Nirav ZINDABAD!

Still in C

2009-08-05T09:32:00.001-07:00

i don't know why, but when the dow has a bad day, C has a great day.

In at 2.78, today hod is 3.46

EDIT**** I'm out at 3pm. long 2.78-3.58.

For documentation's sake...

2009-07-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

I'm long C from around 2.78. I'll post when I sell. I really just want to make my money back to the full amount I started with.

Thank you to everyone that helped me learn so much about trading.

Ahoy, Matey's

2009-04-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Sorry I have not written in a while. As my financial markets professor once said in class "the pain of losing money is much more than the joy of profiting"

Well, that pain has kept me away from trading all together recently. That and several piled up assignments.

Today I am back to declare a gradual re-entry. This is the second time my account is visiting all time lows with a current balance of $3200. If you remember back to the week long rally the DOW had during early March, you'll notice how the pullbacks from the gains were not noticeably seen. The DJI maintained an above 7000 point value and I shorted a 3X Financial BULL ETF-ticker:FAS soon after. It's hard for me to cover losing shorts, so I held invariably longer than I should have.

I still plan on trading exclusively and heavily during the summer months. I am not satisfied with all of my experiments in trading during the school year and hope to exonerate myself from the variability I've had in my account this year through some intensive work.

I should also declare, I will now be majoring in Math alongside Economics. Good day.

This should be fun.

2009-03-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'm current short FAS, but this post is more about an assignment I recently completed for today's FOMC meeting. I'm copying below, a fictitious memo to investors I have written predicting the outcome of today's meeting. I really enjoyed writing this. Skip to the last paragraph if you want my prediction!

Good Afternoon Esteemed Investors,

Needless to describe in detail, these are tumultuous economic times. We here at GEE and VEE pride ourselves on our 100% success rate with determining the Federal Funds Rate over the lifetime of this memo and wish not to fail you in these pressing times.

Among the more dire threats to the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate lies predominately the issue in credit markets. As prescribed as a cause for the struggling repo(repurchase agreement) market, January FOMC minutes stated: “market participants reportedly were reluctant to lend Treasury collateral out of concern that counterparties might fail to return borrowed securities.” A lack of Trust coupled with low supplies of loanable funds and weak demand is causing historic congestion in the credit markets. Commercial Bank credit has fallen for the second consecutive month in December echoing the lackluster demand and dwindling supplies and month to month recovery in select areas such as liquidity in corporate bond markets and short–term funding markets have occurred; though marginal at best. Please note there remains renewed deterioration in the banking sector’s financial condition as well as consumer spending, business investment, sales of new homes, foreign demand (of US treasuries), unemployment, GDP, and industrial production. The message of the January 28 FOMC meeting is bare; the committee stands united to combat the credit crisis before all other issues. It is the committee’s belief that this will subsequently loosen the flow of capital to all other deteriorating sectors. We must let you know that the FOMC has already stated after the January 28th meeting that “policy rates would likely remain low for some time and that the FOMC might engage in additional nontraditional policy actions such as the purchase of longer term Treasury Securities.” We here at GEE and VEE do not believe the purchase of longer term Treasury Securities will be resorted to. Adverse price movements which occurred after this initial announcement were “more than reversed after the turn of the year, despite the worsening economic outlook.” Further as month to month relief comes to short term funding markets and spreads in the LIBOR decline, there is no reason for government purchases of long term treasury securities to occur.

It is difficult to find opposing views from the January FOMC meeting in media and the Beige Book Summary for 3/4/09. The Summary confirms the prevailing failure of consumer spending in all sectors including real estate, manufacturing, retail, travel/tourism, and services. Price levels are not showing signs of increasing either due to low energy prices. The summary also confirms that “availability of credit generally remained tight” through February and the opening of March. As mentioned in the 1/28 FOMC report, the summary reaffirms: “Demand for commercial and industrial loans was reported lower in most Districts,” and that “Lenders continued to impose strict standards for all types of loans”. Credit markets have not loosened in the period after the last FOMC meeting. Though some might find problems with WSJ reports that show unemployment increases beyond the FOMC projection of 4.8-5.0%, careful readings of the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) show that the FOMC acknowledged, “projections for unemployment rate were to be tilted to the upside”. Also, the FOMC was aware of the potential for large drops in GDP. The 1/28 SEP reads: “projections for real GDP growth were judged to being skewed to the downside.” There should be no surprises here folks. The WSJ reports after the 1/28 FOMC meeting show that FED officers have become much more comfortable with delivering the blunt truth to the ailing economy. As the March 4^th WSJ article reminds us, the U.S. is aggressively attacking weak credit markets by injecting up to $1 trillion in new lending through TALF and associated relief to Mortgage backed Securities. Please note that the problems cited by the FED and FOMC are indeed being addressed through substantial measures.

Reports from the fifth and twelfth Federal Reserve district verify all claims in the Beige Book summary. Retail, Manufacturing, tourism, service, finance and real estate sectors all show declining and contracted states with very low consumer spending even in the holiday season. The economic picture is bleak both nationally and regionally.

We here at GEE and VEE see not the courage in the FOMC to make the bold decision to increase the Federal funds rate. Doing so would be akin to pulling away the crutches of an already lame and aged man. Reducing the rate further, would not make lending services anymore available then a 0-.25 rate have already done. The credit markets are severely disabled at historic proportions. Extraordinary measures in bailout funds are being pledged in this second round of funding. Ladies and gentlemen, we wish to warn that as the effects of the TALF become felt that long-term inflation will become the next threat to the FOMC as the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet continues to grow. For this reason, assuming no further shocks to the economy occur, as effects of TALF spread through the economy and credit markets loosen, the FED will refocus measures to scale back liquidity and begin to address the multitude of issues weak consumer spending and low industrial lending/borrowing have created. However, in these markets trying to anticipate future movements of the FOMC are best labeled unwise for the sake of safe investing. For the time being, please prepare investments for an unchanged rate for today, March 17^th, 2009.

Yours in Finance

Nirav Lakhani

Research Associate, GEE and VEE

Scalps today.

2009-03-04T17:33:00.000-08:00

I scalped RF today. It was a pure technical read. Saw a lasting 10/60 cross and continous upticking DJI , and a following BAC. I jumped in RF at 3.48, and was out at 3.68, though it hit a max at 3.76 but failed soon after to close at 3.51

+$220

Perhaps the most satisfying part of this trade was knowing that

I still had the edge to recognize this pattern and make an effective entry and exit after a horrible last Friday. I also realized how important it is to avoid making back to back trades just becuase you think you may not have reached your profit potential. I left about $72 on the table from my exit, but I learned this valuable lesson.

Really guys, this breakout was beautiful, just easy money. Check out the chart below

EDIT**

I love this article, let the education bubble burst--another artificially inflated sector of the economy that should come crashing down.

BIGGEST LOSSES ON MY ACCOUNT.

2009-02-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Everyone has always said be careful o/n financials. Muddy goes even further to say he cannot do o/n longs. Well, GDP figures came out and sent shares of everything sliding down. My losses sum to ($1140) and I'm down 6.8% since starting to trade. This is my 3rd time ever going into losses on my account. I've recovered beautifully each time. I'm not worried in that sense, I'm not even worried about making a bad trade for my entry. GDP fell 6.2 percent. How was I supposed to know revisions were coming out if it wasn't making headlines yesterday. In fact, I think getting out with 1k losses is good comparing to how large the implications of the GDP drop are. If you're unaware of how big of a deal this is, just read some articles.

There is one thing I did very wrong about this trade, and that is my exit. I've been great about not making exits during panics. Out of open, RF started to hit new LODS so I got out and "cut my losses." See, I never understood why people say that, b/c right after selloffs are bounces. If you just wait to "cut your losses" you will REALLY cut your losses. I recommend you take "cut your losses" out of your vocabulary if you trade. Its cliche beyond belief. It terms of numbers- I exited RF at 3.13. Right now it has bounced up to 3.66, thats $530 that could have been subtracted from my loss of $1140.

So now, lets talk about recovery. Its strange, aynul, made a good post yesterday about some things he picked up about handling losses at the traders expo. I'm not sure what this weekend will procure from me. Perhaps some deep philisophical ramblings on my behavior are in order. What the hell, I do that everyday. Honestly, I'm just going to keep trading. I think i've got the edge already. Honestly, what just happened easily relates to poker. It's really like being Daniel Negrenau in this hand.

Sometimes, probability pins you on the losing end up against a wall with hundreds of orcs glancing at you with their beady eyes through unwashed and tangled strands of hair, slowly approaching, mumbling incantations in foreign tongues while licking their lips as they stare greedily at their fresh supper. Ok ok, thats not how I feel, but its fun to talk about.

Really, its not the entry thats getting to me, its the exit. Right now RF has reached 3.78 meaning this is no longer a bounce, but a reversal. RF is a GOOD COMPANY. I'm serious.

test done, market open

2009-02-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

I think i'll do a minute by minute today again. I just got out of my Microecon test at 9:15 and being 9:36, i have all day to trade(though I really shouldn't). One day trade to use, and a 100% chance that it will be. I've already fought the urge to buy right off open, but I know better entries happen when volume settles. I should go find a book, or write in my journal until 10:30, but I'll probably keep the charts open just for the sheer enjoyment of looking at them.

No positions yet, updates soon.

Today's trade

2009-02-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

In C, doubling up again, at 2.32. This is the first time i've bought right after market open-9:33am, It is a direct violation of yng's rules. We'll see how it goes... update later.

EDIT: 4:20pm

First, It was a huge mistake to buy within 3 minutes of open. Right after I did, C tanked and I was down over $500 on my position. It was a sell off and I almost cut my losses. All in all, I held because I have a tolerance for pain when I know I might have simply been early to the party. But party there was. It was a roller coaster day, the chart says it all, I sold with about 45 seconds to market close at 2.58 for a nice $480

As you can see, I bought right at open, and held through a deep sell off. You might wonder why I held, and my reason is simple. A sell off or a buy run can happen really quick in BofA or C. A volume spike can make this happen and also, this was happening before 10:30 when volume is particularly high. It is a risky play, but I watched Bernanke's testimony real time with my trade. When he mentioned that nationalization of C did not imply a shareholder wipe, I had more confidence. This was when the first buying run of the day came around 11AM. From there, I was looking for a nice exit while checkings charts of the many other financials having good days. Since C was not hitting the same HODS BofA was, I knew it would come EOD.

Simple reasoning. Profitable trade. I'm not happy with the risk I took at 9:33AM. I'm tired of account fluctuations. I'm up 16.3% and don't want to give any of it back.

My new hero

2009-02-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

I've always thought traders had much to offer for economic input. Even day traders like myself. Knowing how the market will react is so much a part of setting economic policy, but traders all make up the "silent majority." Like this guy, the one reason I cannot see myself getting involved in American Economics is because a co-requisite for such positions is to be an fervent politician as well.

Rick Santelli is very emotional in this video. He sum's up what I believe much better than I could. His picture is my new desktop wallpaper.

I'm also short BAC at 4.01. Edit at EOD if i'm close or hold o/n.

UPDATE

($280) on BAC. Definitely let this one get away from me as I didn't update my position with the realtime chart patterns i saw.

I saw a reversal coming but I held. Clearly my own fault and this is why I am down for the day. Last two trades have now

been red.

-NIRAV

Yesterday.

2009-02-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

Update.

BAC and C are plummeting under fear of nationalization- hmmmm, how did I end my last post?

My BAC short went brilliant, I covered at 4.28 from 4.73 up $485

I got ready for how stocks normal react from morning sell offs by going long on C since the pp/share was lower and I could double my position size. C did not bounce from the sell off. It continued downward. I was mad at my exit point. I lost ($380). I'm up from yesterday, but seeing my account break 6K only to fall below it again was thoroughly disappointing.

I am, however, not mad about exiting BAC where I did, its currently at 3.20 meaning i could have had $1500 in paper profit had I held, but profit taking seemed completely reasonable way back in the 4.20's and I would not have anticipated this meltdown that has occurred.

Today I could easily trade w/ my remaining day trade, but I will restrain myself since this weekend will be big for BAC,C and the government. Right now they are both sideways anyway. It is difficult to see where things are going from here. My hunch is continued downward, but Im not sure enough to bet on things... yet.

Behavioral Trading, and my recent trades

2009-02-18T21:37:00.001-08:00

I made a losing short on BAC friday. My loss was ($40). This was not a bad trade, it was a good lesson learned. A lot of times I may enter shorts because I for see EOD fades. This means waiting until definitively after 3pm but usually after 3:45 or 3:50. That I did on this short, and finally covered so I wouldn't have to hold over the weekend. Like we discussed in Financial Markets today, it helps traders to sleep better knowing their money is not invested in some far off land in some far off company. The funny thing about this EOD sell-off last Friday, was that it did in fact happen but not until around 3:59. Talk about pushing off the inevitable. Plenty might have jumped out like me for similar reasons for moderate losses. Smart money did not.

