Down on the Floor

My Move

2009-08-19T20:26:00.002-05:00

I've moved to wordpress now. You can follow me and leave nasty comments there at mloylo.wordpress.com.

My Psychic

2009-07-13T18:44:00.001-05:00

My sister was in town the other day and she wanted to go see a psychic. I told her there was a psychic a co-worker had told me about and maybe she'd like to go pay her a visit. Emphasis on the pay there... I later found out she's now charging $75 for a 30 min. reading sessions. I don't want to blabber her private business all over the www, but let's just say she was seeking some marital advice. She then told me she made an appointment for me and I thought, what the heck, we'll see if this lady is full of crap or not.

The name is Yanie Brewer in case anybody is interested. She gave me a recording of the session on cassette tape, which I thought, seriously... who the fuck owns a cassette players now? This is clearly not iPod compatible and I doubt they have an app for the iPhone for this. I don't think I've had regularly used a cassette tape since 1997. Anyway, I finally went to my car and play back the tape. There were some pretty cool stuff that just made me dropped/dislocated my jaw.

I had my doubts but then one of the first things she said that made me feel like she might be for real was when she went "do you have two careers?" Which I replied yes but in my head I was thinking "Did my sister tell you that in her session before me? How could you know about that?" Towards the end of the session I asked a few questions about my family and she asked me if it was just me and my sister the two sibling and I said yes, but she said "there should've been a third." At that point I remembered that my mother actually did have an abortion way younger before my older sister was born. She also told me she sees cars, and asked me what that means. Well, our family business is revolved around car related products like AC, tire repair, engine oil or different kind of fluid.

A lot of these are kind of like I had to attach the meanings myself, but I thought it was pretty cool that if someone can really hear or feel and clairvoyant.

As for the future, I don't know exactly how much salt to take w/ what she said. It sort of just reflected a lot of what I know about myself or what I've been thinking. The topic of education came up a lot, which I have been thinking about going back for my MBA (pretty much like everybody else my age). It definitely seems like my journey here in Austin is about to end (and just when I decided to put a swimming pool in at my house, too...). There are some new beginnings. She says that I'm talented and have interest in many things and I have to find what my niche is and what will give me the most fulfilment is where I feel like I'm helping people. I mentioned about marketing but she said something even more people enough.

Apparently I'm also put on this earth to travel and I'll make very good money. She mentioned about going to Hawaii and golfing there (hmm...) and business travel in British Columbia, although I couldn't tell if she was feeling B.C. or regular Columbia. There's a big difference in Vancouver and Bogota. She keeps talking about some opportunity, I don't think she meant schools, in Florida and how being around the water is very good for me. I will also meet my best relationship, very vivacious and energetic person, on a trip and she even says that I'm going to have two boys, one of water and another w/ fire sign (really... c'mon). She even asked me how I feel about dogs b/c this person will have a small dog. Right, let me just go travel the world and ask every girl that sits next to me on the plane what kind of dog she has. St. Bernard, oh sorry... nice meeting ya. What? A Yorkie? What did you say your name was?

Basically, she has just told me what I've been feeling since sophomore year, which is what is my passion, what is my niche? I thought my path might be w/ the family business but she actually says that my footsteps won't be the same as my dad and in the long run I'd have to do something that's more me. Either do things more my style or take the background and experience to move on to another venture. Sigh... got a lot to think about.

My Peacock

2009-07-11T06:44:00.005-05:00

I've been working from home lately. With the trading volume being so light I basically had decided to put my account on hold for a month, maybe two. It was good to hear at least I won't incur any variable fees in the mean time.

Well, I was getting ready to leave the house on Tuesday and as I pull my car out of the garage I see this creature at my front door. Upon further review... it was a peacock. Yeah, I know it's random, but a damn peacock is just sitting at my front door. When I came back it was still there. Weird... it was not dead. Definitely alive and moving. Was this a present? It doesn't have a note tied to it or anything. I went to the formal dinning room and snapped this picture.

It looks like it's there to collect rent... Funny that my Asian friends, and the one French one after I told them about it all say to eat it. Oh the foodies. I tried to get it to open up a few hours later and that's when I noticed that it's actually a peahen.

I didn't know if this was an auspicious or ominous sign so I went to look up what peacocks symbolize. Apparently it represents royalty and immortality among other things in different culture. Overall, I took that as a positive thing. I've actually been thinking about a name for a new company that I'm planning to form for a new venture that's going to be strictly my effort and this gives me a few ideas. C'mon, a bird symbolizing immortality, as in always in never go out of business is pretty cool.

My name is in our family business's title and every time I meet a new client I gotta explain the story of how my dad couldn't come think of a good name while he was filing the paperwork. One thought I had was to use our last name but I am concerned about the marketability and confusion it might come up b/c, well, it's not the easiest last name to spell or pronounce. I just feel it's a little unprofessional. So far the best I've come up with is maybe somehow related to Expeditus, the patron saint of merchants, navigators, expeditious solutions and against procrastination.

My Tweet

2009-06-25T13:30:00.002-05:00

I'll be trading today and tomorrow for the Russell rebalance. Pool construction has started at my house and it woke me up @ 7:30am this morning. Sadly there's no snooze button on these machines. I'll be working out of the office even if I'm not trading.

I'm still not fully sold on this whole Twitter thing. I don't like it. It feels like there are some elements or narcissism going on here that you feel somehow what you are doing is so important that everybody must know about it. Little did you know that it's totally trivial. And what's the deal w/ following celebrities and what they (or their assistants/publicists) write about. As if their lives are really that much more interesting. Go out and live your own adventures and get into trouble or do something LENGENDARY. Except for the very few people that I follow the rest is just extra noise to me.

I tried tweeting a little bit about the trades I'm getting in this morning and it's... distracting. It's not really real time, I don't have the time to put in my stop or profit target that much, so I doubt anybody will actually find it useful. I might spot some really nice trends and I'll comment on that but overall I think it's a little silly and waste of my energy.

If anybody's interested there's a site call stocktwits that a lot of people comment on there through out the day. It's really noisy and I pretty much just tune it out unless there's really nothing going on during the day. I need to find the ones that are actually worthwhile following on there.

My Spinning Plates

2009-06-10T10:00:00.002-05:00

Haven't been updating lately. Been pretty busy. I'm actually feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. I constantly feel a tightness in my lung, not in a way where I'm in pain or anything wrong with me physically. It's probably just that I'm constantly thinking about the business and trading. Not to say that I've never had to worry about money, but I've never felt monetary pressure like this before. Plus we're building a pool right now, which estimate is about $70k that will most likely end up in the 6 figure area in my opinion.

I really should be doing a better job at managing this, after having gone through Dale Carnegie training and all that. In fact, I was so out of whack and not myself I called up JT for lunch. I kind of wanted someone that have no idea what I do and just chat for a bit. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm going through. The best analogy I can come up with was the circus act you see where they spinning many plates on a stick. Under the optimal condition, everything would be spinning and you just have to occasionally walk over to a plate and give it a little extra spin. Right now if feels like as if all of my plates are wobbling and about to come crashing down.

Trading hasn't been that well either. The volume is pitiful. On top of that I think I'm probably trying to make up for lost time and trading much bigger for the hours that I'm actually trading. It's just really hard to focus, at least for me, to take yourself away from the market for a while and then expect to jump back in and be completely in tune and able to read what the market is telling you. I've adjusted to trading a lot less and much smaller position size and it's gotten better.

I tend to have these little Mik Matusow-esque blow-ups. If I'm trading that entire day, I usually just do what I do and be up maybe a thousand dollars at the end of the day, give and take a few hundred. But from time to time, seems like prior to the close I'd jump ahead of the volume and might get whipped out or take a loser on a big size and just lose my mind from that point on where I feel like I need to make that money back and revenge trade or just not thinking clearly at all and getting into trades w/out clear rational reasoning and risk/reward behind it.

Expensive lesson... I really just need to leave all the baggage at the door if I'm going in to trade and stick to my trading style. We hear about some of the people that swings really big size here and in reality it's probably just a small minority of the traders and totally not representative of how people trade here. It's funny that when I feel the need to make money or when I'm trading to MAKE money that's exactly when I don't do well... I know it almost feels illogical but when I'm put myself in the position where I'm just looking for my set ups and not caring if I make money or not that's when I'm seeing the market well. That's when I actually make money. This echoes a little bit of what Mark Douglas writes about in his book I think.

I'm going to Dallas tomorrow to meet one of our customers. They represent about 20% of our sales revenue. I need to review some sales stuff and prepare questions and stuff for the meeting tomorrow.

My Omelet

2009-06-07T18:58:00.007-05:00

The trip to Seattle was awesome. I ate so much. Thanks to all the walking I did around the UW campus and Discovery Park I think I only gained a few lbs. Prior to the trip I think I spent around 6-9 hrs on Yelp and different websites to research food places and I'm really glad it paid off. There are a lot of different specialty food shops around Pike Market for cheese and dessert stuff. If anybody wants recommendations feel free to drop me a line.

The main event for the heavy weight bout was me vs. the 12-egg omelet. Beth's Cafe serves four different kinds of omelet: veggie, American, bacon, and the southwestern exposure omelet. They also serve a 6-egg variety of their omelets. Let me just tell anyone that's brave/stupid enough to try the omelet, DO NOT get the southwestern exposure omelet. This happens to be the one Adam Richman ordered on the show Man v. Food as well, but that's not why I ordered it. I saw that it had chili and salsa and I thought the spiciness would help my appetite, but I totally did not consider the fact that chili has BEANS in it, which makes it extra filling.

I gotta say, I had my doubts going in whether I could actually finish this. I know I could eat, but I'm no competitve eater. My friends weren't really helpful either and filling me w/ negative thoughts. When they finally bring this monstrocity out on a f-ing PIZZA PAN, I didn't even know where to start eating.

My friend and I actually talked strategy a little bit on our bus ride over to Aurora Village. Laugh all you want about how much of a dork we are, but it really helped. We debated a little bit whether to eat it really fast or pace myself. The omelet comes with some toast and hash so we decided that I should finish the toast and hash first since I don't like it as much. Well, the hash is buried underneath the omelet so I decided to change strategy and just mix everything all together.

I inhaled the four pieces of toast and cut my omelet into 4th's. I blew through the first half great, no problem at all. Then the grease from the hash, plus the sour cream and all the beans just slowly to trigger my gag reflex. Each bite was becoming more and more difficult to swallow. I mixed the remaining omelet and has together and then divide them down into 4th's again. And I think I did this one more time when I find it hard to slide the food down my throat again. Somehow the last fourth really wasn't all that bad... I guess I just hit a wall.

You know, when I watched the show I was wondering why Adam quit like a little girl with only maybe 3 or 4 bites left and maybe the producers had something to do with him throwing in the towel. I know now what kind of pain he was in. I mean, damn... that was some serious work. All that chewing and at one point I had to try to trick myself and think happy thoughts. But hey, I finished it, he didn't. Jason > omelet > Adam Richman.

My Day at Home

2009-05-19T23:07:00.006-05:00

Didn't trade at all today. Woke up and my throat feels extremely dry and coarse plus a little tightness in my chest. I stayed home and talk with my dad about the deal we're working on with a potential partner in Memphis. Another good chunk of time setting up some communication stuff for my parents and our wireless network. I wish technology would just work the way they're designed. It's quite frustrating at times. It feels like these technology that's suppose to make our lives easier end up creating more hassles. And what do we do? Create something else to deal w/ that new hassle which ends up complicating things even more.

Last week was actually a pretty eventful week. I got to see Rent here in Austin w/ Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal reprising their roles as Mark and Roger. Earlier that week I also went with my dad to Memphis to visit somebody we're thinking about entering into a partnership w/ and start negotiating some contracts.

Rent is definitely one of my top favorite musicals. Sure, some people might not agree with the subjects involved like homosexuality and drug usage but I think the emotional aspect of the relationships between the character is just beautiful and the music component is exactly what I expect out of a musical. It inspired other pop culture and spoofs (Ref: Lease the Musical in Team America: World Police) instead of having musicals "inspired" by other pop culture items lately like the Shrek and Dr. Seuss musical.

I remember during intermission when I saw it in NYC, this family was sitting near me and the dad was explaining to his two boys about the play. The boys looked no more than what... 12-yrs-old? I'm sure their young mind were pretty confused about why the two men or two women are kissing on stage.

I did a lot of prep work with my dad on who's going to say what so we're on the same page in front of the counter party. We talked a lot about the new project on the drive up to Memphis... it's about 10-11 hrs I think. I really think we should've taken a flight. I got to eat at Corky's as I wished. I knew it was right down the street from our meeting location. When we got there we actually got to meet the owner Don and his son. Turns out the guy we were meeting with went to school with Don when they were young in Memphis.

Corky's is really good, man! If anybody is ever in Memphis I highly recommend their tender juicy pulled pork. I tried the ribs as well. Memphis barbecue focuses on pork and dry rub while in Texas where I am it's more about beef and the sauce. I can appreciate all the spices they put into the pork, I think I just prefer the pulled pork more.

There's quite a few points to the deal and I won't bore you with that much details. We basically have another product that we have a patent on we have been trying to sell for a couple of years unsuccessfully due to lack of contacts and channels. The partner we're in talks with actually marketed the Chip Clip and couple other products. From our conversation I could tell that they were trying to sell us more on the idea of partnering up w/ them plus we have the patent. Sure, we could try to market it ourselves but it'll probably take longer and we won't sell as much. Their initial proposal was 50-50 profit split which I didn't like. I kind of feel them out to see if they'd go for something like a more commission based structure and it was obvious from their responses that was out of the question. At the end of the meeting to recap all the points my father sort of very casually and quickly agreed to the 50-50 point which I had asked him to not to agree on so easily. At the very least, save that for further discussion or even if he's ok w/ that act somewhat reluctant in order to set up leverage for other minor points in the negotiation.

That's basically what we talked about yesterday. I got on his case a little bit about leaving money on the table... but whatever, ultimately it's his decision. I still have some calculation and projections to run. If nothing else, it should boost our bottom a bit and gain valuable experience and contacts.

My Flight...

2009-05-18T02:07:00.002-05:00

Oh... and I just found out that Meiko is playing in Seattle @ The Crocodile the same day I leave. I leave in the afternoon and she doesn't play until at night. Too bad I can't change my flights by just snapping my fingers. If I had known though I definitely would've planned around it. I have to say though, my crush for Meiko has waned quite a bit. Maybe it'll get back up there when she put out a second album. She also does the vocal for the last track of The Crystal Method's latest album called "Falling Hard," which I think is pretty cool.

My Emerald City

2009-05-17T18:52:00.004-05:00

I'm heading to Seattle this coming weekend for Memorial Day. I'm really excited! Seattle is one of the few cool cities I've never been to before. My parents went with my sister a few years ago I think... I think I had to work so I didn't go w/ them. Honestly, nothing against my folks, but they're pretty boring.

God knows how many hours I've spent on Yelp looking at different restaurants and what not; probably somewhere in the 6-8 hours ballpark. I'm going w/my friend Craig and we're staying downtown close to Pike Market. I have a feeling that by the time we depart Seattle there's going to be a food shortage.

We're going to a Mariners game, and I'm going to be taking on the 12-egg omelet challenge @ Beth's cafe. I also kind of want to explore the UW area, or U-District I guess is what the local calls it. Check out Discovery Park and the Ballard/Fremont neighborhood and their Sunday markets. I want to try abalone somewhere. I don't think I'll be doing the whole museum thing that much this trip or even bother with the Space Needle. I have a lot of restaurants and little dessert or snack shops planned out but I'll report about the ones I actually went to when I get back. I'm already hitting the gym extra hard this week in preparation for all the eating coming up.

This 12-egg omelet... it doesn't look that big, but I'm kind of scared. Pray for me that I defeat this culinary beast!

My New Shop

2009-05-08T10:16:00.003-05:00

I'm set up and ready to go @ Assent now. I've been away too long and I was getting itchy fingers, plus I wanted to trade after the stress test result... although I figure that it might just turn out to be a big non-event, that all this window dressing has already been priced in. Oh well, I want to at least take care of this before heading to Memphis next week w/ my dad to discuss a partnership contract.

There are some areas it's just the same as Kershner and some areas w/ pretty dramatic differences. It took me over the span of like two days to get up to speed where I'm comfortable w/ everything. It really could've been accomplished in a morning or afternoon but Assent only has one tech guy w/ multiple duties. Plus there are other new people starting (some ex-KTG traders) so he really couldn't spend too much time or attention with me.

Once I'm proficient with the new system I'll write a comparison between the two shop for the benefit of the readers. I'm not sure if this will burn any major bridges back at KTG. I hope it won't. And again, I hope this is only part-time and temporary anyway.

My Rumor Mill

2009-05-05T15:53:00.002-05:00

Man, I was getting text messages last week the very next day I left my position about me setting up shop at our competitor, Assent. The truth is, I have filed for some paperwork but I have not put a deposit down and funded my account just because I still wasn't sure how much trading I'll be doing and I couldn't quite go through with the decision to switch. I do have some guilt as if I'm betraying the team if I do switch. It feels as if I stabbed my brother in the back.

Andy had proposed a new structure to the guys on the older commission plan to increase their commission rate, an added infrastructure fee, and I think lower split? I don't remember that part. It didn't really involve me since I was on TAC plan so I didn't pay attention to the great details. At least within the discussion in my team the move didn't make too much sense. The purpose was so the company can have a higher margin but chances are we'll lose a few of the top traders that are getting the higher split, which would negate the savings/margin the company would get from the move.

Sure enough, that very same week two very major traders, one that's definitely in the top 3 P/L wise and the other is probably somewhere in the top 10 but has many HP traders under him, left the company. From my understanding, Andy made an announcement late last week to switch back to the old compensation plan.

I'm not going to doubt Andy. I believe that entrepreneurs and artists do see the world a little differently. He probably sees something with the whole China move. We knew we weren't going to be able to trade A shares but the plan is to have access to Japan and Hong Kong. I know at least for me I was getting tired of having more than half of my profits go to fund this project and the number of employees we have working in the back offices. It was one thing if we were seeing promising results but I can't even plot VWAP on my charts or overlay multiple stocks on one chart to compare price % movement. Sometimes if I have an order sitting out for a position I'm in but my stop gets triggered before that all of my special programmed keys would get fried, to which they have yet to be able to find a solution for and it'll cost me some serious money sometimes.

I know some of the employees in different departments and a good handful of them provide some real value. I love the pit guys and the quant team, but there's a ton of people, especially the new hires that I have no idea what they do and I know we're the ones funding their paycheck and 401(k). It just didn't sit very well with me the longer I think about it

There are many reasons why I left and the higher payout at Assent is only one of the factors (and it's not the main one despite what the rumor is saying). If I was going to be trading part-time, I knew I didn't want to take such a small slice of the pie.

My Outrage

2009-05-05T03:33:00.002-05:00

So I'm up, can't really sleep... I'm operating on Asia time more these days. I was flipping through the TV and I saw back to back infomercials that just makes me sick. The first was for Investools and the second was for Optionetics. I think what was interesting enough for me to blog about was that this occupied back to back 30-minute slots on ABC from 2:00am to 3:00am.

I knew these ads have always been out there. Honestly, I don't know what to say to you if you truly believe that you can pay $2,000 or $3,000 and they'll tell you everything you need to know to trade equities or options successful in a 2-day 2-hour seminar or some variation of that format. You're just a little too gullible or maybe your mom didn't raise you right. You gotta take everything they say in the ad w/ some salt right? That was my first thought.

