The Beatles, "I Am The Walrus"

Probably my favorite song from the Beatles.

After The Storm, Some Quiet

I took it really easy today. So easy in fact, that I don't have too much to report here.

I was long 200 (UBB) overnight. It gapped up 7 points. I sold in the high $104s.



Problem was that I started to buy it back at around $99. It wanted to go down to $96. I lost about half of my gains getting in and out as it dropped those 3 points. What's worse however, is that I had about 800 shares again from around $96.20 and sold out at $96.50.

I was conditioned by all of my bad trades in the stock to think he was going lower again and I just sold when I had a quick profit. Basically, he ran up the rest of the day as you can see. That really pissed me off. However, instead of getting all vengeful and chasing it I let it go and walked away from trading for a couple of hours.

Before I took off though I got short some (MOS) and rode it down for a decent profit.



I didn't trade at all between 11:00 and 3pm. I just chilled, added some features to the blog and watched the idiots on CNBC.

At 3pm, I noticed that (MLM) looked like it might pop out of the base it had been forming all day.



It didn't make it... however, that didn't stop me from believing that it WOULD make it eventually... this was stupid and it led to my worse loss on the day as I stubbornly held expecting the stock to bust higher.

Anyway, thanks all for reading along this week. It's been lots of fun. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my vacation for next week because of all the volatility. I'm keeping a close eye on Hurricane Dean and the oil stocks for next week. If nothing develops there, it may be vacation time until after Labor Day. I'll keep you posted.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $2667
Best, UBB, $593
Worst, MLM, -$621

shares traded, 39,000
23 stocks traded, 16 winners, 7 losers
220 trades

NOTE: Be sure to check out the new "Feed" options I have placed on the blog and let me know what you think.

Virtual Office, $3984, Dow, +223.06, 13068.67.

Me, $2667 on 37,000 shares traded.
HPT, $1000 on 84 contracts.
Evolution, $632 on 13,500 shares traded.
Bubs, no trades.
Misstrade, no stock trades.
OBAT, -$315 on 3400 shares traded.

Well, for a summer Friday this one was fairly wild. The FED cut the discount window rate by 50 basis points and put at least a short term bottom into the market.

After we spiked up in the morning we lost half the gains in the futures and then basically got them all back by the close.

On tap for Monday is a greater understanding of how Hurricane Dean is going to effect this market, if at all.

Have a great weekend everyone. Enjoy the perfect weather on the East Coast. If you go into the water, watch out for the sharks.

Daily Show: Great China Recall

Watch how he rips our friend Erin Burnett apart at the end. Note too that I highlighted her stupidity in this post a few days before it got to the Daily Show.

Mr. Stewart? Please... if you're reading I would much rather write some good, ass-kicking comedy than trade. Just don't plagiarize me or I'll sue you. Shoot me an email.



NOTE: Screw Maria and her Junior Park Ranger pin....

Subaru And Greenwash

UPDATE: Subaru has responded to this post, so I've bumped it. See their response in the comments section. I still say the ads suck and are misleading. However, I give them props for stopping the "Dinosaur Trader public relations nightmare blitzkreig" from having a chance to develop.

I've been waiting to find this damn commercial on Youtube for awhile. They play it over and over again on CNBC.

A guy, with a little stubble, wearing "natural fiber" clothing standing among trees talking about how nice Subaru is to the environment. Ah yes! The air is so crisp and clean at the Subaru auto plant! LOL!



Bullshit.

Here's the real deal.

If Subaru is so damned friendly to the environment, why did they raise the clearance of the Outback so that it could be classified as a small truck? Was it to help the little bunnies, deer and trees at their "environmentally friendly plant" in Indiana?

Nope. It was to exploit a loophole that would allow the Outback to get WORSE FUEL ECONOMY.

Now, if you totalled the extra carbon emitted from the millions of the very popular Outbacks on the road today that now get fewer miles per gallon due to the exploitation of this loophole, I'd venture a guess that it dwarfs the carbon saved from their little "green plant" in Indiana that they tout so highly.

So to Subaru I say, "Fuck you!" for lying to the consumers.

To you, the consumer, I say, beware "greenwash" and let Subaru know that they aren't duping you.

Feedburner

Hey, I don't know a damn thing about feeds, I'll admit it. However, after watching today's Wallstrip, I was inspired to set up a blog feed since I thought the Sphere idea was very interesting.

