Archive for the 'News' Category

Congrats Canada

Published on February 28, 2010, 10:54 pm in News and Opinions. 0 Comments Tags: , .

It was an awesome hockey game today, although I was rooting for the other team :cry:   but overall it was a good 2 weeks. Both US curling teams sucked, but the US walked away with the most medals ever in a Winter Olympics. I think the Canadians were gracious hosts. Thanks.

Besides watching the Olympics all weekend….with my computer nearby, I ran across some interesting reading:

California is a greater risk than Greece, warns JP Morgan chief

Short Selling Restrictions “A Great Indicator of Imminent Market Crashes”

Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

Banks Out of the Woods? Maybe Not

And What the $%@&* is this? Okay, so she used to be CNBC’s eye-candy, that moniker being taken over by youngsters, but is she now an investor analyst? Well, at least it’s free….Maria Bartiromo’s Investor Brief

Ponzi Economy

Published on January 13, 2010, 10:23 pm in News, Opinions, Other Traders and Psyche. 0 Comments

Bill Gross has a good explanation of how the government is funding our debt: Let’s Get Fisical

Here’s a little outtake, but make sure you read the whole thing.

….in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total – perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. Of course they purchased more 30-year Agency mortgages than Treasuries, but PIMCO and others sold them those mortgages and bought – you guessed it – Treasuries with the proceeds. The conclusion of this fairytale is that the government got to run up a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit, didn’t have to sell much of it to private investors, and lived happily ever – ever – well, not ever after, but certainly in 2009.

Smoke and mirrors….smoke and mirrors.

Last Year and This Year

Published on January 2, 2010, 11:03 pm in News, Opinions and Psyche. 2 Comments Tags: , .

First of all, thank you all for your best wishes and I hope 2010 becomes your healthiest, happiest and most profitable year ever. :!:

I know this is the time of year when everyone speculates, guesses and fortune-tells what the new year will unveil. I’m not one of those guys. But, here is a list of articles you can read that will get you thinking:

What I do do, is review my last year. I gather my trading journal, trading notes, TradeManager reports and review my trading for the year. And this is what I found: I placed 571 equity trades last year, 68% of those trades were profitable. Those trades allowed me to increase my trading account by 22%.

My winning trades lasted on average 9 days. But get this, my losing trades lasted on average 25 days! That means I hold on to my losers just way too long! So what do I need to do? Cut my losers faster….and probably keep my winners longer!

If you use Tradestation as your trading software and broker, TradeManager gets you all kinds of reports, graphs and charts that can show you how your trading and your performance. I’m sure different software and brokers have similar programs, I’m just familiar with TS. I still have to review my futures trading, but I use a different broker and software for futures trading, Infinity Futures.

Every trading day I create my “Daily Trading Sheet.” On it I keep my active trades and a few stocks that I’m going to keep an eye on during the day. I jot notes about what the market is doing, or what a particular stock is doing, or, as I look them over, I doodle a lot. :D It’s interesting to reminisce about your good days and those bad ones. Hopefully you have more good than bad.

Oh well, this post is getting long in the tooth and it’s getting late, so I’ll just put an end to it and try again tomorrow. Hope you’re having a great weekend.

Happy New Year

Published on December 31, 2009, 9:51 pm in News. 0 Comments

Unbelievable

Published on December 12, 2009, 3:20 pm in News and Opinions. 0 Comments

I know that this has nothing to do with trading, but I just couldn’t believe it!! Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist
Un-f!!ck!ng-believable!

So many crashes, so little time

Published on November 29, 2009, 6:59 pm in News, Opinions and Weekly. 0 Comments Tags: , .

We have the Dubai crash and the Tiger Woods crash to deal with…..the Woods crash will be easier to deal with because he is man enough to just say, “It’s my fault.” Bankers and politicians on the other hand, have to make sure they can blame it on something or someone. I think both these crashes will be less newsworthy as we go forward.

The holiday week was just like the recent weeks….big pop on Monday and a slow drain for the rest of the week. Of course the end of this week was a bit more severe. The futures this evening are looking like a pop for this Monday also. We’ll see if the pattern continues.

The upcoming week is full of economic data….including the big ones Nonfarm Payroll and Unemployment reports on Friday. Some of the others: Chicago PMI, Construction Spending, Auto & Truck Sales, Initial & Continuing Claims and Factory Orders, among others, will be moving the markets.

Some interesting reading:
Asia trip, Dubai news, T-Day wish! This is a great read about what the Asians think about the U.S.

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

U.A.E. Will Support Banks in Dubai Credit Crisis

My oh my Dubai!

Published on November 27, 2009, 9:02 am in News, Opinions and Psyche. 0 Comments

Is it really all that bad as the sell-off makes it look?
Stop Freaking Out, The UAE Can Easily Save Dubai

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

Is this bye-bye Dubai?

Or maybe they are just catching up to the rest of the world!

Oh Boy!