Second thought: interesting they would pitch these ads at this time! Does this signal the American people's appetite for risk? My impression is that you tend to see these ads during bull markets, when the market is white hot. Who could blame them? We have been in a pretty bullish run here. Now the big question is: is this a contrarian indicator? You probably have noticed the more and more frequent ads for gold like Cash 4 Gold. For crying out loud they ran one during the SUPER BOWL! I consider these things to be contrarian indicators. Gold was very bullish during that brief time frame, yes. But after it made a "sort of" double top late February where it didn't break the previous high made last March and started making lower highs you knew the gig was up.

There was another case and this one had to deal w/ real estate. Yup, you've seen the ads about how to make money from foreclosure and what not. Well, I thought it was a little ridiculous when a company took ads out on THE RADIO. I thought we'd find, if nothing else, at least a temporary bottom in housing.

So, does this mean that stocks are overbought? Maybe a little. I've been out of the game a little... more research is needed on this.

Final thought: I was disgusted at these ads, especially the 2nd one on options. The main reason was that they played up so much the leverage factor in options, like how a stock going in your direction can make you 5 times the earning while taking on only limited risk. This is true, I won't debate that. My belief is that most novice had no idea the true risk they're taking on or even what to do if their options get exercised (even though percentage wise most options positions are closed out before expiration). Anybody that tells me he can teach somebody in 2 or 4 hours how to trade confidently and profitably is a liar. And yes, I will tell him that straight to his face. Right after I kick him in the nads. Leveraging was the exact reason how we not just shot ourselves in the foot but in the face or whatever vital organs you deem fit in this analogy. And now you're encouraging individual investors to go out and leverage the hell out of this. Hey, take out yet another mortgage if necessary right?

This is just dumber than the kid you will have with your cousin from Oklahoma.

My Departure

2009-04-30T22:25:00.003-05:00

I left my position on Monday. Got in after lunch and traded for a little bit. Up a few hundred bucks and basically decided right then that was that, final answer. Made the announcement to the team and handed in my key card. I've been going back and forth for the greater part of April even long before I made my previous post. It didn't quite hit me until the moment I took the keycard out of my wallet that this really is it. The point of no return.

There are so many factors at play here and maybe I'm making things more complicated than they are but I'll try to address them here, including some of the comments from the previous post.

Did I want to walk away from trading and Kershner? No. God forbid that somebody actually loves what they do for a living and the people they work with. It's exactly because of that complicated the decision process for me I think. There's this book by Malcolm Gladwell that is on my reading list (I'm reading Malcolm's Blink right now) called Outliers: The Story of Success, where he uses examples like Bill Gates and at one point I know he said that before becoming an expert you need to put in like 10,000 hours of practice or work. If you do the math, there are 6.5 trading hours a day, not counting pre and post-market action and 250 trading days to a year, 10,000 hours is the equivalent of 6.15 years. I still got a ways to go. I've made my decision based on current situation, current facts with the opportunity potential. It's not that I'm obligated to help out mom and pop. I could've chosen to be like my sister and do my own thing.

The main reason is the fact that my parents have entrusted in me to take the family business to the next level. We have a patent on one of our products and that's helped us tremendously for quite a few years now. Right now just seems like a good transition point and critical for us to position ourselves for years to come. I suppose it's because of the economy but there are quite a few changes in personnel in our clients and my dad feels this is a good time to introduce me to the new blood. We also wanted to solidify our relationships before the patent expires... not for close to another decade I think. Meanwhile when we still have this competitive advantage we want to grow into other markets like in Europe. A family friend works for the government and has been stationed outside of the country like in South America and currently he is in Saudi I believe. We're planning to do Christmas in the middle east this year and I'm sure we'll try to gain some contacts and pre-approach while we're there as well.

To me, this is exciting. I've been working for my dad in some capacity since I was probably 5 or 6 years old. There's no child labor law in Taiwan when we were living there, heh. From just sweeping the floor to being on call for the night shift; from menial repetitive jobs on the assembly line to reviewing contracts and handling accounts receivable/payable I've seem and involved in every process of the business. There are some greater details that my parents need to bring me up to speed on before they fully let go the reins but I envision us doing 2 or 3 times the business we've been doing.

There are certain facts my parents purposely withheld from my sister and me as we were growing up. They never wanted us to know how poorly or well we were doing as a family. God bless them for that. I know at least on two difference occasions we had to move b/c of rent issues that I was not even aware of until I was in college. I think they thought we might have self-esteem issues if we knew how poorly we were doing early on and lose our work ethics if we found out how much money we were actually making. I'll be honest with you, I still don't know exactly what our yearly revenue and profit numbers are like. I only have an idea or ballpark figure. Even if I do obviously I wouldn't be disclosing it here. They don't want me to think that I'm set for life and that the biz would just be here for me when I graduate and they'll just hand it over to me. They've even gone as far as to discourage me the idea of working full time helping my dad. But now everybody in the family believe that I'm the best person to take it to where we want to go.

I appreciation the time people actually takes to read what's on my mind. My impression is that people range from having no idea about trading/Kershner to 10+ years of trading experience or actually works @ Kershner right now. There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes that even us normal traders like me don't know about. I've been blessed that my coach is on Trader Council and would share with us information that might not be as readily available on the floor, but nothing that's classified. All that is another post at another time. I think mainly you continue to read this because you don't fully understand. Basically situations changed quite a bit with me and at Kershner from two years ago when I joined the firm.

Bottom line: the market is going to stay open and the opportunities and timing with the family business would not come again. I do have to take into account that the people who left comments on the previous post is somebody that just started at Kershner and somebody that didn't get a position. I still do very much love trading and I don't want to influence anybody's decision or pursuit of their passion just b/c of my situation. There's only 24 hours in a day and something's gotta give.

My Big Decision

2009-04-25T06:42:00.003-05:00

I'm indecisive. I have grown to accept that about me. As my sister, who reads into astrology probably more than she should, explains to me that it's all part of the territory w/ Libras. Just like a scale, we like to weigh the both sides thoroughly before reaching a conclusion. You'd think that would be a problem as a trader who has to make split second decisions all the time. Through my life experience though, it seems that I only have problems with decisions that affect me for more than 24 hrs. I have no problems picking out what to wear in the morning. If it looks bad I'm wearing something different anyway the next day. However, I've moved into the new house for almost 6 months and I still have tons of pictures and paintings that I have not hung up yet.

Many times people ask me what my career or life plans are and I usually say something about how moving from Taiwan to a podunk town in Kansas and eventually to Austin really has taught me that life never turns out quite how you plan it. I actually won a few competitions talking about this experience in Toastmasters, in which I also threw in a little line from Forrest Gump. You know, the one about chocolates. I'll also say that I know a decision has to be made at some point down the line whether I want to blaze my own trail or I want to take over for my dad. Being the type A or overachiever that I am I know I will want to try to do both, but life has taught me that something will have to take a backseat. I know at some point I want to go back to school for my MBA and what I study or where I want to go to school depends on this decision as well. At the moment I'm perfectly happy being a trader, just learning as much as I can about trading and keep on improving everyday. Funny that I probably said that just two weeks ago while chatting w/ an HP.

I believe that time has come.

With my dad out of the country and tax deadline approaching I had to devote a lot more time to the family business and I got a taste of what it would be like if I try to do both jobs. Maybe I've moved my own time table up but I figure the decision has gotta be made at some point. Plus there are a few transitions at some of our clients as well. The CEO of one of our clients passed away recently and a buyer has retired. I think my dad sees this as a good time to start hanging over the torch as well. We have a few products we want to bring on line and is working with another company in Memphis to enter into a partnership in the U.S. and we also want to sell in Europe. Maybe he think I'll do a better job or he's just too damn tired but he wants me to take the lead on this.

There are certain things I would do differently or how things should be done by the way we were taught in the business school. There are a few things my dad could be doing better when it comes to his taxes and honestly I don't think we really need our accountant except on a more consultative or audit role.

I believe there will be a time where I can trade full/part time and run the business effectively, although I know it'll take a lot more time and concentration. For the short run though I don't see that happening. We could be very busy all the way through August and then there's a big trade show that we go to every fall around the end of October/start of November and busy again through the end of the year. At the time being, I don't mind taking a little break from trading... especially with the volume being so pitiful.

The first question I had to answer for myself was that if I had to pick, which one would be first: the family business or trading? And I chose the family business, which leads to the troubling part for me. Do I trade at all? If I'm only trading part-time, is Kershner still the right place for me? Trading won't be a priority for me anymore and I'll be taking a cut of a pie that's gonna be significantly smaller if I'm not trading full-time. If I don't trade at Kershner, where would I go? Use my TD Ameritrade account? Go to Assent? What about the relationships I've formed during my tenure? I know it's just me, but I tend to put more value on relationships than most people. It's not simply just a business decision or I have to do what's best for me. It's never been that simple for me. Could I just pack up and leave everything behind to jump ship over to our competitor? That doesn't seem right to me after all the time and effort people have put into me and knowing that I won't get that team environment over at Assent.

I don't know. I'm close to the point where I can be a coach and I know Murphy would back me in a second. It would be a completely different scenario if I already had a few guys under me. It's not that I'm second guessing myself; it's just hard that I actually do like my job and the people I work with. At the moment, nothing is for certain yet... but I'm definitely leaning towards one way.

My Last Name

2009-04-13T03:45:00.004-05:00

Ok, there's a lot of outrage right now about this following clip in the Asian-American community and I have to say that some of it is a little unjustified. From what I gather from the video and the longer version, Rep. Betty Brown is attempting to come up with a Bill, or solution, to problems that arises when someone's ID doesn't match with the name on the voter registration. I get that. I really do. It's also a shame to be denied your right to vote just b/c of some inconsistencies in paperwork. For ages my last name was spelled S-H-A-W instead of H-S-I-A-O while we were living in Kansas. Quite honestly, people didn't want to take the effort to learn how to pronounce it and have you correct them a few times before they actually get it. Quite honestly, I didn't like people butchering my name... you make it sound worse than finger nails on chalkboard. For those of you that cared enough to learn and remembered or even go to the extreme to know my first AND last Chinese name like my friend Andy in Arizona, God bless you.

For the record, if you drop the silent H in front of my last name, it's pronounced exactly how it's spelled. A friend of mine with the last name Liao once complained that he had the most difficult last name in the world b/c Americans are not used to seeing three vowels in a row... yeah, I think adding a silent H tops that. I joke that it's b/c Americans watch too much Wheel of Fortune all the time. I joke but there's some truth behind it about how our linguistic mind is structured.

While I was at UT I did meet someone with my last name except his family Americanized it to the Shaw version that I mentioned. At one time in my life I did contemplate doing that as well. It would make my life and practically everybody's life easier. But I didn't. B/c my last name is part of my identity. Yeah, people have trouble pronouncing it but it's me. It's my family's name. My heritage. It's as unique as the birthmark on my elbow or my huge horse size calves that sets me apart from other people.

Back to the video... would it be easier to just adopt a different name? Maybe. Kind of like how Smyth transformed into Smith? Yeah. Would it be easier just to drop that silent H in my last name? Sure. What bugs me and the only part about this that angers me is the thought (or the lack thereof) behind it. For one, it's one thing if it's just my buddy and I drinking and joking about this name change but you're talking about legislation. A law. As in, do this or some of you civil liberties will be taken away just like going to jail. On top of that, Rep. Betty Brown doesn't strike me as someone that is "worldly." By "worldly" I mean she is a senile lady who should be at Luby's for the early bird specials, playing bingo and have her license revoked by the DMV on the account that she's so damn old. In about the 1:30 or 1:40 mark in the video you hear her asking about elections in China.... um yeah, there's no elections in China. Seriously, think before you speak. Think before you propose a ridiculous bill like this.

The root of the issue for me is this: Why should it be made easier for YOU? Why don't you take the effort to learn someone's name and have the government agencies correspond to make sure everything's consistent? God forbid that it should take a little bit of effort from your part. If not ignorant, it certainly is a very selfish thought.

I leave you with this: consider the scenario if it was flipped around, that there are too many Williams, Smiths, and Browns running around where it's becoming confusing and hard to identify who's who. What would you say?

My Bad Start

2009-04-08T01:54:00.004-05:00

April and Q2 is off to a bad start. I'm letting a lot of things slip and sizing inappropriately and not listening to my stops. That's really all there is to it. I'm going to trade probably 200 share lots for a while until I get my head screwed back on right. It sucks that I gave back so much of my March profits but after having that kind of month gives me confidence that I can dig myself out again. I'm trying not to think about monetized goals and the only expectation is to make good trades as in getting and getting out as I planned.

Our team is doing this thing where one person has to do a presentation a week and this week was my turn. I did it on Trading in the Zone, which I read last August. It's pretty cool to go back and review some of the stuff. Also, judging by the comments I get the feeling that it was the author Mark Douglas that's been writing them. I dunno, just all this talk about expectations and the language or writing style that was used reminds me a lot of the book. Hey, like I said, if someone out there wants to help me become a better trader I am all for it.

I do have to give myself credit and pat myself on the back more often. I've come a long way and is much better than a year before. I'd say that I need to love myself more but I'm up to three times a day as it is (no, that's not true. I just couldn't help myself to make a joke that's all).

Gavin DeGraw concert on Wednesday night! I'm taking Cancer Girl to the show since this is the only show in the foreseeable future playing at The Parish that I think she'd like. Not gonna lie man, there are some cool stuff happening this month. White Denim plays on the 17th and the finals for the B-Boy competition will be on the 26th.

My Training, Part III

2009-04-04T04:15:00.000-05:00

I'm separating this segment of the training out into yet another section since it was getting a little long. Brett just had a new book published on becoming your own trading coach. We got a Reader's Digest version I'm sure since the title of the books said "101 Lessons." Get it here! I know we already have at least 3 copies or so floating around the trading floor.

Five Best Practices for Self-Coaching

Break Trading Down into Components - such as idea generation, execution (how much heat you take on before the trade goes your way), and managing the trade. Think of it as a process
Evaluate Performance w/ Metrics - like holding time for winning trades vs losing trades
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses - profit by time of day and trade smaller during less profitable time
Set Realistic Goals for Development - Set yourself up for success and have goals for each day that's achievable. You want to have non-monetary and controllable goals. Expose yourself as a success and increase your well-being. Ask yourself: what did I do right yesterday that I can continue today and what didn't I do well. Everyday is a learning experience. Think of yourself as a learning machine.

Using Brief Therapy Techniques (short term techniques to change your thoughts)

Change by doing
Targeted change
Corrective experiences
Rehearsal as key - until it becomes a part of you

#1: Diffuse Triggers Through Exposure

Deconditioning emotional triggers - how to stay relaxed
Creating hierarchies
Using imaginal and in-vivo exposure
Conducting intensive rehearsals - Slow down and control your breathing. Practice outside of trading hours at first. Imagine a worst case scenario as you're practicing. It'll desensitize you, mentally rehearse until you can do so

#2: Shifting States

Taking your emotional temperature
Activating complementary states
Activating non-emotional states
Using biofeedback for emotional training - such as vigorous exercise when you are feeling risk averse and focus your attention and control breathing for the opposite

#3: Cognitive Restructuring

Identify negative thought patterns
Externalize the self-talk - imagine someone else saying this to you. We think it but we don't like to hear it from other people, which leads you to...
Challenge the self-talk
Rehears new self-talk

#4: Solution Focus

Finding exceptions to problem patterns
Identifying triggers and facilitative factors that aid exceptions
Creating models of desired behavior
Anchoring models to distinctive states

Training as the Best Therapy

Becoming more rule-governed
Building capacity to perform "in the zone"
Skill and talent won't get you anywhere if you can't access them

My Training, Part II

2009-04-03T02:54:00.004-05:00

Lots and lots to think and write about. Gotta finish Brett's notes, conversation w/ Lopez, and I talked to Andy a little bit, meanwhile these comments on the previous training post is igniting a whole series of thought chains that I just couldn't handle anymore. I don't know who it is but if there are people out there that want to help me become a better trader I'm all for it. For all I know it could be our CEO or Brett making the comments. I played a lot of volleyball this week and I'm trying to let these conversations sit and simmer a bit but not to a point where I forget what they mean. Here's the rest of my notes from Brett.

Trading is a performance activity, much like sports, performing arts like dance. You have to find your niche, in other words a cross section of talent, skills and opportunities
Build on your success and strengths. So many traders overlook their strengths instead they just try to correct their weaknesses. Once you have that, leverage it, scale it, trade more different stocks and more shares. You want to turn best trading into best practices and best strengths into habit patterns.
Find your unique strengths. Brett told us a story about his blind cat Molly who was about to learn and navigate around a new environment after just about a day or two. Everybody has got something going for them.

Characteristics of Successful Trader

High Conscientiousness: High discipline, responsible. They think about their day, think about their trading and think of trading as a craft.
Low Neuroticism: Have a low tendency toward negativism. Blood literally flow out a certain part of your brain and you become in the "wrong mind."
High Openness: Likes new experience, which correlate with risk taking. It's even better when you can take on lots of risk conscientiously.
Problem-Focused Coping: When something goes wrong are you focused on the emotion or the problem. Brett mentioned about someone thinking of a losing trade as paying for information and testing out the market, which I thought was a really interesting way of looking at things b/c that's kind of like poker where sometimes you pay or call even though you know you're probably wrong to help you make more money in future hands.

Characteristics of Successful Trading Firms

Sticking to Knitting
Promote Teamwork
Distribute Expertise
Trader Support
Hiring Expertise

Common Trading Problems

Performance Anxiety - more concerned about the outcome than the process, which leads to poor decision making. It makes traders more risk averse to where they miss a trade or take too small of a size. You can't trade to not lose!
Impulsivity - becoming frustrated, driven by anger and become reactive instead of grounded
Failure to Adapt - either in trend or volatility. You have to continue to find new patterns but be aware that they change.

Undercontrolled vs. Overcontrolled Trading

Most problems are control problems
Impulsivity: the fear of missing moves and need for action. You have to think is your job to trade or to make money?
Trader as ADHD: loss of focus and rule governance
Hesitation: fear of sustaining loss, need for safety. Trader becomes anxious, self-focused attention and negative spiral. You need to focus on the MARKET instead!

Poor Trading Patterns Are State Dependent

Behavior is patterned
Patterns are associated w/ particular states of mind - most coaching won't work b/c you're not in the same state of mind any more. You need to coach while you're trading; work on performing while you're in performance
States are evoked by triggers - the key is to figure out what riggers you and coach yourself to break the cycle and not get triggered, either during breaks or right b4 or after

Common Triggers

Anxiety
Guilt/Self Recrimination - I should have _____
Boredom - it's easier to lose money than not trade
Fatigue - we tend to over interpret things
Anger/Frustration
Physical Stimuli

The Importance of Well-Being

Concentration
Motivation
Performance
Over time, not enough positive emotion can be just as damaging as too much negative
You can have a lot of distress but still a good trader if you're extracting lots of positive out of the job
Contentment is a big area for most people
It's not just about minimizing stress but maximize well-being as well

My Shirt

2009-04-02T04:36:00.003-05:00

During SXSW I came across something really cool. At least in my opinion... I had to have it.

Apparently it's call a T-Qualizer. Like the equalizer you see on your stereo, except it's on a t-shirt! I'm over my printed/graphic/humor t-shirt phase, but this just blows my mind. Way better than the drum t-shirt I posted about from last Christmas

My End of the Month

2009-03-31T19:49:00.002-05:00

I didn't size correctly today. Pratically doubled most of my trades today and get in over my head. A losing day. Haven't had one in a while. Nothing too major or damaging. Will learn from this.

My brain feels very full right now. The same way my stomach feels after eating three Don Juan tacos. It's almost uncomfortable. I've been talking to so many different traders and reading different stuff. Have to digest all this and put this down on the blog soon. Lots of good stuff though. Expect good posts coming soon.

