Happy Birthday To Judy

I was surfing in the ocean today at 5:40, when most of you zombies were probably still sleeping. It's Judy's birthday, and I had to get in and out so I could be home in time to cook her breakfast and massage her feet.

Unfortunately, our fucking cat threw a wrench in that plan. He peed all over my daughter's "friend hippo." Frankly, I wasn't too upset at saying goodbye to the hippo, he was too big and animated looking for my taste. I like my stuffed animals to be subdued-looking and huggable. But that's another story altogether...

Anyway, since it's Judy's birthday I only worked the first hour and let one position ride. We then took our bikes into town for a picnic lunch. Now, she's teaching yoga and I'm watching our daughter for the rest of the day. Later we're going out to dinner, so the VO will be up but that's likely all for the day.

Back to your regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow.

Phil Collins, "Against All Odds"

I'm gonna start posting "non DT" music until my P&L improves. Think self-flagellation.

Virtual Office, -$154. SPY, +1.17, $138.81.

Retardo, nothing.
Timmay, no trades
Tokyo, vacation.
OBAT, -$22 on 2800 shares traded.
Me, -$41 on 6400 shares traded.
Denarii, -$91 on 5200 shares traded.

Goodnight market... sleep tight... don't let the bed bugs bite.

Really? Who has bed bugs anyway? Poor people? Well, I guess I might as well get used to them.

From here on out, assume volume sucks. Guess the NYSE was wrong about the hybrid increasing volume... and whatever happened to all that "added value?" It's still full of static and shitty low volume price spikes and fills.

Again, we just missed a new volume low on the year. I'm strongly considering just booking this month as a loss and enjoying myself the next few days.

Perhaps June will be different.

Wait... who am I kidding? This isn't some aberration... we're talking long term trend now.

Last year at this time, we were trading between 1.3 and 1.6 billion on the NYSE each day. Truly, the NYSE is fucked. No one wants to trade here anymore. The hybrid market is killing the NYSE. It's been clear for the last year and a half. It will never become a true news story I guess since CNBC is up the ass of the NYSE... reporting from there and everything... but it's a fact.

So what do you do in these slow times if you're a prop trader? Wait. Pray. Go to the beach. On that note, I'm looking forward to surfing tomorrow. No daily tonight... I get the feeling that stock traders/stock blog readers are still on vacation...

The Market Is Hungover

We're about halfway through a very dull trading session. Volume is below Friday's pathetic levels and the market is flatlining. It's dead.

I'm going out to mow my lawn. Even the blogosphere feels dead.

Preserve your capital today... don't get stuck in this low volume chop.

Great Weekend

Man, we had a very full weekend around here.  We went to barbecues, went out on a boat, hung out on the beach with hipsters, strolled around town and gawked at the "dig-me" crowd... just about everything that you're supposed to do on Memorial Day weekend in these parts.

I felt like I had a vacation even though I didn't stray more than 10 miles from my house.

So I feel recharged and ready for the week ahead.  Now I just need a good night of sleep.

See you tomorrow.

Neil Young, "Ohio"

"Four dead in Ohio..."

Same Ole Story...

Great entries, poor execution of my exits.

There really wasn't much to look at today, and I planned on taking it easy. However, SLB opened up with good volume, and since he was hovering above $100, I decided to watch him closely should he start to show weakness.



Look at that... I made $50 in the stock... meanwhile, the thing never looked back from my second short entry at $101.47. Depressing.

I took another trade in GES and received an awful fill on my entry. For the last two days, I've really felt a lag in my esignal quotes, and today I think it cost me about 20 cents on this trade. I went to sell when my esiggy quotes showed 38 and was filled .22 cents lower... given that I was looking for a run down to $37.50 before the stock hit some support, this kind of took the steam out of the trade. I covered 100 immediately at a small loss, and then the other 300 when the stock bounced off of the $37.50 level. So I made nothing, but I seemed to have the right idea.



Other than those two, I had a lot of small losses. The volume was really light today and with the holiday looming, it's not surprising that there wasn't a lot of follow through. The other stocks I traded, IPI, WFC and DHR didn't have great movement, and I didn't miss out from my entries. I took small losses in each which isn't a problem.

The thing I can't take is the missed opportunity in the SLB. I absolutely must learn how to hold these winning trades when they come or I'll never break out of this +200, -$200 grind I currently find myself in.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the three day weekend. I don't plan on posting much, if at all. However, the mysterious Internet force known as Bloggerdotcom contacted me with tales of a new post... I will let you know when it will drop. Presumably next weekend, but I guess it could happen this weekend as well... you never know with bloggerdotcom.

I plan on going to a lot of barbecues this weekend. I told Judy, "Listen, take any invitations and accept them all."