Smart Money is a term Robert Shiller uses to describe profitable traders. Tim Sykes always says 90% of traders lose money and 10% are consistently profitable. While the percentages might not be weighted this way, lets assume most people lose money- a fair assumption in my opinion. We could go into all of the market theory behind this, but I don't want my fingers to cramp in the morning. I know the discussion would get lengthy. Anyway, I think Syke's profitable traders and Shiller's smart money are one in the same. If you are one of these traders then on most days, placed in the context of news and general market fear/glee you wait for the market to speak and simply react. In the future, I plan to compile a few charts and demonstrate how I trade and my candid reasoning for doing so.

Right now i'm o/n on a BAC short. I have large unrealized gains and my entry was 4.73. Its ridiculous that BAC has such large back to back red days, but when the DJI is testing new lows, its not a big deal as it would be otherwise. I'll post tomorrow when I close

I only watch C, BAC, and DJI these days. They have volume, I don't have to chat to borrow shares, and I get immediate and accurate fills. I'm not going to stop until these banks get nationalized... I hope I'm short on that day :)

5-1

2009-02-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

I couldn't keep the streak going today. I am now 5 for 1 on trades. Saw a signal for a breakout and jumped on it. It wasn't more than a 7c movement from my long entry-so I know I read the chart right. I held too long, and what looked like a bad EOD selloff began, so I got out.

-$144- Long on C

Holding till EOD would have been profitable as it closed indeed 7c up from my entry, but I was on the move to study in the undergraduate library.'

Today was definitely a day to sit out. The EOD of day buying spree would have been dangerous if I had gone short-- which was my instinct when I saw the chart for the first time.

In other news, I had a humorous thought the other day when someone mentioned Bernie Madoff. Could the government, in fact, be accused of running the largest ponzi scheme ever for the tax funds they are using and the returns they are promising? Think about it.

Note* I edited my last post after Hari brought to my attention the comments I made about Americans/people that defaulted on mortgages. But, I felt very vindicated today when a CNBC reporter asked Kyle Bass, a hedgefund manager that sold short (Mortgage backed) bonds in anticipation of the subprime crisis, how he felt about betting against America. Bass said the lenders of capital should have never met with the homebuyers and homebuyers should not have taken on such risk. There is nothing wrong with Bass recognizing this and trying to profit. Some may argue traders are responsible for the moral implications of their trades. After hearing Bass speak, I am less concerned about this dilemma and how it applies to me.

Trust me when I say, it gave me great unrest to short banks in the past!

C

2009-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

5th successful C trade. Went short this time.

+$120 on the trade.

+$100 from referrals on Aynul and Alex to TOS.

I'm going to count the referral funds as my own to bring my new yield on my account to:

+14.84%

I left alot of money on the table with this one. I was short. Chart was simply too easy to read. If you want an example of a purely downward headed chart, view C at 11AM. I got out after I made pinch on this trade, but If I had turned CNBC as I have on now, I would have realized that i was covering too soon.

They even said "buy on rumor, sell on news"... lmaonade.

Wow, I shorted C at 3.77 out at 3.67.... Right now its 3.47!

Its only 11:39. But this will be a hugely talked about today. Market hasn't reacted this violently in a while. Shows the fear that exists out there.

Today is a great day for shorting. I wasn't even supposed to trade this week, but when I see such an easy C chart, I'm glad I got in for a bit of profit off this mess. I called C a short since yesterday as it did a sideways all day around 4.00, but I would not have called this. This is just awful for the market.

now at 11:44, there is finally an end to this selloff.

In terms of where all of this trading is going, I had a good conversation with Prof. Vaidyanathan, about risk, leverage and where I think this crisis could spread: the retail sector. She warned me about greed, but pointed out that risk is a function of age, and I know I'm being risky with my position sizes and pennystocks in general. But i'm not trading a retirement account, this is mostly for learning but also because I really enjoy it.

Also, it seems like both, Credit Default Swaps(CDS) and Collatoralized Debt Obligations(CDO) are becoming common knowledge for the havoc they created. My Micro professor spend 30 minutes explaining both to my completely indifferent classmates.

WOW I left so much profit on this trade out there! Now I know I know how Aynul felt with BAC.

CNBC financial idiot just said:"We should see a reversal by July-August". These people are delusional. Do me a favor, don't be delusional.

My covestor chart, Sharpe Ratio, and Citi

2009-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

I've made 4 trades with C in the past week and a half. I've played long and short. The trade I closed yesterday was my largest gain. All of my trades were positive. My total gain on C has been $1193.00

On that note, I am up 13.1% on the year. My Covestor chart will update soon to put me at up 50%. I'm not sure where the discrepancy is coming from. I wish I was up 50%.

Best for last! I just checked. I am ranked 63rd on the covestor top 100!!!!!! My Sharpe ratio is 1.57, probably the highest it has ever been. Check it out HERE

My focus from here will be to continue my streak of winning trades. No set backs. They take too much time to recover from.

EDIT** A friend of mine is now blogging his trading too. Check him out here.

Reflections.

2009-01-31T16:09:00.000-08:00

After making my post yesterday. I kind of glorified my little decisions through the day. Yes I made money and made some great calls about short entries and overall movement for the day, but I'm skeptical about my own skill.

I had a good long talk with Giovanni yesterday. He worked at a 330 million dollar hedgefund this past summer so he has plenty of perspectives to represent about trading.

My conclusions and ideas about trading: The market is made up of players in a pyramid scheme.Remember the old food pyramid, with a triangle for fats/oils at the top. Imagine that.

In the top triangle, are Ibanks

Sharing the level underneath are Market makers(specialists, floor traders etc) and Hedge funds. The later would have more real estate at this level if it could be ideal.

Underneath are mutual funds foreign long run investors, prop firms.

At the bottom are online brokerages and their constituents. Note: The sections are divided by volume of people in each category, not by %age share of total market cap. I have no idea how to represent the market cap. The market makers are the ones who always win of course. My ideas in trading are biased by me being indian. No really, read GAMES INDIANS PLAY. It'll explain to you why if you are ever in a business transaction with an Indian odds are you are losing. I can't help it, I was taught these things since I was young. The point of this is, it is my opinion that shifts in the stocks I trade are rarely due to news. Its a psychological war between market makers and traders like me to make money off of day-to-day price variances. This is, afterall, what a true daytrader like myself, and the rest of GOTS are trying to do. This is why I recongnize the fake breakouts. They are attempts for the market makers to convince people that the stock has reversed. False, there is no news, a wave of buying has come in so that market makers can get nice short entries. The higher up you can make the stock tick, the better your entry for a short. Simple.

Conclusions with GIOVANNI: Everything I write on this blog is complete bull that my self-inflated ego vomits out everytime I make a winning trade. Thats right. Look at all of the quotes people have about trading. When your POS stock begins breaking out in your $10K short, you aren't quoting Warren Buffet anymore, you're hyperventilating into a brown paper bag and taking pointless puffs of your asthma inhaler! Even Giovanni's boss, the parter of the fund, loved reading self help books on trading. I have nothing against the guy, he's actually managed to keep his fund afloat in this mess. Good for him. I'm just saying that I have plenty of theories about how the market works. I could easily be wrong. I know what I see is profitable, but I have no idea if I'm my logic is what is going on. If you see an inefficiency, exploit it. That is what Muddy does. This is what I do. I just like to explain why I think it worked. The point of this post is, my explanations could easily be wild theories.

Hell, Muddy, probably realizes its pointless to blog like I do. People make a winning trades, move on, just realize why it worked and try it again the next market day.

This is a very funny post, in my opinion. It feels good to be breaking even after months of being down.

Anatomy of a Day trade

2009-01-30T12:46:00.000-08:00

AS my fellow bloggers Yng, DV, and Il torello did yesterday, I too posted a chart with some comments on my thoughts. I particularly enjoyed Yng and DV's Anatomy of a Day trade. Here is my own below.

I kept a text file open all day, and simply timelogged my thoughts throughout the day. They are candid, unedited thoughts, often typed very quickly as I might have been in class or more interested in following a stock then typing my exact thoughts. I have no reason to be fraudulent. I was denied the internship for which I started this blog anyway, so I have nothing to prove. I wanted to share my thouhgts on how I analyze stocks I daytrade and keep track of which ones of my ideas actually hold up. You'll notice interesting things like at beginning of the day I wanted to do a long scalp on C, while for the day, long on C would have been awful. The subject of my log is only C. Keep in mind I am already sold short 1k shares from yesterday at 3.98. I have made in bold my best time logs. Here is my time log copied and pasted:

9:44- just missed my chance to flip positions. realized 3.94 that it hit resitance at 3.90 and it was time to go long. Currently 3.95 lets see if it faces upward resistance. The big open up this morning looks like it could be an attempt to avoid the inevitable tank which happened last night.

Had I more trades(though I do have 3 as of now, not sure if I can use them all on C) I might have flipped.

9:46- looks like its trying to bring 60dayMA down flatlining at 3.95. Resistance at 3.96 break.

9:47- I realize I am doing way too many realtime updates, there are many more minutes in the day left.

9:50- this resistance is pathetic, and the rise is too. cues me to think this is going to be a big down day.

9:56- starting to think more and more that 3.95 is going to be your best short entry for the day. Wow thats a bold statement, I'd feel owned to be wrong.

10:12- Just back from shower, and the breakdown occured causing definite confirmation of my beliefs. Wow, its amazing how well today is working out. I guess I feel insync with C becuase I have watched it so much. Currently unrealized P/L open is 160. I am very happy that my entry is few cents above my posted entry. P/L now 180.

10:15- I have class at 11. My position is doing very well. Dow is sliding just like I expected(post about this idea later). The general market slid should cause the trop in confidence that I

m looking for. Right now, I don't see a bottom. Im not getting stopped out of this very nice trade. I'm going to walk away and check via Ipod in class.

10:17-look for breakout type buy in soon. This selloff has gone over too many percentage points already. ITs time for the day traders exit. I'm a long short today. Let's see C bleed. Red is green for me.

10:22- chatting w/ rep. considering closing and reshorting to protect gains and make more off the anti-selloff, will post convo. P/L hit top at 280 at price 3.70

10:19 lakhanin: Hi

10:19 lakhanin: I have 3 day trades left.

10:19 Rodrigo: hello

10:20 lakhanin: If i close my short from yesterday on C, will I be able to use my funds to re short C later?

10:20 lakhanin: Its a question about having the necessary funds I guess

10:21 Rodrigo: yes, but you would need to contact us to place the short later. Additionally, you won't be able to close the "new short "position today

10:21 lakhanin: ok, is that becuase it is on C which I have already traded?

10:22 lakhanin: its not becuae of PDT right b/c i have 3 trades

10:23 Rodrigo: It is only because you can not day trade with proceeds from closing a position that was held overnight

10:24 lakhanin: yea, that was my worry. Thanks.

10:24 Rodrigo: you are welcome\

10:27- the air smells like a mix of feet and Harvest cheddar sunchips(courtesy of my roomate... breakfast of champions) As we come near the end of the first hour of trading, expect sideways action as volume settles. NIce resistance break of 3.70. Currently @ 3.68. Very nice sign for my short! Will need to watch for barack giving an address, that could easily send things the other way. This is the news I will be watching for.

10:31- a moment worth celebrating. I am finally breaking even on my account for the first time since December. My account was down over 37% and I managed to work my way out. Keep in mind this is all still unrealized gains. P/L is 349.

11:12-made it to class slightly late. C at 3.73. Its hard to focus on price action etc. while learning discrete math. Not sure how the short stands, but i'm going to walk away till class ends.

11-23- wow, C is following DJI. exact scaled charts

11:29-dow will ned to break 8k for lower lows in C

11:30, bid ask just were equal. something big is about to happen, i think its a buyin.

11:55- out of class, starting to get nervous about profit taking. wish I had cnbc to tell me the general market news and what obama is saying. When you trade what everyone talks about it there is so much more pressure to stay ahead of the curve. Only now realizing this.

11:59- just realized my math prof has facebook. Roflcopterz. Seeing some naive cycling/channeling in C at the moment. Resistance at 3.58 is strong. I've witnessed two attempts to break and dow looks like it could make back some losses having turned away from 8020's to 8040's now.

12:12- I've started to think that we might have seen C's lowest lows already. It just hit 3.70

12:13- nevermind, i think its going to be and EOD fade, here we could see a nice run even to the 3.80's showing reversal. It will be fake breakout. Need to add some longs to take profits from before the EOD death happens. DOW will not end above 8k. mark it as my opinion.

12:20-put it this way, it takes a ton of other shorts for the selloff that happened before 10:30 this morning to occur. I know they haven't covered yet. WE are all waiting tocover.

12:47- not happy with this run, far from the 60 day MA and a new recent high at 3.77

12:58- if i was over pdt, i feel like I would have sold way before. But i'm not over and I have no ewya of telling.

