Breaking the $1,000 barrier

Let me just begin by saying that when my dad woke me up this morning, I seriously considered not going to work. After the shitty day yesterday and not being able to sleep after picking my parents up at the airport at midnight when I woke up at 7:30am I though... eh, fuck it. I actually debated about going into work or not the previous night. On one hand, it is prudent to take it easy after a rough day. Then again, Monday is MLK Day and I would have to wait until Tuesday to trade again. Thank God I decided to be a man and go out to face what could be another disastrous day.

Market gapped up and looked like finally some buyers are coming in but then much like yesterday President Bush came on TV and I guess people didn't hear much hope of government stepping and doing what's necessary for the economy it started selling off again. Well, I got short my trusty EEM again for some good profits. I don't know what else I traded but I felt like I was churning EEM a lot. It's hard you know... when you are in for 800 shares, a slight pull back is like $50 and it was hard for me to let me profit run away. So I would get in, take my profit, look, and decide to get back in. I think once I get more comfortable with it I'll be able to hold it better.

What I've been noticing about EEM is that it sort of over react according to futures chart I think and it tends to be a few seconds slower then SPY. So if I'm in a winning position and SPY is reversing slowly, I should wait very briefly to get a price and if after that few seconds it started going my direction again then I should definitely keep holding on to it. Also b/c of this "lag" I could wait a little bit and get a better price for my entry and approximate what price level the stock reached before making its real move. Otherwise I've found sometimes I get in right away but then it behaves like the previous move and hit my stop loss before continuing in the current direction. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense the way I described, but at least it makes sense to me.

I hit a cross through INET for $60. The first time that I was fast enough to hit a cross. Although I could've loss a lot of money on it since the volume is so low and the book is thing.

I don't like MOO. It's really thin and my profit or stop outs could evaporate very quickly. Although it's an agriculture index, I found it tends to correlate better w/ POT.

My highest point before the close was probably up about $1,200 before I gave a bunch back to EEM b/c the stupid son of a gun wasn't really making a move and I keep getting stopped out.

I didn't get hit on any of the closing prints (Pat did though for 12,000 shares... scary). But I was kind of watching the futures chart and it made a significant, not big, but sizable move and SPY reflects the same move but EEM was just sitting still. I watched and watched and after having my outs determined and someone else taking some of the bids on ARCA I decided to short 400 shares of it myself, risking about 15 cents. All of a sudden I see the ECN offers have been dropped. I remember seeing something .20, which I though was 135.20 b/c I was short from 135.35 and I just immediately pressed my direct ECN key but when I look back later.... it was 133.20. Holy crap! I hit a cross and I made about $850 on that.

Traded over 50,000 shares... I have no idea what that's gonna come out to be for my commission but I'm guessing I'm up about $1,500 or $1,600 for today.