So now there is a little link along the right sidebar where you can subscribe to the Dinosaur Trader "feed."

If this has caused problems for people who were subscribed in some other way, let me know. I'm just trying out some new stuff here.

NOTE: Meanwhile, let me know if the site is acting funny or anything.

Soundtrack To My Bounceback

Man, I haven't been able to get this song out of my head for the last few weeks. I posted the video a couple of weeks back, but here's the song, sans video.



Also, I've updated Dinosaur Trader's Golden Smash Hits.

Taking A Breath

I'm never really good at morning gap-ups so I've been taking it easy.

However, I still managed to make a bunch of good trades mostly on the short side. I caught nice shorts in both MOS and AGU.

One exception was a gap-up long in UBB. I had 200 shares and watched it gap close to 7 points. I took profits but then gave half back trying to buy it again. I just missed catching a really great long in it but I sold for no good reason in the $96s... that's when I decided it was time to step away.

Anyway, there was loads of opportunity out there. If you're into short scalping, as "Streetsmack" over at Wallstreak is, then this has been your type of day.

For me, I'm a little mentally exhausted from yesterday. For now, I'm taking my nice gains on the day and chilling out until further notice. If my buddy is able to hit the water again, I'll be doing that this afternoon instead of trading. We'll see.

I'll leave the "Rs" to Prospectus and Richard today...

Meanwhile, "the Fly" has a bunch of speculative hurricane plays... that is, if you feel Hurricane Dean will "mushroom cloud" the Gulf Coast, as he apparently does.

Thanks For All The Kind Comments

Anyway, I can't answer them all because it's going to be another very busy morning but I just wanted to say thanks.

It made a nice day even better.

Anyway, so I found a nice punk cover of "Wind Beneath My Wings" that features an animation of an evil Bette Midler for you.

Fed Cuts Rate Pre-Open, Too Bad...

I mean, this would have been nicer if we had a chance to get long on the day first!

Anyway, the futures went from being down to shooting higher. Check the 5-minute.

The Dow is set to open up over 250 points.



This may make trading very difficult today. I mean, we'll just have to see how stocks open. My only overnight long is 200 shares of UBB. Sigh...

Great waves this morning.

UPDATE: Art Cashin (one of the only voices of reason) on CNBC has this to say about the rate cut and the ensuing market action.

"It's a massive short-covering rally. It's unusual that they chose to cut the "discount window rate" instead of the Fed Funds rate but they're saying, 'look we're on top of this' and it shows they may do more down the road. Meanwhile, Art says that the Yen is still critical and that he's watching it closely.

When asked by Joe Kernan, Art said an "intermediate term low" was reached in the market yesterday but said he didn't think it was the final capitulation.

More On The "Big Day" Or...Irrational Fears

Okay... I've put the trading behind me. I mean, I made so many trades that it's hard to remember each one specifically.

I remember more the mood of the moment... like, "The market is going to zero, why aren't I short?" And then later, "The market is going unched... this stock looks overbought but, I'll buy more!"

Let's start at the beginning.

I woke at 4:45 to go surfing. I picked up my friend at 5:10 and drove the 25 minutes to the break. When we got there, the sky was gray, it was misty and cold and the surf was sloppy. There was an old guy in the parking lot waxing his long board. I've seen him at least 10 times before. I said "Good morning!" to him and he didn't even bother to look up. We decided not to get in the water.

To be honest, I'm developing an irrational fear of sharks. If conditions aren't perfect, I don't go in. My friend just thinks I'm picky about the surf, but really, I'm afraid of sharks. Now that I've gone and admitted that to the blogosphere, I'm bound to be eaten by a Great White soon. The story is too perfect. Perhaps I should just delete that line... no. It's too late. It's fated to happen.

"Obscure Blogger With Irrational Fear Of Sharks Eaten By Great White." Sigh...

Anyway...

So we went and got breakfast. Egg sandwiches and coffee and then we headed back to his place to eat them out on the porch. His wife and children were just waking up. I asked his 3 year old daughter if I could have one of her ears since she has two. She said no.

We ate our sandwiches and I said that I would have to put off my vacation for next week. The market had finally been giving me opportunity and I had to take advantage. He said, "Yeah, when it's quiet again, you can just fly somewhere."

Little did my friend know that I have an irrational fear of flying. However, this I shared with him. I told them that I never flew when I was younger. The first time I ever flew anywhere was just a few years ago and that was to Japan. I didn't realize that I didn't like to fly until we were halfway across Canada.

