Archive for the 'Tools' Category

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Slow!

Published on October 11, 2010, 11:14 pm in Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , .

Gee, were the markets open today? Not many trades…SPY and ES trading was less than half the average volume. Ugh! Makes for a boring day. But I was busy loading Tradestation and Infinity on the new machine. Tomorrow I start trading with it…I’m excited. Plus I can give my backup PC a breather.

The Beige book comes out tomorrow is all the news, but INTC reports after the close. Futures this evening are under the weather, which is just fine with me.

I did make some trades today, buying some November VXX calls and a position in QID….yes, I’m looking for some pullback here.

A techno-weekend

Published on October 10, 2010, 11:19 pm in Charts, reading and Tools. Closed Tags: , , .

I spent this weekend building my new trading PC, searching the Internet for tech support and running to Best Buy to pick up a few things I missed. ;) But, by Sunday night I had Windows 7 installed on the SSD, or Tradestation, especially when backtesting strategies. I will document all I did and will put it up on the website, going through the process of why I picked the parts I incorporated into the PC….but I want to get it into the trading mix first.

I’m still not done, there’s a lot of data I need to extract from the old PC to the new, but, in the mean time, I’m trying to review the charts on my backup machine. Boy, the indexes sure look like they want to ride the bull! The S&P has been running up the 8EMA since the August lows. The rest are similar, but this whole volume thing has still got me wondering where the money is coming from….the Fed? GS? People still employed?

Here’s an idea: Americans Are Saving Too Much Money, So We Need Them Spending Again.

I guess I’ll get some sleep before trying to connect the new machine to the Internet. 8O

Thanks for checking in and good luck tomorrow!

Caution….NFP report ahead

Published on October 7, 2010, 10:08 pm in Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , .

Another one of those low volume, hang around breakeven day, as traders wait for Friday’s Employment reports. Today’s Jobless Claims was better than expected and the markets were happy at the open and took off early before realizing that this wasn’t THE report everyone is waiting for, and turned back down and just shuffled around.

After hours, AA kicked off earnings sseason with a pretty good report. helping move the indexes to the upside. But will it matter after 8:30AM EST?

I ordered all the peices and parts for my new trading computer. I’m going to set up a new section for “Tools” and document my choices and the process of putting it all together….and pictures too. Stay tuned.

Now, filed in the “You can’t make this stuff up” drawer: Postal Union Election Delayed After Ballots Lost in the Mail. Really?

“Donald Trump may run for president. Is that a good idea? Haven’t enough Americans already been told, “You’re fired’?” – Jay Leno

That was unexpected

Published on October 5, 2010, 10:53 pm in Opinions, Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Did not see this one coming, and it’s not because of my handicapped technology, but because of a sneak attack, the Bank of Japan decided to lower its rates from almost zero to just about zero. Duh! That’s going to help? They’ve been trying this for years…so even though I thought it was stupid, the marketplace said, “Let’s borrow money from Japan and buy stocks!” And buy they did, there wasn’t a seller to be found! Oh well, I’m never wrong on a call… but sometimes I’m way too early!

Two of the indicators I check at the end of the day…$TRIN and $PVCE…those are the TradeStation symbols for the Arms Index and the Put/Call Volume Ratio of Equities….both closed WAY too low today! The Arms index, or TRIN, says that a close under 0.50 results in selling the next day. Today it closed at 0.28. Watch out, No selling? Bears are in trouble. $PCVE closed today at .25….Under .50 puts a ”ceiling” on the market. Look to close longs and go short. We’ll see how that advice works….

Lots of news over the next three days, plus earnings season starts again with AA on Thursday! Tomorrow we get Mortgage Applications, Challenger Report, ADP Employment Report, and Crude Inventories. Then more job stuff on Thursday with Jobless Claims and then Friday…kaboom!…the NFP report. Oh yeah…then we go into OpEx week. Won’t this be wild?

Happy Trading!

Still hardware deficient

Published on October 4, 2010, 11:29 pm in Opinions, Tools and Trading. Closed

Are we building another channel? Looks like we may spend some time between 1130 and 1150 on the SPX. I’d post a chart but still am in a hardware-deficit situation. I spent most of the day getting Tradestation updated on my backup computer.

I cashed out of my IWM puts in the morning and then by the close I got back in….well, it worked today, let’s hope it works on Tuesday.

This doesn’t sound good: S&P 500 Profits Cut for First Time in Year by Analysts.

It’s that time of the month…

Published on October 3, 2010, 10:51 pm in Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , .

The markets always go up at the first of the month…and it did…barely. But they also say September is always a bad month…and it wasn’t. Are history and seasonal analysis out the door? Is it a new market?

Since IRA’s and 401k’s were decimated 2 years ago, I’d say yes, we are in a different marketplace. Just look at the volume of trades. Sure it inched up the last 2 days, but the average is still down. Lots of people are out of the market and computers are so automatic some of that sentiment and history analysis just might not fit. Oh my!

What? Earnings again? Yep, AA kicks off the next round on Thursday and the NFP Employment report is on Friday.