My Training

2009-03-30T03:02:00.004-05:00

Getting up early on Saturday morning sucks. Even though now that I've programmed myself to wake up early I still like to sleep in on Saturdays for an extra few hours. This Saturday was different though because we were having someone coming in to do some training for our office. I don't know exactly when I started following Brett 's blog, maybe about a year ago or whenever he was a guest on Horowitz' podcast. I was really drawn to his perspective and what he was writing about trading from a psychological standpoint and the different technical indicators he used. Having read a lot of material on the human mind while I was doing sales I was pretty excited about his presentation and meeting him.

I took 7 pages of notes... yeah, I think I'll break up into sections. There were some really good stuff. I wish we did this more often. I'll start on what we talked about in our group break out sessions.

On being extremely profitable:

There are no extremely profitable as opposed to the consistently profitable. The extremely profitable takes on excessive risk and when they go into a slump they become extremely unemployed.
The best traders study and work on themselves, even when they're on top of their games.
Video tape, review and prepare for the market each day.
How much time you spend in front of the screen internalizing and focus on the market is going to make a difference in the long run.
You have to be constantly learning from others, always changing, improving
There's a difference between people who work hard to trade for a living and those who trade to not have to work hard for a living (he lost me a little bit here... I think I was too busy writing)

On expanding trading:

Expand into different markets, different time frames and different set ups.
When expanding, play it with the smallest size you can
Eventually you'll always have a couple of things working for you
In general, learn how to trade one time frame larger (I think I have stretched a lot more into the 4-10 min. time frame so I'd be looking for set ups that I can hold into the 10-20 min. time frame)

On greatest mistakes traders make:

Not knowing what they're good at
Not sizing up enough when they're seeing the market well
Size up to a point where you won't ruin your whole day if you are wrong or whole week.
In general, size up 10% more at a time
20 to 1 max to min ratio depending on when you know you are right or not sure at all

On dealing with slumps:

Trade small size
You won't know at first if it's just temporary but at some point you have to reign in your size
Identify what's a normal slump so you won't get super worried when it happens
Do not get more aggressive
Focus on your core competency

I had to ask a side question. I've read a lot of William James material about the link between our thoughts and our action. In sales they've always told us that action cures fear, but I tend to think if you're having problems it's easier to cure the mind first. I've asked other people this question before: Should we try to act our way into healthy thinking or think our way into healthy acting. In other words, should we trade our way into healthy thinking again when we're in a slump or think our way into healthy trading. Eric from the Quant Team falls under the healthy thinking then acting camp, Steenbarger said that both sides are valid but it seems that he's in the camp of trade your way into healthy thinking, as in trade very small to regain your confidence and then once you're back, increase your size back up. I suppose this is no different from major league baseball players going back down to AAA or AA league to build themselves back up.

We talked a little bit more about having a plan compared to being stubborn when the plan is not working. Brett believes that when you're formulating a plan, you mentally rehearse for the different scenarios. I guess in a sense he was saying there's no way to be stubborn if you've already accounted for every scenario and what you are going to do in each case.

When the topic about the change in the market in 2009, Brett told us that the best thing we can do is to share what's working. You have to constantly process new information, whether it's through reading or listening and talking. Whichever method works for you best is what you should do.

In closing, Brett encouraged us to focus on the process and the money will eventually come. Learn to process your thinking in a different way and learn to love your losing trades b/c they will teach you something either about yourself, the market or the set up you're trading. You are who you are as a person and the trader side will reflect that as well. Learn to accept it, appreciate it, and love it because you can change it. I wish someone had told me this when I was like 16-years-old. I don't think I became fully comfortable in my skin until I was like 21 or 22.

My Conversations

2009-03-27T02:46:00.002-05:00

My conversation with David didn't turn out to be as beneficial as I had hoped but there were still some good stuff there. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about trade ideas or set ups because I personally felt that at this point the focus is on some of the more intangibles and mental aspect of the game. I wanted to figure out how to try to get to that next level, but I didn't hear anything new really. That is not a negative really, b/c it just reinforces some of the previous conversations I've had.

David's advice was to try new things, especially options and on small enough of a scale where I wouldn't care if I was wrong b/c the damage would be very minimal. I wanted to short SKF when it was way up high but we couldn't locate shares, I wish I had thought about selling some calls or buying a few puts. Next time, next time. One other thing I had to ask him was about what he was doing pre-market, which I didn't get the time to probe too much and I don't want to disclose his secret to everybody but it has to do with industry wide overall... how's that?

Next thing to work on is to scale my trading, meaning that either trade more shares of what works for me or in a different way or different industries. This led me to set up a lot more other link transformers for different stocks in the same industries that trade together or at least some what correlated. Another thing is to find a strategy that would work consistently enough for auto trading.

I've also try to take the initiative to talk to some of the newer traders, especially in our pod. Personally I felt like nobody to talk to when I first started. Only when I'm feeling extremely frustrated I'd go talk to Lawrence or Nick. In coaching them, I'm coaching myself a little bit as well. Because if I'm telling them to maintain their discipline or be patient and follow their trading rules then I better follow through on my end and be an example to them.

One of the rookies in particular... I won't name names but I'm beginning to be a little be frustrated b/c it's not necessarily he won't listen, it's just that I feel there are things he has convinced himself to be the truth when it's not really the case. I actually spent some time chatting with him after we played volleyball on Tuesday. Just so you know, by the time we were done it was about 11:40pm already and by the time I got into my car it was like 12:40am. He was incredibily frustrated and was just kind of beaten up. I'd say probably the first 40, 45 minutes or so was just me listening, relating to him. Finally it got to a point he was just whining way too much and I had to switch gears on him and tell him to pick up his skirt and go to work. Yeah, I actually did say that. Mr. Nice Guy approach wasn't getting through to him so I had to try something a little different. I told him that he knows how to trade and how to make money but he was letting little things stand in his way.

I think I'd be a good coach... I really do. I just need to get my production level up there and consistently to be nominated. A day at a time, a day at a time. I'm shooting to get there by end of May or the end of summer.

My Double Up

2009-03-27T02:24:00.004-05:00

Trading's been going... well, surprisingly well actually. My confidence was completely shot to hell after February. I spent a good part of this month just dialing my shares back, being more selective and just slowing build my confidence back up. I've stopped playing EWZ and SPY as much, that probably helps a lot, too. I've been trading the REITs and agriculture stocks a lot like POT, AGU, MON, MOS, IPI. The thicker ones at least, with lots of liquidity. I just don't like the thinner ones like CF and BG. Much harder to judge my outs and having a reliable read, at least for me. My coach noticed that, too. We've been doing this peer evaluation feedback thing and funny that he had me this week. He said that he's been impressed with the past three weeks and obviously it's good to hear your boss impressed your performance.

Today just made it a little bit sweeter. I practically doubled my month in just one day. And it's not that I've been trading really shitty and not making any money lately. You know I don't like to talk about actual dollar values so let's just leave it at that. Funny thing is, I could've done better still. I know I'm just being hard on myself as usual and not giving myself enough credit. Just a few minor execution improvement like if I continue to put out additional orders or manage my position better could sweeten this situation even further. I'll have to keep that in mind the next time this situation happens. I have to focus on not getting cocky or complacent or even thinking that I don't deserve this money and let my discipline slip. Three more trading days left in March. Things could get much better still.

This rally we've had lately... even I'm starting to be a believer but technically we're still in a lower low down trend. Monday could be very interesting and I want to say that things are shaping up to be exactly how I imagined. Something's coming in April. I don't want to stick my neck out too far just yet, but once I see indications then I'll disclose and probably put on a large position.

I've been doing a lot of talking lately, both to senior traders and rookies. I took David out to lunch and we didn't get too deep but it was still beneficial. David's one of the brothers of our CEO so it was a pretty cool experience. I'm talking to another top trader soon and I'd like to keep it going. It's kind of like in sales and I just get them to refer me to somebody else and I think eventually I'll get to even some of the guys that I feel are unapproachable. I'll put my conversations in separate posts b/c I feel my posts can be a little too long sometimes =)

Brett Steenbarger is coming to our office this Saturday. Looking forward to it and getting lots of useful stuff from him. He has a lot of insight into the psychology of trading and set of indicators he looks at. I'm going to have to miss the crawfish boil for Texas Exes Young Alumni as well as the one for Texas Blazers. Oh well, too bad. Job is more important.

My Four Days and Four Nights

2009-03-22T21:53:00.009-05:00

SXSW is over. I'm a little sad but I'm happy with how this year has gone. I met this one girl Jessica through playing volleyball and we decided to be South By buddies (plus her cousin) and turned out we had a lot of similar taste in music. I am happy with the fact that I stayed disciplined and made good trades at work even though I did oversleep. Also happy to report that I did manage to not touch alcohol for the duration of SXSW and even St. Patty's Day on top of that. I don't know how I did it but concentrating on getting good pictures really helped take my mind off of it. To recap...

Yay for:

Lisa Hannigan - "The female Damien Rice" quickly emerges as in a tag line b/c of their previous working relationship, although I'm sure her talent will earn its own merit and people will start dropping the comparison to Damien soon. She also has probably the cutest smile in the world. Her cheeks perk up when she smiles, make me just want to run up and pinch them. I heard she temporarily relocated to Austin, maybe I can be her new BFF.

Nikon 70-200mm lens - I've been shopping for a new lens for a while now. Since this one's full retail price is about $2,100 I decided to rent it for a week instead for less than $200. For the most part I'm pretty impressed. I wouldn't mind it being even faster and possibly lighter but I've gotten some amazing photos this week because of it. I remember years ago wondering how people get these amazing concert photos for Rolling Stone and then actually attempting it and now finally have the confidence to say that I can produce photos almost just as good.

The Parish - We've been fortunate to be blessed with some amazing acts and having NPR host their day party there again. Meiko, Sara Bareilles, K'naan, Ra Ra Riot, Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, Okkervil River, Blitzen Trapper and having Jason Hammel from Mates of State to DJ for us in between sets. Although part of me felt that I hung out at the Parish way too much and wasted money on the wristband.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears - I'm disappointed in myself that I haven't heard them live until this week. I was gonna go to the new CD release party back in January I think but I didn't make it. They currently have dethroned Spoon as my favorite musical act from Austin.

Will Sheff and Okkervil River - You're talented. The ladies love you. I wish I could grow a beard like yours. 'Nuff said.

iPod Touch - I got a new iPod. My old one has served me bravely for many many years. It's happened before where it just freezes or the battery completely shuts down on me only to come back alive a few days later, perfectly fine as if nothing had happened. For this reason I started calling my iPod Meredith after Grey's Anatomy b/c of her revival after drowning in one of the seasons. My friend Brett works at Apple so he got me a 15% discount. This is just perfect for all the new music I discovered this week!

Losing 5 lbs - Most of that is probably water weight; some of it has to do w/ hauling the camera and walking all over town.

Meiko - I heart Meiko. I think we've established that. I actually ran into her randomly right before the alley behind Logan's. She was wearing a bright yellow green dress. Part of me wanted to follow her and see where she went and I'm glad Sensible Jason talked Stalker Jason out of it. She was probably just going somewhere to grab a bite to eat or her hotel room. I wish I had worn my Lacoste polo in the exact same color, then it definitely would be a sign. She worn white for her performance that night at The Parish though... that was a sign that I should propose I think. Sara Bareilles - I got a picture with her! She's gotten even more beautiful since last year if that's even humanly possible.

St. Vincent - aka Annie Clark. I got to meet her at the NPR party. I even shook her hand which is the equivalent of shaking magic since she does some amazing things with an guitar in her hands. She was in The Polyphonic Spree and toured with Sufjan Stevens and I'm pretty sure she can kick my ass in Guitar Hero.

Chrissie from New Orleans - randomly lady that I started talking to whiling listening to M. Ward's acoustic set at Halcyon. I basically was just using some Dale Carnegie principles and let her talk about herself. This lady was from New Orleans and she used to be a sommelier and her husband owns Hastings Entertainment (kind of like B&N?) and has over 10,000 vinyl records. She said when they moved they had dolly after dolly full of records. We talked about New Orleans, oysters, Top Chef, Mother's Restaurant, music, wine and just about everything. She gave me two mixed CD's and her contacts. I think I pretty much just won the "Free CDs 4 Life" prize.

Boo for:

Kanye West - I just don't care about him anymore. My patience is wearing thin for him and his ego. They had to send out multiple text messages through different sources to try to get people to come to the performance. I think some of the organizers got nervous when they didn't see a long line out the tent. If you want me to go further I'll even say that Kanye doesn't produce any real music. He obviously can't sing. He samples other people's music. When was the last time he produced anything original on his own? If you want me to go there I will, but I won't.

Perez Hilton - I'll give props to Perez for his taste in music especially with Meiko and thanks for stopping by the establishment but he's not even a real celebrity ok? Stop worshipping this guy like he's God. Real celebrities come to SXSW as real music fans and keep a low profile like Drew Barrymore (ran into her at The Parish Saturday night).

Not getting a press pass for the camera - I never had any real problems with it other than at Stubb's but this year almost every place was giving me crap about not having a tag for my camera. Maybe that's the downside of the big lens that it draws more attention. Even at The Parish the volunteers would give me problems so I basically just go in through the backdoor after that.

SXSW Volunteers - Look, I appreciate probably 98% of the volunteers. People that gave up their spring breaks or time off work to make this event possible. There are rules, many of them not popular rules, that you have to enforce in order to make SXSW go smoothly. Things change however when you go on a total power trip and thinking you're the Almighty Himself. Seriously, turn it down a notch. Why don't you go home and worry about your algebra homework more than if I have a shoelace dangling over the line?

Rachel Ray - How could you poop on Rachel Ray?! I know, right? Just watch a few episodes of Bourdain's show and you'll understand what I'm talking about. Hey great line up again this year Rachel (The Hold Steady, Ra Ra Riot, Bob Schneider, Semi-Precious Weapons) and heck of a party but that pussy husband of yours John Cusimano might want to get his balls reattached and not pimp you to promote his band. The Cringe? Funny that's exactly what I get when I hear their music. You have a lot of ways to go until the Nickelback level but still... you're pretty bad. At the very least, not good. It's a shame that you're sharing the spotlight with all these other awesome bands and not to mention your darling wife. Ok, so I guess this is really more pooping on John than Rachel.

Speaking of Nickelback... Jessica and I have determined that they're quite possibly the worst band ever and the worst export out of Canada so if you ever have to argue against NAFTA in your debate class, bring this up.
yes, I know music has nothing to do w/ NAFTA but have a sense of humor, ok?

My Next Step

2009-03-16T17:13:00.005-05:00

Solid day. pre commission I'm over the top performer line. After commission I'm just under. Traded one them high dollar stocks today and pretty happy with the result. I had a plan and I stuck with it. Got away with some revenge trading though so I'll have to watch that since I'm pressing a little bit to be in the green to free me up the rest of the week.

I had a chat with Jane, who is now the head of our trading floor after the close about getting to that next level. I was sharing with her that at this point, I don't think the key for improvement is not in the knowledge, now it's some of the more intangibles. In Dale Carnegie training we were talking about there's knowledge, through practice it translate into your attitude and further cement into skill and you start over again. When it comes down to it, knowledge only accounts for 15% of someone's success.

I know there are no silver bullet, no magic formula that somebody is going to say to me and immediately the next day I'm just going to get it and make a lot more money. At the same time, if there's anything that I can do to speed up that process I'd like to know. I kind of expected what Jane is going to say and it was going to be an answer that I didn't like, which is that it takes time. The best thing I can do now is to congratulate myself on how far I've come, build on that confidence. It's very much a mental game from here on out.

I'm starting to talk to some more HP's now, but I want to spend some more time thinking about questions and mental or psychological aspects to discuss with them.

My Thoughts Exactly

2009-03-16T08:15:00.003-05:00

I saw this on the Paste Magazine website today and I couldn't agree more.

Eight Survival Tips for Your First SXSW

Do not wear new shoes.
And if you do, do not walk all the way across town just to buy a tablecloth.

Pedicabs and the 'Dillos are your friends.
Comfortable footwear notwithstanding, sometimes you just need to catch a lift. The Dillo trollies on Fifth and Sixth streets a little bumpy, but free and convenient. And Pedicab rides are every bit as terrifying as they seem, but are still a fun (and environmentally-friendly) taxi-alternative that go all over the city.

or better yet, plan your schedule to where you don't need to use them and spend valuable time traveling across town to South Congress or Manor Road.

Don't get too attached to your plans.
They will probably change.

Bands tend to run behind schedule as the day goes on

Accept that there's always something you're missing.
You can spend every hour thinking about the six bands you're not seeing, or you can just enjoy the one in front of you.

My biggest problem. Cloning is the solution.

Plan ahead, especially when the words "buzz band" are involved.
If you really want to see an act, avoid the pain of being stuck out on the curb while the sounds of the next big thing wafts at you from inside. Get there early, even if it might mean taking in a band you're not so keen on (and you never know-- they could be the next next big thing).

Don't be afraid to go it alone.
Last year, I dumped two Brit-hop loving compatriots at Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip and headed up by myself to see Bon Iver at Mohawk. It was hard to feel lonely while being elbowed in the ribs by no less than ten awed strangers at once.

Drink when it's free...
Many day parties have free liquor, and that'll let you clear your head by the wee small hours—just in time to get a good night's sleep and wake up feeling fine.

...but pace yourself.
You probably can't have all the beer and all the bands and all the tacos that you want to have without barfing and/or passing out. Take it easy at first, get your business done, then save the serious craziness for the last day and just zonk out on the flight home.

Go to Hut's.
If you are hungover, or if you've ever been hungover, or if there is a chance you may ever be hungover at any point in your life, consumption of these hamburgers is simply imperative.

... eh, Hut's is too far from the heart of the action. Go to Stubb's and grab a BBQ sandwich instead.

My Diminishing Return

2009-03-16T08:05:00.002-05:00

My schedule was a little out of wack on Sunday and since I didn't really eat dinner when I woke up this morning/night I was craving some Don Juan breakfast taco from Juan in a Million. If any of you watches The Travel Channel, there's a new show called Man v. Food where this guy, Adam, goes around the country and take on the eating challenges of each city. When he came to Austin, he went to Juan in a Million and tried to break the record of 7 Don Juan's by eating 8.

The most I've ever done was 2, after New Years Eve this year where I was slightly hung over and hungry as hell. Each taco is 3/4 of a pound. Basically I was full as can be when there are about 3 or 4 bites left of the 2nd taco. This morning, instead of driving straight to work I took a 20 minute detour and I bought FOUR DON JUANS to go. I don't know exactly what I was expecting but I somehow managed to get three of them down. That's 2 1/4 pound of food! I didn't enjoy that 3rd one at all. It started to trigger my gag reflex as I was working on the last half of the third taco.

My Groove

2009-03-15T23:52:00.003-05:00

Solid week. Flirted with that top performer mark the first three days. Starting to get my groove back. I tried to stay away from some of the ETFs for the most part and really dialed down my share size. Honestly though I should've done better. I've called the rally on Monday and Tuesday but I've only made about half or a third of what I normally would make just because my confidence is a little lower recently that I took less size and took profit a little quicker as well. Got burned on Thursday because of a stop triggered but didn't get me out of my entire position... and I kind of stared at it for maybe 20 seconds too long instead of just listening to my stop. Overall, good week. Well within expectation..... but I should've done better. I'm going to start dipping my toes in some of the high dollar stocks and start spending time talking to other traders on what's working for them. I feel like I'm plateauing and I don't like it.

I'm expecting a slow week this week. After that run up we'll probably just bounce around this price level for a while unless significant news comes out. Most of the traders are probably out on vacation with their kids, too. I'll see how the action is on Monday and Tuesday and decide if I'm going to take the rest of the week off for SXSW music. Friday is option expiration though so... we'll see. It's always fun and a little bit stressful playing with the schedule during SXSW since I'm anal about scheduling. There are so many bands I'd like to see playing at the same time sometimes and then you'd have to consider which one of them play at a different time on another day and maybe you can see them then but if that conflicts again...... yikes.