They had that map up that showed where you were in relation to where you were going. A little dotted line showed the route the plane was taking. For some reason, I was looking at that map and seeing that we were going to fly over the Bering Sea I immediately developed an irrational fear of the Bering Sea. I told my wife, "I think the plane is going to go down into the Bering Sea... it's going to be cold." She told me I was nuts and that I should listen to some music, drink some water, and apply some chapstick.

Long story short, we made it over the Bering Sea. However, on the return trip home when we were directly over the Bering Sea, I had a panic attack. This is all true. Anyway, so I don't like to fly.

Wow. I'm tired. I had other plans for this post, I promise. Need to sleep though.

Fatboy Slim, "Praise You"

A party song... forgive me.

A Big Day

At around 2:30pm, I thought it was 11:00am... no joke.

It's hard to begin this post. As you can imagine, I feel a little light-headed right now... almost shellshocked.

Look at the above graph of the Dow. I was long between 15k and 20k of stock at that point right when it decided to drop 200 points. I mean, I was in a bunch of stocks... I had no choice but to sell, because trust me, at 3:00pm, it certainly looked like we were going to test the lows of the day, we were only 50 points away on the Dow...

I liquidated every single one of my positions. And I called my wife up to ask her if I had enough "buffer" to trade the rest of the day. She gave me a big smile and said that I was doing fine.

I now know that I was up about $11,000 when she checked at 3pm. I'm pretty sure I lost close to $10,000 between 2pm and 3pm... with all of those positions, it was hard not to.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I should do this chronologically or what. Here's my best stock of the day, HXM.



Here are my trades from the last hour of the day in this stock:

15:17 Buy 500 @ 45.97 (500)
15:22 Buy 300 @ 46 (800)
15:24 Sell 100 @ 45.89 (700)
15:24 Sell 200 @ 45.88 (500)
15:27 Buy 300 @ 46.14 (800)
15:28 Buy 400 @ 46.26 (1200)
15:28 Buy 300 @ 46.41 (1500)
15:33 Buy 300 @ 46.56 (1800)
15:35 Sell 300 @ 47.13 (1500)
15:38 Sell 300 @ 46.82 (1200)
15:45 Sell 500 @ 46.86 (700)
15:57 Sell 200 @ 48.35 (500)
15:58 Sell 200 @ 49.14 (300)
15:59 Sell 300 @ 50 (flat)

This is less skill and more like, being in the right place at the right time. In fact, I'd love to have those 500 shares I sold at $46.86 back...

My second best stock of the day was PCP. I made $3900 in him. Again, mostly in the last hour. I had 500 shares for the entire move.



And then, there's UBB...



I traded 26,000 shares of UBB alone today. I basically built up a really nice position for the run from $92 to $100. Of course, I didn't hold it all... I was selling on the way up. But here's the part that sucked. I never saw it trade $100... and really, the next thing I know it was trading $96 again. 4 points gone in less than 5 minutes. I added at around the $96 level and had over 2000 shares when it plummeted down to $94. I got out, cursing. I had just given between $5,000 and $10,000 away in the stock in very short order.

However, I did buy back, quite aggressively, though not until it traded back up to $96. I was too battered in the stock to be buying when it was $93... at that point, I was sure it was headed back to the lows. That's about the same time that I called Judy in to check my P&L. I was really dejected at that point because I knew I had just thrown thousands away. In fact, and I know this may seem crazy now, but I asked her to check because I thought I might be close to negative on the day.

Anyway, while these were my 3 big winners of the day the real deal is that I had 12 winners for over $1000 today while my biggest loser of the day was $761. That's how the numbers added up like they did.

So TBSI was my worst. The reason? It just didn't bounce! I mean, it did have a move from $26 to $28... but I didn't catch it. Luckily, I never had more than 400 shares of the stock. I got chopped multiple times in him.



Sorry this post is lame but I'm shot. I'm walking away from the computer now and going to get dinner with friends. Perhaps after dinner I'll be able to reflect some more. Right now, my head is still spinning.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $28077
Best, HXM, $4239
Worst, TBSI, -$761

shares traded, 211,400
49 stocks traded, 33 winners, 16 losers
903 trades

NOTE: If you haven't already, please vote in my poll. Thanks!

Virtual Office, $32,581. Dow, -15.69, 12,845.78.

