Retardo Tries To Kill Tim Sykes
Lots of speculation on who exactly tried to kill Timmay, however, it's pretty obvious to me...
Thursday, February 7, 2008
The Doors, "The End"
Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite movies. I didn't like the Redux as much though...
Is Daytrading Gambling?
(Shameless SEO title there... the answer? No, it's not.)
I had a pretty good start today. Last night, retailers reported same-store sales and the initial reaction to the data this morning was positive. I don't trade WMT (Walmart), but he's a pretty good indicator for the group and he ripped over a point right at the open. That's quite a move for WMT, so I looked for catch up plays and I found TIF, who opened up about flat.
I bought 800 shares between $36.60 and $36.70 and sold the entire position about 50 cents higher for a quick $400 in the first 5 minutes of trade.
By 10:00am, the market was turning negative and since I have a bearish bias right now, I was happy to get short. However, at just that moment, the market ripped higher again and I took some hits. Ironically though, my biggest loss came in my old friend/nemesis, RWT, on the long side.
That's just an old-fashioned "fuck job" to use the technical trading term. I lost a few hundred in the mofo. Now, RWT can make some nice moves every once in a while. Lately, I've been on the wrong side. So, until I start getting on the right side, I'm restricting my position size in this dude to 300 shares.
Finally, we can talk about a well thought out trade. If you're a daily reader here, you know that's a rarity. I don't do too much thinking when I trade, I do much more reacting.
Anyway, at 10:00am when the market was ripping my face off in all of my shorts, I noticed that MA was not taking part in the rally. So I started getting bearish thoughts about the stock and I waited for the spike in the futures to subside. And then at about 10:13, I got short around $201.25. About a half hour later, I covered at $198.15, pretty close to the lows of the move.
I was so happy about finally catching a full move, even if it was just with 100 shares.
Better yet, I watched and figured he might find some resistance up near $200. So I threw in a short limit at $199.69 and was filled. The trade initially went against me, but given the volume that came in on the downside and the weak volume on the buy side, I decided to give the trade a little room. I put my buy stop up at $201, so I was risking about $140. Considering I had just caught 3 points, I was willing to take the trade to test my "$200 resistance theory" and prove myself correct.
Happily, the stock turned tail and dropped like a rock and again, I covered near the lows of the move, at $196.25.
Those two trades gave me half of my profits on the day even though I was only trading with 100 shares. More importantly, they gave me a boost of confidence.
After that trade, I head off to the beach. The surf was way too big for me, between head high and double overhead... for me, that'd be like trading CME with 2000 share lots. I'm just not ready for it. I'm going in the early morning again because I think the wind will knock down the swell a little tonight.
I also wanted to thank Moom for quelling my fears over our Banks collapsing.
Anyway, here's the stats:
P&L, $1361
Best, MA, $590
Worst, RWT, -$232
17,800 shares traded.
19 stocks traded. 9 winners, 10 losers.
Virtual Office, $7425. SPX, +9.30, 1339.20.
Misstrade, $4900 on 1400 shares traded.
Dehtrader, $1882 on 4680 shares traded.
Me, $1361 on 17,800 shares traded.
Sanglucci, $580 on 35,600 shares traded.
OBAT, $546 on 11,200 shares traded.
Denarii, $149 on 1200 shares traded.
Wincity, $8 on 200 shares traded.
Retardo, no trades.
Tim Sykes, no trades.
Evolution, -$2001 on 54,400 shares traded.
I wish I could say more about the day in general, but the truth is, I traded until 11:00am and split for a few hours. So I have no idea what that midday rally was all about. I caught some shorts in the afternoon, but traded cautiously.
Volume was pretty good today as we traded 1.75 billion shares on the NYSE. The VIX declined a little.
I thought the bulls showed some gumption when they bought the market at 3:00. I really thought we were going back to the lows.
What this tells me is that we could expect these types of trading battles going forward. The market is neither high enough for the bears to take it down hard, nor low enough to create explosive rallies. We may just be in a trading range now waiting for a catalyst to make the market move. As long as we have volume, that's fine by me.
Anyway, the VO had a pretty good day... we would have had a great day except Evolution completely fucked us up. Damn prop traders... they're all gamblers really. Also, it was good to see OBAT come back from the hosing he took yesterday.
US Banking Crisis At Hand?
Just getting to my desk to see the futures down again...
My "political soul mate" Jake Gint posted the following video over at "the Fly's" place last night. There are two others after it. It's extremely dry. Pretty much, this guy is wondering if we're in the midst of a huge banking crisis, since the FED has run out of reserves, or something.
See, I'm not an economist. I don't understand any of this stuff. That's why I need one of you to explain it to me. Do I buy gold? Foreign currency? Huge sacks of rice to store in my basement?
NOTE: Also, look... blogs are all about participation. Are you a guy? or a girl? While some, (Ragin and Tapeworm come to mind) might have trouble with this seemingly easy question, most of you should just be able to "click it in there."
Go vote in my damned poll!
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