Other than my girl Meiko, I really want to see The Decemberists, Bishop Allen, The Von Bondies, Peter Bjorn and John, K'Naan, Ra Ra Riot, The Hold Steady. And is this officially "retro" now? I can't quite believe my eyes when I see Fastball, Third Eye Blind and Marcy Playground playing at SXSW. Some of my high school faves. Hells yeah!

My Certainty

2009-03-07T18:55:00.003-06:00

Nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Is there suppose to be correlation or causal relationship between the two though?

There's a "trader tax" proposed by this ~~public servant~~ douche bag from Oregon, Peter Defazio has proposed a 0.25% trading tax on all transaction in stocks, options, and futures. It may not sound like a lot, but consider this: most online brokers transaction fees are about $7, meaning that any stocks you purchase for your retirement account, IRA, etc over $2800 you are essentially doubling your transaction fees. For us prop traders most of us our commission fees are so low it's negligible and this "minuscule" trader tax is really quite significant. Does that mean we can't make money now? Of course not. The point is that this is absolutely unnecessary, ill-advised, and ill-intentioned.

Here's a clip of his interview on Fox Busniess. Normally I despise Fox News with a passion, especially that angry leprechaun that we somehow call a journalist Bill O'Reily but I have to say that Fox Business is actually pretty impressive, especially the HD version. It would make me a very happy person if we can get Bloomberg news or Fox Business in the office instead of CNBC.

The intent of this is to have the tax fund the $700 billion TARP. Have Wall Street pay for Wall Street I guess you can say. Hmm... interesting, because I am not Wall Street. Your grandmother buying for her retirement is not Wall Street. We are not the Big Boys with our big swinging dicks getting in way over our heads. There's so much cash just sitting on the sideline right now and this tax is definitely not going to inspire confidence for people to get in. Or any taxes for that matter. Most people knew about Obama's intention to raise taxes, especially on the rich but I have to say even I'm surprised that he's doing this so quickly. Chalk me up under the Keynesian camp but I believe that in a time or economic crisis the government should increase spending and cut taxes. Yeah, it sucks the deficit is large right now but now is not the time to raise taxes. A few years down the line when the market has recovered, then you do it, but of course don't do it too close to re-election time right?

As far as I know this bill is just sitting in the committee stage and not going anywhere but with all the anti-Wall Street sentiment right now I wouldn't be surprised if it builds momentum. If it does get passed though, it's gonna drive another coffin into the market. One of the biggest thing us traders do is we provide liquidity in situations of a huge influx of orders and if it's gone you're going to see larger, more erratic drops in the market. This is kind of like when they put out a ban on short selling last year, thinking that it's going to help but it's gonna totally backfire with a vengeance.

What really got me fuming was that this Defaggio guy says that this would not hurt a lot of his constituents. Ok, none of the people that voted for him is invested in securities? When the market drops another leg none of them will get hurt right? They all have their cash stashed under a huge Olympics size pool mattress?? You want to make something that can be resolved in 2-3 years time into 10-20 years then go right ahead. I really just don't like smug bastards that talk out of their asses and have to have a script to look at when he's being interviewed. Obviously he doesn't have all the facts yet.

Speaking of death... my mom is in Taiwan right now and she went to get a follow up because she suspected last year that she has breast cancer. I feel kind of bad that I'm not reacting stronger to this but maybe it's just because after years of Dale Carnegie training I don't really get stressed out over things. It could very well be nothing. Even if it is something it is very treatable if it's caught early. My grandmother also had a stroke who is now rehabbing. Sigh... I might have to take some time off and fly back for a week or two.

My Lucky Break

2009-03-03T23:11:00.000-06:00

Caught a lucky break in one of the Citigroup (C) preferred shares today and getting on the top performer list. Well deserved though in my opinion. I think with the way Citigroup and Bank of America (BAC) is trading lately there are a lot of opportunities in the preferred shares. BAC has the BAC class preferreds and also the BML class. Might also consider a few other financials with a lot of different preferred shares. My main concern is liquidity since preferreds don't have as much volume. I need to go in early in the morning and set up my playbook for this.

I considered breaking one of my rules and go play video games and I was glad I didn't b/c I increased my profits by another 50% for the day. I should've flipped to more bullish towards the close but I didn't and took a small hit but it's ok.

Still would like to see myself refine my entries more on the ultra short ETFs; maybe adding liquidity more instead and having a clearer defined entry, profit & loss target out.

Blockbuster (BBI) announced they were considering filing for bankruptcy. Immediately I wanted to make a play on Netflix (NFLX). I got long and then after it broke support towards the close I shorted it. NFLX has such a high short interest and if people were to cover it would run it up so much. I think it's somewhere in the high 60's percentage wise. I could've done better w/ the trade still though. Getting in earlier b/c of my conviction and holding on to the winners better by giving it a slightly larger and more reasonable room to work. Judging by the NFLX reaction towards the close I wanted to get long BBI but it has been halted for a while by that time.

My Recovery

2009-03-02T23:15:00.003-06:00

Flat day today. Missed the morning and a free u-quote. I still think I overtraded just a bit though but I was glad that I got my size more under control. I had people running my risk management halved my daily loss limit and I originally wanted to see if they can restrict my share size by certain stocks or ETFs but they couldn't so I had to take it upon myself to do that. I know I didn't want to get into more than 200 shares of any of the leveraged ETFs and no more than 800 shares of SPY and EWZ until I can get my head back on straight.

Overall, still a small victory today. I'm just trying to do the small things and build my confidence back up. Get a few base hits before I go back to my regular share size.

My Re-Focus

2009-03-02T03:16:00.004-06:00

In case you didn't notice, I haven't been writing about trading lately. As a matter of fact, I haven't been very motivated do anything trading related lately. January and February has been pretty terrible for me and mostly it's my fault. Yeah sure, the market was pretty boring for a long time. The only good news was the absence of bad news and the only bad news was there wasn't any good news, especially from Obama. I don't know if anybody felt this way but for the longest time we didn't hear anything concrete from the White House and when Geithner finally said something meaningful it was clear that this administration hasn't got any solutions too different from before or at least something to inspire some confidence in the people or the market. I hope the rest of these first 100 days are more exciting b/c I don't want to have canceled my trip to Germany for nothing.

Anyway, I was positive in January but far from my goals and after several silly rookie mistakes I'm clearly in the red for the month of Februray.

I had a really bad day last Monday so I took Tuesday off to clear my head b/c I was still so upset at myself Tuesday morning I was punching my mattress and swearing to try to get out some frustration. I had another bad day on Wednesday and I just decided to take the rest of the week off. I knew it was pointless to come in unless I can successfully put what has happened behind me and I was clearly too emotional. Both days I got in early at 7:30 and told myself to forget about the past and just focus on today; to be patient and pick my spots. Instead I continuously overtrade, take on bigger size than I should and goes on fucking tilt like in poker, making stupid and inexplicable decisions after decisions. Looking at some of the trades I took on I couldn't even tell you why I did what I did.

Simply put: I was sick of it. We were suppose to learn from our mistakes!! Yet here I was, sticking my hands back into the fire over and over again, getting burned each time. I struggled with the same problems last year around this time as well. Maybe we don't realy learn from our mistakes but we repeat them in a different fashion or magnitude. I've had bad days before and I've always bounced back nicely. That's just how I am; I'm a fighter. I sincerely believe life is less about what happens to you but more about how you respond. I surprised myself when I noticed how differently or poorly I was reacting this time around. I was simply beat up and defeated. I felt like my brain has been turned into mush and I have lost all will and consciousness to fight.

I'm really trying to think of it as nothing more than a little slump or bump in the road. Professional athletes go through it all the time. You don't get a base hit or sink a jump shot long enough you start to think that you'll never be able to do it again. I suppose you get a few lay ups going and slowly build back up that confidence and over time you'll be back on your game. I think writing about it helps. At least it'll get me to admit the stupid mistakes I made and eventually accept it and finally move on. Let's just say I've been spending the past 40 or so trading days in the desert battling my trading demons and now I am reborn to rise to a new height.

Something stood out to me during mass the other day, other than discipline, which I'm lacking at the moment, was the word re-focus. Obviously it was used in a spiritual context, but I clearly could use some re-focusing at work. Maybe the fact I haven't taken a vacation or some time just for myself has affected my psyche, but it's time to get my act back together. If I can trade w/ discipline maybe I'll take a day or two off to reward myself and go properly enjoy SXSW. I need to cleanse myself of my trading sins. I need to re-dedicate myself and take things more seriously, like pro athletes. Get in at 7:30 to catch up on news and other pre-game warm ups. 8:30 to 10:00am is 1st period and it's full speed ahead. 10:00 to 11:30am is 2nd period and you step off the pedal a bit and manage the game. 11:30am to noon is half time; go grab some lunch. noon to 1:30pm is 3rd period and you read your opponent and make adjustments as necessary. 1:30pm to the close at 3pm is the 4th period and you pick back up the intensity to finish strong. After the close you do some post-game evaluation and you prepare for the next game.

Volume and the VIX have picked up a bit. The first two weeks of March should make some good moves and then the traders will probably take their kids on spring break. Hopefully at least some of the them shares my thinking and decide to stay at their desks in case Obama does something meaningful.

It's crunch time for a lot of businesses and families out there to make ends meet in this economy and I need to have the same sense of urgency. The easy money is gone, u-quote doesn't happen as often now, plus so many funds out there have either blown up or they're sitting on the sideline in cash. It's just traders out there shooting each other in the back now. I've scout out my favorite spot and I'm just going to snipe them one by one without exposing my position.

I'm gonna bust out all kind of superstitious crap come morning. Lucky shirt, shoes, jeans, need to find my headband, eat breakfast, and just whatever else I can do to put myself in absolutely the most positive state of mind.

My Religion

2009-03-02T02:18:00.003-06:00

Lent started this week and I figured that if there ever is a perfect time to start going to church again this would be it. I went to a 6:30am mass since it was somewhat on the way to work, plus it's only a few blocks from Cancer Girl's place. I thought there would be a slim chance I'd run into her :P

I'm by no means a hardcore religious nut. You will definitely not hear me citing the scripture. In fact, I think the PC term to describe me is a "non-practicing Catholic." You can probably argue that the only reason my grandmother started going to church was b/c the churches give out rice and flour in Taiwan post WWII. My parents probably wouldn't drag us to mass every Sunday if other parents in the congregation didn't judge or sneer when we miss a Sunday. That was probably the biggest thing that bugged me about going to church: the fact that you are suppose to love each other yet here you have these soccer moms w/ their holier than thou attitude judging you and thinking she's so much better than you. I thought God is the only one that has the right to judge people? If you add the fact that there are masses done in Latin where I don't understand what's going on at all, 8am or earlier mass time, and how some masses break out into a song every five minutes and go for two hours you can see why I tend to have a negative attitude towards going to church every Sunday.

It's never been that I want to go to church; it's always I have to. It's always out of fear of negative punishment than positive reward.

However, lately and during my senior year in college where I almost committed suicide I began to find that mass has become the last place I can go and find some peace for my mind and be alone with my thoughts. And I like that. I don't have to think about my appointments or my to-do list and million other distractions going on in my head. The only other places I can do this at seems to be when I go running and when I'm at airports. I also find that as I get older sometimes I'm not strong enough to face whatever challenge was kicking my ass and somehow my faith got me through it.

I didn't really know what I would be giving up yet. I know I want it to be fasting of some kind and it's gotta be kind of difficult but still do-able where I would take it seriously and I want it to be something that would remind me of Christ. Giving up facebook doesn't remind me of Christ. I wish I could gain or do something instead of give up something. For what it's worth I decided to give up alcohol for 40 days. I'll definitely be tested when SXSW comes around.

My Top Chef

2009-02-26T16:47:00.005-06:00

***Spoiler alert. Do not read this if you have not watched the Top Chef Finale and want to find out who wins on your own***

Last night was the season finale for Top Chef 5. I really like the competition shows on Bravo, except for the ones about modeling and hairdos. I'll even watch Top Design and Step It up and Dance from time to time. The Millionaire Matchmaker w/ Patti Stanger is pretty entertaining as well. The hotter the hostess though, the more likely I'm to watch it. C'mon, Padma and Heidi? I don't think there's a straight guy out there that wouldn't mind spending a night with them. I'm sure the show producers had people like me in mind when they were brainstorming about the show since the target audience for Bravo is clearly women, and you can clearly see this by the products they try to sell during commercials (a little marketing lesson for ya).

I really wish Padma had not mentioned that the winner of the first elimination challenge had gone on and win the Top Chef title except for one year in the first episode. For those that don't know who she's referring to, Tre from season 3 was the winner of the first elimination challenge but he went home for doing a dessert just like so many other contestants before him. I think he made like a bread pudding or panna cotta. My original pick was Stefan but it was fairly obvious that his confidence was getting the best of him and he feels that judging by the season overall he should be Top Chef and didn't do his best in the finale. Maybe Richard from Season 4 had the same attitude but at least he knows and even admits on air that he "choked."

As entertaining and profitable it is for me, here are some lessons to be learned from Top Chef:

#1: Mama's Boys Don't Get Far. Yes, I do bet on the shows. Each episode I bet on who's going home and who wins the challenge. One of theory I have that's worked pretty consistently is that if you start talking about your mother during the interview clips, chances are you are going home. This season the first time Fabio talked about his mother I bet on him going home even though he is clearly the producers' favorite and they get a lot of soundbites from him. He was on the bottom but he didn't go home. The very next episode he talked about his grandmother and I bet on him going home again w/ the same result. Again for the third time he mentioned about his mother and I bet on him again and finally this time he was on the bottom and actually DID go home. My theory is that production knows this is the last episode the person is going to be on so they dig up some archive interview footage of the contestants talking about their inspiration for being on the show or just something slightly more emotional for the audience to remember them by. Anyway, if any of you ever end up on these shows, don't mention your mother unless you don't want to win. For all purposes you are an orphan. Grow up, be your own man and not a mama's boy.

#2: Know Thyself and Be Thyself. Speaking of be your own man, last night Carla didn't win b/c she didn't do her food. She has the classical French training background and her food to me has a very rustic and down to earth feeling. Very soulful and loving. Reminds you of grandma's place in a way. However, she let her sous chef Casey's (who's from Dallas and very good looking) suggestions dictate her menu too much. She usually doesn't do these modern, space age techniques like cooking with liquid nitrogen but last night she did a sous vide, which is cooking in a vacuum bag and it didn't turn out well. She also took Casey's suggestions to suffle the cheese instead putting it on tart as her original plan. The oven temperature was too high and the cheese curdled instead. It's cool that she's open-minded and listened to suggestions. I really would've preferred that she stuck to her guns and trust in herself and what got her this far. There's no point in trying to be something you are not just to say fit in or for any reason really. This is not high school. This is life. Be who you are and not what other people wants you to be.

#3: It's All About Love. With Carla's cooking, it reminded me of a quote from Serendipity that the Greeks didn't write obituaries but instead just ask "did he have passion?" Now, I don't know if this is really true or some sentimental line the writers fed in to the movie but I still love the quote. A life without love or passion is really not one worth living at all to me. If you don't love your job, your major, your significant other, then what are you doing?? Why choose to make yourself suffer? Go see your advisor and switch to what you want to study, even if it's Art History. Break up with the cheerleader and go out with the girl next door who digs the same music you do. I don't know what else you live for if it's not for love.

#4: Nobody Loves A Cocky Bastard. Well, at least we know the judges or the show producers don't. The only time I can remember the bad boy winning was Jeffrey Sebelia from season 3 of Project Runway. You're good, we know it. Most important of all, it'll show in your work. Let your work do the talking for you. Marcel from season 2 of Top Chef was really talented, but it was almost as if he was set up to be the antagonist, the bad guy to the eventual winner Ilan. Stefan was clearly a gifted chef but his confidence got to a point to where he think he's got it in the bag and hearing him talk about how he "deserves" to win Top Chef when Padma asked each of the contestants why they should win almost made me sick. Play nice and confidence comes from within, you exude it, not by talking a big game.

#5: What Have You Done for Me Lately. You can tell that Stefan felt that over the entire season he was the best chef, but if we're judging by the entire season, there's no point to having a season finale. It's just how life is really. Doesn't matter if you are a rock legend or a coach who's won bunch of championships, you're judged by your performance NOW! There are no excuses to producing a flop or continuously losing games. You are only as good as your last hit, so you better keep on rocking.

#6: NO DESSERTS. This really doesn't have any life philosophy behind it, but seriously dessert has been the downfall to so many contestants and sent them home or in Stefan's case, cost him the title. I just don't see unless you've practiced or have got that one killer recipe in the bag why you would ever attempt to do a dessert on Top Chef. This is really more of a corollary to #2. Even though most people would consider going from appetizer to heavier plates and finish w/ dessert to be a full meal but you had the option to not do it. He jus turned out a mediocre plate instead of using that opportunity to showcase his abilities more. You had Richard going home this season for a banana s'more, Alex for a creme brulee, and obviously Tre for his bread pudding that I mentioned earlier.

My SXSW

2009-02-15T00:30:00.004-06:00

SXSW has posted their schedule, as told to me by Meiko, Hotel Cafe is doing their showcase at The Parish again. Which means Greg Laswell, Jim Bianco and Cary Brothers will be back as well. It's really funny to me that on the SXSW website it lists a "special guest" for the 12:30am slot, but it says that it's a singer-songwriter from Eureka, CA... uh, I'm just gonna go ahead and guess that it's Sara Bareilles. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to do this deductive reasoning.

For Friday night, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is playing, along with Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears and Okkervil River, both from Austin! I wanted to go to Black Joe Lewis' CD release party but didn't make it last month. I'm really looking forward to this.

Saturday night it's all about Ra Ra Riot and The Rosebuds!! And yes, I do kind of have a crush on Alexandra Lawn from Ra Ra Riot as well.

My Love

2009-02-14T23:04:00.004-06:00

What is love? Love lifts us up where we belong. Love is the answer to most of the questions in my heart. All you need is love. Boy, The Beatles sure sound like they've got it all figured out but Paul himself got divorced, so what does that mean?

Maybe it doesn't mean anything.

And if Jack Johnson is right that love is the answer to most of the questions in my heart, I think I've been looking for answers in all the wrong places. Instead of answers I seem to have just more and more questions.

"Only unfilled love can be romantic"
--- Vicky Cristina Barcelona

This hit me like a lightning bolt.

Bat Girl, as my best friend Jack had hear about me talk about on so many occasions, is that unfilled love. And it is unfilled not because great obstacles standing before us like a family feud or me going off to war, it was simply because I preferred it that way. The story goes, that I met this girl my sophomore year in an independent study class. Brown hair hazel eyes and a smile to rival the Mona Lisa. We love the same music and share the same interests. If you ask me for what I look for in a girl I would list you bunch of attributes but really I'd be describing her. Later I found out she was dating one of my friends and I soon got involved with someone else so time passed until our paths crossed again in senior year, this time single. Well, I was single.

As we hang out more and more, it became clear to me that she's always dating somebody. It was also clear that she's got some serious daddy issues. Almost every other guy she introduce me to was somebody she used to go out with or date. She didn't want me. Anybody would do, really. She just wanted a warm body to keep her from being bored. I don't even think she believes in the concept of love. I've seen her w/ other guys that she's with at the time and it was just as believable as Jennifer Lopez's acting. Oh, and the friend of mine that she was dating when I first met her? She cheated on him.

