I graduated with a business degree, and I can honestly tell you it taught me absolutely nothing. I barely went to class, and the little that I did learn, I never use nowadays. The only times I recall my classes in economics and finance are an examination of how by-the-book financial analysts view the market, and how to take advantage of their herd-mentality. Trust me, you didn't miss anything in class. If anything, it would help you to forget some of their academic gibberish. What did help me, and what I base all my trading now on, is about 10 years of trading experience on my own. This means reading books, examining and testing different strategies, and oh, losing money over and over again. I've learned more when losing money than I ever have when making money. BTW I have ZERO financial analysis skills like you claim. I have trading analysis skills, which is quite different. This is an understanding of the markets, price action, pattern recognization, etc. I've also been playing poker since a young age, which helps with bankroll management, gambling psychology etc. This is all stuff way more important to trading than anything you can learn in a classroom. So if you are interested, you haven't missed anything in school, so you are not too late.
I am not sure why I wrote such a verbose response when this is much more eloquent! No seriously, it is so true. Although for me, my face was not smashed at work, since I've already had my go around before arriving at this job. It was however smashed over and over during my learning stage. I've lost plenty of accounts, and I am very lucky to do so at a young age, since I was able to recover and learn. Most people who start trading, start at a stage in their life where if they made the same mistakes that I made, they would not have the resources, nor patience to comeback with. Especially if you have a family or responsibilities.
depends on how large the order is/how much dollar volume is being traded. clearly if you see someone buy more contracts than average daily volume then there is something to be investigated to see what might be going on there. further if the call or put being bought is at the money (meaning the person has to outlay a large amount of capital) then you can pay a lot more attention to that trade versus some speculative far out of the money lotto ticket being bought. the relationship is a little difficult to explain but we bought out the company that created the market scanning software but the options scanning stuff we didn't start to follow up until about 6 months ago. the options scanning had always been apart of the software but we never used it since we were equity traders. there is a group of options traders outside of our company that uses it and they have developed many different scans for various options activity. long story short our relationship with them has developed much more in the past few weeks and we can use all their options scans which are freaking awesome. it's nothing insanely complicated but it is great to see all these transactions that we hadn't been seeing before.
Please don't take any offense to this, because I genuinely mean NONE by it, but... When the market has rallied to such an extent, that it is even enticing the "dumb money" to enter, this usually means it is probably NOT the optimal time to "invest". If I ever were to in the first place. I would suggest you wait until your natural inclination tells you to stay as far away from the stock market as possible[maybe a time like 5 months ago?], then THAT would be the time to invest.
For now that may be best. If you do not have experience with the market, don't ever trust your instincts. Many people wonder why they often buy at the very peak, and sell at the bottom. This is not because some hidden force is out to "get you". It is the finality of the Greater Fool theory. The reality is, the smart money is always the minority. But when even the "dumb money" has bought, who will buy higher?
Robbie and CXbby Any comments on WFC? A few web sites mentioned higher levels of options activity towards the end of the week.
yeah there are rumors wells might be pricing a secondary offering in the next week or so. i tried a small short on wfc based on the call buying switching to put buying but got stopped out midday friday. now if you want some options activity then citigroup is the place to be. good god that just keeps getting larger and larger after they did their preferred conversion. also they just keep loading up on calls in citi. call to put ratios have consistently been between 2:1 to 3:1.
The volume in some of the financial related stocks has been amazing. JNJ, XOM, CVX etc look like they are asleep compared to the action in BAC, WFC, C and GE.
I'm hoping for a bit of a sell-off at the end, but I'm not sure. I wanted to get into C after it pulled back last week, but never had the guts. I still want to get in on it. I have lots of money sitting on the sidelines now that my commodities stocks were stopped out last week. I may start nibbling or starting a position on homebuilders.
Perhaps a dip tomorrow morning then another day of relatively <i>flatline</i> activity. Wednesday and Thursday have the potential to have wider swings intraday.
That people are bullish on a stock by a certain period of time (unless they're all just hedging some kind of short position, I guess).
GLD looks to be breaking out to the upside in the coming week. Im establishing a long-term position. I see gold the commodity going to at least 1050 in the next 2 months. - Stakes are high.
The Financials (JPM, BAC, WFC etc) are under some selling pressure today. Some of the Techs are also on the soft side.
Here is what I see coming in the markets: -SPX Short term: We should a dip then a rally until Friday afternoon or Monday at the latest. Go short after that. Sell any rips you see. Long term: If we can rally enough to turn the stochastic indicator positive over the next 2 or three days we may be in for a long term pull back. -FXI S: No buy or sell signal. L: Sell signal until mid-September. The Chinese market is tanking a little earlier than the U.S. After Friday or Monday of next week at the latest this bear market rally will soon be over. -DXY S: Dollar weakness until Monday. L: After Monday there will be a rally in the dollar for around two weeks. Painful two weeks for equities. -VIX S: Tommorrow will be an increase in VIX until midday. Then the VIX will tank until Friday afternoon. L: N/A -FAZ S: Selling pressure until next Tuesday. Good time to buy financials. L: N/A -GLD/USO S: N/A L: I see a rally until December for Gold and Oil. Good time to go long. - Stakes are high
