A Place To Bury Strangers, "To Fix The Gash In Your Head"

Still Trading Lightly

Here's the deal, I barely traded again.

I'm trading gingerly this week as I regain my bearings. While I only officially didn't trade for 2 days, I've been on a mental vacation since the middle of August. I'm just getting my feel back this week.

Also, with my wife still ill and my daughter now running a fever, I haven't had the opportunity to focus on the market like I should.

Simply put I'm washing more dishes and blogging less these days.

That said, I did okay today. My best trade of the day was a short in ITU.



Here are my trades in ITU:

10:00:08 Short 900 @ $42.83 (-900)
10:00:41 Short 100 @ $42.73 (-1000)
10:01:31 Buy 200 @ $42.65 (-800)
10:03:37 Buy 100 @ $42.63 (-700)
10:04:10 Buy 200 @ $42.69 (-500)
10:05:06 Buy 100 @ $42.68 (-400)
10:08:47 Buy 200 @ $42.66 (-200)
10:18:23 Buy 200 @ $42.33 (flat)

Had I been more patient with this trade I would have fared much better. It never traded back to my short entry so you could say I messed this one up. I'll regain my patience in time. Right now I'm definitely trading a little jumpy because I don't have a great "feel" for the market. My gut tells me it needs to trade lower but for the last couple of weeks it's been trading higher.

So I'm a little confused.

That said, it's important that I "lose the story" I have in my head about which way I think the market should be trading and instead just focus on what it's actually doing. There's some religious message there somewhere...

Anyway, short post, here's the stats:

P&L, $596
Best, ITU, $212
Worst, LDK, -$265

11,800 shares traded
11 stocks traded, 7 winners 4 losers
81 trades

Virtual Office, $8243. Dow, -143.39, 13305.47.

Misstrade, $9614 on 20,900 shares traded.
Me, $596 on 11,800 shares traded.
HPT, $400 on 73 contracts traded.
Bubs, $105 on 400 shares traded.
Denarii, on a beach, tanning.
Tapeworm, -$32 on 8 contracts traded.
OBAT, -$108 on 7000 shares traded.
Evolution, -$2332 on 6000 shares traded.

Well, I need to get out of here for awhile but I figured I'd post a preliminary VO since most (if not all) of the numbers are in.

Volume is still light on the NYSE. Looks like another day where we'll trade below 1.5 billion shares. In fact, we haven't traded over 1.5 billion shares since the 20th of August. I dunno... call it a summer hangover. Everyone still wants to be on the beach.

It was a pretty choppy day in the VO. We lost money overall and that's never good. Evolution has been on a great roll and he took a little hit today. In his email to me he offered a one word explanation, "airlines." Check out his blog for the full details.

Anyway, I expect trade to continue light for the rest of the week. In fact, I'm beginning to think it may be light all the way until the Fed meeting on the 18th. There's just so much speculation and indecision about what they're going to do. I hope I'm wrong because I'm hoping for more volume and volatility... time will tell.

UPDATE: As you can see, Misstrade won't be watching football until tomorrow. He turned in quite a day bringing the VO into the green.

Dinosaur Part I

This is completely random. Still, the market is slow and I know that you have nothing better to do. While vacationing, I did market research on you. I had focus groups, taste testing... I spoke with your credit agency... I know a lot now. And you'll enjoy this 4 part series.

"Puppies! Puppies!"

This commercial makes me sick on many levels... I'll let you watch it and choose what you hate about it.



Anyway, they play it over and over again on CNBC.

Fall Migration

I haven't thrown a bird post up in awhile, so here goes!

The thing is, I used to bird pre-market. I'd wake and get down to the beach and study the mud flats between 6:30 and 7:30 looking for shorebirds. Right now, if I went down there I'd probably see hundreds of Tree Swallows. They gather at the barrier beaches with a nervous anticipation getting ready for their impossibly long migration flights. It's really a beautiful scene.

Surfing has taken over my morning time slot (temporarily?) and so I haven't been out birding. However, I've long read a great blog about birding and I'll share the link here in case any of you are interested.

The guy lives in Brooklyn. Since many of you are probably located around the city, it is a great blog for you to follow since these bird observations are happening right on your doorstep. The name of the blog is Citybirder. I'm also updating my blogroll with it's inclusion.