the buyers were again in charge. I held on to almost all of my shares and sold out of most of them in the 57.45-57.50 area. I cut my loss in the stock from around $2500 to about $900. Some silver lining, eh?
The main thing I want to take away from this trade is recognizing that if I had just been patient and waited for the stock to break that downtrend line before I began to buy that I still would have made money in the trade. And, I wouldn't have had to contend with all the losses that piled up while I was buying on the way down.
Anyway, here are the damn stats:
P&L -$674
Best: BTU $258
Worst: MON -$896
stocks traded: 8, 3 positive, 5 negative
shares traded: 48,200 (29,000 of these in MON)
Enjoy the vacation day.
I'll work on another "history" post this weekend. Also, by next Monday I hope to have a new feature on this blog.
I think that everyone knows that the song Debaser by the Pixies is about the Easter Bunny. That and the Hybrid market.
If I had to make one CD with all the songs from my life, this one would be on it for the high-school years.
Anyway, it's a short week so I'm posting this today. Enjoy!
Again, we are hit with really low volatility and really low volume during the holiday week.
It was the kind of day where I was either up $100 or down $100 all day long.
Here are the stats.
P&L -$131
Best: TNH $168
Worst: RAS -$216
stocks traded: 15, 6 positive, 9 negative
total trades: 149
total volume: 25,500
You have to love that headline... I just couldn't resist.
Here's the link.
If Keith Richards were a stock, everyone and their grandmother would be short and getting squeezed. Can you believe this guy is still alive?
Well, a nice rally today even if it was on light holiday volume. So I guess I probably missed out some because I'm in non-aggressive, holiday-week, trading mode. Still, I had a good day that officially puts my account back into the green for the first time since my twin disaster days in early March.
My best trade of the day was in CF. In the morning the stock dipped below old resistance at 39 that seems to have become some new support. I picked some up around there and slowly unloaded the position all day. I had 4 other triple-digit winners which helped pad the profits and only 1 triple-digit loser.
P&L $1022
Best: CF $559
Worst: SQM -$109
Stocks traded: 13, 9 winners 4 losers
Total trades: 122
Volume: 22,800
Hey, I just discovered this blog Alphatrends that posts videos with some really well-done and easily understood technical analysis. Check it out!
I found it when I did my early morning drive-by of Wallstrip who covered EFX today.
Some rip today, eh? It's great but the volume is only slightly above yesterday's anemic levels so I'm not overly excited.
It was a long few weeks that followed my visit to watch Albert trade.
During that time, my job as a Sales Assistant went from bad to just downright awful. I basically spent my days in meetings with unorganized salespeople who treated me like crap but then expected me to help them. No matter how hard I worked for them they were always unhappy. I had already been turned down once when I asked for a meager raise.
One day my mom called my office. She was calling from the hospital where she was laid up with a broken leg. (Parking lot. Ice.) Was she okay? Yes, but she would need a ride home. She and my father were divorced, and my two older siblings both lived in California. I had no choice but to go. I went into my boss's office and told him that I had a family emergency and that I needed to leave early. He said, "Do what you have to do. But I don't have to be happy about it." Even though I had only $600 in savings and over $30,000 in student loans, I quit then and there. I drove down to Collingswood and spent the next week taking care of my mom. I also decided that I was going to take a shot at trading. But with no income or savings, how was I going to live? Albert told me that I shouldn't expect to make money for at least 6 months and even that wasn't guaranteed.
As it turns out the timing for this particular problem was perfect. My girlfriend (future wife) Judy and I had been talking about moving in together; the lease on my apartment was up at the end of the month. I could not wait to leave this particular apartment because all of my neighbors were crazy. I lived next door to a couple who fought all the time. When they weren't fighting, they were listening to the Madonna song "Ray of Light" and having sex. Upstairs, lived a woman who worked in the sex-trade and downstairs, lived 3 guys who played video games all the time. When they weren't playing video games, they were busy visiting the woman who lived upstairs.
Anyway, Judy had a nice stable job working as an administrative assistant for the CEO of a large publishing company. She said her salary could support us both until I was profitable. In a week, we had found a house to rent on Staten Island and I was preparing for my second visit downtown to become more immersed in the world of trading. This time, I wouldn't wear a suit.
It was a slow, sleepy, "nothing to see here folks, move along" kind of day here in the cave. The lowest volume in awhile and unfortunately, it will probably just get lower and lower as the week wears on because of the holidays.
I, for one, could not turn water into wine today.
P&L -$136
Best: POT $106
Worst: CF -$210 (I was stopped out just before the "rip" at the end of the day. GRRR!)
stocks traded: 17, 7 positive, 10 negative
total trades: 220
I'll probably get some spring cleaning done this week. It's gonna be a slow one. And why not get some rest? Earnings season will start soon and then things will get crazy.
While I'm at it, I figured I'd take a poll of what quote services you all use. I currently use esignal. It's okay, but I think their customer service is awful. Most of the time I don't have issues with their systems, but I have noticed slow opening price changes on some stocks and often their graphs load slowly.
When you call to complain, they tell you that the problem must be local to your computer and that they aren't having any system trouble.
Then, they tell you to shut down and restart... yawn.
So, anyway. Which quote system do you use?
I'm in the market to subscribe to a new real-time news service. In the past I've used Briefing.com but even since they released BriefingTrader I feel like their Platinum service has stumbled.
Anyone use a news service that is good for NYSE stocks and has solid customer service?