Rather than doing what I should I almost prefer keep my image of her as it is, at least the good part, instead of finding out for myself first hand I was afraid of what she would turn out to be. But until I find somebody just like her, which is unlikely unless she has a clone, I keep romanticizing. I've gone out w/ other people and all I wish was that I was w/ her. My short stint w/ Vodka Girl (she was Russian... and you guessed it, she's a drinker) ended in a complete failure and fiery crash and I don't think I've yet to fully recover from that. Which brings me up to date, I don't even want to give her a nickname for the slim chance that this somehow finds its way to her computer screen. For whatever reason, maybe b/c I'm socially programmed to be awkward when it comes to this stuff, or that I still have some healing to do from the scars Vodka Girl left, or my romanticism with Bat Girl, I'm already trying to find reasons why it won't work. She's too conservative. She doesn't share my interest in music. She's taller than me by two inches and there's no way girls like shorter guys, just look at how well Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise turned out. And most of all, she's nothing like Bat Girl.

Not very upbeat for Valentine's, I know. Sorry. Oh, in case you were wondering why I called her Bat Girl it's b/c of a certain mascot she was affiliated with and I don't want to disclosed too much more than that lest unwanted problems and drama is traced back to this post. It has before and it probably will again. I just repeat the same mistakes in different form and magnitude.

My "That's What She Said," Part II

2009-02-13T09:23:00.003-06:00

On Monday they had a guest on CNBC and I don't remember who the anchor was but that person asked the guest maybe 3 or 4 questions in a row w/out giving him time to digest or answer. So while he was internalizing the questions and coming up w/ a response he said "man, that's a lot to swallow." Seriously, I thought Christmas came early this year. I can't believe he just said that... that was too good.

That night I went to my bar at The Parish and after Meiko's set I went up to get a pictures w/ her and got to talk to her a little bit. She mentioned something about beer while she was playing and someone in the crowd yelled out Shiner since it's a local beer. Someone actually brought over a Shiner while I was talking to her and she goes "now I'm totally double fisting." I didn't even think about it, not even the fact that I'm in front of a semi-star, out of reflex I said "that's what she said." Fortunately she thought it was funny and said that I was good. Yeah, you hear that? Meiko thought I was funny!

She's gonna be back for SXSW w/ the Hotel Cafe showcase on Thursday. This is not out on the news yet. I got this straight from the source.

My Monday

2009-02-08T22:14:00.007-06:00

I've been waiting for this day for a while. It just so happen that a lot of things are happening on this day as well. Since I've decided to buy out a slice of ownership at The Parish I've been looking forward to this concert. Joshua Radin is going to play w/ Meiko and Jesse Harris. I don't even know how many times I've listened to Joshua's new album since it came out, probably more like 60. It's rare for me to be moved to tears by a song, and the last artist that was able to do that was Adele. If you know that I'm a Scrubs fan it's really not that surprising that I'm a fan of Joshua Radin as well. I like this album so much more... the last one is almost a little too depressing.

It just so happen tomorrow that I have to drive my parents to the airport in the morning and rush back to the office before market opens. I have an appointment to inspect my car at 4pm right after the close since I hit a pregnant lady and I have my Dale Carnegie sales class from 6 to 8:30pm. After that I got to rush downtown since I think Meiko is the opening act.

Funny story about Meiko and me, well... it's not really funny and it's not that big of a deal but I was at the Hotel Cafe Tour showcase last year for SXSW and she said she was a bit under the weather or whatever and her throat was hurting a little bit. She asked if anybody would buy her a shot. If I remember correctly she requested whiskey, Jack Daniel even, but my memory fails me right now. Well, I bought her one and just asked the crowd to send it up to the stage for her. A southern girl from Georgia who's a quarter Japanese, talented, and drinks Jack Daniel? I'll admit I was crushing on her so hard for about a month or ten. I wonder if I'll be able to get to meet her backstage. I wonder if she remembers the random act of kindness from a random person in the crowd.

My Musical

2009-02-07T23:46:00.005-06:00

Bass Concert Hall re-opened back in late January after closed down for renovation for about an year and a half and I've been dying to go check it out for myself. So far John Legend and Broken Social Scene played, even Ghostland Observatory made a guest appearance for the UT Ensemble.

During the short time that I lived in New York, I used to see almost a show every week. A good chunk of my paycheck went to rent, taxes, and then Broadway. Since most of the shows touring through Austin I have already seen, it left me with Legally Blonde and Mama Mia. Given the fact that I wasn't really big fan of either movies, I was quite conflicted. But since it gives me a chance to spend some quality time with Cancer Girl I decided to go.

When I say I wasn't a big fan of the movie is a nice way to put it. I hated it. It is everything I hate about L.A. in cinematic form. Every time it is on TV it triggers my gag reflects and makes me want to throw up. It is against everything I stand for as a man. Yeah, there's a self-confidence message in there, but it is almost as real and believable as those size 38DD breasts you see on the beach. As for Mama Mia? Well, I have not been able to sit through the first 30 minutes of it yet. It was one of the in-flight movies while I was flying to and back from Spain. On multiple occasions I would start watching it and quickly get very nauseated and let's just say it's because of the turbulence. I've never been that big of an ABBA fan anyway.

I'll admit, the musical is different. At least I didn't throw up or start bleeding from the nose. It was fun, I liked it but far from loving it. There, I said it. I refused to say anything positive about the show for the longest time. Once I stop judging it by what I believe what a musical should be I was at least able to accept it other than some lame excuse to make women and homosexuals withdraw money from their bank accounts. When I think of musical I think of Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Chicago, and the likes. Of course, lately there's been more a trend toward trivial pop culture. There's just no talent like Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim or Jonathan Laron anymore. I mean, c'mon... Seussical The Musical, The Wedding Singer, and of course now Legally Blonde? Even Spamalot, which I liked a lot was based on a Monty Python movie. Wicked was based on a novel that's a spin off from a classic. In both cases the musical component was lacking. The two biggest component of a musical is its story and its music. In this case, a double negative does not make it a positive for Legally Blonde.

There were some nice jokes in the show with brilliant setup and punch line combination. It's just sad that they were pretty much all gay, blonde, or fashion/shopping jokes and lacking a bit in originality and intelligence. Even if was fun the fact is we're watching bunch of under studies. If Laura Bell Bundy was playing Elle it would be a total different show. The lead for this tour was injured so we were watching the understudy of the understudy... basically it's like the third string quarterback trying to lead a mediocre team and let's face it, unless the tour director is Bill Belichick and the understudy is related to Tom Brady there's no way it can achieve greatness. At least Bundy played Glinda in Wicked and have the vocal chops. The girl that played Elle we saw was just too whiny, nasally and throaty. For a show about a blonde sorority girl, they totally let the men steal the show, like Emmett and the UPS Guy. Especially the UPS Guy.

I do have to compliment the staging though. First they had two vertical and one horizontal bars lit that would frame the stage. In different scene they would move the horizontal bar lower or one of the vertical bars in to shrink the frame. At first I thought there was some kind of wheel or pulley system but I later realized that they just had the two vertical behind the horizontal one to create the optical illusion that they were connected. Just subtle things like that adds a lot to the show. Like the fact for the song Ireland, the girl playing Paulette actually had on green shoes which you didn't realize before that blends in and accentuate w/ the rest of the set.

So there, it was entertaining and for $38 you get what you paid for, but I refuse to admit that I even remotely liked the show for that it's an insult to the magic of Broadway.

My 20 Minutes

2009-02-07T22:38:00.002-06:00

20 minutes. That's about the amount of time for me to blow up on Friday. It wasn't really that bad. I've lost more money than that before. It was, however, for the first time that I really didn't like my job. I took my headset off, threw them on the desk. Repeat the process for my SmartGlove. First the left hand, then the right hand. "I'm fucking going back to sleep." And that was that. I grabbed my coat and headed out the door. I didn't even take my messenger bag with me. My ring and watch were still sitting on the desk as well. I simply could not stand the place anymore and I was determined to remove myself from the environment that's been causing me much frustration.

I went home. Watched RocknRolla. Crawled into my bed and slept. Coincidentally when I woke up it was about 3:10pm EST. The day was pretty much over as far as I'm concerned.

At one point my dad did come see why I was home so early. "Did you forget something?" I thought about giving him the silent treatment but I just told him I had a bad day and didn't feel like sticking around the office. Funny enough, later on while I was having "lunch" my mom said something like "man, the market shot up today and just kept going up huh?" "Gee, no fucking shit, Mom." Well ok, I didn't say that... it did cross my mind but instead I just lethargically said that I'd rather not talk stocks today. She knows just how I know not to mention AIG around her. There are two stocks we don't talk about in our household: AIG and JSDA.

Like I said, it wasn't really that bad. Normally if I took a hit like that in the morning I'd just dial down my shares to like 200 shares and zone in for the rest of the day until I feel like my head is back in the ball game and I'll up my share sizes again. Usually I'd either at least make up half of my losses or break even. I consider myself resilient. I get knocked down but I'll always try to get back up. For some reason I didn't even bother on Friday. I was on the brink of not able to hold back my rage. Maybe I would rip my monitors off and throw them across the room. Take my keyboard and smash whoever come up to me in the head.

The job data came out that morning and shortly after the open I interpreted what I saw in the market as weakness and that the market was going to pretty much roll over and play dead. I loaded up the shares and well, got stopped out. Normally this would've been typical except I loaded up about 4 times my normal size and I basically lost my mind after that. My long position got stopped out as well and my next two shorts was the same result. I did reduce my share size but they were still pretty big consider my norm. Honestly, I was trading like a mad man.

To be more accurate, I lost my mind at the close the previous day, after I broke my rule of not playing Call of Duty during market hours. The two biggest problems with playing CoD during market hours is that 1) Missed opportunities and 2) Residual excessive aggression heading into the close.

Truthfully, what I was mad about wasn't that I lost money. I wasn't mad about getting stopped out. I wasn't mad about the ridiculous up move the market made despite the pitiful job numbers. The rationale was that w/ this horrible job data it'll urge the government to pass the stimulus package. Whatever. I'm just so sick off it. I was mad about myself. I was mad that I had broken my rule. I was mad about not sticking to my discipline. I was mad about being distracted having all these stuff going on in my head and going into the office w/ my head not screwed on right. I was mad that I had gone mad.

This is the same elementary mistake I made again and again before. I was eager to get to HP the same fashion I wanted to super. I was upset that I was not getting the result that I believe I should be seeing. Especially after our training session last week where after hearing the panel of HP's talk further cement my belief that I have what it takes to be an HP myself. If you had asked me the same questions the rookies were asking I would've answered almost word for word the exact same way. There's nothing more to do except to get over it, buckle down and claw my way back up.

I wanted to document the high and low of trading. Well, you're getting the low right now unfortunately.

My Talk Show

2009-02-06T19:15:00.004-06:00

CNBC has gotten ridiculously annoying lately. Right around 11am CST, the segment Power Lunch comes on and the anchors will start yakking about topic du jour, which lately is always about the stimulus package. I believe that journalism is about information. It's to inform the public. Give me the news. Give me what's important. Sure, the show is in a debate format, but let's at least have some intelligent people making some valid point. The person I can't stand the most is Dennis Kneale, whom I'm convince more and more each day is gay. All they're doing is squawking like bunch of chickens and not making any sense whatsoever. Look, if I want to watch or listen to meaningless argument I would've flipped over to The View ok?

Oh, and Mark Haines, who is on in the early morning and right after the bell, I believe is CNBC's version of Willard Scott from The Today Show. They're just getting... oh, what's a nice way of putting it... senile. Some of the stuff he says on air is just flat out ridiculous, silly, and makes absolutely no sense except maybe to the clown in his ear with a twisted sense of humor. By that I don't mean his producer but that I do believe he has a clown talking in his ears telling him what he thinks is funny. There's no other explanations. My god, I would be embarrassed to be his kid of grandkid.

Maria Bartiromo... her voice just kicks into this unpleasant high pitch sometimes. I want to guess she's Italian w/ that last name b/c I get images in my head of her screeching in an Italian market selling artichokes or anchovies.

Lastly, I'm sure I'm not the only one that feel this way b/c CNBC seems to have made changes to it but the TD Ameritrade ad they run usually about 2 minutes before the opening and closing bell has the audio clip of an actual bell ringing just like the one they use down on the floor. The first few days they ran that ad so many of us got spooked and almost sent out orders prematurely. I want to believe that either CNBC or TD Ameritrade received so many complaints they've decided to take the audio clip out.

In related news, while a colleague of mine was getting fed up w/ the Power Lunch bunch he said under his breath: "God, shut the hell up! You guys are so annoying. I'll give you a real stimulus package to get excited about." Of course, you already know what my response was ("that's what she said"). Oh, and this just happened today that DKS was running up and someone called out for news, to which the Pit responded: "oh, Dick's just got upgraded" and then someone over the headset made some lesbian or homo jokes... It was funny at the time; I can't recreate that moment for you through this medium.

My New Favorite Show

2009-01-31T01:11:00.012-06:00

A colleague of mine recently told me about this show on PBS called "Spain - On The Road Again." I have to say, I absolutely adore this show. The premise is basically Mario Batali, you know, the guy w/ the orange Crox, going on a road trip through Spain with Mark Bittman, a food writer for The New York Times, Gwyneth Paltrow and this Spainish actress I haven't heard of Claudia Bassols. I must say that normally I don't turn to PBS now that I don't watch Sesame Street, This Old House, or that dude that does the painting show but after a few episodes and I was immediately hooked. It's really funny, not in an intentional scripted way like on a sitcom where there's a platoon of writers working. They show a little bit of food, the sights and history of the places they go to, yet somehow in a balance like your favorite bottle of wine. The thing I can't stand about some of these travel shows is that the selling point of the show gets a little old after a while. Yeah, Andrew Zimmern, we know you're going to eat weird shit, and yeah Samantha Brown, we know you're going to talk about whatever fabulous hotel you're staying at that's out of most people's budget especially in this economy.

I am beginning to have more and more problems with Sam Brown... she's just getting annoying, a little too "white girl from Northeast", especially after watching the episode of Paris where she keeps pronouncing Arc de Triomph "trai-awnf" instead of "tree-awnf." Who cares about the $400/night hotel room you're staying in unless it is what defines the city? Maybe there is one that I'm not thinking of off the top of my mind right now but when was the last time you hear someone said that Hotel Bordeux is a must see in Paris (I don't know if there's really a Hotel Bordeux in Paris, I just made that up). She's got a new series now on China... I have a feeling I won't like it and I'll be incredibly offended.

Some other random thoughts:

Claudia Bassols is really quite beautiful. I have a mad crush on her right now. She's just turned 30 so it's not like age wise it's out of the question. I think she's even more beautiful than Penelope Cruz.
Who takes road trips in two Mercedes convertibles? When I think road trip I think like Honda Element or just something easy and comfy. I guess after all this is celebrities we're talking about. And it's so funny they always seem to be find a parking spot right in front of the restaurant or whatever destination they're going to. They never happens to me. Oh... the magic of television.
My gosh! Gwyneth Paltrow knows Spanish? I had no idea! Not only is she a great actress, taken after her mother Blythe Danner, you know, the mom from Meet the Parents, good looking, married to Chris Martin from Coldplay, whom I assume have made and will make more gorgeous babies, she's really quite well traveled and knows her stuff.

I really fell in love with Spain from my visit last year. Part of me secretly wish I could be reborn a Spainard. The food is just full of color and flavor. They have combined the influences of its neighboring countries and cultures flawlessily into another unique idenity (unlike Canada... there's a joke that say Canada could've had the British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but instead they got the American culture, French technology, and British cuisine). I want to take the time and visit more cities in Spain. I want to go to Bilboa, San Sebastian, Valencia and Madrid and have my own version of the Don Quijote adventure.

If any producers out there are interested, I'd happy to pitch the idea of doing a road trip show through the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and different regions of the U.S. That's at least maybe 6 seasons. All sponsored by Honda Element. Go ahead, whore it up. I don't care about product placement.

My New Year

2009-01-25T23:17:00.002-06:00

Happy Chinese New Year everybody! It's the Year of the Ox. Ox = Bull so giddy up market! 900 pt rally!!! Well.... I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. I've flipped to more bearish now judging by the action the past few days even though it seems pretty stupid to get short right now. If the market rally huge on something Obama does or positive sentiment from China you can be sure I'll be trying to fade it. I believe Obama was the better candidate compared to McCain but until I see him walk on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool or put on a cape and fly away I'm still going to look at him as just another human being.

BAC looks like it's been poisoned by all the toxic assets it swallowed up from Countrywide and Merrill. It could very well die... and I wouldn't be too surprised if it. Of course, Uncle Sam would not allow that to happen.

My Big Decision

2009-01-22T02:10:00.003-06:00

Two back to back very positive days thanks to Obama and I'm right back in the groove. The psyche is totally different now. Hopefully tomorrow stays the same b/c I'm going to be up for a while.

I find it funny that depending on how reference it, a monetary amount either sounds like a lot or a very little. It could totally due to the fact that I haven't had to buy a lot of things before. I would be the world's worst contestant on The Price is Right just FYI. For example, I had no idea that a washing machine or a dryer cost so much. At the moment I'm struggling with this opportunity that I came across to own a share of a bar. It's uh... let's just say 5 digits (again, I'm a little uncomfortable publishing absolute numbers out to the WWW). If you think about it, it's really not that much with a good solid month of trading. On the other hand it's no chump change, either.

The bar in discussion is The Parish down on 6th Street. I personally have visited the place on numerous occasions. There's a Cajun restaurant downstairs and I don't care for it. Now that I know the management is making changes to sell/re-do the restaurant portion I feel a lot more comfortable with the idea of putting my money there. I got a few financial statements and I'm going to do some Excel work later. Given that this is my first major investment I'm having some reservations. The worst case scenario is that I lose all of my investment... the slightly more likely and still not very favorable scenario is that I don't see a return on my money for a long while.

Now I'm a die hard music fan. The idea of owning a piece of one of my favorite Austin venues is fantastic. The ability to go to all the shows for free and get a 25% discount on my tab is flat out awesome, not to mention meeting the band. At the end of the day, it's still a business decision no matter how much I want to romanticize about it. If I want to get a return on my money by just going to free shows I'd have to go to about 1,000 shows (LOL!!). Say that if I go to two concerts a month, I'd break even in about 3 and a half years. Honestly, I don't even know where else to put my money as far as investing or retirement planning goes since it's not technically "earned" income by IRS' definition so we can't really do IRA or SEP. I want to say our real option is CD's and life insurance even though life insurance has a good chunk of fees.

I'm going to crunch some numbers and see if it's a viable business and what the P/L would look like after the some of the changes that's going to happen.

My Frustration

2009-01-15T21:21:00.000-06:00

January hasn't been that well so far trading wise. I've been taking bigger size which has worked out sometimes but occasionally I'll get hit for a loss on these big size and I guess I'd loose my head. Also, with bigger size I've pushed the price against myself sometimes when I need to get out. It definitely requires a little bit of fine tuning. Plus with the bigger size I'm not holding my winners as well. It might also be that they're not that good of a set up to begin with so I'm not getting much upside getting into a trade. This is all the same back when I was still a rookie, increasing share size say from 100 to 200, 200 to 400, and 400 to 800. From now on, take only a little bit more than I normally would for typical trades, maybe scale slightly. On the setups that I really like and if it's thick like a big cap or ETF where I wouldn't have too much problem getting out, go ahead and take couple thousand shares.

January is far from over though. I've got time to make up some ground. Obama takes office on the 20th and the 25th is Chinese New Year. We should begin to see some real actions then. I need to just forget about the past trading days, especially the bad ones and just focus on each day and break them down into each little segmenets. I think I should be just fine if I can do that for the rest of this month.