2:33- Through my class on Financial markets and there was a solid sell off after the brief breakout. I must admit, the breakout was killer. Much better a real one then that yesterday. I'm sure several were spooked.I shouuld identify an target exit now since its bounced of lows for today more than once. I want DOW to end under 8K, but i'm not going to but my money there any longer. Look for me to cover soon.

2:56-i've stopped watching a lot. dow looks like its breaking off highs. IT won't rise, question is when its going to decide to let everyone know 8K this week is no good

3:07-final hour of trading. At this point i don't care if my prediction is true or false, i'm closing my trade before the weekend. I'm going to cover REAL soon, both on my real account and youngmoney account.

3:21-8004!!!! break BROKE!!! as i wrote this

7998

3:21- this is what i wanted all day!!! bleeding to follow

3:25-can it hold under 8k?

3:30- holding 7982 at the moment. C consequently broke LODS. 3.57.

3:38 nlods at 3.56 I think i should cover before the squezze leaves me w/o profits in the .55 range

3:41-AHHHHH i covered at 3.59, i made the wait not worth all it could have been. but hey, my net PL on C is now 10% of my net worth. Much remains to be said about perfect exits as tough as these. I really did not want to get squeezed into the 3.60's with this trade. I know many more are anxious to cover their trades. I saw the DOW squeeze and pulled the trigger on my C trade. Very nice. Green on my account and very green on this trade! Celebrate.

3:55- i've watched the markets enough. I don't care if DJI actually ends under 8k. It is at this exact moment and I have closed my trade. Today was a success.

the downside to trading liquid stocks.

2009-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

With all of my recent involvement with Citigroup lately, I've picked up some observations about price/volume and 10/60 crosses relative to future movements.

These observations are compared against all that I know of momentum stocks, and illiquid penny stocks. First, expect these guys to tick. With so many shares moving often, no one is satisfied with sideways action. Next, sell offs and breakouts are not secure for long! This is huge. If you are sub 25k "day-trader" then you need to be at the screen watching price/vol. Take a look at how C cycles downward with progressively lower lows after 1pm. I knew my short was valid. Initially my stop was at 4.05. This stop was placed on the uptick, right after I entered and right after the 10/60 cross. I got more confident in my position as time passed but when I first entered, to guard against break out it was a great decision. I saw the resistance at 4.03. If it broke, I could have lost much more since I am short, and C had a great day just yesterday. Well after the two cycles I decided I could layback. So, when the stock brokeout past 4.05, I knew what the market was up to. C was going to end the day down. When I stock is due to be down, the best way to end the day profitable is to short. Luckily I beat the crowd in at around 12:30. So, I sat and watched while the stock cycled and sure enough, it hit BOTTOM after the best breakout of the day. A few months ago I would have cut my losses at 4.04, or maybe during the second breakout. Hell, I probably would have flipped positions and went long. These are classic mistakes. This is why fewer people make money than those that lose in the market. I hold panic buys and sells accountable.

Today was special because C was cycling. The strange part was that it was unbelievable predictable. As usual, had I more trades, perhaps I would be up more. I hope nonetheless that I would have done the o/n night hold I am currently with. My shares were shorted after noon at 3.98 and market close was a nice 3.90. If you checkout after market you can see the slide off of 3.88 to the upper 3.80's. We might be up for a gapdown tommorrow, but news will send this struggling spaceship flying if Barack decides to share his plans about TARP and additional funds that have been mentioned.

Overall, I have nice unrealized gains. C will make them up in no time since it is so liquid. Profit taking at the right moment tomorrow will be the challenge. For the first time in a while, I will be on top of general market news. It will destroy my confidence to end up red on this trade. So the real question is... should I put a buy stop at 3.96 to break even on commissions?

A decent trade

2009-01-23T09:22:00.001-08:00

I had a sudden urge to begin trading again today after my recent breaks yesterday. I think it is because of my recent luck with a poker game, and since I haven't been able to gamble with chips, I've been wanting to play the market. I couldn't get myself to do any serious research though because I had various engagements beginning at 9:15 this morning. Nonetheless, as I finished up and had breakfast at around 10:20 I decided to open up ye ol' dodecaon of charts I keep to see how the market was doing.

Behold the dodeca!

First, a gap down on the DOW! This made me smile. The funny thing is, the media doesn't even care anymore. Below 8k? What else is new? All the headline

s were about job cuts and decreasing expectations for corporate profits. I don't really keep up with general market sqawk in terms of trading, just out of interest. There are those panic days when financials and baskets move with DJI. Those are generally profitable, and thats why I do it.

Second, I loaded up the usual interests: ABK, FMD,PMI,DSL, BKUNA, FIG, and the Citi's. I remembered the latter two because of Ramta's tipoff of C's recent volatility. Nice hint. I began watching C closely. My immediate impulse was to short at the 3.20's. It was easy to borrow, there was sideways action and this was my hunch. Good as hell thing I didn't. When I saw the spread go to 0, I knew shit was going down. By now I had left the bottom of lenoir and was waiting for my class to begin. It moved a 3 cents, but thats all I was looking for. I pulled the trigger at 3.23, and sat back as 381 lecture began. Today was Quantifiers and Predicates. Also the first homework was not due today, as most of the class expected. While they breathed a sigh of relief, my heart beat grew faster. C was now holding steady 9 cents higher than I bought. I don't gamble less then 1000 share positions. Do the math. Then, it really took off. I could only imagine giving the alert of the GOTS boys, but I'm sure someone else caught the 3.20/ask bid equivalence just as I had. My thoughts on this are that a huge increase in volume set the dealers momentarily back on where to price. But, I honestly have no idea.

Well, it hit a high around the 3.50's. My experience told me now was the time to sell, but I held on the hopes of making this a weekend hold. I used trailing stops and thought that 3.39 would be enough breathing room for the inevitable selloff after this 10% breakout. WRONG. You win some you lose some. C is currently holding steady in the upper 3.40's.

But hindsight is 20/20. Today I made money, that is all that matters. I'll save my remaining trades for next week, but I really want a weekend hold. Perhaps something else will catch my attention before days end.

On trading algorithms.

2009-01-13T02:50:00.000-08:00

No new trades. Sitting on FIG instead of overtrading my gains. New semester, new classes, and I would like the have the morning free before I commit the time to researching some risers for my new strategy, commented on by MUDDY in my last post.

I lately had two interesting conversations regarding the only studies I use while trading. My indicators for entering a trade have almost always been a combinations of experience enriched price movement and the trusty 10/60 day moving average. I will note to look into bollinger bands, per Muddy's note, as an attempt to diversify my technical indicators. Most people also find despair, yes despair, in the fact that I hardly allow myself to find out what exactly a company does before entering a trade. When a known riser takes off premarket, all you need are those 3-5 ticker letters and quick fingers to get the trade in.

Anyway, I always describe the 10/60 day moving average study set to people as a set of ploted lines, with the 10 day moving average being sinusoidal WRT the 60 day moving average. Now recently I explained this to two people Amit and Steve, who both happen to be engineers. Despite different specialties they both immediately responded wanting to call the 10 day line a Fourier transform of price/time. Interesting. Amit went further to ask what I thought the number of cycles was. Great question. AS I pointed out after I talked with Steve, I think that answer maybe 3. That right there, is easily exploitable. Forget scans, complex algorithims, what if funds were distributed across a number of tickers and bought or sold(to go long or short) depending on real time 10/60 crosses and then bought/sold on the anticipated nodes for the ticker. According to my theory this would be about 5 solid trades per day/ticker. WOW. Worth looking into for its mere simplicity. Who knows, maybe this will all turn out to be a commonplace fact about how 10/60 really works, but I haven't ever heard anyone talk about it.

Where I take this realization about 10/60 to is the efficient market hypothesis. I now feel I have the necessary proof to battle this idea I always thought was a bit immature. It was developed before the internet, so for it to still be vigorously debated today shows just how applicable it still maybe. For me, early one stocks were not about news, and price of a stock was not as good of an indicator as a 5 minute plotted chart. News is said to be something unknowable in present but to affect fture price. In behavioral and technical trading indicators are known to those who choose to note them, and definitely affect future price. My belief is that read if you dare "news" has been created due to development in communications that allowed real time quotes and the online day trader to be birthed. Information spreads quick nowadays. Plus with the influx of traders trading securities today behavioral analysis is alive and well as fundamental. It is in my opinoin a separate field from techincal analysis too. There is no luck involved with patterned observations. I have yet to find the long run to prove my committment to how dead EMH may be, but I'm working on it.

I find great problem in the assumptions EMH takes too. It is because a great number of unskilled traders will over react and under react that profits will be made. The decisions of these many people cannot be admitted to the "noise" category. I take the opposite view.

Who knows. As I pointed in my last post. Maybe market makers take those observant folks and allow them the same profit potential as they themselves in an attempt to fool the foolhardy into losses. If this is the case, we are talking about a different type of stock market then many ever expected. But hey if the collapse of our economy can be traced back to the buying and selling of a single security, mortgages, who is to say I am wrong.

I am curious to hear the EMH view.

FORTRESS INVESTMENT GROUP

2009-01-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

Ticker- FIG.

I recently hit a century on the trading pitch. I entered FIG at 1.20, had a weekend hold after an incredibly friday. Held Monday, and sold on the Tuesday morning breakout. My exit was perfect. I saw the percentage gains, knew a sell off was inevitable after the near 35 cent breakout in just 2-3 minutes, and got a full fill at 2.38. This was a near 100% return. I'm really proud of the way I handled the movements of the stock between the point I bought at and the point I sold. The path was not direct. As always buying and selling during panic breakouts or sellouts is not a good idea. You can significantly add to your loss if you close during a panic. Mostly this applies to sell off's, I will explain why.

When I began trading around JUNE. The hot strategy was "green to red" and short. Playing a stock long seemed inexplicably complex. "Red to green" didn't always hold up, so I wasn't sure how to tell if a stock was ready to rise. The "green to red" strategy was made popular by timothy sykes, and it was transparent that many of his minions had infiltrated GOTS and were trying to spread this gospel. Muddy, being the brilliant trader her is, stuck to his key phrase which is simply waiting for confirmation on a stocks predicted path. I had not made up my mind back in August, but I was certainly only playing shorts for the most part. It has become clear to me that the nature of many day traders too, was that shorting was the best way to some quick gains. Market makers, more experienced by definition, can easily respond to the way the masses are thinking. After all, this is their job. It seems like the pump and dump is losing it's strength. Stocks like SIL and FEED and COIN aren't dumping as easily as they have in the past. This is expected. Any profitable strategy in the market will become apparent, be exploited till the point where it becomes common knowledge and thus harder to succeed in. I'm not saying pump and dump is dead, but if you've been around watching pennystocks as long as I have, you'll know there is emerging a strategy to respond to pumps and sell offs that is PRIMED for profit.

There has been a huge increase of pennystockers courtesy of Timothy Sykes. Most don't know what they are doing. When they short, you can gain. Enough said.

If you wish to discuss this strategy further, and are noticing things as well. I'd love to talk. lakhani.nirav@gmail.com

try try again

2009-01-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

So after a sucessfull trade. My last friday with FIG and ABD were off the mark. Both positions ended in losses. ABD, was a good excited considering it ran quite a bit that day. FIG could have been held longer but after seeing multiple failed attempts at resistance I closed it out. If you saw FIG today, you have no idea what the regret feels like. However the regret is easily balanced by the sense of pride I have for exciting that ABD run.

Perhaps the real lesson from this is just being able to flip my position or read stocks to begin with better. A nice read on FIG today when it was "falling" and shorts were entering turned out to be a fakeout with a quick .20 rebound. Its things like this only expereince will help with.

On to the list

IFX- 1.10 watch for a quick morning fade. it might be worth it, whats sure is it will be very volatile.

GMO-1.38. had a morning fakeout, might be a riser.

ABD- 3.92, who cares if i can't get 1k shares, i can watch ABD with some experience under my belt and try for it again.

PWER- 1.35- a multi day riser.

OCNF- 3.89 a shipper in the higher range, but I know these low floats have a tendency of falling.

VTSS- .45 just going to put my opinion on this pennystock. Looks like a valid rise. i'd long.

IVN- 3.27. long at open. looks legit. sideways is my call.

URRE- .92. same as IVN

MEG- watch at 3 break. tested and failed, but thats always a good sign with these risers.

Enough for now. Patience and good rationing will make this prep worthwhile tomorrow.

Losing money is no fun.

2008-12-31T18:55:00.001-08:00

I guess you can say everyday that I haven't traded since I sucked him some huge losses has made the gut wrenching feeling I get when I think about my losses appear bigger and bigger. Today was the first day I stopped having that feeling and didn't look at all potential trades as a way to make back my losses. Today, it was all about making a winning trade, and not making back my money. I used a trade today, and though my gain was small, it helped me clear my mind and get back into the swing of things.

