Paraphrasology

"On Sunday morning while church bells rang in the villages alongshore, the world and its mistress returned to Dinosaur Trader's blog and twinkled hilariously on his lawn."

"Son of a Bitch!"

I know what you're thinking... dude goes away for a month, comes back, says he's not going to post as much, and then posts a 10 minute scene from Moonstruck. What the fuck? Yeah, I don't know...

Honey Cone, "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show"

Bunge Jumping...

Man, what a fucked up day.

Things were going fine for me early, as I caught a great long in MON and POT. My office was getting smoked. I was showing impressive relative strength.

Then, BG exposed my weakness... a "weak" stock showing undue strength in a crappy market.

I had to short it.

I got sucked into this trade like no other since well... the last time I did the same exact fucking thing, in late February. Same stock, everything. Welcome to the life of an idiot.



Anyway, I nearly lost my entire month on this bullshit, selling into a spike... what's worse, Sanglucci kept telling me I was trading like "a herb" rubbing it in with his "cool kid" slang terms.

You know what? I'm 95% sure I'm going to make this same mistake some other time, so I won't even claim to have "learned anything" from the trade. What I did learn, is that I trade okay 90% of the time... then 10% I trade like a crack addict.

Luckily, I was able to make a little money off of the bonanza in V during the afternoon.



Anyway, here's the stats:

P&L, $95
Best, MON, $443
Worst, BG, -$773

21,800 shares traded.
16 stocks traded, 10 winners, 6 losers.

Virtual Office, -$48. SPX, +2.50, 1373.40.

OBAT, $494 on 9400 shares traded.
Me, $95 on 21,800 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $4 on 1050 shares traded.
Wincity, no trades.
Retardo, no trades.
Timmay, no trades.
Dehtrader, -$202 on 6614 shares traded.
Denarii, -$215 on 4800 shares traded.
Sanglucci, -$224 on 47,800 shares traded.

You might look at the indexes today and think nothing happened. I mean, we were barely up on the day, with not too crazy of a range and the volume sucked. But it was a fucking warzone out there today...

Some guys in my main office got completely smoked... no cake was made anywhere. But it's really odd, because the agriculture stocks were acting like crackheads, and the coal stocks were wiling out. Meanwhile, did you see the action in V today? I have it on good inside information that the buying there was coming out of the deep south.

The VO had a pretty crappy day. OBAT made money, but when doesn't he? Dude just chills on a pacific island toying with the stock market all day long, buying beaches and shit. Meanwhile, Evolution had a good day I think, but he forgot to report his numbers... he thinks he's Timmay or something.

Anyway, I need to go have a drink. I'll have a daily post up this evening... I have some shit to vent.

I'm Alone, In A Fucking Desert Today

see more crazy cat pics

When Imbalance Orders Go Bad

Here's the trade I lost $400 on at the end of the day yesterday...

Virtual Office, $3003. SPX, +.30, 1370.90.

Evolution, $1572 on 58,600 shares traded.
Sanglucci, $827 on 28,400 shares traded.
OBAT, $450 on 12,200 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $254 on 3190 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $88 on 1350 shares traded.
Wincity, $30 on 100 shares traded.
Denarii, no trades.
Retardo, no trades.
Me, -$218 on 12,600 shares traded.

I gotta say that for most of the day, my office was getting smoked but there was a lot of "juice" in the market today, and "cake" to be made.

Take a look at the Agriculture stocks... the range on these things has been sick.

Still, it was a challenging day. A lot of breakouts didn't follow through easily, and there was plenty of churn. The volume on the NYSE was average, at just over 1.4 billion shares.

Evolution continued to tear it up however, with his "focus on one sector and dominate it" type of style. Sanglucci also did well, trading the Ag stocks like a fucking farmer. Speaking of farmers, Ainkurn came out with a "get 'er done!" in the chatroom today, which frankly, scared the shit out of us Northeastern elite types...

I was the lone red guy today... let me tell you it sucks to be the only red guy in the VO. That's what I get for fucking around with imbalances... HI had a published buy imbalance at 3:40 and then switched it negative at 3:50... I lost over $400 on the trade and it brought me negative.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sykes didn't get his numbers in on time again. He may be the "blingmaster" with his advertising laced website, but perhaps all the advertising and the gay "hotspot" and "tim links" are slowing down his email server... that's right.

This Guy Should Never Trade

He'd be dead already.


Angry Tennis Player Hurts Himself - Watch more free videos

Ween, "Freedom of '76"

Keep Your Mind Open When Trading

I wasn't going to do a post this evening, but I wanted to point out my stock of the day, MTL.

Now looking at this chart, it seems pretty obvious that I made my money in the stock, $428, on the long side.



However, that would be wrong. I actually made my money on the short side with the following orders:

9:46 Short 200 MTL at $115.60.
9:52 Buy 100 MTL at $114.71.
10:15 Buy 100 MTL at $112.19.

The point is that in the stock market, there are many ways to make money. Everyone has their niche and everyone can look at the same graph and see different opportunities to exploit. That's what makes the job interesting.

It's also why you always need to keep an open mind when trading.

Virtual Office, $5407. SPX, +46, 1370.

Evolution, $2891 on 68,400 shares traded.
Me, $1998 on 32,800 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $1069 on 5330 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $91 on 600 shares traded.
Wincity, $35 on 200 shares traded.
OBAT, $11 on 12,800 shares traded.
Denarii, no trades.
Retardo, no trades.
Timmay, -$88 on 2600 shares traded.
Sanglucci, -$600 on 38,600 shares traded.

First things first... Maria Bartiromo is the worst excuse for a "journalist" this world knows.

The higher the market goes, the more giddy she becomes. I would love to hang out with Maria one night, just so I could depress the shit out of her.

Anyway, the market freaked out today, jumping higher on 1.7 billion shares traded. That's pretty solid volume. But seriously, I would have thought we'd trade over 2 billion with the market nearly up 400. Still, it's hard to argue against moves like this... sentiment seems to have shifted, quite radically, just over the last couple of weeks. I guess that's why it's hard to pick bottoms. (insert joke about "picking bottoms" here)

By the way, in case you missed it, the jokesters over at IBC thought it'd be funny to "nuke" my blog in this video. Ha Ha... I'll tell you what though... there's nothing funny about nuclear bombs. They melt people. Also, my blog is indestructible. Thanks for reading. I'm happy to be back blogging... I just have to shake some of the rust off.

Equine Quits VO

After witnessing the following exchange between Aikurn, Sanglucci and Evolution, she decided to move on... I guess the VO is no place for a woman.

However, she may have also left because of this attack from Retardo.

Meanwhile, I myself have now suffered a twisted attack from the one known as Retard Trader. If I wasn't so busy thinking positive thoughts and forgiving people, I'd attack him right back.


How to Get Rid of Annoying Co-Workers - Watch more free videos

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.

Old And Unimproved

Just a reminder... tomorrow will be the next first day in the rest of the life of Dinosaur Trader blog.

See you then.

Fuck "J. Lo" and Her Babies

We need to know the names of her babies? That's front page news? And we need to see their pictures?

This is part of what's wrong.

Bear Stearns Bought For $2 A Share

I can't believe this shit...

I mean, this feels like "the game" must be over, or something...

NOTE: I'd love to hear from some of the older traders out there...

The Market Is Angry

Every Politician Is A Hypocrite

They do not deserve your respect.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Back to the hiatus.

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.