My trading computer crashed this weekend and I have been working frantically to get it going again. It’s late Sunday night and the hard drives are 85% through the rebuilding process…and it looks like it will take the rest of the night to complete. I won’t know until morning how all the data looks. And then I will need to replace a fried video card to get all the monitors up and running. I’m a computer geek but sometimes I just hate technology! :cry:

Lucky I use multi-computers also. Thanks for reading and good luck tomorrow!

Woe is me

Published on September 23, 2010, 9:07 am in Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I had about 24 hours of hardware and Internet issues…all while trying to trade and attended an online webinar….those things don’t mix!

That also didn’t allow me to update my trading journal. For the past 18 months, I’ve been keeping a journal in Microsoft’s OneNote. While I jot down all my trades, I also write about what I’m feeling at the time, my reasons for buying, profit and stop targets. While it feels therapeutic during the day, the real value comes each weekend when I not only review the weeks entries, but also review some entries from months before…especially comparing recent winners and losers with “old” winners and losers.

I digress. The markets were pretty mixed up on Wednesday. Oil really got slapped around. At the end of the day I thought I’d nibble on some UCO and nibbled a little more in the pre-market this morning…average cost 8.65…we’ll see. May also look into some USO calls at the open.

Porbably a big eco number at 10AM…Existing Home Sales….also Leading Indicators. A pullback is not a bad thing…we just want to stay above the S&P’s June and August highs…Maybe a little poke-through, but nothing drastic.

Good Luck and happy trading :!:

Groundhog Day again?

Published on September 16, 2010, 10:40 pm in Opinions, Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

This is getting to be a broken record…or is it Groundhog Day, the movie…no volume…over and over again! And it’s opex. Tomorrow has to show some activity, and at this point I don’t care if it’s the bulls or the bears or both.

Did you see that bullish sentiment hit 51% this week in the AAII survey. That’s the highest reading this year. And you know what happens when there are so many bullish people? That’s right, markets go down. Be wary out there….it’s not instantaneous, but the signal says time for some downward movement.

It was miserable for several hours…no Internet and no television….the cable was out. I’m at a loss when all my communications is gone. The Internet connection is back up so time to update all my charts.

“According to government auditors, the stimulus money is being held up because there aren’t enough government workers to oversee the spending. So follow this, in other words, government workers who aren’t there are needed to spend money we don’t have to create jobs that don’t exist.’ – Jay Leno

Trading some ETFs

Published on August 26, 2010, 9:33 pm in reading, Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

I like to daytrade the index ETFs….y’know, TNA/TZA BGU/BGZ SSO/SDS and a multitude of other bull/bear pairs. Depending on how the market is doing, I jump on either the bull or bear ETF and scalp it for as long as all day sometimes….and other times for 60 seconds….sometimes for a profit and other times for a loss. You know how it goes. 8O

As I was watching the grass grow at mid-day today, I was daydreaming at where I would be if I had bought some pairs at the beginning of the year. Logic would be that one side would be up and the other side down. But no!

On January 4th this year, TNA opened at $44.66 and closed today at $33.58, down about 12%. The Russell is down about 4% for the year, and since TNA is a 3X ETF, being off 12% is about right.

So TZA should be up about 12%, right? No! TZA opened the year at $47.05 and closed today at $39.06, down about 15% for the year. What!? The bear ETF is down more than the bull ETF? Yes. So if you had decided to put on some sort of spread bet taking both sides to hedge yourself, you’d be a real loser! :cry:

My lesson here is … not to hold leveraged ETFs for more than a day. Yes I have held overnight and have both profitted and lost on the gamble…. But now just daytrade or scalp….make more money and sleep a whole lot better.

Here’s an article that should be read by anyone trading leveraged ETFs. This study is based on 2X ETFs so the issues are greater in the 3X and 4X ETFs available now. The explanation is a lot more technical than what my daydreaming came up with. How Long Can You Hold Leveraged ETFs?

For all the periods studied except one-year, tracking error grows larger … and more negative … as the expected return grows.
The results of the study are clear. As you move further away from the targeted one-day time period, tracking error on these funds grows.

Wow, that was unexpected!

Published on August 11, 2010, 10:20 pm in Tools and Trading. Closed Tags: , , .

Markets sucked today, diving overnight and then continuing at the open. By the close they erased all their year’s gains! And then CSCO came out with a crappy report, missing expectations and futures crashed…again…going down another 12 points on the S&P (via ES) or 90 points on the Dow (via YM) afterhours. What a pile of bear poopy!

So the Dow is down 1000 points from last week’s high, and feeling a bit uncomfortable. A wise old sage told me the best trades are made while your finger is shaking when you hit ”enter”. So, while that finger was shaking I nibbled on some TNA afterhours for maybe a 3-6 day hold. I’m looking to do some shopping tomorrow (Thursday) to pick up some long positions.

Initial Claims in the morning will be the catalyst for a gap down or just a boring breakeven kind of day. The Stock Trader’s Almanac still gives tomorrow a bear face, but Friday and most of next week gets a bull face.

So I hope you didn’t get hurt too badly today, but better days are in store. Of course, if you’re bear, today was heaven. Thanks for reading and good luck tomorrow!

Oh, and here’s an interesting statistic to keep in mind….

The latest survey shows that three out of four people make up 75% of the population!

Really? 8O