GOTS is no longer the little hangout it was. The room today had over 300 people. The crowd interested in pennystocks and shorting tickers using TOS has grown significantly. However, if there is anything to be said about the market, its that it is an efficient one that makes profitable strategies difficult to be consistent with. Sure sideways action maybe difficult to see and reserving shares may be difficult to do, but this is the point of a competetive market. I'll be going back to my basics. I hope to begin trading again. My last bout last week with GNW definetly proved to me just how possible it is. No I didn't catch a piece of the massive onslaught of buying that occurred. But I did manage to lose a small penny in the morning grind. Tough luck. No worries. Lets get on to some tickers of interest.

CWST, PNX, VTSS are all stinkers that we(GOTS et. all) have heard of in the past. They pumped recently.. CWST over 100% and sideways action is always a good sign. These are all playable given my account size and I anticipate they shoud be plenty to watch given I am just trying to get back into things. Market is closed on the 'morry.

*12/1 edit* picks from darkside:

KFN 1.58

MMPI 1.24

EVC 1.56

HTMX .31

GASS 4.82

EMAG 1.82

NFP 3.04

IFX 1.40

Shall see how the trading goes on 1/2. Happy new year folks. Its good to be back.

No room for new strategies

2008-11-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

I placed my bets too early on the penny financials. I went long on a group of 5 of them. BKUNA, SCA, ABK, DSL, and RDN. I spread my money and waited. I could have suffered big had I gone all in on one. RDN fell over a 1$ on my position. These are penny stocks, %age wise, the movements were significant. I held through some minor red, but slowly, the cummulative losses had me worried. I covered my long positions and my account is down $1500. Its tough. This means its back to shorting pumps for me. Chasing momentum plays is hard. Shorting pumps requires waking up on time and patience. Further, all of this intense charting i've been doing keeping track of the penny financials and the usual lot from the % gainers list from yahoo.

My stocks broke their 52 week lows. I took big losses on them. My account has been corrected. The most important thing is the lessons i've learned. I really am not in the place to take positions like I did. Seriously, I bet on a government bailout. I was way too cocky, and my account was not big enough. This is why i'm down over 1500$ at the moment. In fact, I think this is a lesson that extends beyond account size. Shorting pumps is so easy. Its just waiting for the right price break. Seeing stocks like OPTR, DIN, and DDR had me ready to get a piece of the action. I was ready to break 10k in one position. People in GOTS may do it every day, but I'm going to be working slowly back to even. From there, I anticipate continueing the shorts to 10K as I originally planned.

Despite my mistakes in the penny financials. I know they are LR buyins. ABK broke 1 dollar today. Anything that breaks 52 week lows is on my radar for long positions. Checking extended period MAverages wouldn't have predicted this dip either. Credit ratings cut these corporations down, and they are part of why DJI isn't at its top either. Auto corps are stealing media at this point. Once the fluff dies down, I want the small lenders to get the help they need. ESPECIALLY if the automakers get what it looks like they might.... a piece of the FED.

Really, a new strategy all together.

2008-11-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

Alright guys, I'm taking a break from day trading. It takes a lot of time, to be able to watch these penny stocks catching and shorting momentum stocks, and waking up early to reserve shares with TOS. Add in a full courseload, a part time job, two big extracurriculars, and you have my non-stop life. I enjoy it. I enjoy it a lot actually. But I'm always interesting in trying new things. I have my iPod, meaning I can check stocks, and use TOS's thinkpod software to trade anywhere I go on campus. I'm going to start playing stocks long term as a habit. Multi-day will be the normal hold, probably even weeks. I'll buyin on technicals and lows mostly. My favorite crowd, coincidentally, is at some nice lows. The penny financials are where I plan to start. DV commeneted on this in his latest post. I'd agree, ABK is a buyin. The chart is sinusoidal with nodes at 1 and 3. Tripling some money would be nice. Multiple times, even better. This is what I'm thinking I will do. Day trades will no longer be a concern. They will always be there just in case.

Now for my watches.

ABK- If I could name my first real stock, it would be ABK. I saw it go 1 to 10 and then back down. I know it can move. Just ask Ramtajogi.

DSL- Not as big of a ranger as ABK has been recently, but back when FRE/FNM collapsed, this had an amazing run. Nicely set at 1.58

BKUNA- Had a great day on this stock before. Nice at only .40 cents. Could really hit a homer with this one. Definitely a low, and my number one watch!

FRE- Nicely set below 1.00 for now. Has dipped to the .60's in the past twenty days, so the bottom might not be in sight yet, but I'll watch it.

FMD-Shortable. Nice at 1.50's and has touched the 1.20's in the past twenty days.

BIOS- Needs more downside, but it has the volume and volatility that fits my standards.

The rest I'll just list: RDN, PMI, RAMR,DTG

This is enough to watch, especially for me. If you want more ideas, just google the shorting ban on the 700+ companies. There will be plenty for you there. Check out the small mortgage lenders like TMA.

Why I intentionally took the biggest loss I could.

2008-11-03T22:01:00.001-08:00

I have been really sloppy lately. Take a look at my investment record and you will see a steady streak of losses. I enter stagnant stocks, try to beat the crowd, and refuse to reserve shares pre-market in lieu of sleeping in. I took a huge loss today just so my account would be at a low and I would have to focus on taking small and steady gains. Call me a masochist, but as I have said before, my confidence is not hurt. I

I'm o/n short on SAH.

PLA still hasn't given it all back.

CVI, has sideways action at 5, after some nice gains from 3.

Lets focus on these and some pre-market hits for the day tommorow. Lots of potential in these, no need to try to find a 10 stock list to follow. If these fail, plenty more opportunities for the rest of week. Really.

A new trading strategy all together

2008-11-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've been focusing on being right. If I pick a stock and put my capital up, I hold till I see things going my way. I've held LVLT for a week on and off and even two weekends! This is not what I anticipated doing with my day trading career. This has lead to my new focus being time periods. I hold over many hours, and pay close attention to 10/60 crosses to predict the two most volatile sections of trading during the day- open and close. In fact, I've gotten to be much better at this. Regardless, watching some Wall Street Warriors made me realize that even with my small account, taking green is much better than holding for more. You'll hear every trader say this, but as always, whats the point if you don't follow your own rules. I've held LVLT to below 6k in my account twice. Tommorw I plan on liquidating my position and starting fresh. Sure I will be back to my lows, but as I made a entire post about earlier. I'm very confident. Even noob comments on how it is easy to have .5-1k days. It really is. Just look at DIN, DDR, NCC, TRE in the past. The list goes on and one, but these stocks have huge one-days %tage P/L. Yes, I could find an ABK at its bottom, hold tight and double my account over a few weeks. But I am way more interested in picking up some solid day-trading fundamentals then hitting a homerun.

Addiontally, some of the guys have been writing about risk/reward and risk managment. Check out Yng for an awesome post on expectancy/profit ratios. For me, I've never had tight stop losses. Perhaps this is why my account can fluctuate 1K in unrealized gains and losses without me even making a big deal about it. My positions are big, and I try to avoid letting the micro movements spook me. At the same time, I'm always on the lookout for breakouts when i'm short and landslides when i'm long. This, you see, is why I exited CRDC at it's peak. It fell. I was wrong. It happens. Move on.

-Take any green you get.
-Don't worry about having a great track record in picking stocks, your net worth is what speaks on your behalf. This means exiting when things turn sour, and staying in liquid stocks.

Also, PLA(Playboy Enterprises) is the latest no news pump! Long or short depending on the attention it gets. Guessing it'll be big w/ the corp being so well known.

GKK is on a two day run up. Third times the charm. Short after.

CVI. Charts do not get more predictable than this. It has no reason for this pump! Wouldn't we all love for our companies to rise 68% in worth in one day?

"Buy into the rumor, sell on the news"

2008-10-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

That quote is just one of the many things I've picked up about trading, yet never verbalized. I intend on writing my notes about stocks down in post very soon. I also hope to do a post specifically on finding the stocks I trade. I've got an arsenal of sites to check- just click down my blog roll on the right side of this page, but I find my own stocks just in case. For example, I found FRZ on the first day of the run up on 10/22/08. I said I'd play short or long based on morning action and indeed, the run was not finished on 10/23. Nevertheless, be on the lookout for these posts.

Next, there is absolutely no way you can expect that I not traded this past week I haven't posted in. Yes, I did have two midterms, but I've been trading plenty.

First was my CRDC short. I took the hit at the top of its bounce and covered. It was my mental stop price and I just followed my rules expecting it to continue the rally. If you've check recently, It hit 5.75 recently. My short was from 6.72. Could have been a nice 1k profits, but I've learned that thinking about what you could have done in the stock market is the biggest waste of time.

I took the hit in my account, and set my eyes on TRE and soon LVLT. I bought TRE on Friday on a vol spike. It had a multi-day run down, and I didn't mind holding o/w(over weekend) on it. After all, only a mining company. Funny thing is, i've been buying and selling stocks very often without checking what the company is even about. My technical analysis is getting better and better the more time I chart with moving averages on TOS. Like my buddy Gio said, 10/60 and 20/50 is really where many traders make their decisions. For me, its an instant way to tell where the market is heading. I have also been admiring how eloquently as a whole the market makers will time buy/sell volume spikes so that EOD buy-ups and sell-offs can happen in accordance with the 10/60 sinusoidal pattern.

Anyway, TRE was played long and again I took a hit on this one. It went my way immediately, almost breaking 2.0 from my 1.91 entry, but since it didn't hit my price, I held. Eventually I couldn't take the pain at 1.70 thinking that shorts would force it lower so I got out. My account was below 6k for the first time in perhaps a month. Simultaneosly I bought into LVLT at close friday hoping to get in on this breakdown rally. When stocks fall this quickly, its very easy for the momentum to overshoot the true price of the stock. For that reason, I bought into EOD momentum and closed Friday with a loss, but if you saw it almost take out 1.40 today, you know why I reloaded EOD at 1.20 with more shares. This ticker is a good prospect for me. Big thanks to Laura, chat goddess of GOTS, for the alert late Friday.

The end of CRDC and my newfound Confidence.

2008-10-22T17:01:00.001-07:00

I exited CRDC yesterday and took a hefty loss. It was actually during a midday boom. Though I commented on the sinusoidal pattern and could have guessed that it would eventually collapse, I was following my mental stop that I set at 7.30. As it approached my mental stop it was picking up vol and was looking bullish. I want to follow my rules so I took the exit even if its for a loss.

Its strange, however, this loss has given me confidence. Today, CRDC gapped down and never met 7$ again. More than ever, I am understanding price and volume movements, and really using sector stocks, DJI, and moving averages. One thing I noticed from reading blogs like Yng and DV, is that while i've learned these general skills that I can use on all kinds of stocks, I haven't really been picking up on single stock patterns. You know, things like how ABK(one of my most talked about tickers) reacts after gapping up, or what failed 10/60 crosses do for it. Yng recently made an awesome gap up play with TMA. Definitely what I call easy money. Its these kinds of patterns i'm going to try to start noticing.

FRZ is my short watch tommorw. Volume is there, and its been hovering in this price range since early Oct. Just bouncing up and down in the 1-3$ range. Of course, if this run isn't over, I'll go long too.

NKTR- has a lovely multiday run and check out today chart. Solid "sideways action"

Greed.

2008-10-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

CRDC was just frustrating today. When the BID falls to 6.33 but you can't exit becuase the ASK is still 6.99 you start to realize just how manipulated some of these stocks are. I don't know who is behind it, and I could list all sorts of conspiracy theorys about how this pump happened, but I probably still would not nail just how low manipulators are willing to go. If you're not convinced, read TIMS post on a real life stock manipulator

I noticed that CRDC is very sinusoidal relative to 60 day MA so i wasn't THAT worried when it tried to break 7.10. I told dhous i'd cover in the crash. Greed got the best of me. Only a 110$ gain and i've been holding this stock for over 5 days? No way, I wanted more. Thats why I held, even when my trade was green, and thats why i'm stuck here at the 7.07 close!

I'm making a promise now, because this stock is no longer worth my time or capital. The net dip, ,no matter whether I'm green or red, and i'm out. I could have played TMA, ABK, or RDN if I just had some capital today.

I'm really not dissapointed in myself, becuase my reserach tells me itshould be going down. But i've learned from this experience that illiquid stocks are not worth the huge bid/ask spread, and multi-cent lunges in price they take. Further, like i said before, something is up with this stock. Just look at the volume spikes. The daily shares traded is not much at all, so when the volume spikes, the market maker is the one moving in my opinion. One last reason I think this stock is up to no good is becuase the bid/asks are always teasing investors. Often, they don't surround the LAST. Imo, market makers are just testing the people in the trade to cave in and surrender their money in the extreme squeezes and sell-offs that keep happening- thus the sinusoidal leading line around the lagging line.

But honestly, no one should trust sell-offs and booms in illiquid stocks! This thing is definitely long run RED. I just don't have that much time.

A bittersweet EOweek

2008-10-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cancel posting the positions traded up here. I've decided to start keeping an excel spreadsheet with these stats so I can get percent stats much quicker. Since I'm trying to use my trading as part of my resume for getting trading internships/jobs, i'll need to start keeping track of these numbers.

