Good luck with that. You will probably be fine if you plan on covering at the open, futures are flat currently, but I expect a gap down. However, any gap down tomorrow is good for a morning fade(buy). Still some residual shorts to be taken out and stops to get hit. If you plan on holding for more than the first few hours then like I said, good luck. Shorting here will probably be just good enough to get you stopped out at 1230.
yeah i'm not exactly sure what i am going to do yet. if we gap down i will cover a good chunk. if we gap up big i would buy some more qid. not looking to be a hero with the trade since i already have my short hero trade in the waste management companies. lol go figure that those would have turned around and kicked my ass today. my biggest position was in the WM...which had been the weakest but decided to blow out today. im down about 25 in those 3 combined overall. we will see what tomorrow brings, but i am still inclined to be a hero and stick in the trade for various reasons. probably stupid reasons...but whatever and here are the other random trades i am in...i've been long like 30k EK and long the oct and jan 3/7.5 call spread. check out the volatility in that thing...it's freaking absurd. basically, it's another company looking to monetize its patents. they have a big patent appeal coming up against rimm and aapl, but that is getting delayed due to a judge retiring. anyhow been in that trade for like a week. other than that i have a call spread and a risk reversal in HPQ. short the nov 15 and 18 puts and long the nov 25/30 call spread. i think i put it on the day after the gap down so it's worked out well. i'm also short the HRBN (China scam stock) buyout. short a bunch of calls and long a put spread. i made a ton of money on this stock earlier in the year when it crashed. anyhow this trade is pretty much a binary event. either they get bought out for $24 or they basically go to the pink sheets lol. it's a pretty interesting story. the CEO has been busted for fraudulent loans before and basically it appears as if the company has been forging documents and fudging earnings...similar to sinoforest. we will see what happens. i will pretty much make 50 or lose 50 if the buyout happens or fails before sept expiration...and the buyout was supposed to close in sept. i think that's basically everything i have on right now.
Robbie, just from reading that it seems you have a bit of a gambler in you. We probably all do or we wouldn't be in this business. Still, some words of advice. 1. Always know exactly what you intend to do, before you put on a trade. Figuring things out as they go will cloud your judgment when you have a position on. 2. I have seen way too many traders, some very good ones, get blown out of their positions because they were too early, even though they turned out to be right. Being right means nothing, timing is everything. I've heard stories from washed out traders talking about how they were fully loaded short the Nasdaq in Jan 2000, only to be blown out by their firm a week and a half before the eventual top. Talking about how they should be sitting at a beach right now, instead of worrying about their kids tuition. One of the best traders I know shorted the casinos in 2007. He was dead right, but what did he get for it? Got torn a new one. So the real question is, how do you figure out timing, when you think you are right. That is the name of the game. 3. Never, ever, take advice on trading from someone on an online forum. Especially from guys who probably don't know half what they are talking about themselves.
I don't like gambling, but I can get sucked into things early. Also, I have no problem being wrong. I've certainly been wrong a lot. I wouldn't still be here if I was unable to be wrong. I don't like being wrong...who does? But it's a fact of life. I know you probably don't believe it but I have made a lot of high percentage, low risk/high reward trades over the years. I have made very consistent money in my career. The vast majority of my trades are not like my waste management trade lol. I don't normally take large drawdowns, but sometimes I get complacent and I do get whacked for it eventually. Also, the numbers have shown over my career that when I think I should put on a trade it means I should be in that trade. If I'm wrong so be it... For myself I have to disagree. As the situation develops I change my opinion of things. Most of my trades are made very quickly and I can't tell what the future will bring so I have to be ready to react as things develop. I have found much greater success trading in this fashion. I know I don't say things in a precise way on this message board, but that's because I don't feel like explaining all the nuances of everything I am thinking with one little trade like my market short position (QID long) or with the waste management companies I am short. I don't know exactly what the news will be tomorrow and I don't know what the market action will be tomorrow. I've gotta pretty good idea of what I am going to do, but we will wait and see until the market opens. I can't tell but it seems as if I trade on a much shorter time frame than you with a good portion of my trades. These overnight positions are not all the trades I do. The bulk of the money I have made in my career has been off of short term trades...either news/earnings plays, intraday swing/momentum trades, order flow, arb trades between market centers (mostly when the specialist was around), imbalances, indications, and so on. You don't have to tell me about this. If you want a recent example of this with me take a look at the silver top. Should have been one of my biggest trades ever, but I got overly aggressive and got away from my original plan. Long story made short...I stopped myself out because I could tell sentiment and price action was clearly not in my favor and the risk for a mega blowout to the upside was too large. I lost a good chunk of money. I regrouped. I moved on. If