I started reading Liar's Poker. I don't know if it counts as a fiction because it is about Wall Street and banking back in the 80's and the author's account of his tenure there. So far I'm loving it. I finally found the lamp for my bed stand that I couldn't locate after the move so I've just reading a little bit of it each night before I go to sleep. I love the language Michael Lewis uses. It's casual, funny, yet it paints a vivid picture. There's a part where he talks about the traders in the firm that make a lot of money and the refer to them as Big Swinging Dicks (yeah, excuse the language but I'm just quoting the book) and he links them to elephant trunks. He calls the female version Big Swinging Dickettes. It might just be a guy think but I think that's hilarious. This books has the whole Boiler Room feel to it and I love Boiler Room. It's one of the few movies I actually own. Normally I don't buy DVDs and I don't watch movies twice. I only buy the DVD if I truly love the movie, that it speaks something about me or I just can't get sick of it. If they were playing one of the movies I own all day on a channel, I swear I wouldn't mind watching it over and over again for that entire day and quote all the lines in that movie.

***Oh, and I would love to become one of the BSD's at work. That would be lovely

It's been a relatively warm winter for me and I went out to run today. I don't like to run. It used to be that I would run only if the bus was about to leave the stop and I need to get on or that somebody is chasing me with a weapon. From time to time I would go for a jog around Town Lake (or Lady Bird Johnson Lake now... that name's too long). I went today and brought my Garmin Forerunner 305 with me. It tracks my lap time and my route along with other stuff. I haven't played with it that much yet but I believe you can also import your data onto your computer. My time wasn't too shabby. I did three miles and it was actually 10 minute less than the best time I can remember back in college (or I just remembered wrong). I know I could do better too b/c I slacked off and walked a lot of it even know I wasn't feeling that out of breath. I don't really have the endurance yet but hopefully I get someone to go w/ me next time and push me to go farther without stopping.

I'm also going to go shop for a bike this weekend. I've decided on a road bike. Maybe I'll get a mountain bike later if I feel it's necessary. I don't know what kind of shape I'm in really for climbing hills but it'd be cool if I can leave my house and then go down 360, head west on Bee Caves Road, up 620 and then back down 2222 to my house, or the reverse but I don't think I'd like to go up that big ass hill on 2222.

My 2009 Goals

2009-01-04T00:24:00.005-06:00

My mind has been active lately. I have a notepad or post-it note that I jot down ideas that are floating in my head or things that I need to do and every square millimeter of real estate has just been about filled up. I'm going to try to flush some of these stuff out and cleanse my brain.

The most important thing for me is my goals for 2009, both professionally and personally. I don't like making resolutions. They sound like promises you don't plan on keeping anyway. Quit smoking, lose weight, pay off credit card debt. I must say that we all could use more discipline in our lives. Instead, I'm just going to call these goals. Because goals don't imply that you can only make them at new years. Because goals can be big or small and they strive you do better, even just baby steps. Because goals are concrete and measurable.

Professionally:

Trading Profit: XXX,XXX. You'll have to forgive me if I'm not comfortable disclosing absolute dollar value here. I will say that it's 6 figures and I'm shooting for 20% increase from last year. I don't expect this year to be as volatile as the last but given how pitiful the first 8 months of the year was for me I think this is definitely achievable and a good stretch if I can put the discipline and skills I've learned from last year to practice.
Long Term and Options Profit: 20% of the the aforementioned amount. It's a little harder for me to set a dollar amount here because I'm still just a baby growing in these two arenas. I feel like my focus is still in the equities side first. People have always talked about the 80-20 rule, which means that for a business, about 80% of your profit comes from just 20% of your customers. There are other interpretations as well. I've heard someone saying that you can increase your result 80% by just focusing on 20% of your effort.
Write three tickers that I actively use. I have some ideas brewing using VWAP, moving averages, accumulation/distribution, pair trades but I have to think more about the set up and the probability of it working out. I plan on scanning the Insight library to get some ideas as well. I have one that I've been working with Jane a little on and I want to see which category she filed it under to potentially see some ticker ideas other traders are playing with that they've made public. I've been trying to plot the VWAP using our trading software to no avail at the moment; I'm gonna have to ask some of the tech guys or development team for help on this.
Come up with one autotrade model. It's possibly that I turn one of the tickers into an autotrade. It'd be more complicated just because you have to define your entry and your exit strategy. Of course there's also the problem of running it and testing it.
Hit HP status and become a coach. If I hit my monthly goals it should be no problem at all.

Personally:

Get out more! Even if just sitting on the patio reading. I'm planning on buying a bike, except I don't know if I should get a mountain bike, a road bike, or a hybrid. I've got one of those Garmin GPS watches that tracks your route for you. I'm still not big on running but biking I like. I've concluded that I don't spend enough time with nature. Speaking of reading earlier...
Read more fiction. Actually, I wouldn't mind just reading more. I have a lot of subscriptions coming through my Google Reader so I do read a lot, but there's just something to be said about sitting down and having an actual book in your hands. I tend to read more non-fiction stuff so I'm going to make a point to read more fiction from now on. I'm even planning on getting a library card... boy, I haven't had one of these since I was like 8.
Have lunch/hang out with one friend that's in Austin once a month and call two friends that moved away each month. I briefly mentioned in the previous post that I felt like I concentrated too much on work and neglected a lot of friendship from the college years. Many of them are in danger of falling in the category of "It's-kind-of-weird-you're-calling-after-X-years."
Take a photography class. I've been into photography for a while now and through fumbling around myself and reading a snippet here and there I have improved quite a bit. However, I do want to take an actual class to fill in any gaps that I should know in order to become a serious, kick ass photographer.
Learn a foreign language. I started feeling that simply knowing English and Mandarin is not enough. If I have my way I'd just install a program in my head like they did in The Matrix and I'll load the German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese program in my head. Since this is the real world, I'll have to do it the hard way. I'm leaning towards German since I'll be visiting Sarah. I actually just talked to Paul today and he said his wife was using Rosetta Stone to learn Chinese. It doesn't really teach the basic phonetics or any of the grammar stuff but just immerse you in the language so you can converse with other people. I'm curious. I think I'm going to get it.
Cook once a week. If I'm in Austin I'm going to cook something or try out a new recipe at least once a week.

Basically my approach to 2009 is to invest, in myself that is. I want to feel like I learned something new everyday, whether it's a new photography technique or a new German word (or even English word for that matter). And I want to be more hands-on, more DIY instead of just watching it on TV or read about it.

My Strong Finish

2009-01-02T00:37:00.003-06:00

"It doesn't matter how you start; it matters how you finish." This is a saying that I've inherited from my days with The Southwestern Company.

Well, having the worst day of your trading career isn't quite exactly what I had in mind. The close was pretty crazy and whippy. I was doing ok until my MOC order just decimated me. It should've worked out but all of a sudden it looked like the floor was just yanked out from underneath in the futures and a lot of these financials dropped a few floors like Tower of Terror ride at Disney World. I've had lost more money than that in the middle of the day and always manage to bounce back a bit but this was right at the close and who know what the first day of 2009 is going to be like and I just decided to take the loss... I won't say what stock it is, but it is a regional bank. It made me want to go out and burn down one of their branches.

I was over my goal for December by at least 20 or 30%, which I was really happy considering December is painfully slow compared to the few previous months we've had. I was proud of me adjusting and adapting to the market, especially on some of the play now that some stocks and ETFs have migrated from AMEX to NYSE/ARCA. After that swift kick to the genitals I think I'm just barely over my goal, which is still really good. I should be happy. Again, I should be happy.

Maybe I've been complacent and lost focus. Sure, things have been slower but there are still money to be made in the middle of the day. I've been playing Call of Duty way too much in the middle of the day, which does mean that I miss a few opportunities and in my opinion I'm not as focused heading into the close which is usually when I kick some serious ass.

Sigh... at least it gave me of an excuse to get crazier for NYE. There were so many things going on and my friends are spread all over town. I ended up going to Copa w/ Brett and some of his friends that came up from Houston. Brett's in from California, with his girlfriend-recently-upgraded-to-fiance, and decided that it's better to utilize the time to spend with a friend from out of state. I also made a few new friends as well, one of whom just recently moved from Houston back to Austin.

I have to admit, I try to game it too much sometimes but it's really amazing what you can do when you apply a little Dale Carnegie principle and simply take the time to learn a person's name. Everytime I go to a restaurant or a bar, if it's possible I learn the wait staff or the bartend's name. This is especially handy on a busy night that you know you'll be there for a while like NYE or even just a catered function. Call that person by their first name, maybe even introduce yourself, make some friendly chat, ask them how business is and sympathize/relate to them. From person experience, I know I'd get you what you wanted, whether it's a refill or the check a whole lot quicker if you call me by my first name instead yelling "hey waiter!" or trying to get the bartend's attention along with 20 other people at the bar.

Basically we got there when it's still not too crowded. I got my drinks, opened a tab, learned the bartend's name is Carlos and introduced myself. For the rest of the night, if he sees me standing at the bar, he usually get my order next, no matter how much cleavage the girl next to me is showing. Some people do this thing where they'll try to say your name as many times or whenever possible. That's a little tacky and people know you're just trying to game it instead of taking an genuine interest in them. I was doing this just for my benefits; I was being friendly and I wouldn't mind making a new friend. Let's just say that I was really glad I did that b/c I drank A LOT that night.

2008 was a great year for traders everywhere with the volatility up the wazoo. 2009 probably won't be as crazy but that doesn't mean there's no room for growth. I feel like I focused to much on "making it" as a trader this year and have neglected my relationships with a lot of friends from college. It really is harder though, now that everybody has a consuming job/career, most people moved away from Austin. For crying out loud, Sarah's in Germany, Nien is back in Taiwan and even though my best bud Jack's in Houston we hardly get any phone or face time. It's not like back in school where you run into people all the time either at classes or different organization meetings. It takes work. I found that relationships, no matter how casual, will atrophy just like muscles if you don't put in the time and work (speaking of atrophy... haven't been to the gym in a while after moving to the new house. Need to get on that).

My mind has been on hyperdrive for the past few days. There are so many thoughts floating in there that I feel like I need to reboot b/c the hourglass icon has been floating there for quite a while (or spinning beach ball if you're a Mac user). I would lie in bed trying to sleep but thinking about all sorts of things so I end up watching TV for a while. Funny thing is after watching for a few minutes I basically turn comatose since TV is just so brain stimulating and I fall asleep. It's probably best to break it up into several posts. Stick around for my goals for 2009 and what I'll be watching for trading wise.

My 2009 Wish List

2008-12-26T18:37:00.001-06:00

In 2009, I hope I never have to hear or see any of these people when I turn on my TV or read in my paper:

Tyra Banks Not everything is about you!

Dr. Phil Not everything's about you either!

Kathy Griffin Only if she comes out w/ new material instead of just talking about her run-ins with ACTUAL celebrities

Paris Hilton The face of STD

Britney Spears I used to like her but one day I woke up and discovered good music is not engineered on a soundboard and what beautiful woman should look like

Chris Crocker I'll leave Britney alone if you go away and never post a video on YouTube.

P.Diddy What he lacks in artistic and musical talent he makes it up in marketing second class products like clothing, vodka, and reality TV shows.

J.Lo Please stop making movies even the Chinese don't want to bootleg: Monster-in-law, Anaconda, Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, Gigli and you ruined Jersey Girl for me! I will never forgive you for that. That movie was actually pretty good after the point you died in the script.

Donald Trump Seriously, enough w/ the hair and pink ties

Jessica Simpson The year you break up with Romo is the year Cowboys win the Super Bowl

Amy Winehouse Get out of the pub and get back in the recording studio

Jonas Brothers Disney puppets w/ purity rings. Are you guys even actual brothers? Because one of you is not even good looking at all

George W. Bush Wake me up if he chokes on a pretzel and actually dies this time

Rosie O'Donnell The fat, obnoxious and not funny version of Ellen

The Hills and anyone associated with it Especially Heidi and Spencer, unless it's about their tragic death

Kardashian Sisters It's not like we've never seen a sex tape before...

And pretty much all the reality TV shows out there. Oh, and if your sister is famous and for whatever the reason your parents decided to capitalize on it even more by putting you on TV or in front of the press, do us a favor and just disappear already. We're not interested in you even if you do remotely look like your sibling in bad lighting. You hear that? Ashlee, Haylie, Ali

My Long Term Trades

2008-12-12T17:17:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to make more long term plays for a while except I can never quite lose the fear and I constantly look to see where the stock is trading at and that interfers with my short term trading. Personally I feel the general market is still in a down trend so I've been looking for things to short. Although, I do have to say that it does feel a lot more positive than before and it could be the potential of gov't stepping to help out the auto industry. There are a lot more political factors driving the market instead of just fundamental earnings. It's in a bit of a no mans land right now. I don't feel comfortable getting long when I can see some clear resistance meanwhile there's no point getting in front of the train trying to short. Because of this I've only taken some very small positions in my long term trading account.

I shorted ITRI on Monday after it shot up. It looked through out the day but it got pretty painful in the afternoon when it made another up move for couple of points. It did look like the sellers came back into control on this stock and the general market so I figured that I'd hold on to this and if it doesn't gap down the next day I'll cover it. Fortunately it did gap down the next day, except I was late to the office so after things turn sour again I covered it for a much smaller loss.

On top of that equity short, I actually sold some naked call options as well for the 60 strike price. When it looked like it wasn't going to work out I covered those and lost about $75 total, which isn't all that bad for my first option trade. The reason I said it's not bad b/c it could've been totally disastrous. I sold naked calls which means my risk could be unlimited. Also on top of that I didn't quite consider the time to expiration and how much this ITRI could move. I was only looking at the short term chart, which I do believe is going to consolidate here but surely a 10 point in a day is nothing surprising for this guy.

I actually got a call from the Pit on Friday asking about this trade and what my rationale was. I was really looking at this as three separate trades, the two options contracts I sold and equities short and I've calculated the amount that I was willing to lose. Obviously somebody in the backroom thought I was taking on too much risk and I don't blame them for thinking that; I thought so a little bit myself, which is why I covered my positions. Anyway, I need to be more careful with time to expiration and a stock's delta if I'm trading options from now on.

MELI was another short I had and like ITRI I looked for reasons to stay in the trade but I eventually covered it for a small profit after it hit my pullback. I got into CX short and it looked really good until the next day that I covered before it went to a new high. Sadly Wednesday, CX came out with negative news and drove the stock down. I got into HURN and it's the same story... hold on as long as I can but eventually cover for a small profit after a pullback.

I'm glad I took these trades b/c I'm applying the discipline of defining my risk reward prior to getting into the trade and adjusting my pullback as the trade goes in my favor. I got into small positions just because I don't want the P&L to affect my other trading and the market isn't quite setting up like I'd like. I don't know if there's a particular reason that I've traded almost all Nasdaq stocks in these long term, it's probably just b/c they're what came across my tickers at the time.

On a slight side note, I've been somewhat whining about the fact that I paid for a new monitor right before the new policy go into effect that if you yahtzee you get a second monitor for free. Well, another way to get a monitor for free is if you hit certain profit level. I was almost there so I sent in a request anyway and I was very happy to see that it got approved. Starting sometime next week I hope, I'll be trading with three monitors. I know the Pit is trying to get me set up so that I could at least see options quotes, which will be important come expiration date on this coming Friday. I plan to use my third monitor for options but other than that I'm not sure...

A friend of mine that's been trading part time contacted me about Kershner and we went out to lunch on Tuesday and I showed him the floor a bit afterwards. Funny enough another guy just messaged me on Facebook. I'm getting close to the HP status and I hope to earn the trust of the company soon to allow me take on students but that's probably still a good 6 months away. However, if I do have friends applying to Kershner at that time I sure would love to have them on my team. It's a bit of a wistful thinking at this time but I'm definitely making it a goal to improve my trading, make more money, and become a coach.

It's only December 12th and I've already met my profit goal for the month. Let's kick some ass the rest of this month, finish out the year strong, and build momentum heading into 2009. There's a Fed meeting next week. Happy trading!

My Saturday

2008-12-07T22:22:00.004-06:00

I think I spent just about the entire day shopping... I don't remember exactly when I left the house, somewhere around 11am or noon and I didn't get back until 7pm.

Stop #1: Home Depot. I went to see if they have the washer and dryer I want on sale, looked at different materials and colors for the blinds, and compared a few different light fixtures for outside of the house.

Stop #2: Ethan Allen. Looking for office desk and bar stools.

Stop #3: The Domain. I think I'm going to get a PS3 for the Blu Ray, can't quite decide what TV to put in my room. I don't need a big one since I plan on mounting it to the wall; 30" at most. Looked around some stores for wine glasses and stuff for the kitchen.

Stop #4: Z Gallerie. Technically still in The Domain but I spent a lot more time here. Looking for bar stools, bed covers, shams, and other accessories. Picked up two photograph prints by Alan Blaustine. Couldn't find the other two that I was looking for so I might go back and see if they have them back in stock or ask the store to try to ship it.

Stop #5: Sam's Club. Looking for a TV.

Stop #6: Costco. TV again and other furniture stuff. They also have the charging valet station I like for a lot cheaper.

Stop #7: Pier 1. I think I found the bar stools and office desk I like here, plus a few other decorative items.

Stop #8: Crate & Barrel. Finally decided on the wine glasses, looked at some shams and coverlets

I was planning on staying at Crate & Barrel longer but I bought some pork products that need to be refrigriated at Costco so I cut it short. Otherwise I was gonna go to Target and Restoration Hardware as well. There's also Pottery Barn still.

Maybe all this wasn't necessary but I wanted to see all what's out there and what might work well together and fit into my budget. I'm not quite sure why but a lot of stuff are more expensive than I thought it would be. It's probably best that I don't go on The Price is Right any time. For example, I thought I could get a pretty good office desk for under $400, $500 at most but Ethan Allen had one for like almot $1500. Bar stools I was hoping I can get some real steals at below $100 but I saw some for $300, $500+... I don't know if anybody felt this way but since I'm making my own money instead of relying on my allowance I've definitely been more concerned and aware of my budget.

Speaking of budget... Costco was ridiculous. There were almost no parking at all available. Some other stores and shopping malls were all pretty full, too. People are definitely out looking at stuff but I'm curious to see how many people actually bought. The retail industry has gone all-in betting on the holiday shopping season. Just looking at Austin is an isolated, blip of the big picture, but if you ask me I probably wouldn't mind longing some Costco stocks at the right price. Ethan Allen I'd have to go short. I should've gone to Best Buy. I'm going to try to find time for that.

My dad seems to think some of my photos are good enough to be framed and put up in our house. I do want to get photoshop and process some of them. It would be nice to have more of a personal touch in the house.

My Barcelona

2008-12-03T19:57:00.002-06:00

We got to spend a few extra days in Barcelona prior to the cruise. Here are a few pictures from around the city.

My Nerdiness

2008-12-02T17:24:00.008-06:00

I'll admit I'm kind of a nerd sometimes. There are things that have deep scientific or mathematical theory behind them I find them deeply interesting. So while going through my RSS feed today I came across this article about Neflix offering $1 million to whoever can improve their recommendation system by 10%. Make sure to read the New York Times article if you find this interesting... I know I certainly did. I thought this was a really cool example about Bayesian theorem on conditional probability application but after reading some other nerdy blogs it might not be... I'm kind of confused now; need to do more reading. **Sarah, if you guys learn about Bayesian in your statistics class you can show this to your prof for some brownie points.

All I remember about Bayesian from statistics class is that it uses past data and application of regression analysis to determine future probability. In the case of Netflix, it's using past ratings to determine what movies the viewer might also find interesting. Other companies like Amazon uses this application as well to see what else you might want to buy. What's funny about the article is that the movie Napoleon Dynamite is throwing off the result by quite a bit... same applies to a few other polarizing films that people either love it or hate it.