I was way to eager to trade after Wednesday. My account was at an all time high, and I had two day trades left for the week. I forced trades for the rest of the week. Tried to reshort PNX and got a quick lesson that it wasn't ready to break 5. I held an o/n on RAMR out of desperation to trade. Luckily I didn't not go bankrupt on this trade. I don't know what i was thinking. RAMR!! A 1$ stock with no volume! I could have taken a big hit of someone decided to do some manipulating. I started early Friday with CRDC. I shorted off the top and saw some nice pitfalls. But the spread on this stock is horrible and again, I saw how ugly low vol stocks are for small accounts. Muddy was able to take it when it begged to break 7. I was even willing to give up a hard earned 400 more on my short before I called it quits. I've really gotten a feel for movements in price and resistance. My EOD fade that i told dhous and Andromeda about came through just like I said. I think the downside will come Monday since it didn't crack 7 on friday. Not to mention, there was the DJI fade Friday.

I'm proud of how I stuck through the losses on CRDC Friday. I saw my target exit and when things didn't go my way though I considered covering for a loss. I checked my reasons for entering and saw that this junk company had not yet delivered on rumors from sept. 11. A buy offer is not up for discussion, and from bid/ask it looked like the market movers were just begging people to raise the price. IMO, theres some manipulation in this stock. They didn't get me to fall for it. Of course, this could all change monday. I do real-time analysis on price/volume and sectors. I need charts, and I need to get a feel for the moving averages. My biases call on CRDC is way down. What will happen monday is what I will react to.

This is my first weekend hold. As dhous reminded me EOD, at least we saved a day trade! Now for a picture.

I entered pre 10/60 cross #2 of the day. Saw some quick quick money, and wanted more. I held through the squeeze that turned into a solid attempt at 7. Decided that it was a good fakeout by some shady market makers. Saw confirmation when the huge red drop happened at the red circle. Decided the EOD sell off wasn't enough the second time it happened either. I'm confident about monday.

P.S. Covester is really being strange recently. It seems like the percent gains are always wrong, but I know they have the right information on my trades. Noob just made the Covester rankings list making me really hopeful that they may add me as well. I emailed Blain Reinkensmeyer about being added to the rankings to help my resume, but I have to have two months experience. Fortunately, they will calculate my Sharpe Ratio for me on the 24th so I will be able to place myself in the rankings unofficially. I'll be sure to post here when I find out.

My new oversleeping story and the end of PMI

2008-10-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Positions traded:

PMI o/n long @ 2.14, close @ 2.57

+$730.57

$6932.48

I woke up late for the market today. Well, considering I went to bed around 5AM, I should have seen this coming, but my wake-up was a great place to see the chart action. Had I been awake at open I might have been spooked by the quick small sell off. I've seen this happen too often. Especially after my RAMR o/n long a few weeks ago. After checking my Itouch in bed to find the Google finance(delayed) quote, I casually rolled out of bed to see my account steadily over $6900! When I when to bed, I was in $6500. The euphoria quickly settled into concentration. I was very calm and reasoned through my options. I was expecting a gap up, but quickly saw that ABK,DSL, XLF, and FRE/FNM had all fallen at open. VERY STRANGE. I always check related stocks for guidance on entering and exiting. Thats when I realized I didn't care what the 10/60 was doing. I saw it testing 2.58 and set my sell limit at 2.57. I was out with a solid profit, and had made my second biggest gain just minutes after rolling out of bed still not having showered or brushed my teeth. It was a great feeling. For the rest of the day, I curiously watched it and found out that PMI had maintained a great credit rating in the recent mess. This, i'm sure, was why we didn't see it sell off at open.

Nonetheless, I now have an awesome story about oversleeping with my o/n position in the gutter of the market. Hooray.

Resiliance with PMI

2008-10-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

Positions traded

o/n long on PMI @ 2.14 1700 shares.

closed at 2.33

I saw PMI at 2.12 about when I rolled out of bed around noon. Having missed the morning of trading and the morning GOTS chatroom I was not planning on trading. However, the setup was great. After a huge gap up, the market covered and shorts joined the quick morning sell off. It was just stabilizing in low 2 teens and I saw that the 10/60 was set up for a rest of day uptrend. I pulled the trigger very instinctively and felt good about having done so. I got my fill at 2.14. After little action all day, I knew EOD would decide my fate. It looked like shorts had yet to cover so I wanted a squeeze. Imo, this is exactly what we saw EOD--though, DJI & XLF had great EOD breakouts as well. P/L YTD is around 192$ and P/L day is @ $305. I have highest yet unrealized gains for my account, but of course, they are not mine untill I make a closing trade.

I look forward to tommorrow.

Friday's trade. A bad start to a great weekend.

2008-10-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

Positions traded
PMI long 2K shares @ 1.91, sold at 1.86.

-$112.99

$6221.89

I really shouldn't have traded Friday. Especially after I realized the potential for each trading day should not be measured by the number of day trades I have. I went long on PMI. Why? honestly I spent the morning scolding myself for not pulling the trigger on trades fast enough. So when I saw a nice 10/60 cross on PMI I went in. I went in 2k shares. In other news, on both of my trades last week I lost $112 and some change.

Interesting convo with Yash on the way back from ATL today. He proposed a negative rate on the part of the FED, as a possible solution. Very interesting and something I would not have considered. Of course, its ironic that I read an article that said the NYC debt clock would need to have additional digits added after it maxed out.

This is going to be a good week in terms of time set aside for trading.

Rate Cut

2008-10-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Worldwide cuts in the Rate were supposed to save us from our second crisis of the year. The mortgage crisis was the cause of the lending crisis, but nonetheless, this is what REALLY shook up the American problems into something that went worldwide. A global initiative cut rates by 50 basis points in about 8 countries, but remember, this isn't to encourage consumers to spend. It is really to encourage banks to borrow and provide lending liquidity. Inflation is still around and we are deeply in a recession.

This, folks, is the dreaded stagflation.

It DOES matter that the vast majority of American's won't realize whats going on. But who cares right? If you don't understand it now, your children will explain this entire crisis starting from the 1980's through now to you when they take ECON and HIST courses in the future.

In the meantime, we(average Joe's) will all whine and moan about our shriveling nest eggs saying "This is ridiculous." just about every other line in our highly intellectual and researched soliloquies on the current state of the economy.

What a terrible trade today

2008-10-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Positions traded:

GGC
Short 1500 shares @ 2.82, cover at 2.90
$-112.76

$6340.43

I came into the day knowing I made a shitload last week and that after a huge Monday drop the markets would be very testy. Sure enough the FED responded by writing a plan to buy up short term debt and offering rate cuts. Honestly, rate cuts a while back might have helped the credit freeze we are in. How else were the markets to remain liquid with so many failures?

So... what did I trade. I played GGC today.GGC was a huge supernova. It went from 2.12 to 3.25 almost uninterrupted. I wanted a piece of this easy money so badly. Of course, with easy money in a stock like this comes lots of manipulation. A stock that moves like this on 0 news has shady traders involved. Slotmonkey in the chat room was talking about his position and then gave an "OK" to short. I foolishly listened. After missing the short above 3, I chased down to the 2.80's. I got a fill at 2.82 and it didn't even come back near it for the rest of the time I was in. It was between 2.84 and 2.88 for a good bit then it hit 2.90. The chart looked like it could rally off the dip and I didn't see this action to be squeezing so I made my exit for a loss. My exit was not a problem. The fact that I entered this trade was.

Really, the potential for a trading day should not be measured by the number of DAY TRADES I HAVE!!!! This is something I need to fix. Also, I need to stop watching Net Liq on my trades. I forbid myself from doing either of these from now on.

today was horrible. DJI was not moving with the penny financials and I really just rushed this entry.

On the economy as a whole, I can't call it, I can only react. Shorting bans are to expire soon. The FED & SEC will make their decisions and I, as an unofficial daytrader, will have to comply and react. I do want to make it clear while Wall Street was unregulated in this crisis, no one has the guts to blame the Americans who bought mortgages they knew they couldn't afford. Should not they be regulated as well? Just something to think about all of you that are throwing the blame around out there.

Saturday Notes

2008-10-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting read on BeatTheMkt's Covester account.

If someone is going to teach you to trade, or you are going to invest in their fund, they should know the answers to these questions.

1) What is the accuracy of profitable trades for the system?
2) What is the average profit per trade for the system?
3) What is the average loss per trade for the system?
4) What is the average, largest drawdown in a win or loss?
5) What is the most consecutive wins and losses?
6) Can two people interpet the methods differently?

I've read a lot about hedge funds, and I have never heard of this being discussed. Granted I don't have a few million to throw into a fund, and these are all serious investor related questions, with hedge funds collapsing like Amy Winehouse after every overdosed stage performace, these are important statistics!

I've had huge gains since I started trading about one month ago. I need to digest it and not become one of the 90% of traders that lose money. When I spoke with one of my serious trading partners, Ben, yesterday he advised that I sit out of trading to digest my gains. My gains recently have been very very large in terms of percentages and getting cocky in these markets... well... you can easily be humbled. For my niche, there's an extent of luck in each trade. Its very volatile, its dangerous. You stand to lose it all. Being up 32%, is a big deal. I'm more cautious about losing gains than principal, so you can bet this little hobby of mine has become that much more serious.

This summer, I used to read all of Timothy Sykes's testimonials and just imagine the numbers and figures he'd throw around. People would make $200,$500, $1000 plus everyday. It's hard to digest that I've become one of those people.

COVESTOR NOTES

I just wanted to clarify some notes on my covestor account. The covestor account shows %returns from an initial account valued at $4736.99. The returns, therefore, are skewed. My actual starting account size is $4900.

BKUNA!

2008-10-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

Positions traded:

BKUNA
long at 1.02, sell at 1.25
+$350

$6473.11

Awesome trade with BKUNA today. I've been hard on myself when I execute bad trades, so you can bet I'll point out why BKUNA was very well played.

I got out of a morning exam at 9:29 AM this morning. Like Laura told me, waiting until 10:30 before entering a position is a good way to get a feel for how things are moving. Plus, in my opinion, you've got a good bit of chart action that can help you for some technical analysis. Before entering BKUNA, I checked out the VIX(fear index) and DJI. I noticed DJI was ~ to penny financials for the day. When you see this early in the morning. Definitely exploit it for the day. I saw a DJI spike while BKUNA was flat lining at 1.02. despit having a solid run in the first hour of trading, all of the signs were there and the DJI just did a nice angled 10/60 cross. I pulled the the trigger. I was quickly 1500 shares in. I checked out if the GOTS chatters were interested in shorting. Terri quickly pointed out it was on the short ban list. ALL SYSTEMS GO. I was now confident enough to walk away and go pickup my new speaker system. I returned to find the stock where I left it... trying to break resistance at 1.10. The DJI was still channeling upwards so I held. I saw the lagging line(I don't know if everyone calls the 60 day MA line a lagging line, but thats what i'll call it. The 10 day MA is the leading line) reaching a peak and considered exiting. I had a solid $150, but the bailout was just hours away. I held. It fell. I got nervous. I reminded myself of all the signs, and continued. As the bailout grew closer and closer it shot up. I didn't even realize it at the time, but this was a $ stock! It was breaking key price points at a very high rate. I'll need to pay more attention next time. The percentage gains were huge. I finally realized around 1.27 as my account broke $6500 in net liquidity. The fact that I realized this at the time is a good sign in retrospect. I really am learning when to exit! After i exited at 1.25 right before the bailout vote was finalized the stock shot to 1.29 and then fell slowly but surely. I had a great exit!

Size of position was a modest bet, but seeing as all of the good signs were there I easily should have done double my position.

One thing I did not do correctly was place the sell limit at the right price. The LAST was showing 1.27 but i put a sell limit at 1.25 since this was the ASK price and thus lost an easy $30.

This is something to improve upon, though i'm very happy with my trade.

August/September in Review

2008-10-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

Yng has a nice habit of posting his monthly stats up and I think it would really help my trading If I could pinpoint costs, bad habits, and highlight good trades. So... I will do my best to recount what the months of August/September were like in terms of trading my account.

August was my breakout month. It wasn't very eventful.

August:

Starting account value: $4900
Ending account value: $4855.61
Total loss: $44.39
Total loss (%): 0.9%

Total commissions paid: $30.03

Total # trades: 2
Total # winning trades: 1
Total # losing trades: 1

Positions held long: 0
Positions held short:2

Largest winning trade: $1
Largest losing trade: $-59.40

Total # trading days: 1
# green days on account: 0
# red days on account: 1

September:

Starting account value: $4855.61
Ending account value: $6147.64
Total gain: $1292.03
Total gain (%): 26.6%

Average daily return: 0.887%
Average daily P/L: $43.07
Total commissions paid: $376.17
YTD commissions paid:$406.20

Largest winning trade: $992.40
Largest losing trade: $-146.88

I hit some lows during September that you don't see in the above statistics. It was tough. At its lowest point I was down nearly $300 to $4629.94. My trades on RAMR and SIL helped bring me well out of the red.