So we've already got one tonight and tomorrow to attend. If I can't make money, at least I can mooch off friends for free meals. I also plan on watching my normally quiet town get taken over by "cityots" (mix of city and idiot). I will sit in town, sip a coffee from a bench, and quietly take notes on their actions, like an anthropologist watching monkeys or something. They always do something entertaining. Hopefully, we get a blog post out of it.

Be safe.

Here's the stats:
P&L, -$60
Best, SLB, $48
Worst, DHR, -$60
7200 shares traded.
8 stocks traded, 3 winners, 5 losers.

Virtual Office, $165. SPY, -1.70, $137.81.

Tokyo, $221 on 2189 shares traded.
Denarii, no trades.
OBAT, no trades.
Retardo, no trades.
Me, -$56 on 7200 shares traded.

Well, we almost made a new low for the NYSE volume on the year. At least today it's not surprising, given that we're heading into a three-day weekend.

Not much action in the VO today, however, the market took it on the chin. Brokers got slammed, as people start freaking out all over again about "third-tier" companies like Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs.

Additionally, all of the energy leaders got pissed on... sell in May, indeed.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend. I'll have a daily post up in about an hour.

CHECK IT! MMMaria!

Funny Internet Comment

I was listening to this song on youtube and read some of the comments... one of them, was classic. Read below...

"jumesblant (2 days ago)

your beautiful words mixed with this music made me cry through my nose.from now on i belong to you xxxxxxx"

A Conversation Between Two Master Stock Traders

Stock bloggers kick ass because you could (in theory) learn good stuff. Fuck CNBC and their idiots. This right here is the future.

Here's a brief excerpt of a conversation I had with Jamie over on his site. As you know, I'm attempting to become more like him. He takes the same trades I do, yet he makes more money doing it. This doesn't mean he's smarter, and it doesn't mean Canada isn't pure evil...

(Note that I put his quote in a pretty shade of pink (mine is a masculine shit brown color). Sure he makes money, but that doesn't mean I won't try to emasculate him and ruin his self confidence. Stock trading is a zero sum game... and as far as I'm concerned, Jamie is my enemy.)

I said:

Nice trade in V... I mean, I had your entry, but you kicked my ass with the exit.

I noticed that you use 15-minute graphs to explain your trades. Do you use them as well when you're making your entries? I figure you have to use a smaller timeframe intraday, right?

I still need loads of work with my exits and I'm wondering if I should be focusing more on longer time frame graphs once I get my entry... because I tend to jump on profits... perhaps the longer timeframe would help me stick out the trades.

Have a nice long weekend.

-DT

Jamie said...

Yeah that V setup was a gift.

I use 4 timeframes daily, 1, (3 or 5), and 15 min. If the trade sets up nicely on all 3 intraday timeframes and has room to move on the daily, I take the trade. If I have a lot of confidence in the setup, once it gets going, I manage the trade on 15 minute. If I'm scalping, I manage on 1 or 3 minute chart. Most of my gapper trades are executed on the 15 minute.

If you're trading to win based on a setup you have confidence in, you might want to let your profits run, or partial out after 3 WRBs or obvious S/R levels. If the setup is less than perfect, or the markets are choppy, then, I sometimes use the trade not to lose strategy. After the initial BO I tighten stop after each new high. So on a three minute chart, my stop is just one or two bars behind the current price bar. This strategy usually insures a win unless the BO is a complete head fake, but if the stock really takes off, you want to give it more room, otherwise you'll get stopped out on the first pullback. This last strategy works best with highly liquid stocks.

NYSE Trading Volume Plummeting

Nothing new here for my readers. I've been talking about this everyday for the last year...

Gotta love the Hybrid Market... or do you? Ray still has hope.

(h/t Stockhunter)

Art Cashin, May 23, 2008. CNBC.

Again, Art Cashin is one of the only regulars on CNBC worth listening to. Today, Erin and Mark asked him about the price of oil.

Art Cashin: Well, China and India keep subsidizing things. China just had a huge earthquake and they're not going to stop subsiding right now and risk a populist problem... So, oil demand is going to stay.

Erin: People look a the last few years, and oil has tripled, but stocks have also done well. What do you make of that?

Art Cashin: Well, it's like that old story. You put a frog in a cold part of oil and start heating it up. By the time the frog learns it's hot it's too late. People have been accommodating to the high price of oil so far, but it's getting hotter."

Sonic Youth, "Teenage Riot"

Stock Trades Add Up To Small Gain

I had another green day today. When you're down on a month, green is good, no matter what.

My best trade of the day came early, in V, an HCPG watchlist stock. They were looking for the stock to trade down to $78. I saw it was relatively weak off the open and so I was watching it closely. Volume wasn't great yet, but the weakness was enough for me to be transfixed. It traded down near $79 quickly and then bounced, but rolled almost immediately.