While I was asking around the office to see if anybody would know Bayesian off the top of their head since it was close to the opening bell and I didn't have the time to try different searches in Google (at first I thought it was Keynesian but he's an economist so I knew I was wrong), Eric mentioned something about using that for trading... interesting; more in-depth thoughts later.

I also came across this item on a list of recommended gift for music lovers this Christmas. It's a shirt with a playable drum set on it and the sound comes through its built-in speakers. It's only $29.99... I'm really tempted to get it but I could also foresee some problems this causes, such as people coming up to touch or punch me to play w/ the drum set themselves. Nonetheless, I think it's really cool.

My Return

2008-12-01T21:15:00.003-06:00

Back in Austin now... We got back to Houston around 9pm last night and hung out at my sister's place for a while after she picked us up at the airport. I got sick I think the second to last day of the cruise and I spent the entire trip back sneezing, coughing, and sipping on water b/c the air in the airplane cabin is really dry and it hurts my respiratory system. That's what I get for sleeping without a blanket for a few days and not dressed warm enough for those city tour buses with the exposed top deck. After being in transit for about 21 hrs I took a little nap and drove back to Austin at about 3:30 in the morning to go to work.

I'm not sure if it's b/c of the fact that I'm sick or that I'm still adjusting to being on land but I felt as if equilibrium is off. It wasn't a dizzy feeling; it was more like as if I'm still rocking back and forth with the motion of the ocean. Regardless, I didn't feel well at all trading today. My first trade I accidentally took about 1/3 more than the max size that I'm comfortable with and when I went to cover the position I over-covered as well. I pushed the position against myself and triggered my own stop. It's pretty stupid if you ask me. Sadly I spent the rest of the day trying to get back to even instead of catching up on my RSS feed like I intended. Pretty light volume but we still dropped 600+ point... craziness. I think I looked at a lot these index ETFs and they were only about 70% its relative volume.

Lots of stuff to do right now, not to mention the 800+ pictures from the trip I want to go through. Still a lot of stuff to do around the new house as well. Once I got the pictures ready I'll have them up in a separate post. I think I've gotten better... I dunno, I might just be spotting interesting things more readily compared to before. My dad messed with the camera and from time to time I would have problems with exposure and focusing... nothing too major though.

I got to thinking about the next step during the trip when I could get some peace and quiet. I'm going to start working on options trading strategies. I put in a request for an options account and it could take anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks I think is what the pit told me. I'm inclined to believe the later which is perfectly fine with me. Options is still pretty foreign to me but this gives me time to read more and refine my strategy.

I also spent some time talking to my dad about our business. We're probably going to try to make a run for it in Europe although consumer behavior or habit for our specific products might be a little different compared to the US and the market might be very fragmented. We got to talking a little bit about me starting to do more as well, on the financial and sales front with the family business. I don't think I would mind picking up some Spanish or German and try to enter the European market but there's a part of me that that doesn't want to family business. Growing up I always know people murmur that I'll probably turn out to be a bum and just rely on my parents' money and that's in fact been a motivator at times. Good part of me wants to blaze my own trails and do my own thing. At the same time, I know how much my parents put into this business and how hard they've worked to get to where they are. In a way it's their legacy and it's not something you just discard easily. If I can do that and trading while maintaining the necessary focus I certainly won't mind. We'll have to see how we can phase it over to me and if we do I'd have to concentrate on a different subject when I go back for my MBA.

My Test

2008-11-21T04:41:00.002-06:00

Look, I’m a patient man. In fact, I consider myself to be very patient. You’d have to be in this household w/ a constant hormonal mother, and by hormonal I meant that as a euphemism for psycho. If my mother had been an alcoholic or has Alzheimer it would’ve been easier. It would at least help us explain the crazy mood swings she has. Sad thing is, whenever things aren’t going perfectly her way or she sense a little bit of stress she takes it out on the rest of us. So in fact, you’d either have to be very patient in order to survive in this family or you’d have to be insane just like her…

The thing is that I don’t get angry hardly ever at all, but when I do you’d better watch out. I don’t like it when I’m angry, and you sure as hell won’t like it when I’m angry. No, it’s not like I turn green with raging muscle from my head down to my purple shorts but every man has his limits. My boiling point is a lot higher than most but that also means that when I reach that point it’s going to be hotter and burn much more. Right now, I’m being tested. Ever since I’ve been on board this stupid ship I’ve been tested. First they tell us the excursion to Granada and Alhambra is full and we can’t go, now they’re telling us that we can’t go on shore to Morocco b/c of visa problems while the agents back in the States told us that we’d be able to if we go w/ an excursion group. I don’t know if it’s b/c of the international staff they have on board here but the way they say no is very hard to take or maybe I just have my heart set on going to Alhambra and Marakech and the rest of Morocco. They don’t just tell you “I’m sorry, no.” They like rip your heart out and directly shoot you down. It feels ten times worse than a girl breaking up with you I swear.

I really don’t like to complain. I don’t. But sometimes you really just gotta puke and let it all out. Unfortunately the blog-sphere becomes an easy outlet for puking.

Anyway, the Alhambra situation was eventually resolved since there were so many people on board wanted to go. I estimated about 7 tour buses with 40 people on each bus, or about 300 people. However, right now we’re docking at Casablanca and I can see the King Hassan II Mosque no more than a couple of miles from me but I’m stuck on this god awful ship filled w/ old people. It really makes me want to go berserk and burn this ship down.

I’ve been on a cruise couple of years back in the Caribbean’s but this ship just seems to be filled w/ old people. It’s as if the entire baby boomer generation from across the globe decided to book this cruise. This cruise is fully booked… makes me wonder if the global economy slowdown and credit crisis we hear in the news so routinely is just a joke. **memo to self: find companies that profit from baby boomers other than ISRG… something related to hip replacement or diabetes. I joked w/ Sarah the other day that the distribution curve for age on board if severely skewed to the right and if you run a t-test or z-test for my age I’d fall outside of even two standard deviations (if you are unfamiliar with statistics lingo, 2 standard deviations, at least in a normal distribution bell curve includes roughly 95% of the entire population)

I’m quite possibly the worst target customer for cruises. It’s like dying of a slow death for me. The only difference between prison and this is that there’s a poker table on this ship. Even the internet on board is slow. I don’t do slow. There are very few exceptions, like dancing and kissing. I should’ve been a New Yorker, really. I cannot stand the pace these people are moving and there’s no way to pass them in the hallways b/c other than the fact it’s narrower than usually, these old people travel in groups. Now I know what the scene you see in movies or commercials where a flock of sheep walk out onto the highway while you’re driving your jeep around in Ireland feels like. I am really considering running around the ship and put those slow moving vehicle signs on people’s ass, you know, the ones they have for like farming vehicles traveling on the highways. It’s not just mind-numbingly slow. I can feel a lot of other body parts going numb… no wonder there’s a demand for Viagra.

Dow cracked the 8,000 resistance and I really want to trade. My worst fear is that it's going to crack during the two weeks I'm gone. At first it looked like it was going to hold. I have no idea what's going to happen. It looks like Asia is up overnight so who knows.

My Vacation

2008-11-14T11:14:00.004-06:00

So I'm going on vacation this weekend for the rest of November. I hope nothing too significant happens while I'm gone. We've already tested the October low yesterday. I was afraid that's going to happen next week and possibly break and I'm going to miss out on the action. There's a G20 meeting which I don't think in the short run it'll be that significant but will have a longer term impact. Since I'm a bit obsessive about schedules, I'm trying to plan out what to do each day while researching the cities we're going and you get an idea of my route.

Saturday, 11/15 - flight to Barcelona, arrive late close to midnight I think. Maybe roam around the hotel, scout out food places.

11/16 ~ 18 - ship leaves at 7pm on the 18th. From what Oliver told me, the Olympic Hill is cool and Picaso Museum, Sagrada Familia, La Rambla and Park Guell (and other Gaudi architectures) are all good places to go.

11/19 - At sea

11/20 - Granada/Malaga. We're here almost 11 hrs. I don't know if we have enough time for both places but I'm leaning more towards Granada if I have to choose. Malaga I heard is cool b/c it's right on the ocean and it's the birth place of Picasso. People have told me that La Alhambra is a can't miss... it's like part fortress, part garden, and part garden.

11/21 - Casablanca. 9 hrs in Casablanca and Rabat. I think we can taken an overnight excursion to Marrakech. If this means we can skip Agadir I'm totally for it. Casablanca has the King Hassan Mosque and Rabat has the Kasbah of the Oudaias, Chellah, and Old Medina to see. If we get to go into Marrakech I'm going to try to go to Djemma El Fna, The Souks Market and Koutoubia Mosque.

11/22 - Agadir. From my research this is just a tourist resort. Disappointing...

11/23 - Arrecife/Lanzarote. Timanfaya Park, volcanic mountains and supposedly we can ride camels along the mountain side. I'm all over riding camels, man. But I feel sorry for the one that's having to carry my fat ass around.

11/24 - Las Palmas. 9 hrs here... I don't really care about this place. Beach and hiking? who knows.

11/25 - At sea

11/26 - Lisbon. We're here for about 9 hrs. Oliver told me to go to Monasterio de San Gerronimo and Torre de Belem. I think they're close together in this monument area but I could be wrong.

11/27 - Sevilla/Cadiz. We have almost 12 hrs at Cadiz and Sevilla. My impression is that Cadiz is not that interesting. If it's possible I'd like to go see a bull fight (Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza). I think someone told me this was along the river. The Cathedral of Seville, Real Alcazar, and the Jewish Quarter have all been mentioned as places to go and see.

11/28 - Gibraltar. 6 hours here more or less. Dolphin watching, St. Michael's cave and the Europa Point are all good options here I guess.

11/29 - Palma. We only have about 6 hrs or less again at Palmas, I think we can go to Castell de Bellver (some Muslim fortress with a good view of the bay) or the Pueblo Espanol (I think this is built like a small village with classical Spanish architectural work).

11/30 - dock back in Barcelona at 5am. Don't remember what time the departing flight is at the moment...

I'm excited about the food. I'm done w/ my diet and I lost about 12 lbs. Obviously it'd be stupid to gain it all back but I'm comfortable w/ indulging a little bit. I want to get some paella, tapas, gazpacho, kabobs, schwarma, falafael, some Moroccan tea, and just good sea food in general. I love the fact that they ran an episode of Bourdain's No Reservation on Monday when he went to Spain.

My Weekend Review

2008-11-02T23:48:00.004-06:00

So... I didn't beat my September. Disappointing... I actually got in a REIT and tried to hedge it with another except I got in a really bad price and too much size on the hedge. They ended up getting really out of wack and I lost a lotttt of money. Andy, our CEO, is back in Austin and he stopped by my desk to chat a little and see my progress.

I got my braces in on Monday. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would at first. Toward the end of my appointment I asked Jeff, my orthodontist, if this is the part that's going to hurt and he joked that "yeah, this is the part where we probably have to hold you down for" except I didn't know he was joking... Can't you see that I'm very nervous here!? The pain didn't quite kick in until Thursday and Friday. Along with my diet the only thing I could eat was beans and this chicken chili I found.

Speaking of the diet, I've lost about 8 or 9 lbs after 3 weeks. I haven't worked out as much as I'd like because sometimes it feels like I need a longer recovery period than normal. I do have to say though that I'm doing better in my weekly volleyball games as well. If nothing else I feel better. I'm not huffing and puffing as much and I'm more agile. I might deviate from my workout plans when it comes to leg exercises. You're suppose to have 5 second contraction and 5 second extension for each rep and for leg exercises that puts a lot of pressure on my knees. The first week was a pain to get through. I'd feel hungry all the time but as soon as I start eating I'd lose my appetite. Not able to have milk really sucks.

The house is a done deal. Closed the house and got the keys on Tuesday. Unfortunately a lot of my energy is spend on the new place right now, more specifically deciding about what to keep from the old place and what to move and what I need to buy. There is a set of living room furniture that's been in the family for I'd say 20 years and my parents and I just can't really find a good spot for it in the new place at the same time we definitely don't want to throw it away. I just spent a good part of today debating with my parents whether I should keep my old bed or get a Tempur-Pedic one, if I should stay with full or queen size, how to position my bed, where to put the rest of the furniture. If it's my room I should get to make the decisions and if I'm willing to pay for a better mattress what's wrong with that?

This is my standpoint: there are things in a house that you SHOULD spend more money on and there are other parts that you can get by a lot cheaper. A good bed is a good investment. Meanwhile my parents want to spend about 10 times the amount of a Tempur-Pedic bed on just a marble breakfast table. I think that's ridiculous. To me that's like buying a piece of crap car and you end up spending a whole lot more on rims and speakers to pimp out your ride. I'm all about simple, elegance, comfort, and affordable. Of course, if you want all four you are going to do a bit of leg work. Judging by all the just butt fugly couches my dad has purchased over the years I am really hesitant on having my parents buy the furniture. Being a Libra, I'm bless with style. Us Libras we appreciate beauty and we know it when we see it. I firmly believe it's also a big reason why I'm so good at these Project Runway, Top Design, Top Chef betting games or whatever reality TV show Bravo has on b/c we know what is beautiful and fierce and what is fugly.

My End of Month Rally

2008-10-30T17:34:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is Halloween, it's also the end of the month, which I'm hoping lots of action happen because I'm trying to beat my September record.

Anyway, I noticed sometime around the middle of this month while I was trying to make some adjustments that it was within the realm of possibilities. I've been consistently having these smaller big up days compared to the few huge up days I had in September and I'm at a good pace to beat it. I had a pretty good day yesterday with the FOMC rate cut, which actually I have to say that for some reason I heard a 25 basis point cut so I went heavily short when it was in fact the expected 50 basis point. Whatever, I made quite a bit on that big dip after the announcement came out. After Wednesday it started to feel real that I actually beat my September record.

I had to make a decision earlier this week whether to miss Thursday or Friday to go to the Spanish Consulate in Houston to get my tourist visa for the cruise I'm not going on around Thanksgiving time. Thursday being the day after Fed announcement, could have lots of action. Friday is the end of the month... tough choice. Because of the fact that I'm only permanent resident status (my family's paper has been filed since 1997... seriously, don't ever try to tell me that gov't is efficient) it makes it a little difficult when traveling abroad. We have to obtain a visa, which is usually not a problem, it's just annoying that they make you jump through a lot of hoops. It's also almost comical when we return to the country they question us at customs why has it been taking so long. Gee, I was wondering if you could shed some light on that.

I drove all the way back from Houston this morning after I got done at the Spanish Consulate to try to make some money at the close. Unfortunately, I got into this UNT that came out with a huge sell imbalance, I'm talking about over 100% and I got some decent size. It started working but then it reversed on me. There was news about it being removed from one S&P index into the other (out of the 600 but into the 400 I think) but I felt comfortable with the huge imbalance. I gave it quite a bit of wiggle room and actually even added into it. Let's just say that I eventually covered it for a loss. I put some orders out up top at the close because of its ridiculous strong up move and he in fact did print up. I got out of about a third of my position but I ended up having to hold the rest over night. Let's hope that I get some help tomorrow. By my rough calculation I need a little over couple thousand dollars to beat my September. I think it's totally possible. Wish me luck!

I'm glad I didn't get too upset over the UNT trade. I mean, yeah, it sucks that I drove all the way back from Houston to lose money. But hey, we play the probabilities and it just didn't work out this time and I think I did let it work against a little too much.

On a side note, there was a little scare in our office risk management wise about a week ago so everybody has been more cautious. Unfortunately I've also been wanting to get my capital raised so I can send out more and bigger orders. Thankfully it's been approved and my buying power is being doubled tomorrow.

My Obama Rally

2008-10-29T22:42:00.002-05:00

Michelle Obama that is.

Apparently Michelle was on Leno Tuesday night and they got to talking about wardrobe since there's this big brouhaha over Sarah Palin dropping couple hundred thousand dollars at Neiman Marcus. Michelle talks about how she got her yellow ensemble online at J. Crew and that actually generated a surge in online traffic for specifically what she was wearing. CNBC reported this this morning and we all thought it was funny since it did have a moderate strength. I shorted it a little bit just as a joke really. Well, 2:40 rolls around and imbalance orders came out and JCG had a strong buy imbalance. Seriously, WTF... JCG's previous close was 17.52 and it reached a high of 19.90. That's almost a 13.6% bounce.

I just find the whole thing a bit humorous.

My Two-Million-Dollar Trade

2008-10-23T17:37:00.003-05:00

Some stock was acting wacko today and I went out to put a ridiculous high offer and see what happens. I didn't think I would get filled and I knew if I get filled it was not going to stand. This particular stock trades around $40, $50 but when I got my short sell order filled I got filled at $10,000 for 200 shares, basically I made about $1,990,000. Yeah, obviously it's an erroneous trade and it got broken. You can see from my P&L chart for the day... the money I made today barely show up as a blip. Oh well, at least it was fun to see $2 million in my account.

My Metal Mouth

2008-10-23T17:08:00.002-05:00

It's been in the talks for a while but I'm finally taking the steps to get braces. Yeah, I know most people get them while they're younger. What can I say? I don't like dentists or orthodontists. The first musical I've ever seen is Little Shop of Horror. Let's just say that the man-eating plant didn't help my young impression of the dental industry. The upper half of my teeth are really good, it's the bottom row that I'm worried about. My lower left canine is fighting space w/ the pre-molar and causing a cross bite.

My orthodontist is someone that my brother-in-law friends with from dental school. I'm just really concerned about the pain. I thought it might help me with my diet but I'm starting to think that I won't be able to eat anything at all the first few days after I get them. I had the separators in on Tuesday to prepare for next Monday's appointment. Yes, in three days I will have metal in my mouth for the next two years. So far I'm already having trouble chewing.

Somebody just tell me that everything is going to be ok.

My Diet

2008-10-20T11:37:00.004-05:00

I'm on a diet/work out regimen. I purposely timed it so it would start after my birthday but ends before thanksgiving. Couple of other guys at work has tried it and each of them lost about 10-15 lbs within the one month period.

We saw this from Timothy Ferriss's blog, the author of the 4-Hour Work Week. You can read the details yourself, but roughly you're doing this for a month, with two 30-minute workouts each week and you don't eat any carbs, especially white carbs, or red meat for 6 days of the week. The work out is a little different, too. Instead of doing 3 sets of 10 like usual, you're doing one set to failure with a 5 seconds up, 5 seconds dow cadence. Basically you're lifting less than your normal load, go freakishingly slow and lift until you can't anymore.

I've been on it for a week now. It's really tough the first week. I found out that milk has a lot of carbs therefore it's banned from my diet which sucks b/c I love milk. It's also a problem since so much of Asian cuisine revolves around rice and noodle. So far there hasn't been a dramatic difference yet. I've only dropped about 3-4 lbs and that could be just water weight. However, I do feel fitter and things are looser---like my pants and watch (yipee, I'm losing the stubborn wrist fat that I've always wanted to lose).

There was a young alumni happy hour last week and I've already planned to have my off day on Friday so it was excruciating for me to just sip on a glass of wine and pass on the free cookies they had at the events. Of course my friends would wolf down the cookies right in front of me to tease me, but somehow I made through it.

My Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich

2008-10-19T21:56:00.002-05:00

Some people have said that I watch too much The Daily Show... some straight out call me a cynic. You know what? They're right.

I try to stay away from political talks and what not b/c it just annoys me. Nobody really gives a damn what the other side thinks. All they're hearing is how the other side disagrees with them and all they're thinking in their head is how they're going to poke holes in their arguments or how to rip their opponents a new one with some trivial statistic. I don't want to impose my political views on anyone. If this post bores you or upsets you, feel free to stop reading anytime.