Bloomberg

2008-10-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I didn't go earlier to check out the Bloomberg Terminal at Park Library in Carroll. This thing was sweet. I don't see it being of huge use to a pennystocker, like myself, but seeing the big firms that had huge holdings on the stocks i've traded was just the beginning of what this machine has to offer. I was getting a news feed just like ticks on a stockprice on the news page. Tons of gossip, spam, and perhaps a bit of honest truth just flying across the pages while also getting the MOST real-time stock prices I can get at the moment. TOS doesn't have shit on Bloomberg.

Of course, I have no idea how to use the damn thing when I get there. Sitting in front of it and marveling at the fact that I get to use two screens for trading is enough for me. The student librarians didn't even know what it was. So... I got to talking to the 60 year old librarian who knew more than what it was called. I think the lady thought it was funny when I asked her if anyone even used it. According to her, "we have a full class on business journalism." Fantastic! They pay 2k a month so all the kids can gather around 1 terminal and see news scroll across the screen faster than methed up bunnies multiply. In any case, I'm not complaining. I think i've found my on campus trading hub. There are computers, the library is very nicely lit, computers, journalism majors, and a fucking Bloomberg machine. The only thing missing is a live CNBC stream.

If the senate knows whats good for them, and they should after monday, the bailout should be passed on this evening for a $DJI rebound on the 'morry.

No trading today. Maybe not for the rest of the week

2008-10-01T06:57:00.000-07:00

I hate politics. Its one of the reasons I never meddled deeply into forex and I vowed not to become too involved with the campaigning thats been going on. Unfortunately, Cameron reads CNN politics like I read the NYT Business page. He alerted me to Mccain's attempt to cancel his debate, and the ugly interview Palin had with Couric, the rest of which is online now. I ended up watching the entire thing and quickly realized just how important it will be for Obama to win this election. I won't rant on Mccain/Palin. In my opinion, they make it way too easy to.

Also, I love my covestor chart for black monday. Btw, shouldn't we come up with a term thats darker than black to describe mondays. Seriously, we've had 2 in the past month, this is getting old.

Last bit. Check out this cool article highlighting the job of specialists in the markets. Specialists have the unpleasant job of being buyers in a bear market, or like monday... a huge sell off. Pretty neat how the internet and information exchange has allowed so many more players to enter the market that sell offs like this can even occur. Think about when there wasn't a live video feed to congressional votings before traders reacted. According to the article we could have seen a 1000+ point drop.

Main street learns about wall street.

2008-09-30T04:30:00.000-07:00

There have been so many distinctions made between main street and wall street in the media that is sickens me. Its just the blame game. I expect it from those damned nay-voters on yesterday's bill... face it.... they're probably political "scientists" anyway. I told Will in my lab, the sad thing is, most Americans won't realize this crisis has very relevant causes from how they spent their money in the past. He agreed, and we agreed that this Bill had to be passed. My macro professor, Zubeyir Kilinc, also said it had to be passed. I couldn't help but smile when he told the class that papers, books, and dissertations will be written on what happened yesterday--something I've been telling everyone for the past few weeks. I also loved it when I asked him how people finance houses in Turkey to which he replied: "we save up for 20 years." This is exactly what my dad did! Look at what a little bit of skepticism did for my dad. He doesn't buy on leverage. He buys with money he has, and is therefore hardly affected by this mess. Sure he'll have to pay for this, but we all are.

Side notes. Bingham(Uk's FRE/FNM) was sold to govt yesterday. Spain's Fortis bank shut down. Credit rates rocket again b/c of intrabank lending fears. I realized yesterday just how much the market is hype after the bill failed in the House. We created this bill. We publiziced as our savior. Thus when it fails, regardless of wheter it will work or not the dow plunges 777. Think of it this way, if the bill was never written or spoken of, would the dow had fallen 777 points yesterday? Doubtful.

No picks or watches for me for a bit. I've got a wounded leg to take care of, and midterms/quizzes to read for.

Why the DOW fell 777(too bad it wasn't 666) points and I made money today!

2008-09-29T21:59:00.001-07:00

I made money because I haven't taken risks with popular stocks this whole time! Why mess with them when there is plenty of money to be made in my niche alone

Plenty to be said about today, but I had a horrible bike crash and I'll leave it at the positions traded

SIL short 1500 shares at 2.18 cover at 2.10

+100

$6147.64

I hope I don't get stitches tomorrow.

Nirav strikes again

2008-09-27T23:18:00.001-07:00

2:12 AM-Bailout announced! Just finished calling it in my post about 30mins ago.

READ UP yo'self

i hate...

2008-09-27T22:16:00.000-07:00

it when people degrade internet slang into "wut" "tat" "iz" "dat" Come on people, we're looking to shorten the amount of typing we do, not butcher the english language to make it sound like we're all podunk second graders, son of klansmen, from mississippi. YEE HAW!

anyway

Trades

Thursday
Covered o/n short on SIL @ 2.59
+607.42

Friday
re-entered SIL short at 2.28 and covered right before close at 2.41
-$147.00

6047.58

I still need to be grounded from my gain. I have a day trade but don't plan on using it untill Tuesday. Plenty of potential with the bailout news for monday. My beloved penny financials, and a few nice risers like HYDG that the GOTS crew has my back on.

There has really been some interesting plays to mention from this week. I've seen stock tank and break-out in very irregular patterns.

CEG had an epic fade from the $60's to $14

TGIC had a huge interday spike

NCC had 300% EOD on friday.

What does this? .....liquidity, lies, rumors, but most of all perception. I told Lawerence, the market hardly reacts as we expect. It's all about perception. The funniest example being AAPL's iPod and iTouch release day. Nobody cared about the new products... everyone wanted to see if Steve Jobs looked like he was going to die soon. Had he not worn thigh and chest implants the stock mighted had the GOTS guys cheering "TIMBERRRRRR". j/k about the implants, he was fine... well, at least according to the CNBC reporter that specializes in assesing CEO health at press confrences. I think that this is just the beginning too. Something is up. How can a stock have 30-40% interday swings 3-4 days a week? This is insane and far from over. I don't see an end to these swings simply becuase everyone fails to mention them. Of course, as everyone knows, efficient markets eliminate easy profit strategies over time, and this may be exactly why no one talks about it. Though, we've seen 5 big guns (count them FRE,FNM,LEH,(sorry LEHMQ), AIG, AND WM) all fall to become pennystocks. Too bad everyone fails to admit just how serious this is to the amerian public which is why pennystocks will continue to pwn joo noobs @ teh soaring and sinking the way they do.

As I told ben in a quick email today. FRE/FNM should open up to news of the bailout certain to occur tommorw(....or tonight rather) evening. Who would of called that the entire U.S. market could collapse due to a crisis in a single investment sector? oh yea... i did. This is all surreal, nonetheless. The extent of which it has happened has been played up by the media as almost unexpected. I guess I should do like I did before, forget the media, read my own history books of the market and come to my own conclusions. That being said, the potential to invest in Asian markets is huge. Seriously, just in terms of business imerging in weak financial markets. As indos and chinese start being able to afford the goods that us in the west have been basking in for years, supply will find its way to the demand. Business men will build their business. High fashion in India has yet to come, superstores are beginning to make their way, the online shopping potential hasn't even been tapped. When I went last xmas, I remember how shocked me and my dad were when we were at a hotel(restaurant) and the punjabi's next to us whipped out a birthday cake with candles during dinner. this was a first! people don't have TIME to do this in India. Work in the fields, or work in a cubicle picking up phones... this is what its been for indo's up till now. It shows, they aren't spending their time working. They have time to spare to celebrate and relax, and more importantly, they ahve the money! This was a moderately nice hotel too. moving on, in india, with products like the TATA nano being unveiled, an entire new class of people in India are going to be buying cars!And you can bet their ass'es are going to want to roll further than down the street than to eat some samosas, and mango chutney. They're going to want to travel, go on vacation and indulge. Jim Rogers said "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia." Look at all of the worthless public companies in America. Why can't asia have them too??? This is huge. During dot-com, IPO's shot through the roof regularly. Tripling, doubling...fuck, there was no use for techinical analysis. Just follow the crowd. These companies are going to want to follow the capitlistic model and join the free market. Plus, its a nice accomplishment to be public. So let the IPO's happen. Let each company have it little bit of publicly traded glory. LET THE PRICE and VOLUME ROCKET. Thats exactly what traders want. As long as there is volatility and liquidity there is money to be made! Someone(i forget who) also made the point that up and coming nations have the benefit of learning from our mistakes. Well, now the whole world knows just how risky mortgages backed securities are. We should get a fucking award for the amount by which we help others by showing them exactly how to screw your entire economy.

Like I quoted Cramer last time, "there's always a bull market somewhere." But I say, who says the bull market has to be found in America? Or even the west for that matter.

Roar.

2008-09-26T00:23:00.000-07:00

Nirav: Forget accounting, I'll just fudge the numbers(yes that's from the office)
Pre-med noob:OMG orgo!!! barf!!!!!!!

Get over it preemies, your major is imaginary, plus chances are.... you won't get into medschool.

Yea Yea, but i have greatness on my side. :)

Muchose picksones.

HYDG- short it

JPM-sell off becuase shares liquidating to raise capital??

WM- buyback from the AM fail.

In other news. My account needs to get corrected by the market before I go around spreading my trading prowess to so many people. I can't let this get to my head. I should instead focus on good trades.

Remember.... 3 keys to this:

size of position, when to enter and where to leave

greenage!

2008-09-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

Positions Traded

LEH
long at .149 sell at .174
+171.2
SIL
short at 3.61 cover at 3.2388
+371.22
o/n short at 3.24
5641.35

Very good day. Definitely find a feel for the market. Can't wait for more trades and finding good o/n's with low risk has been very easy as well. Unfortunately, if you saw LEHMQ today, you'd know my exit was too early, but I put a mental stop at .17 and I will not complain about picking up an extra 170$ without burning a day tradeZ!

As an aside on my ongoing amazement by the markets. Bush just gave a 15 minute rundown on why the 700bn mortgage bailout must occur. People don't realize that the scope of the bad mortgages is way way more than 700bn. 7 trillion to be exact. We aren't even 5% of this. I'm not saying we should, but if this doesn't bailout, credit rates will rocket... on that note maybe congress should not pass this just so americans realize how bad buying on leverage is. Many americans will never even realize that this is the reason the banks failed to being with. BTW, GS and MOR downgrading to commercial banks is just enough failure for me.

No trades left for tommorw, will be looking to close my o/n on SIL. Based on the hearing we should see how stocks react. Plenty of opportunties in this market. Like cramer says, theres always a bull market somehwhere.

Anyone with trades should look to scalp off the very nice DSL run that has continued passed the shorting ban. Ironically enough, most penny financials, which I list almost every post(see below), have fallen. ABK is one of the worst. Based on movement tommorw I could buyin long.

Also, must mention the incredible FRE,FNM moves. Continuous upticks since talk of a bailout occured. Remember the system is never wrong. The bailout will happen, and these will rocket even more.

In all honesty, Just check out GOTS chat tommorw. Best momentum alerts there. Today alone, ERII and SIL would have you well in the green.

Will someone go ahead and say we are in a recession?

stock Pickage

2008-09-22T22:54:00.000-07:00

No new picks.

Fin's are testy and I'm not sure when to take my long position. I've heard a theory that once the 700bn bailout details are approved we'll see a comeback. I definitely want to go long on these before that happens.

I'll split the funds over some of the once I saw move the most last time--ABK,RDN,RAMR,DSL,FMD, and PMI

As for short picks. Timmy just released a 17 stock list of shortables. Lots of good ideas here and lots of big %tage gains in minimal time. Yes, the shorting rule has no effect on this list, and many other companies... like Jamba Juice... which rolls in penny filth every day. Look at it. Sitting pretty at 1.00. Just useless.

You can take away shorting financials... but they will still fall. Let that be a lesson to the SEC.

Yng has a nice post on 10/60 cross using Financial ETF's. Take a look at the Pennystock Financials i listed above and compare them to the ETF charts. They are mirror images!

get that green.

read this

2008-09-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

READ THIS

``They're going to have to protect their deposit bases by law, and the days of high leverage are gone,'' said Charles Geisst, a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, who wrote ``Wall Street: A History.'' ``The days of the big bonuses are gone.''

Today really does mark the end of an era. An era when you could borrow 25$ for every 1$ you owned and repeat this process for every dollar your earned. An era where wall streets financial engine was a series of Ibanks with exec's and partners making multi million dollar bonuses from leveraged money. Its the end to the over the top greed that swept through Ibankers everywhere.... cue the hedgefunds!

Who the care's about salaries, the fact that the powerhouses of wall street are now completely gone is the more relevant point. All in all, I was right. Leverage did this to these ibanks. In theory it worked beautifully, but even high-schoolers know that buying things with money you don't have is dangerous. Further, who in their right mind would have leverage ratios of 25-1????? The banks ate it hard this year for the years of leverage they used.

