Three trading days into August so far. It looks like I'll be at David's desk for about another two weeks maybe three. Last three days has been ok, could've been better since I hit a losing trade into the close all three days. Today it was a key stroke that cost me a couple hundred bucks... I mean to put bids out instead I got short 1200 shares of some stupid stock at a really bad price. It's ok though. I know I can do well by eliminating some of these mistakes.
Not sure what August is going to be like. It could be real crazy like last year or it could be boring as hell. The Fed decision day today was pretty much a none event. It was left unchanged just like everybody expected. The next meeting is not until September 16th, sigh... I think we're going to have a boring August.
I got an email for the Managing Director as well as the CEO congratulating me on a good month. Personally I was a little bit worried b/c I couldn't quite pinpoint what to credit my good month to. I didn't feel like I did anything too differently, if there's any difference it would be from a confidence perspective or something subconsciously. I looked over my numbers w/ Jane and it looks like my win percentage was about 66% compared to 60% in prior month(s) and I was doing about 5,000 more shares per day. My down efficiency went up but so did my up efficiency. My goals for this month is to have the same consistency, 3-1 up vs. down day ratio and I want my up day to be twice as big as my down day number.
Are we out the bear market? Who knows... I kind of think it is and this is based on the event last week when MER announced another bad write-down but the street didn't react negatively to it at all. We'll probably be sideways until the next Fed meeting, SPY is starting to form a channel btwn 124 and 129.
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3 comments:
Hi Jason,
I agree with you about this being a Bear Market. Look at the beating the Financials took on Thursday. Market's up today, but I think this is an oil thing more than anything else. I put the USO fund up and watch that now, too, out of the corner of my eye.
Jason,
You made this comment in an earlier post:
"While I traded SPY and made money last Friday, today I kept getting stopped out in an uptrend which made me really upset... but now I'm investigating into some of the other ETFs like EEM and EWZ or EWM that sort of "lag" the market. At least that's what Pat said. I haven't really experience any sort of lag. I'll have to watch closer tomorrow. My conclusion after watching all these after market crosses is that I'm just not fast enough to hit them... and you never know if there's any sort of news on it and it's very subjective, i.e. high risk. I think I'll just try to get some good prints through some of the AMEX stuff like SPY, XLE, XLF."
Can you tell me a bit more about these "after market crosses?"
Thanks - hope August is good for you!
Dave
I thnk I made that post back in January? There're different reason why there are after market crosses, sometimes there are earnings or just someone trying to get out of their position through the ECNs. It's usually riskier since you'll be holding that position overnight and you never quite know how it'll open the next day. I think there was a cross that I took one time and the next day oil gapped down and a lot of the oil/energy stocks were down and I lost more money than I'd like on it.
Hope that answers the question. August sucks right now, really having to adjust.
Thanks, Jason - I've been reading about crosses on block trades, etc - not quite sure how to use this in trading, especially if they're after the close.
Say, if you haven't already, read Nassim Taleb's Fooled By Randomness - a great book! the sequel is The Black Swan, also enjoyable and in the same vein. I never read market stuff now unless it's 100 years old, or writtien by real traders that are NOT trying to market courses, etc.
August is off to a good start here - hope yours goes well, too!
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