Odd Nosdam, "The Kill Tone Two"

Man... what a beautiful break in this song at 1:18. I could listen to it over and over.

The Hamptons

Just in case you're one of the pricks who will be driving their hot car too fast in the Hamptons this weekend, here's a little clip of Borat making fun of people like you. Well, not really. Honestly, he could do much better with the Hamptons.

The Jam, "That's Entertainment"

The Russell Rebalancing will at least be entertaining. Get ready for some crazy prints!



A tip of the hat to Misstrade for pointing out this song. He's good with the older stuff... oh snap!

Russell Rebalancing

FYI, here is the link to the memo with the additions and deletions.

Pavement, "Summer Babe"

It's the first day of summer you silly bitches!



Pavement, Pixes, Fugazi... what would high school have been without these bands?

I Hate Toddlers... Not Really

I'm just in a bad mood from my crappy trading today and would rather vent right now then be peed upon by some potty-training, whining kid. I love kids though. Really.

Anyway, here's what happened today. I simply didn't know what to do!

The whole thing is that I was to trade with more patience. So when I was largely short at 10:00am, and in the money in most of my positions, (MOS, AGU, DE, MLM, GWW, LNN) I was ambivalent about covering and taking the gains. I wanted to take the money, but at the same time, I didn't want to take the money and then see them break to new lows thereby proving that I was trading impulsively, without thought and without a "plan".

So, I held and I lost money.

Not a lot at that point. I lost about $70 in AGU, $70 in MLM, $80 in DE and $200 in GWW. Not a good start, but not a disaster either. I had 100 shares overnight of LNN still and that was up a couple of points to offset some of those losses.

However, because I knew I had losses in my shorts, I made a related mistake and quickly covered my gain in LNN to "lock in" at least those gains... I sold my LNN around 41. It closed at 44.50 off the highs at 46.50, so I left a lot of easy money on the table there.

So now I'm down on the day a little and watching the market spike up. After the sell-off into the close yesterday and then the weak opening I was bearish. I was not aware of this bias however but it is clear now looking back on my trades from the day that this bias messed with my head.

I kept getting short during each pullback and kept buying my shares back at higher prices...

My big ugly loser of the day was in.... TNH! My old buddy, what happened?



Well, take a look at that chart. How could you lose money in TNH today? You could be short. I was short and that, in a word, was STUPID.

No trading system can save you from yourself.

I lost $828 in TNH so it made up the lion's share of my losses today. Not going to over-analyze it. It's obvious the mistake I made... I was shorting a stock that closed up over 10 points on the day!

Anyway, I'm going to keep my chin up. I made some mistakes today trading with my new style. I also learned that if the market isn't trending cleanly that it is much more difficult to hold stocks.

Actually, I also made some churny trades... I will continue to work on my discipline to stop making those trades...

Looking forward to the Russell Rebalancing tomorrow. Should be interesting at least. That's all you can ask for on the first official Friday of the summer!

Here's the stats:

P&L, -$1302
Best, VNO, $394
Worst, TNH, -$828

shares traded, 28,800
stocks traded, 11, 3 positive, 8 negative
total trades, 130 (way too many)

Virtual Office, -$734. Dow, +57.64, 13547.06.

HPT, $1112 on 73 contracts traded.
Evolution, $784 on 48,700 shares traded.
Denarii, -$148 on 2400 shares traded.
Misstrade, -$1180 on 4600 shares traded.
Me, -$1302 on 28,800 shares traded.

I blame the AMEX.

Anyway, after a blowout day for the VO yesterday, today we took a little hit.

Today was a day for the scalpers... this I learned at 10:00am when the market reversed and I was slow to cover my shorts. Reversal days are always good for the quick and nimble.

Anyway, kudos to HPT and ET for a strong showing today. And before you shed a tear for Misstrade, you should know he did okay today in his futures trades.

My daily post will be late tonight. I will try hard to get it on the site but no guarantees. Today is our turn to have the house overrun with toddlers. Screaming 2 and 3 year old kids after a day like today?

Thank goodness I have a good sense of humor...

AMEX Halting Trading Again... WTF?

Really, haven't they figured out this whole "computer" thing there yet?

2 days in a row. Gives you great confidence in that market, huh?

UPDATE: They're up and running again... took them 3 hours to "reboot" I guess!

Lindsay Manufacturing, LNN- Holy Short Squeeze Batman!

Well, I sold my last 100 shares of my 400 share long position at 41. The stock is now over 45, so I left a good amount of easy money on the table.

I sold because when the market ripped at 10:00am the stock flatlined. I got skittish and thought he might take a breather because it had such a strong run yesterday. Anyway, almost immediately after I sold it began it's ascent.

That's some run. Really, thanks to "the Fly" for the call. I believe he started buying at 31.50.

I owe that insect a cup of coffee.

"I'm Rick James, Bitch!" (Parts 2 & 3)

The video quality is poor, but still, it's hilarious.

"I'm Rick James, Bitch!" (Part 1)

You know, it's a slow day... might as well have some fun.

Coconut Records, "West Coast"

I got chopped early when the market ripped up at 10 because I was short and slow to cover. I was trying to be "patient" but instead I got my face ripped off.

We'll see what happens today. LNN on fire! I sold my shares in my trading account at 41 today. Thank goodness I'm still holding in my longer term account or I'd be angry with myself.

Here's a song that you won't be able to stop listening too. I featured the video before...

You can always find more excellent music videos by clicking the "music video" link over there to the right... things are logical like that around here.