I'm still in awe. I thought these giants were full proof this summer. I thought Goldman was god. Let this be a lesson in how dangerous leverage is. For me, my father taught me this long before any economist did. Regulation is needed, and it is very funny that the CNBC reporters and Goldman officals are now asking for those regulations. Last week, we thought the government was interferring too much, now we've realized they're just being the parents to reckless teens. Of course they have the oversight to have stopped this to begin with, but if they put a damper on private banks when they were getting of their feet, liquidity, money markets, and securities would be all be responsibilities of the government and commercial banks. Who knows, since that is how it is now, things will turn out for the better!

The glass steagal act was supposed to separate the men from the boys, the risk takers from the conservative players. The comerical banks slowly matured to handle crisis very well, but the ibanks had no defense, and this was only amplified by leveraged bets.

Anyone who is winning in the market just hasn't been around long enough, today was the last day for ibanks.

What a market correction!

p.s. taxpayers are paying for this. Score!

quick recap of Friday's trading.

2008-09-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

This was by far the most hyped up day I've traded. CNBC was talking about all of the govt deal. Injecting money to the global economy through central banks, banning shorting on 799 financials(which by the way had many irrelavent companies on the list by mistake), and the continued ban on naked shorting. Dow futures rocketed. Seriously, these CNBC reporters, were merry... As was I, I was sitting on 1k profits on my o/n RAMR position. Only a 1.5K position and 66 percentage gain! What an idiot I was to only take half of my take. I should have easily kept it. Instead, i started asking the GOTS room for help. I sold half of my keep.

Ring the bell. I saw a huge paradox in numbers. Fin's tank, $DJI rockets. Seriously, 5 minutes into the day and were in the 11400's of the $DJI. I know whats coming, a sharp selloff, and a sharp buy back. What i didn't realize was that this would happen more than 4 times. DSL was my pick for buying off the sell off. I saw a return to 3$ and 2.94 was a great entry. Of course, I entered to quick in the morning volatitliy and got spooked with my chart staring when it was in the 2.70's. I wanted to keep my gains from ramr, so I took a 200$ loss and moved on.

Que DSL again. I began trying to enter at 2.70's. Volatility had faded and I saw a 10/60 cross. Got my fill at 2.89 and then came a long hold while also watching my RAMR position.

I walked away, saw probably 5300 in my account a few times but greedily held.

EOD buy up didn't come, and I had held to long. I started wanting to take my profit. Boom out DSL at 3.07 for a cool 200$ back and closed my RAMR in the 1.90's for another $150

My account sits at $5113. I am finally green, made back my 300$ loss, and broke 5000 all in one series of trades.

I should scold myself on using 2 day trades. I was too eager, and should've remembered this will cost me next week. I am more confident on o/n positions now, so perhaps I will play those.

I should mention the RAMR pick is completely luck. The news hype from the govt help is what gave me that 66% gain. Nonetheless, be on the lookout for more news, and more failures. This problem is far from over. Banks like GS and MS should have leverage ratios of 20's to 1. Other firms should not. I posted specifially on leverage before any of this happened in the summer. Credit cards became a habbit, money was injected into the market at incredible rates b/c of the high price of homes, wall street joined, defaults happened, completely fucked....we are done being yet.

A niceeee.

Tommorw is a promising day.

2008-09-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

My short picks for today were all over the place. I've learned I need to do fewer and more researched picks. Today I was scrambling at open to check all of my picks. I ended up playing something off my old list.... RAMR!

Thats right i'm in o/n on RAMR. After a long aftermarket convo w/ Yngvai I saw how great of a buyin it really was. Looking at the chart using 10/60 moving averages, I bought in right where a crucial cross happened on the RAMR, VIX, and DJI charts. I'm up 20%, and depending on how many more close their shorts and what rules/rumors surface on banning shorting, I could be in for much more price action. We shall see.

I'm going to list all of the financials that are def in play if the aforementioned occurs:
ABK,RDN,RHD,DSL,FMD,PMI,TGIC, RAMR

These alone ALWAYS provide plenty of scalping potential so most of my day will be focused on them. They are all up and down on the % gainers list. Be sure to save todays list to reference tommorw. This a market approved pick list people!

I've got 3 day trades tommorw, and DJI gained over 400 point after yesterday's tank. We're back above 11K point on the index and confindence may be returning as the fed moves to spend up to 1/2 a trillion on saving the mortgage market.

Tommorw will be a good day!

9/18/2008

2008-09-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

AIG bailout does zero for confidence. .DJI does another 400+ point drop but Gold rallies. BIG TIME. Todays % gainers list is filled with mining companies reaping in the Gold hype.

NYT IPO alert

FLDM is going public tommorw. This Lehman brothers venture capital group find has it's big public offering in the worst week of 2008. Shares will struggle to maintain value and shorting might be better. Remember this isn't the dot com boom. Right now, you're played for what you are worth and more often less than that.

YESTERDAYS PICKS

Airlines were definitely in play today! DAL, UAUA, LCC etc. Down big on rising crude oil. I'm liking the inverse relationship.

RAMR, TGIC, and RDN had good intraday movements. Of course, yours truly sat on the sidelines.

VLNC- A pick by timothy sykes, and was well talked about in the GOTS chat room. Didn't hit the action we'd all like, but I doubt this is done.

FBR- Also not triggered. Tommorw is another day.

FOR THE NEXT DAY

*These are from dark's blog*

RODM- has the scary shart I hope to hardly see on stocks. Its on a Bellweather in Play report. Thats about it

AKNS- No news pump. My kinda play.

CNEH- No news pump.

ANPI- nice last few minutes surge in price. Not worth the day trade, but i'll note the chart and add it to my inventory of patterns.

XRA- Lovely no news pump. I hope it falls just as beautifully

XRIT- Nice sideways after NNP on this stock. FALL please. :)

ERHE- A true penny stock pump. I'll keep the name and reserve shares. It might be time for me to reap the huge %tage movements of a true pennystock!

On another note. Tommorw will be spent with more time spent watching charts and GOTS. The chat room is a great source of CNBC news and I'd like to spend the day with it of as much as possible.

My usual- RDN, ABK,RAMR, SCA,DSL, FMD are always in play too!!!

SCA, TGIC and RAMR are all 1$ plays!!! talk about good positions! Luckily, i'm rooting for a rebound on these steady financials. Don't let overwhelming financial turmoil spread fog over the good companies out there. Now is the time to find good buy in's on these!

Todays trades + tommorw

2008-09-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

What a day. Black monday followed by turmoil over AIG's fate + sinking Ibanks + release of FFrate.

FFR- unchanged at 2.00

AIG- post market chat of bailout but very volatile day + a missed entry and exit of about 500. Should have followed MUDDY and the chatroom! He makes money all the time.

Sinking Ibanks recovering after US approves AIG bridge loan + those earnings that were never factored into stock price.

Crazy day, and still I am upset that I am not serious about day trading enough to maintain this blog and wake up for the market.

PICKS FOR TOMMORW.

Darkside

MER + AIG having good intraday action. Buying off lows and selling off highs is the way to go here. While everyone worries about the fate.... scalps on these extremely liquid stocks mean huge %tage movements!

NWA, DAL, LCC, UAUA....Airlines are rallying of lower gas. Could this be their comeback? They have been very undervalued admist soaring oil prices. A buyin long might be inorder!

NoNewsPumps
VLNC- loving this chart
FBR- strange EOD spike.

thats plenty more than I have the charting capacity to watch.

Remember, we're not in a recession... i kid i kid.

Stocks

2008-09-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

LEH- If i had a day trade, i'd definetly short. I'm considering putting my worth in this one and shorting, but the reserved part of me won't let it happen. I know this Titanic is going to sink, but I'm not one to hit a home run at the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. If i miss, the outcome could be very bad for my continuing education i nthe market. I think i'll put up to half of my worth in this short tommorw morning after the short squeeze. DONE.

some macro-market things to mention

Morgan and Goldman earnings out this week. BIG news for the banking hype type people out there.

WALK- Nice pump on this one. No news. Welcome to my kinda play. 5's

SSN-not your social security number, but my average type of short. Mid 1's

haha, I compile this list by finding a stock and writing it up chronologically. I should just list the pumps in one section

ANO- same as the two above. Mid'1s

PAL-pump, 3

WGW-pump, mid 1's

RDN and financials alway welcome. Again i'd watch this with my one hour no trade policy.
SCA,ABK,DSL,FMD

RAMR- Same one hour no trade policy. Its a big mover and i'll keep up with it for as long as it keeps those nice day ranges.

Happy trading!

This whole experience is one in a million.

2008-09-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

This summer I read several books that gave me a thorough education on what banking is and what banking is in America. I was fascinated. I was so skeptical about Economics before this summer. To me, a bank gave loans and was a well insured safe for storing money. Boy was I wrong. How else could bankers be making so much just connecting buyers with sellers of capital? This is capitalism baby. You don't sit on top of thousands of dollars of cash. You make your cash work for you. You invest.

Before this summer, Investing to me was AAPL and GOOG. Also hilarious, these were my only indicators of the market status. If GOOG was above 550, the market was great. I had a weak understand of supply and demand, and ECON 101 was a bunch of bullshit theory.

My education started with seeing how investment banks raised capital and kept trading floors and expanded to the world of private equity. Again, I was fascinated. Dollar units were billions and millions. More often, billions. Markets were made by everyones contribution, yet not one contributor knew what would hapeen next. A great paradox for the market makers themselves(specialists) that support these contributors, but I woudln't have found so much free information if many people had not exploited the system and profited.

From Michael Lewis, I got educated about the Mortgage Giants FRE and FNM. Icouldn't believe how clever people like Lewie Ranieri, a IB mailroom clerk that woound up, trading billions of dollars worth of morgages, packaged mortgages and connected buyers and sellers to make a tradebale security out of millions of average joe's trying to buy homes. Consumer spending is 2/3 of GDP! Wall street had just exploited america's biggest source of income!!!!

Of course, FNM and FRE are now trading below 1.00. AFter reading about their explosion in the 80's I saw these giants fall to the gutter. I read about Lehman as a top recruiter for Ibankers at Wharton and saw it fall to shit. Today, MER was bought out by BAC. Brilliant. This year will go down in history. Books will be written, models will be made, and classroms of kids will hear about this for years. I was excited the day that 9/11 happened becuase I knew I was living through a historical moment. Today, I realized the same is happening again. A sell off warranted by fear from a terrorist attack is nothing compared to a sell off from LEH going under. THink about all of the credit related bonds and other securities that just get defaulted. It's like buying someone's Rolls Royce on account, driving it for a month, then wrecking it and taking a shit in the drivers seat before returning it to the seller.

ladies and gentlemen, as our fearless leaders like to say. We are not in a recession. :)

3 trades down .3%

2008-09-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Wow. 3 months of paper trading don't compare to how much more I've learned on real money. I used 3 trades on 2 different securities over the past 5 days, all short plays.

First short was PMI. I sold at 2.84. This was really a bad trade. It was unresearched and really just me betting anxious because my account was funded and I wanted to try it out. The stock was in the red and I thought a tank was in order even though other financials weren't going south. I did it anyway. Set my stop at 2.85 and once it cracked, I was in my first trade in the stock market. It did well. It tanked and I bought back at 2.78. Only 500 shares so my order wasn't that big and I wasn't seeing big enough movement for this to be worth commission and more importantly MY LIMITED trades. I have learned very quickly that I need to invest more and see big movement. So it was before 10AM and i had a small gain on my first trade ever. I wasn't going to settle. I thought this would fall again. So minutes later I re enter. Day trade number 2... gone. I sold off at 2.78. Totally uncalled for. It ran up and was soon over 2.80. I had definetly given back my gains since commissions are so steep with such small positions. The one good thing I did was use good stop losses. I limited my loss to 1% by setting my buy stop at 2.85. It hit and I ended my first day trading down 45$.

Lessons learned: Research is a must whether you want to take big positions or not. I have a small account and commissions will be my enemy.

My ego was bruised. But becuase I'm such a cheapskate I took this very personally. I was not going to allow myself to act this way and burn money. I wanted my money back and I knew I had simply acted poorly.

My next trade wasn't untill 3 trading days later. Yesterday I saw out DLIA on the % gainers list.
Dark side's picks weren't showing the morning action I like and the chat room was moving too quick for me as usual. I saw that DLIA had a good day after an earnings pump. So far the stock was hovering around the day before's close so I saw short potential and put a sell stop two cents under the day befores close. I waited and waited with my sound on high in case I wasn't staring at the char the moment it fell. I had a good feeling it was but after 2 hrs i was starting to lose hope. I kept waiting, even showered. Suddenly I heard that magic TOS trade execution noise. It tanked... hard. It fell so quick my stop wasn't executed until 5 cents later. at 2.43 I was short 1000 shares. It dipped to 2.20 realy quick and I had to take a share of my profits so i did. Within 30 seconds of hearing the noise that the order went through, I was out half of my postion in DLIA. I was sitting on nearly 50$ of profit but then it hit me. Or rather the TOS software told me so quickly. I had just committed my third and last day trade but was still in my short 500 shares.