I didn't stop myself out I would have probably been blown out near the top. True I would have been right if I would have been able to hold all that downside, but it would have just amounted to a terrible trade. I would have made money but I would have been down a ton in order to do that and I would have had no real plan other than hoping the mania would turn to margin calls. I think my biggest mistake with the entire ordeal was taking time to regroup rather than just getting back in and trading. I would have made back my losses and then some since the moves in silver after it broke were VERY predictable. Oh well...live and learn. That being said I trade based on how I feel and how sentiment and price action are going. I know it's imprecise, but it has served me well and my instincts are almost always right when I have that voice yelling at my in my head to get out and cut your losses. Like I said earlier, I don't feel like going into the minutia over all the thoughts I have in my head based on the past experiences of all my good and bad trades and the prevailing price action, sentiment, support/resistance, fundamentals, etc. that was going on at that time, but I have a pretty good record of it in my head and I can explain it much easier in person rather than online. Hope that made some sense. ...But I do understand one of my bigger weaknesses is I will be right in my thinking, but I will be early. That is why I have moved more towards putting on option spread trades versus only trading the equity for longer term stuff since it minimizes my risk, gives me more wiggle room, and gives me time for the trades to work. I listen to everyone. I filter a lot, but I always have an open ear and open mind to whatever anyone says and try to figure out why they are saying it...no matter how idiotic it may sound. Finding out the why things are going on has served me well in my career. Hope that rambling post made some sense.
Nitpicking here but you cover a short and sell a long. Yes sold at gap fill. Expecting some sideways action before gapping to 1230 before end of week. And selling that.
lol yes that is nitpicking. covered, got flat, took the trade off, got out, sell...it's all interchangable with any trader i have talked to. but who really cares...i'm not even using proper capitalization or proper grammar here. my gambles have worked out well today. i am taking the over in the texans game and parlaying it with my EK. anyhow, 123 would be a nice place to sell the SPY if we get there.
interesting note for you guys looking for "safe" dividends. an analyst at ticonderoga securities said he feels MSFT could double their dividend at their shareholder meeting on september 7. not advocating a buy, but i thought that was a pretty interesting thing to keep an eye on since it could be a bellwether for dividend hikes in other mature tech stocks.
LNG Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG) $7.83 0.02 | 0.26% Today's Range: 7.59 - 7.98 LNG Avg. Daily Volume: 3,769,000 08/30/11 - 12:40 PM ET Good buy right now or no? Was reading something that explained China was going to be expanding it's natural gas usage even more and LNG was going to be a big provider of the pipelines. Good buy?
Yeah good thing I didn't buy it today. Still on the decline. I figured it would of shot up a bit and could of made a small profit. but whatever, i'll wait for it to keep dropping below 7 bucks and hang on to it for a while. If it gets past 7
Again, it is nitpicking on here, but a pet peeve of mine. On a professional trade desk or well run hedge fund precise language on callouts is actually very important, kind of like for professional basketball teams. If I am yelling at my buddy who is looking to hedge my risk that I just "covered", he needs to know instantaneously what I mean, whether its selling a long or covering a short, especially in the heat of the moment. Obviously that doesn't matter on here but its a good habit to develop.
I really thought this thing was going to rally into the close today. Boy was I wrong. I got schooled by my trader friend this afternoon who said he's looking for a possible tank tonight in the overnight futures contracts of the major indices. We will see. This market is nuts.
Does anybody follow this guy? He's a very smart cat. I highly enjoy his analysis. Just thought I'd share. <iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CfkP1k776mw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yeah if I was on a floor where I didn't do all the trading myself it would matter. The only times I can remember off the top of my head when I had to yell at the pit support with respect to an order type was back when the market was much slower and specialists would hold orders when they were in U-quote mode (U-quotes are much less common today) or before that when the specialist was always in auction mode. If my long sale was being held by the specialist and we didn't have shares to short we would tell the pit to give us hedges so we could put out more long sale orders at different prices if we felt like our first sell order was not going to get filled. I miss those free money days where you would see legit crossed markets. But now the only time a short sale v long sale actually matters for me is if the stock is hard to borrow and not borrowed. Outside of that 100% proper terminology only matters when I am buying/selling to open or close an options position. The only time when I actually have to be precise is with order routing at the various market centers. Well that and actually hitting the right keys lol...fat fingers no good. Anyhow...I left early today. What caused the market to sell off after hours?
Per usual, people selling. BTW I am getting some adjusted numbers for the upside target. 1236 is now showing up on several projections, along with the previous 1230. Either way, the general premise remains the same: looking for a top to this rally sometime before the end of this week, preferably gapping to one of those levels.