Published on November 26, 2009, 8:40 pm in News and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This is going to be a crazy 3 and a half hour session on Friday. If you haven’t seen all the news coming out a Dubai and what happened in the European markets during the Thanksgiving party, you better get ready. The ES e-mini futures is already down 24 points and the YM Dow e-mini is down 200 points.

If the U.S. markets do get spooked tomorrow, you must remember it’s a half day….so they will try to cram 2 sessions worth of trading into a few hours. The Bank of Japan is already manipulating the yen and I’m sure they’re talking to Ben and Tim.

Maybe I’ll just go shopping. 8O

Something’s coming…

Published on November 18, 2009, 9:07 pm in Daily, News, Opinions and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The housing numbers weren’t great, but homebuilders did pretty good. HOV and LEN both gapped lower but immediately corrected and moved upward….fast! Nimble hands, or is that mice, made a good buck. The general market didn’t react so nicely and meandered around the day’s lows before recovering near the end of the day, but still ending in the red. Everything in between the opening and the close was, well, you’ve heard the expression watching paint dry.

Yesterday the markets went up along with the dollar, and today it went down with the dollar. Hmmm, that inverse relationship seems to be deteriorating. But y’know, logic and markets don’t seem to fit together. Oil at $80 doesn’t help the economy… but somebody has to tell the market. There is a clear divergence of common sense going on. Stocks up big with oil up big and unemployment and foreclosures up big. They can’t keep racing in the same direction. Which brought me to a couple of interesting articles:
Why The Stock Market Should Crash.

Oil Gets A Boost From The Weak Dollar

Obama warns on US public debt pile

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Going nowhere fast

Published on November 8, 2009, 11:30 pm in News, Opinions, Trading and Weekly. 0 Comments Tags: .

Friday the futures took a dump right after the Nonfarm payroll report because the report was truly ugly. But as usual, bad news was good for the market. We ended up for the day and week. After 2 down weeks the markets picked themselves up in a big way and….have ended up where we were 2 months ago. Gee, isn’t that exciting!

Unemployment was up to 10.2%, a rate not seen since 1983. Of course 10% in 2009 is a lot more unemployed than 10% in 1983! Jobs are not coming back soon…and some not at all.

Some other “good” news that must have fueled the bulls:

Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

Consumer credit decreased in 3rd Qtr.

And remember, every Friday the FDIC closes some failing banks — There were 5 banks that the FDIC took over this weekend. The United Commercial Bank of San Francisco, CA became the 120th bank failure of 2009. It’s fun to break records…even when they’re bad news.

I was looking at some charts this weekend and the VIX caught my eye. We had a little spurt up in volatility, but has returned to where we were before the markets ran down 2 weeks ago. So we’ll need to see if this double-bottom shows the start of some up move.

The really next big excitment trading day is options expiration Friday, 2 weeks away. That will also coincide with the end of the President’s trip to China. Earnings season is winding down and there isn’t much in economic data coming out the next week. So…we may be stuck in a range here for several days if not weeks….unless of course some geo-political event takes place. :twisted:

Increase productivity, decrease claims

Published on November 5, 2009, 10:12 pm in Daily, News and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The markets ran this morning when the reports came out showing a decrease in the number of initial, as well as continuous claims and the more than expected increase in worker productivity. They then meandered for the rest of the day, closing near the highs of the day. Advancing isssues outpaced declining issues at 7 to 1. The bears were heard sniffling, “What happened?”

Now for the bad news….an increase in productivity means there is no need to hire more people, so the job picture to get better will be delayed a bit. And continuous claims decrease is probably from the long unemployed falling off the insurance rosters. Such comforting news.

I played the same repretoire today as yesterday: ES TNA and TZA. I had TNA from yesterday and was happy to see the markets open to the upside. In my jubilation I cashed out too soon. If I had held on to TNA for another hour I could have doubled my money, but a profit is a profit! Better than chancing a reveersal. Oh well.

This week’s big kahoona report, the Non-Farm Payroll report comes out Friday morning. It’s not very often that the NFP comes out just 2 days after an FOMC meeting, and it has a wild reputation as well for making crazy markets. So watch out :!:

Some articles to explain the day:
U.S. Worker Productivity Jumps

Jobless Claims in U.S. Decrease More Than Forecast

Small stocks poised to outperform

Banks continue to close

Published on October 26, 2009, 7:46 am in Intraday, News, Opinions and Trading. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

FDIC Friday brought the closing of 7 more banks, bringing the list to 106, the most since 1992 and there is still 2 more months to go through.

Bank failures hit 106 for year; many more are weak

All this goes on while the banks and the government get and make more money.

2009 US economy: largest transfer of wealth to financial/political elite in global history.

I think I’ll be looking at bank and dollar and interest rate ETFs for some action today: TBT UUP UYG XLF. Futures were up overnight but began to weaken as the spotlight turned to European, and now, U.S. markets.