I think it's time for Comedy Central to have a 24 hour news channel. Just saying...
Anyway, here's last night's skit on our struggling economy with special attention paid to President Bush's "wand." Oh, and I guess they hate Ali Velshi too...
I was feeling a little dry this morning... I was hoping for some wisdom from Art Cashin, so I switched on CNBC.
They were discussing the FEDs action this morning... I don't know what the FED did. They increased the TAF or something... I don't care anymore. I just figure they're doing all they can to make sure the stock market can never sell off again. God Bless America.
Anyway, Steve Liesman was talking, and Santelli chimed in with a comment. Liesman, looking hurt said something like, "Rick, I let you finish, now I'd like it if you let me finish."
Santelli fired back with, "Steve, I've said this before... you put your IRA up and I'll put my IRA up and we'll trade them and see who can retire!" This comment caused a manly cheer to erupt behind Santelli from the Chicago pits.
They turned the camera to Liesman. He looked hurt, as if he was about to cry.
Carl Quintanilla was shown chuckling and then they cut to commercial.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the video... CNBC should let people embed. Anyway, Santelli comes on around the 3:40 mark, and it gets awkward around 4:20. Later, they shot some rounds again, in this video, at the 3:15 mark. Just click the links, and then you can drag the ball to where you want to view the video from...
Compilation of Embarrassing and Busted! Photos - Watch more free videos
Also, the May 6th election over at IBC is heating up. Here's a look at where the candidates stand right now.
There was a lot of "juice" in the market today. The problem was that I went to take a sip, slipped, and most of it ended up wasted on my shirt.
I missed a bunch of trades early, and managed to screw up a few others.
The most painful miss of the day for me was DVN, a stock I was watching to break $111. The stock had good volume, the sector was weak, and it had a decent setup. The problem was that I was a little early to the trade and got caught in the chop.
So starting with that loss put me into protection mode early, I was down $233.
Also on the loss side of the ledger were boneheaded trades in UBB, and GWW and pure fuckjobs in FDX and BVN.
But I had a few good trades too. The best in STP, as a short. FSLR was getting killed, and while STP didn't have the volume I was hoping for, I thought the base good enough to give it a shot.
Another good trade came in FCL. Coals were weak, and I was watching $57 as the number here. It made a nice base at the #, so I got short when he popped through.
Both STP and FCL were good trades because I held for decent moves.
My big miss on the day was BHI, which I short at $79.29... I took a half point, and left a few points on the table. Frustrating.
Anyway, here's the stats:
P&L, $161
Best, STP, $306
Worst, DVN, -$233
12,800 shares traded.
13 stocks traded. 5 winners, 8 losers.
OBAT, $1528 on 6200 shares traded.
Me, $161 on 12,800 shares traded.
Denarii, $80 on 3600 shares traded.
Retardo, no trades.
Ainkurn, -$370 on 700 shares traded.
Sanglucci, -$688 on 30,100 shares traded.
OBAT kicked ass today. Thank goodness too, because I was sick of having to sing Sanglucci's praises here everyday.
Meanwhile, special message from FSLR to Ainkurn... "No... you're MY bitch!"
Anyway, with the FED bullshit out of the way, the market finally got a little volume today. The "sell commodities and ag stocks, buy financials" trade seems to be well under way. And importantly for the bulls, we're over 13,000 again on the Dow.
What a turn of events.
I'll have a daily post up later this evening.
Meanwhile, the VO is hiring. Send me an email with your blog address if you're interested in joining. Oh, and I heard from Evolution. He's alive, just laying low and making cash.
"It has now been more than ten days since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates numerous federal laws; both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon's conduct; and Congressional inquiries are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce that it suspended its program."
Continue reading...
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...
Sanglucci, $4100 on 38,400 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $550 on 150 shares traded.
OBAT, $334 on 10,400 shares traded.
Me, $124 on 2400 shares traded.
Retardo, no trades.
Denarii, -$82 on 4800 shares traded.
Well, apparently "cake city" is somewhere in Brazil.
If you're a prop trader and managed to hear the news about Brazil getting upgraded by S&P to "investment grade" status when it came out, you probably made A LOT of money.
That is, unless you got all smart and tried to fade the move... (Note: As I wrote this, UBB dropped 6 points from its high, so there was money made fading as well...)
Sanglucci, current "cake king" around here, is learning Portuguese and moving to Rio de Janeiro. Congrats, Sanglucci. But let's not overlook our boy down south, Ainkurn. He says FSLR is his "bitch." He's thinking of upgrading and moving to Jackson, MS.
Ah, to be young and trading in the spring...
Anyway, the FED cut 25 basis points. The market rallied hard on the news and then reversed, all on mediocre volume. I'm always happy when these days come and go. I really don't like news driven markets... makes me feel dependent.
Just give me graphs.
Pretty much from 1:59 on is the reason why I love the Daily Show. Fucking perfect.
It's a nice day, so I'm heading out to take a bike ride. No reason for me to fuck around pre-FED during lunch hour.
Biker Gets Hit By Speeding Car - Watch more free videos
I've made a couple of trades and I'm up $200. No matter what, given that it's the last day of the month, I won't go negative. So I may just be done for the day.
I'm gonna be taking it very easy today. I figure it's a good day to surf the web until the FED, in all its bearded wisdom, throws us a bone. So here's some reading.
Me, $250 on 6600 shares traded.
Ainkurn, $136 on 700 shares traded.
Retardo, no trades.
Denarii, -$1 on 2600 shares traded.
OBAT, -$59 on 11,400 shares traded.
Timmay, -$265 on 500 shares traded.
Sanglucci, -$765 on 23,400 shares traded.
So I only traded the first hour today. No color for you.
However, I'd just like to note that it seems "the Fly" effectively sold the bottom on his SMN. The ag stocks, recent darlings of the stock market, have been beaten down like Barack Obama getting beaten by Reverend Wright. And thus, SMN is rising faster than yeast. Fuck yeah! Yeast!
It's ugly and most likely, getting uglier.
I'm looking forward to getting tomorrow out of the way. May the FED, in all it's bearded wisdom free the market from these low volume doldrums.
Back to your regularly scheduled posting tomorrow.
Oh, and one last thing... may the Pittsburgh Penguins defeat the children of Satan, also known as The Rangers.
I need to take a half day to attend to some "family business." I'm up $250. I will have the VO up later this evening. Enjoy trading.
If women "breast painting" bothers you, then don't watch this video. Great lyrics. The whole album is excellent, really...