I stepped out of the elevator and expected to see polished mahogany walls, leather furniture and an attractive but protective receptionist behind a huge desk. Instead, the elevator doors opened into a huge room that was chopped into smaller spaces by cubicle walls. In fact when I stepped out, I nearly bumped into a cubicle wall that extended without break in either direction as far as I could see. Apparently space was very expensive on Wall Street and not a bit was wasted on aesthetics.
There were no overhead lights on, but there was a glow. The glow of hundreds of computer screens.
I heard screams and clacking keyboards coming from the other side of the cubicle walls. It was disorienting. I followed along the wall for some time, lost, and was relieved when my friend peeked his head out from behind a door and waved me into his office.
This room was smaller but just as strange. It was darker and uncomfortably hot. Ten traders sat crammed elbow to elbow staring at their screens except one older man who had an entire wall and six monitors to himself. When I entered, not one person looked up to acknowledge that a new person had entered the room. Instead, the older man picked up his telephone receiver and began to pound it over and over again into the phone cradle. He did this for 10-15 seconds until the phone broke apart. I was the only one in the room who seemed surprised.
I wore a suit. That was my first mistake. Everyone in the room was dressed very casually, even sloppily as if they hadn't left the room and showered or changed their clothes in days. Albert was involved in a couple of trades but it was nearly impossible to follow what was going on. He tried to explain but it was all gibberish. The background on his screens was black and all the quotes were red or green. The quotes flashed rapidly. He showed me graphs, the execution system. He explained what a "bid" was, what an "ask" was. He told me the specialists screwed everybody... whoever they were. He introduced me to a couple of other guys in the room. No one looked away from their monitors for more than a couple of seconds. Apparently they all had similar or at least complimentary styles of trading. They called out ideas to one another. When they called out a symbol they wouldn't use the letters, they would substitute words or lewd phrases for the letters so that no mistakes were made. So, for example, GI wasn't called out as Giant Industries, it might be called out as "Gay Indian". DF wasn't Dean Foods, it morphed into "Dick Face".
The guy who sat in the corner, a mathematics whiz, began to react to a trade he was involved in. He was short 3000 shares of a bank stock. He called me over. We watched the stock tick lower and I saw how his p&l increased with each trade down (remember, this was back when the market traded in 16ths... so every 16th was approximately $180). It was interesting in a way I didn't think my parents would have understood. It was especially dark in the corner and I felt like I was in a war-room fighting a battle against some vague enemy. We were winning.
The door to the room opened (I had already forgotten that there was a way out) and an attractive girl entered carrying a platter with snacks on it. She brought it over to Albert, then to the older man, then to the math guy. The older man said something to the girl. Five minutes later she was back with the platter and on it was a new phone.
I left a couple of hours later, squinting into the sunlight. It was warm and I decided to walk back to my apartment even though it was all the way uptown. I took off my suit coat and slung it over my shoulder. A stranger called out to me, "My, my, aren't we comfortable today?". And I imagine I must have had a look on my face. I was contemplating a career change. I had a whiff of freedom there in that small dark room. When I would return a few weeks later to sit in again, I would catch a whiff of something altogether different but nonetheless compelling.
Well, I couldn't save my month completely, but I got damn close.
P&L $1274
Best: AGU, $685
Worst: POT, -$319
#stocks traded: 14, 7 positive, 7 negative
total trades: 361
There's been some discussion on other blogs lately about position sizing. My trade in POT today was a perfect example of why you need to know the stocks you trade. I lost that $319 on two separate trades with 200 shares each trade. So I lost like, 75 cents each trade, very quickly. Clearly a stock that I can't trade with my "full" position.
On the other hand, I had 2500 shares for the AGU trade. It can take AGU a full day to move a point, whereas POT can move a point in 2 minutes.
I initiated a short in AGU when it broke through 38 around 10:20 or so. The stock then sold off a little and pulled back up to the figure but couldn't break through. That's when I doubled my position. He chopped around for a little while and played with the trend line I drew but eventually broke and I was able to cover for a decent profit. Part of the reason I was looking to short AGU was because the other fertilizer stocks were selling off at this time as was the general market.
Anyway, I thought that today the issue of position sizing really was important to me making money on a good trade and not losing too much on a bad trade.
Have a good weekend. I'll post a history article this weekend and if I can get to it, a monthly review.
Although I had a good day, I missed getting to positive on the month by $300... so for the first time in 8 years, I had a negative month.
I'll post my daily stats later. Also, this weekend I'll be posting a new piece of "history" and a monthly review.
Right now, I'm getting away from the computer for a couple of hours!
Very catchy tune. Listen to it a couple of times and you'll be humming it for weeks.
You were able to draw a nice trendline on the futures today. The market basically sold off from the highs of the morning and bounced along this line until it broke it after 2pm today. After that, the market didn't look back, it just rallied. The only problem I have with the market from a short-term bullish perspective is that yesterday's sell-off was on higher volume than today's rally. As an IBD reader, that's not so great. Still, no one complains when the market is up 48 points... it's bad form.
I was able to catch a nice trade in CF because if you look at the two graphs, they are very similar. CF gapped up this morning and then trended down all day. Once the trend was broken, he rallied nicely. I had a decent amount of shares from 38.10 but sold a good chunk around 38.25 because I thought the trendline for the last 4 days or so would create problems. It didn't... so I sold out of a lot of shares "early". I'm not complaining though...
Daily stats:
P&L $560
Best: CF $450
Worst: ITG -$100
stocks traded: 18. 11 positive, 7 negative
total trades: 221
Tomorrow is the last day of the month. With my last 2 days of gains, I have a shot of NOT having my first negative month ever. It will take an excellent day. Still, I'm not going to do anything stupid. It would be nice to get to even, but I don't want to jeopardize the progress I have made or the confidence I'm slowly regaining.