Me, $28,077 on 211,400 shares traded.
HPT, $2200 on 175 contracts traded.
Bubs, $1057 on 2900 shares traded.
OBAT, $723 on 12,200 shares traded.
Evolution, $524 on 58,200 shares traded.
Misstrade, no stock trades.

Wow.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the Dow rallied 300 points in the last hour of the day.

Needless to say, the market is freaking crazy right now.

Well, hey, why should the fun stop now? Just because the market ripped here doesn't mean "sub-prime" goes away.

We could get rate cuts, hurricanes, who the heck knows?

The VO kicked ass today. Bubs had his best day ever and I had my best day since the heady days of the year 2000.

NOTE: Oh, and for those who voted the Dow would hit 12,500 before 14,000 you can't declare victory just yet... the low of the day was 12,518...

"Someone Set Us Up The Bomb"

"You have no chance to survive. Make your time..."

Dow And Dinosaur Getting Smacked

Blogger not allowing me to post pictures right now... but Dow is down over 300.

I have no shorts. Instead, I've chosen to nibble at longs and I keep getting slaughtered. It's a bloodbath. Thank goodness for the risk manager.

We'll see how this ends. I'm just trying to stay in the game long enough today so I can catch the bounce.

The entire market is getting flushed.

Clarence, "The Rodent Of Stock Market Volatility"

Somehow, he eluded our traps and is back, scampering around on the floor of the exchange.



Check out the VIX. It's a traders market. However, that said, there's a good chance I'm a little smoked right now. I got wildly bullish just after 10 and took some losses. It'll be a day of big gains and big losses. It's gonna be tough.

No Waves

At least not in the ocean. A swell is suppossed to come in for the weekend, but the water will be too crowded for me then.

So we went down, looked at the water, watched a couple of guys paddling around, sipped coffee and swapped 9/11 stories. Fun!

Anyway, more bad news this morning. Just about everything on my screen looks to be gapping down. However, if I were a betting man, I'd bet on a bounce at some point today.

Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"

Footage is from Evil Dead II. Blood on the streets, indeed!

"Smart Money Is Buying This Market" - Maria Bartiromo

I figured it was a good idea to post that weekly graph of the futures. As you can see, we're just about where we were on January 1st, 2007.

It's a different story for the Dow. It's still up a few hundred points for the year.

Anyway, it was a wild day for stock trading yet again. With Hurricane Dean looming in the Caribbean and huge companies like CFC having serious trouble, this volatility shows no sign of ending. I'll say that at least in my mind, it feels like our entire financial system is about to collapse. So far, I don't think stocks have fully priced in that type of fear. I think it will take that type of fear induced capitulation plus some financial companies opening up their books and letting people know how deep the sub-slime is to hit some type of bottom... that, or some type of FED bailout in the form of a deep rate cut. But whatever, I'm a trader.

Here's my best stock of the day, UBB.



Ironically enough, I missed the short that melted the stock from 2pm into the close. I made my money on the long side, between 9:45 and 10:00. I actually think that's a really good thing because it tells me that I'm very open-minded about the market right now. I got crippled for a couple of months after the February panic because I could only see shorts. So I'm happy that while the tone of the market is overwhelmingly bearish right now I managed to pull good money from the long side.

At the same time that I caught the UBB long, I also made good money on corresponding longs in AB and CNS. It was all about the financials rallying at that point of the day due to some Fed action. Again, I'm not an economist so I really don't know what they did. But, I don't care. As a trader my job is to react to movement in the market, not to necessarily understand what's causing the movement.

In fact, often the more you know as a trader, the worse off you can be. Because when you know too much, you can start telling yourself stories. And when you start believing your stories you can get stuck in bad trades. The only story you pay attention to is the price and volume action.

Another thing I didn't understand was the movement in AMG today. And wow, my timing was also awful in this stock. Basically, it was spiking up and down a point at the time as you can see on the 5-minute graph below.



I really got sucked into him today and made bad trades over and over. All of them were on the short side. The stock was just choppy today and I shouldn't have been trading it. I think I was watching it because it's my best stock on the month. However, I need to remember that the past is gone forever. Just because I made money in him a week ago means nothing about my ability to make money in him today, or tomorrow.

Anyway, the futures are down a bit again overnight. FXY is trading $86... it doesn't look like we're close to going down just yet. However, I'd expect some type of little rally attempt soon.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $2509
Best, UBB, $1131
Worst, AMG, -$998

shares traded, 39,600
27 stocks traded, 20 winners, 7 losers
193 trades