Investor's Business Daily, Big Picture

Made a really great point today about the general market conditions.

Despite some of the large drops we've seen in the last couple of weeks on higher volume, like yesterday, the leading stocks of this rally are really holding up.

If the leaders start selling hard, THEN it may be time to worry.

Just a thought.

Animal Collective, "Slippi"

A good song to start anything, especially a day.

The Minutemen, "Corona"

Now that I'm surfing again, I can post all my favorites from when I used to surf!

Maybe We're Onto Something Here

I couldn't tell you the last time I traded and nearly made 50 cents for every share I traded... it's been a long while. I felt like Misstrade out there! Was it the surfing, the new trading style, or HPT joining the VO? We may never know for sure...

Anyway, the day started off with a bang as LNN reported excellent numbers and gapped up a couple of points. I stayed long 400 overnight into the earnings report.



It was my best stock of the day as I net $1281 in him.

My next best stock was AGU.



After the stock ran to new highs around 11am, it pulled back sharply. The reaction bounce at around 11:30 couldn't bring the stock to new highs, so I began to short. I short 400 at 44.80 and then 200 more at 44.77. And then I had to be patient.

I covered 100 shares at 12:16 at the price of 44.42 and was immediately angry with myself. The market was feeling weak, other AG names were showing signs of weakness and I knew I should have just held.

My next cover came at 1:38, 200 shares at 44.15. While in retrospect this too was an early cover, I didn't think it was too bad because the stock hit the figure and bounced sharply. Also, at that point, the futures looked to be improving.

I covered the last couple hundred shares very near the close, around 43.60. So this was a trade that I was in for 6 hours. That's a very long hold for this trader. I net $453 in AGU.

Anyway, I had similar trades in CF and DE netting about the same. Both trades were shorts and in both case I again didn't jump to cover. In short, I made good trades in the names.

It has always helped me when an entire group of stocks is acting strong or weak. Today, the entire group of AG names started acting weak at about the same time. Check charts of POT, TNH, CF, DE, CNH, AG and MOS. There was a lot of money to be made in a sector trade here today. When my confidence builds again, trades like that can be month-makers. Patience...

Anyway, I had one other good trade today in BEN. I caught a 4 point drop between 1 and 4pm. The only bad news about this trade is that I only had 100 shares. I had limits for more above where I got the 100 shares off but they were never hit. Still, I was very happy that I didn't cover into the spike-down at 3pm. I could have, but I decided instead to see if it would run further. It did and I made an extra $100 because of that patience.



As important as my winners were today it's worth noting that my biggest loser was for -$36 in AB. Also important was my winner to loser ratio, 8 winners and 2 losers.

So while LNN started my day off with a bang, it was less than half of my total gains. I simply traded well today and I hope I can keep it up tomorrow.

Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $2977
Best, LNN, $1281
Worst, AB, -$36

shares traded, 7000
stocks traded, 10, 8 positive, 2 negative
total trades, 55

Virtual Office, $8982. Dow, -146.73, 13488.69.

Misstrade, $4410 on 9500 shares traded.
Me, $2977 on 7000 shares traded.
HPT, $1006 on 36 contracts and 200 shares traded.
Evolution, $589 on 61,400 shares traded.

Crappy day for the market, excellent day for the VO.

Misstrade turned some shit (fertilizer joke, stay with me people) into money with a nice short in TNH. Keeping with the agricultural theme, I had a nice gainer with LNN which I held overnight into the earnings gap-up.

HPT had a solid day and even slummed it in the stock market for a trade. ET, went on a trading binge... ET buddy, you're overtrading! HAHAHA!

Anyway, another heavy volume loss for the market. Recently, the market shrugs off these losses with bigger gains. Kind of like the whole, "Hey, they knocked down the towers now we're just gonna build them BIGGER" mentality. Let's see if it works again.

My daily post and music video will have to come later this evening as I am busy immediately after the close.

Tick Bombs

They make me skittish. And really, with this new method of trading I am using I'm thinking about just removing that indicator from my screen entirely.

The ticks shoot up to 850 and I think, "well, maybe it's time to cover the shorts" and then a second later, they're -600.

More static than anything really...

Speech About Blogging, American Politics

Whatever your political opinions may be, I thought this speech was worth posting just based on what she says about blogging and about how the media has let us down in the last decade.

Blogging, in whatever form it takes, is here to stay. And I think that's a very good thing.

Boredom And LNN, Lindsay Manufacturing

Well, I had another nice morning of surf and then I hit the screens. I was relieved to see the favorable earnings report put up by LNN. I held 400 shares into the report and the gap up helped my mood a lot!

There is a gigantic short interest in this stock which was first pointed out to me by "the Fly". And of course, there was the Wallstrip episode.



I added to my position on the pullback this morning and then sold those shares during the conference call, which was short and sweet.

A couple of things I picked up from the call:

-declining steel prices help Lindsay
-positive economic conditions for farmers help Lindsay

Should be fun to watch the next few months.

Anyway, so I've stuck to the new trading style today. One problem I'm encountering is extreme boredom. I'm a trader, but really, I'd rather be out watching birds, reading books or playing with my daughter. Since I'm not trading a gajillion shares a day anymore I find I'm losing focus. This is something I'll have to work on. I guess I can use the new free time to scan charts and look for setups, but man, it's boring!

And yes, Woodshedder, I checked the link about trade setups you provided the other day in the comments section. Much appreciated, thanks!