I covered quickly after the first move down. I missed the real move when it bounced back up to $79 before cratering down to $77. $79 on the bounce was a perfect reentry... just afraid to enter. I made another good entry on the stock around 11:30, through $78. Again, my exits were fucked up. I covered way too early and missed a nice 2 point move down close to $76. Not sure what it's gonna take for me to start holding for these larger moves.

Probably desperation, brought on by extreme poverty.

Anyway, I then managed to fuck myself up trading BTU short. I got stubborn, added to a losing position, and blew out near the top of the move (classic) for a $200 loss. I also had smaller losses in DVN and SLB. So despite my initial good trade, I was down and had some fighting back to get through.

I saw a couple of trades that didn't have "daily spots" but were trading with good volume. STP had a nice flat base and I felt safe entering at $47. I was hoping for a quick pop down. Had it popped up to $47.10, I would have taken the loss. This was a perfect entry. Volume came in and the stock quickly plummeted. Again, I fucked up the exits. See below...



I saw another opportunity in BTU, the same stock that I screwed up earlier. So I cut my size to 100 shares and gave it a shot.



This was a good trade despite the small size. BTU had visited the $76.25 level three times on the day and had met resistance there continually the prior two days. So when he bounced weakly off that level while running into both the intraday downtrend line and $77 resistance, I thought it was a good entry spot.

My worst stock on the day was SLB. Again, just a case of me not covering when I'm wrong. I'm really beginning to see that if I just cover when shit doesn't work immediately that I'll do myself much less damage than if I hold and wait for it to return to my level. Just cover. If necessary or applicable, reenter later. Just cover and take a small loss.

On the other side, respect the stops... if the position doesn't move against my original entry, I should try to at least hold 100 shares for a larger move.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $165
Best, V, $161
Worst, SLB, -$85

9400 shares traded.
9 stocks traded, 6 winners, 3 losers.

Virtual Office, $938. SPY, +0.09, $139.57.

Timmay!, $515 on 1700 shares traded.
Me, $165 on 9400 shares traded.
Tokyo, $156 on 811 shares traded.
Denarii, $90 on 2000 shares traded.
OBAT, $12 on 4400 shares traded.
Retardo, zippo

My plan of firing the entire VO so I could be on top of the shit-heap is almost working! Soon, I will unleash the "paid services" section of my site, so you too can make $200 a day from the stock market! I just need to shake that Tim Sykes guy... developing...

Anyway... all the activity was in the morning today. Volume really tailed off into the afternoon and I can't help but wonder if tomorrow is gonna be completely dead ahead of the long weekend. I know I'm planning on trading for about 45 minutes. After that, I'm going to the store and stocking up on supplies, so I can huddle in my house and avoid the "city people" this weekend.

Look, we're in a tough environment for active traders. The VO is definitely reflecting that. Active traders need volume and VIX. This environment is better for swing traders it seems. Not sure what's gonna change that. Grind it out.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Cablevision Customer Service

They're still the worst...

My Internet has been going in and out the last hour making it impossible for me to trade with any confidence. So I called and got this wonderful message:

"We are experiencing a higher call volume than usual. Please call back another time. Thank you."

CLICK.

Fuck you too, Cablevision.

Dubai And Our Gas Dollars

Insane... put it on mute though... worst music ever.


Did You Know: Dubai And Our Gas Dollars - Watch more free videos

PDO... No Fucking Locate!

This had to be one of the most obvious trades of all time, and I couldn't take advantage because I could get a locate.

As you know, I've been watching MXC and PDO for the last few days. They've been trading together. This morning, MXC opened and immediately dropped 15 points. Or, it lost nearly a third of it's value in the first 5 minutes of trade. And it didn't gap down either... IT TRADED DOWN! Check the intra...



Now PDO gapped up and reversed as well, but there were a few precious moments where you could have sold up over $27... it lagged MXC, importantly, by a few minutes. 5 points, EASY.



Look at the daily on this thing... unbelievable! Gotta love the AMEX.



But perhaps it wasn't so easy after all... Timmay! got a little clipped in FPP, another stock that has run with these psychos.

Blog Post Confidential

Here's a huge article about blogging from the upcoming NYT Magazine. I haven't read it all yet, but it sounds like it's interesting.

Mass Layoffs In VO Lead To Violent Protests

I mean, tens of thousands of people are being laid off from the major brokerage houses, so the VO was bound to suffer as well. Goodbye to Ainkurn, Dehtrader, Evolution and Sanglucci.

I expected some anger, some outrage, but not an angry mob of people being whipped into a frenzy by a union agitator



After this speech the VO was ripped to shreds. It may take weeks for it to be operating normally again, but we need to stick to our principles. We've been through adversity before however, and I'm confident that we'll emerge stronger.

Meanwhile, the layoffs may not be over just yet...