Another lesson very quickly learned. I can't do this!!! i'm in a 5K account. I need to sell at once to conserve trades. Opportunities are every day. I gotta have trades ready. I started freaking out and explaining everything to Cameron, while also chatting with GS from the GOTS chat room who explained that I was still ok. I could buy back the rest of my position and still not be in offense of breaking the pattern day trader rule. All i had to do was call up TOS. I quickly had the trade re-credited to my account but DLIA had shot up. It was now around 2.55. Again I was losing my gains and commissions were tearing away at them as well. I set a stop loss at 2.61 thinking it'd have a hard time breaking 2.60 luckily it never got that close. I held for the rest of day and saw it fall to 2.45 right before close. I set a buy stop at 2.50 during after hours thinking it'd help my prevent losing more, which was totally correct but i have not experience with how after market trading worked. During aftermarket I saw a 2000 bid and a 2.10 ask on my poor little DLIA stock. I was confused but some GOTS fellows assured me it was normal. What i didn't know was that a wacky bid ask would be introduced at the open and sure enough my order went trhoug at the bell since the bid was 2.41and ask was 2.57. Some how I bought back the rest of my postion at 2.41 and I netted 30$ post commissions. I'm now sitting at $4881.01 with many lessons learned. I think that I did ver well with these first trades

I thought if i went red on my first trade i'd be devasted. I've realized that I really do have to wait for the perfect opportunity and not stress over that fact that i'm putting 5 grand on the line with my bets. I don't crunch the numbers like they are dollars, just points like they were on my paper account. With that, i'm ready for some fresh opportunties tommorw.

No picks at the moment. Research will be done in the morning.

Plenty of picks for you on Darkside, TIM, MIKE, and super-trades, as well as Yngvai.

Yeehaw

This isn't for fun anymore.

2008-08-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

My account is reaching the end of the funding process so I'll be doing some thorough research for my picks in this post. I'll also try to limit the picks and keep a daily record of how successful the picks were.

Reflections and Predictions

2008-08-19T19:53:00.001-07:00

Reflections:

FMD,DYAX,CROX all had beautiful fades starting at the opening bell, losing yesterday's gains steadily for the patient.

Looking at my 6 chart setup I saw 6 shorts I didn't get on because I overslept an hour. Further today again validated the importance of being self aware by 8 so that I can reserve shares to short.

Predictions

HYGS- Bigger pump. Or my opinion: Big dump. Earnings are a loss. Moving b/c it was on stocklists? This doesn't deserve $1.34. 1500 shares is $2010. Nice position.

Bad day for the financials. Tommorow is NOT another day Annie. These will fall:
RHD,RDN,SCA,ABK.

FMD,CROX-more falling

DYAX- Good drug news, yet falling? I'm out of this anwaya.

ZYXI- Must be a multiday rundown. Short into the open.

BHBC- Times are not good. Lets make it fall down to $1 from $1.50.

Enough. Sleep.

Back @ school and still papertrading.

2008-08-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

Managed to make up a good bit of losses from uneducated guessing, and the account is @ about 98,200.

In the meantime, it's back to Carolina and time to turn this hobby into something more serious. Funding in progress, and visits to the banks tomorrow to figure out these pesky transfers.

The NEW

FMD- According to the last book I read when GS does anything, don't bet against them. They don't make billions taking stabs at the market. Should the flurry of buyers that joined GS taking their stake decide to bail, this might be worth my time.

DYAX-Pharm pump. Lets hope this drug fails so I can short. Probably being too naive not having enough experience with probabilities of this happening.

CKSW- Low volume. Big Mover. Absolutely zero news. I'll add this to my inventory of patterns. 3 month history shows this is not a new trend for the stock. Look for it to hold or fall. Regardless, no decisions until this market opens and others jump in. Essentially a management/infrastructure providing company. No foreseeable links to overall market conditions.

CROX- Well known. Liquid. Pump and sideways action. Tank please. $5.31 close

ANSV- Same as CROX. Trades lower at $2.45. Sideways action means the buyers and sellers are close to equilibrium. Price resistance is essentially whats going on. Of course I want for these penny stocks to fall back down. But this is down in the gutter, and when a stock does this, I think a fancy coming out party(IPO) is what had it in the clouds to begin with. Yea its not the most solid reasoning, but fuck, I'll justify charts however I want. If I'm wrong it won't be assumed again.

OLD NEWS

RAMR, ABK,SCA,RDN,RHD,TGIC,BIOS, ZYXI

Experimental Strategies. Buying todays % gainers for gapup's and finding the daily % gainer gems.

Some picks for a day i wont be trading. Just for practice.

2008-08-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

ABK- This little pos i've known since the first day it appeared on the % gainers list. I watched it specially because it got mention on Tim Sykes blog, but only as something he'd never touch since it was a financial play. Not only has it over doubled since then, but today it kept the gains going. I said i'd wait for sideways action and a fall on my post that got deleted for yesterday, but for tommorow, any upward movements will be solid gains in partial. We won't be seeing a sell off soon.

BIOS- Wanting to short this very badly, but it whenever it reaches 4.01 it never loses that extra cent. I'll continue to watch it for short

DENN- This guy gapped down after a solid day on the % gainers list for Tuesday the 5th. Still it ended green for the day up 8%. This is on my momentum list. News says it wants to regain breakfast kind status.... but its all just some hype that'll blowover once the market realizes it.

CBOU- this is why the market fascinates me. Q2 losses on this coffee shop weren't as bad as expected so.... pump it up! 3-4th time its made the % gainers list. I want this to fall bad. Anyone who compares this to SBUX is out of their mind.

MKTY- If i was trading I would join the short train on this that has been riding this stock downward since last week. Its still at 3 meaning plenty more to drop.

RDN and RHD- These are both going higher. I'm more sure of RDN. It got that nice pattern of holding on to a good bit of a intraday spike.

SCA- Be careful of the steep runups bit this one wants up too.

Now my failures.

ABK and GGC were both on my list. ABK had a good breakout leading me to think it'd crack six today but no such luck. GGC...... man what a beautiful fade. Right after the open too. It just kept falling afterwards. Also it gapped up making the short even more profitable if you had good timing. It made up some of the fall but not much and ended the day on bad news saying it just paid to dismiss a lawsuit. Sales are down becuase of housing crisis. bla blah blah. Shutup and go back to the sewer you rat!

I'll have to start waking early to get shorts in but tommorw I won't be around a computer anyway. This is just a way to get my predictions down and access my accuracy and build my eye.

2008-08-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

long post lost.

short
ABK
RHD
RDN
GCC
BIOS
DENN

illiquid
UBET
FLWS

long
IDAE

DONE

DOH!

2008-08-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

The LASM is back, big time. I should've gone to that thing, at that place today. Instead I stayed home, and let the LASM consume me. Too bad one stop didn't have any S. Any my "attempts" to scalp W on the way were as productive as lucrative as my "attempts" themselves.

I think I did a good job of letting my parents know. I just dumped a pot full of fresh cooked minute rice into the trash can. Take that Dr. Phil! I'm out of control. I had a flash back to my first encounter with LASM earlier today where I rolled around unpredictably doing my best impression of having a seizure I could conjure up. Last time I did it right after a shower on my bed full of clothes.... Well, at least now I sleep on that bed. Ironically enough, this time it was on the floor next to the bed-- where I used to sleep. Last time a trip to random stores helped settle my thoughts. This time, I'll ride this wave out until I've squeezed every last bit of dopamine out of my poor nerve cells.

f*#@*$@#($#@(&$@#&($(#@$&(~!

LASM returning

2008-08-01T19:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't been reading, I stopped trading two days ago, but days have been busier. I guess that answers it. Either way i certainly havne't read quite as much as I intended too. After all, I've got half the fucking trading/stock market section of the University City Public Library on my new bookshelf.

Eh, no mainstream news tickling my dopamine receivers I guess. But nonetheless, Mr. Hussein and Zuckerburg have crept back into my life. Further, I think the LASM is partially derived from the onslaught of completely depressing news that fills the headline boards on my favorite news sites.

LOL Sauce. This is the first paragraph of an article about CITI

The attorney general of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, said on Friday that he would take legal action against Citigroup, which he said misled investors about the dangers of auction-rate securities and destroyed evidence that his office had requested as part of its investigation into the company’s sales practices.

3 months ago I would have read this, frowned, and thought about if this is what Dr. Byrns my ECON 101 prof meant by greedy captitalist pigs... Now I think, well damn, I guess the general public will never know that the sales and trading rooms of IB's everywhere are legal boiler rooms. Think of it this way, everyone always talks about buy side trading: "Buy AAPL, the iPhone 3G is going to blowup sales," "GOOG is growing faster than any company ever, buy now!!" First of all, anyone that talks about GOOG and AAPL and speculates about the stock market is about as trustworthy as your friendly neighborhood methhead. Second, the guys spreading this hype are elaborate salesmen-- paid-off promoters, analysts, and investors. They'll never try to advise you to sell GOOG because earnings didn't meet expectations. Short selling is too abstract for the average American. For every buyer out there, a seller must also exist. Thus when IB's invest in 300 million shares of VISA after listening to the promoters, analysts, and investors, and the deal goes sour, the shares can't just be dumped back in the market. It takes some convincing. It takes... a good salesmen. Don't blame CITI. Blame the buyers. The market operates on one principle: Caveat Emptor-Let the buyer beware.

I've decided I refuse to hear anymore about politics/political candidates untill after the election. Any attempt I make to hear about Bush only confirms my decision to award him the Douchebag of the Past 8 years award, and well.... I've written about Obamo way too much already.

Read previous posts on my award presentation, and Obama at my old blog. You will also find here, an explanation of the aforementioned acronym LASM--it's not a stock symbol... its a disease, and I suffer from it. Go to my website and click "About me" www.nlak.weebly.com

Things continue to be unsettling in America. The pace at which negative economic activity is breaking records is perhaps the worse but unequivocal to what it all stems from... LEVERAGE.

Oh... what to share?

2008-07-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

You'll find all of my previous rants and adventures from my quick introduction to the wild world of finance this summer .... fucking formatting i can't get this underline off. anyway, visit
www.nlak.weebly.com and click blog to see all previous posts.

Now for some beautiful charts

Excuse the USS blurriness. As long as you see the latest red bars on the chart you see my source of satisfaction and pride. After 3 days of incredible pumping, this thing was swelling with sell off. All it took was some patience. I bought at 4.34 and saw it drift downward I knew 4.00 was the tanking point. If it could reach this, hundreds.... no thousands of computers would execute automated limit trades and a sell of would ensue. I was right. All it took was aptience. I saw resistance at 3.70 and took a quick $640 right to my pocket. It felt good to finally so many of the fundamental i'd been reading about acutally happen right in front of my eyes. Following this stock as an adrenaline rush. Occasionally on my TOS software i'd see a desperate seller dip way below the current price in attempts to bring in buyers but this thing had gained way too many on the ride up, everyone wanted their profit or everyone was in for a long short selling ride. TAnk it did. AFter my exit it closed in the 3.20's and the next day it fell below 2. What a beaut. I could've rode it more but the next morning my eye was on DSL, my $95 pride and joy. This required absoluetly 0 research- which the market has yet to teach me a lesson on, just good timing. I saw a sell off and within 10 minutes max had shorted and covered to get a 10% gain on a thosand dollar principal.

These two trades have taught me what months of reading had left me skeptical about. Picking stocks off the % gainers list is easy and simple. Watching them fall requires patience and thats all I need to work on. tommorw's top short is VC. Its been pumped up on the % gainers list for 2 days for sure. The fundamental here is that value cannot be added this quickly.... unless the news is stellar. Lets face it... if you're trading below $5 to begin with anything can easily become "stellar" news. This is the beauty of pennystocking i've realized. I've got a variety of other stocks. You'll find them on posted on www.nlak.weebly.com under FILES as a txt file called Stock picks. I'm feeling good about VC.

At this point, i'm playing anything that presents itself. Whether its a financial group riding the recent credit recovery, or a pharmaceutical boasting succesfull trials of a drug. I've found anything that can raise these puny companies is easily lost once confidence is.

AS i told my future roomate. The market is a combination of hype and resulting movement. Reading the hype and predicting movement is all it takes to build a position and predicted movements quickly create happy traders.

In other news. There have been copious articles for those of you keeping up with headlines on the Economist, WSJ, FT or NYT regarding america's addiction to leverage. While I'im not particucarly interested in this while i'm studying the market, i feel very confident for calling this on my old blog.

See HERE for more info on the huge loss of confidence. Of course, if my simple summary of the market holds the market is not done tumbling at all.

Good think shorting requires nothing more than paying attention. Happy times :)