I still remember this episode of South Park from the 2004 election. It was called "Douche and Turd." I don't watch South Park that often. I do think it's funny and they hit it right on the mark when the episode is some kind of social satire like the Douche and Turd episode. It's a lot like The Simpson in a way. It's just gross and crude sometimes and I don't necessary like the means they try to achieve comedy all the time. This episode aired in late October in 2004, just right before the election.

The main plot is that PETA is protesting the South Park Elementary School's usage of cow as its mascot so to appease PETA the school is voting between a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich for its new mascot. Dividing opinions form; conflicts ensue. Stan, one of the main characters didn't see the point of voting between the two joke candidates and there's a whole bunch of other stuff that happens in that episode including an appearance by P.Diddy and his Vote or Die campaign. At the end of the episode, Stan's dad tells Stan at the dinner table that all votes matter even if it's for a losing cause, because "you see, it's always going to be between a giant douche and a turd sandwich."

That's kind of how I feel. It's easy to be cynical. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

In case you feel I have the wrong attitude, I have to let you know about my experience with politics growing up. This is not to justify my attitude (b/c I don't feel I'm wrong in the first place); this is just so you can gain some understanding, which is what we should all do regardless in politics or not. Growing up in Taiwan, I have seen plenty of bribery that went on to get business deals done, straight up buying votes, and just simply a joke of a government. I have seen friends of my dad throwing dinner parties and make under the table deals in order to secure votes. In the US, it exist as well, just not in such obvious forms. I just simply cannot trust the people in power are making decisions with OUR best interest in mind. It wasn't that George Bush doesn't care about black people. George Bush doesn't care period. Barbara Bush and 90% of Republicans in Washington is surprise to find that we still have poor people in America when Katrina hit. "I thought we got rid of them when Reagan was in office."

It's just all a big joke to me now. I remember when I believe in all this "democratic process." In high school I believed people could make a difference and I got involved in Student Council but I quickly saw that there's no such thing as leadership in that organization. Everybody was just using that to pad their college application. Every year we fight to be able to have lunches off campus, at least maybe for the senior or freshman and each year the administrators shut us down. Eventually we quit trying and just go on eating our cookies during StuCo meetings.

My freshman year in college I got involved w/ Student Government again. I thought this was going to be different. This is college. People care and there are real issues to take care of. Well, I was half right. There are real issues but instead they waste 3 hours each Tuesday night in the SSG building promoting and debating agendas of no real interest to us students. It's still a popularity contest. Which tickets has more cool people from different greek organizations ends up sweeping the votes. Each year we want lower tuition and more benefits for the students and each year administrators shut us down. Eventually we quit trying and go on fighting about things that look like we're making a difference, like the Cesar Chavez statue. Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not some anti-Cesar Chavez asshole or I don't think he deserves a statue. Each student ended up contributing I believe $2 out of their student fees to build that statue and did it provide a better student life for us? I guess you could make the argument that now you walk by the West Mall you feel slightly more inspired instead of the urge of going up the Main Tower and sniper-rifle all the people that are trying to hand you a flyer.

Now that in the real government, I'm inclined to have the same feeling I did in high school and college. I've been to Young Democrats AND Young Republicans meetings. Quite honestly, they're both just about equally clueless. The last time I engaged in an actual talk about politics with a friend he said he was voting for McCain and I probed "Why?" "No reason; mostly because I can't stand Obama." Again, I'm not here to impose my view on who I think is the better candidate or fit to lead our country. I just feel like in this YouTube/MTV era it's not about leadership or the policies anymore. It's just all about who's cool or funny. Whatever happen to leaders like FDR and Lincoln? It seems like starting with Nixon we just have these likable guys with questionable leadership skills, or as I'd like to call it, Ron Paul clones (I do have some reservations about putting Reagan in this category though). You can even make arguments against JFK and LBJ. I blame this on the invention of television :-P

I guess the next time someone says to me "how can you be so cynical" I have to respond "how can you be so naive." I don't know what to do from now on. I'm trying to remember how I coped when I found out Santa wasn't real and use that same methodology.

My "What's Next?"

2008-10-16T16:46:00.002-05:00

I'm at a place right now where I'm showing pretty good consistency and it's not rare for me to show up in the company's top performer report. Although, the market has been active and it's been good for us the past month and a half or so. I'm a little concerned regarding how I'm going to hit my numbers when a slow month comes along. I know still have the tendency to churn a little bit and that's what I need to work on. Jane, my coach, and our Managing Director have all said that my P&L will be a lot higher than before even if a slow month does come. Theoretically I am making better decisions and managing my size better as well.

So what's next? I definitely want to become an HP trader and take on students myself but that seems to be further out in the time line. Jason, my MD (managing director), thought I was impatient. It's really just that I don't know what to shoot for now. I'm happy with the check I'm getting but I want to get to the next level. From my conversation with Jason yesterday, here's what I think I can to grow even more:

Take bigger size when it's appropriate and stretch myself a little bit maybe once or twice a week where I'm a little nervous or uncomfortable with the size I'm in.
Analyze strengths and weakness--there's no need to be good at everything is what Jason told me, which is completely the opposite of my inherent personality. I'm like Skylar from Heroes. I have this hunger of wanting everybody's powers. X Trader is good trading off of IBD data? I want that. Y trader is the best pre-market traders? Great, I need to get his power, too. There are also plays revolving around high dollar stocks, penny stocks, and pair trades.
I'm doing great right at the close or post market. Take more shares and for the iShares that I play, know exactly what I need to hedge it with if it looks like I can't get out.
I have some trouble in the middle of the day (much like the rest of the company); dial back the shares and more selective with trades after 10:30am. I think also a lot of times I should be playing the reversals when a stock is up or down huge but being the momentum trader that I am I go short those bounces or long the retracement. Those happen a little earlier than 10:30 though. The other stuff is probably just churning. (all time in CST)
Wednesday is just terrible for me relative to other days for some reason... It used to be I would get burned sometimes when oil numbers came out but not anymore. Still, I'm not doing as well on Wednesdays compared to the rest of the week. It could be a lack of focus in mid week or that I just have some predisposed belief that I suck on Wednesdays.
I'm sucking it up on certain oil stocks like PBR and HK... and the banking ETFs and stocks I'm not doing too well either. Adjustment is needed or don't trade it at all.
I'm doing well with EWZ. EEM and FXI kind of sucked after the split. Jason recommends that I find another ETF that I can hone in and trade well.
I have pretty high winning percentage, about 60%, but my risk reward could be better, aka stretching out my winners and cutting the losers quicker, and I'd like my duration to be longer as well. I do believe though that if I've establish a trading style that works for me I don't need to do any heavy adjusting. Why try to be someone I am not, right?

The other thing I've been thinking was about the blog. When I first started writing it's really more for my benefits. I wanted to jot down what I was thinking and feeling and use them to improve my trading. I don't know if anybody picked it up but it was supposed to be similar to "Scrubs." You'll notice most of my entry titles start out w/ MY, much like the episode titles for Scrubs. I don't recall the exact reason why I called it Down on the Floor. I remember my first choice was taken; I wanted something like Wall Street Confidential or something like that... like the book Law School Confidential b/c I wanted to debunk the myths and mysteries of the financial world. I think I called the blog what it is b/c we're trading "down on the floor" and I got into ballroom dancing, so you know, getting jiggy with it "down on the floor," plus it's like what you say when you go rob a bank and that's what I'm trying to do in a way... out there getting that money!

As I went along I think people found out about it somehow. I know someone posted the link to my blog in a discussion board out there. The guy that sits next me that started in March moved from San Francisco area read my blog before he took the offer. It makes me wonder how many new traders have read my blog and if that actually had any influence on their decision. If it does than I'm missing out some serious referral checks. Let me just say that this is not a recruiting tool for Kershner. HR and management has no control on what I say on here and whatever ends up here is just my personal opinion, not that of Kershner Trading. I've been thinking about posting more stuff about trading and technical stuff, but I decided against that. There's plenty of other blogs out there that do a good job providing market commentary and technical analysis. I'll update my links sections the ones I read regularly in my Google Reader. I'll just post on the trades that worked out really well or disastrous for me. I'm going to lean more on the personal style. This is blog is for me to read and review in the future like I said and any other friends or family that want to know what I'm up to, mixed in with a few funny posts and what not.

My "That's What She Said"

2008-10-13T16:43:00.003-05:00

I came across this today at work. It's sad to see that they still give out detentions for stupid reasons in high school.

There was one time where somebody on my team was long a stock and he said "get up you dick!" over our conference call on Skype. That was a very nice "that's what she said" moment.

My Relax

2008-10-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of keeping things light and perhaps help you (and me) forget about all this dooms day, end-of-the-world, Armageddon talk b/c the stock market is getting out of hand once again, I'm posting these humor pics that I came across either in my RSS feed or people from work sent me. I particularly like the Halloween one since it's coming up soon.

My Pair Trades

2008-10-08T16:45:00.004-05:00

I'm trying out some pair trades on Facebook. The idea is to long the strong ones in the industry and short the weaker ones or I was going to pair trade it off of the ETF, so say short the ETF but long the leaders that ETF holds or long the ETF but short the weaker ones.

I'm trying out the OIH, XOP, MOO, EWZ, PPH, or a combination of stocks in those ETFs... and I do want to try out the financials like KBE and UYG but with the short ban (which ends tonight) it's a little harder to gauge. I want to find things that are close in value or exactly half or a third to judge how many shares to take

I already longed 60,000 shares of MON and shorted 30,000 shares of AGU and MOS since those two's value is roughly half of MON. I will probably put on 50,000 shares of POT long with 33,500 shares of AGU and MOS short each when the market is slow MOS and AGU has a combined price of roughly 33% less than of POT so I'm shorting 33% more shares to match. I don't know if exactly that math makes sense when it's translated into dollar figures but since it's all an experiment I don't really care. In addition, I'm going to put on 45,000 shares OIH short and split my longs among RIG, SLB, and DO. The combined value of those threes is about twice the value of OIH so I'm probably going to do 7,500 shares each for 22,500 shares or half of the number of OIH shares I'm going to put on. For EWZ the max it'll let me short on facebook is 13,350 shares so I'm going to match that by longing 17,800 shares of PBR. PPH I can only short about 37,000 shares so I'll then split that in half and long 18,500 shares of JNJ and ABT.

It kind of makes sense to me with the numbers and the shares and all that in my but I'm not sure and if it's that easy I'm sure everybody out there would be doing it. Supposedly other people who do these kind of trades have some complicated algorithm, etc etc... woooo, wouldn't it be funny if I just crack it right now?

I'm at a point when I'm satisfied with my trading system and I want to continue to expand my repertoire. I have faith in the way that I trade that I'm going to consistently make money.

My Failed Rally

2008-10-07T17:14:00.000-05:00

It looks like we're still heading lower. It looked good in the morning but mid day, coincidentally (or maybe as V would say, only the mere illusion of coincidence) when Bernanke came on CNBC and the FOMC minute were about to come out we started making lower highs down trend again. In fact, we even took out the lows made on Monday. I'm going to continue to look for confirmations in the price action and volume. The short ban ends on midnight Wednesday so Thursday should be very interesting. With the financial shorts back in play... there's just no point in trying to play the long side right now. I hope to see that bottom confirmation sometime within the next 5-10 days. If this doesn't hold up... next stop: Dows 8800 or 7700ish range.

I got short some shares at the close but I didn't get the ideal price that I wanted and I panicked. I covered for a bigger loss than I'd like. I really wasn't thinking clearly at that point with everything going on at the close. It was stupid really. I should've at least just hedge it with something. I had absolutely no idea how we might open the next day at that moment... so I just took the loss. Now that seeing Asian getting beat up I'm pretty sure I could've made a least a couple thousand dollars right at the open tomorrow. I still finished up the day, quite significantly. Sometimes I feel as if I want to lose money. You might think: that's crazy! Why would you want to lose money? It's actually quite common. It's a psychological thing. Some traders do very well and go on a streak but a part of them don't believe they deserve this money. It's like a form of cognitive dissonance and they adjust by subconsciously taking some losses.

My parents are back in Austin again. The suspcious Jason believe he makes a lot more money when his parents are out of the 512 area code and doesn't like Wednesday. Just so happens tomorrow is Wednesday as well. Whoopi! Let's just be careful and not let this get to my head.

I'm trying to think of some fundamental plays again. With oil and other commodity prices down sharply, I was thinking of longing stuff like airlines, transport, and food companies. Unfortunately if we do have a global slowdown that's going to take the transport stocks down with it. Airlines... we'll see. It's hard to get on board (no pun intended) with such a crappy industry but once we've bottomed out this might be the first group that I look to.

My Bottom?

2008-10-06T16:16:00.003-05:00

I think we've bottomed.

*gasp*

I really don't like to call tops or bottoms. People come on TV and call bottom all the time. But they're getting paid to say what they think. I don't. I'm just blogging about what's going on with me and what's going through this tiny head of mine. Of course, when you call top or bottom, you're sticking your neck out and from time to time you're going to be wrong. I mean, my god, Jim Cramer called the bottom back when SPY was trading at like 126, 127 I think (SPY closed around 105 today). And I understood why he would call the bottom right there. I remember that day there were negative news about MER or MS (I always get them mixed up a little bit), but the market seems to just brush it off completely, which you could interpret as that the market has already priced in all the bad news.

BAC just announced they're going to cut dividends so I think we might gap down again tomorrow depending on how Asia and Europe do. We also have the FOMC minutes coming out at 1pm CST. Lots have changed since the last Fed meeting. I think people are going to read into it whether there's a chance of a rate cut coming up in three weeks. VIX is way up at 58. There's panic and I think we've finally flushed all the weak hands out. I lost a lot of money in the middle of the day churning away. It just seemed like the buyers and sellers had come to a stand still and the market wasn't making any real moves and I was getting stopped out of my longs and shorts left and right. I would be looking to buy some stocks around 9:30, 10:00 CST with some slightly wider stop placed.

We're going to weed out the weak and after the smoke clear, I think we'll be surprised how strong WFC is.

My New Trades

2008-10-03T11:04:00.005-05:00

So I was talking to another trader on the floor yesterday about pair trades. I know he does a lot of that and I've been pretty fascinated by the idea. I've been looking for some trade ideas to automate for a while. The thing with pair trade though is that what I was thinking about is the opposite of what Brian or conventional play which is to play for the divergence to converge back. I was thinking that certain days EWZ looks a lot stronger/weaker compared to SPY, but I was also just looking at the dollar amount whereas most pair traders look at percentages.

There's still a lot of homework I need to do on this. There are traders that base trades off of complicated algorithm. How do I find the pairs? How do I establish what's the norm for them and what would trigger the trade? Should I look at the change in dollar amount or percentage? Do I take a different amount of shares for the long/short? Should I trade in the direction of the divergence or trade for them to converge? If it's not working, how much room do I give it or willing to lose? If it's working for me, what's my exit strategy in that case as well?

So far I only have the LVS-MGM and SPWRA-SPWRB pair that I'm trying out. If you know any other pairs that's been working for you, let me know.

My Retirment Plan

2008-10-02T17:55:00.009-05:00

Where am I putting my money? For my retirement I'm actually following the Good to Great Index or method. Good to great is a book by Jim Collins that talks about companies that are able to consistently perform and adjust to make the company Built to Last.

The Good to Great companies

Abbot Laboratories (ABT)
Circuit City (CC)
Fannie Mae (FNM)
Gillette (got bought out by Proctor I think)
Kimberly-Clark (KMB)
Kroger (KR)
Nucor (NUE)
Philip Morrs/Altria (PM/MO)
Pitney Bowes (PBI)
Walgreen (WAG)
Wells Fargo (WFC)

The Built to Last companies:

3M (MMM)
American Express (AXP)
Boeing (BA)
Citygroup (C)
Disney (DIS)
Ford (F)
General Electric (GE)
Hewlett Packard (HPQ)
IBM (IBM)
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Marriott (MAR)
Merck (MRK)
Motorola (MOT)
Nordstrom (JWN)
Phillip Morris/Altria (PM/MO)
Proctor & Gamble (PG)
Sony (SNE)
Wal*Mart (WMT)

See anything in common? You guessed it, my money is in Philip Morris. Yeah yeah yeah, I know they make cigarettes and that stuff supposedly can kill you, but it's a great company. Great dividends, actually does have an uptrend. You don't hear people talk about the shitty cars Ford makes that kill people as much. How about the number of people that get cut shaving in the morning using Gillette razors each more made by Proctor & Gamble, or the number of divorces each year deep rooted in the problematic movies Disney produces that instill an unrealistic view of love in young people as much. Alright, I'm going to switch off the sarcastic mode now.

There are some real crap on this list though... FNM is not worth crap now, MOT is crap, CC is double crap, F is crap to the 5th power. If you look at the chart for ALLLL the way back, and I mean back in like the 80's or even further, the ones that actually do have an uptrend I like are (wth the current dividend % following) : ABT (2.44%), KMB (3.54%), KR (1.30%), PM (4.40%), MO (6.37%), WFC (3.87%), MMM (3.05%), JNJ (2.71%), PG (2.24%).

Some of the companies I really like as well like BA and IBM and some technically do have an uptrend but I didn't include them b/c the slope of the trend is not as great or almost flat or there's a lot more volatility than I'd like. So seriously, if you are putting in money into your 401(k), IRA or whatever retirement/pension fund you have like SEP or VUL... just go w/ these companies. Personally I'm even more selective. I'm down to just PM, MO, WFC, JNJ, KMB, and PG. Six companies... well, it used to be 5 before the PM/MO spin off. I simply just buy these shares no matter what price they are and I reinvest the dividends. I don't care if they go up or down. Will this work? Let's see... I'm almost 25 now, I'll let you know in 40 years. So let's talk again in 2048.

My Little Blow Up

2008-10-02T16:52:00.001-05:00

Today was suppose to be a great day. It looked like I was going to be in the company's top performer's list for the 5th straight day, but then in the afternoon I took two small hits. Instead of lightening up my shares or stop trading for a while I still went at it full steam ahead and this time I held my loser for much more room than I'd normally give it. I lost my day's profit and then some. I really haven't had a blow up like this lately, even if it's a small one. I just kind of lost my head... sigh...

The House is going to vote on the new bail out bill. Look, I understand why people feel that this bill should not be passed. Yes, this is the creation of Wall Street greed. No, we should not be in this situation. Judging from the stuff I read and watch, it feels like most everybody do not want this bill to be passed b/c the average joes should not have to pay for the sins of the greed of evil corporations. Meanwhile, people that are in the financial industry believe this bill needs to be passed. Whenever you see a fund manager or whoever they have on CNBC they all say that the bail out needs to be passed, but when you interview the John Smiths from Iowa City, Iowa or wherever that's way the hell away from New York City they are all against the bill.

What do I think? I quite frankly don't know what to think anymore. I believe the Congress should do something. That something was better regulation and accounting standards a LOOONNG time ago. I mean, c'mon, did we learn nothing from the savings & loan crisis in the 80's? Now that we're here, what do we do? I don't have the answer. Believe it or not, Congress doesn't quite have the answer. I mean no offense but no Congressman or Congresswoman fully understands the illiquid financial instruments that we're dealing with here. Not McCain, not Obama, not Pelosi. Hank Paulson has a plan but he sure didn't do a good job explaining and selling the plan. I don't want to place blame and point fingers. All I really hoping is that Congress is doing the right thing instead of simply politicking b/c we have an election coming, voting with personal or the party's agenda.

Hey, take the whole anger and greed thing out... if something is not done, seriously, it's going to affect all of us. Yes, even you who stuff money under your mattress. Without a healthy credit market business is not going to be able to function properly and the economy goes down the crapper, which translate into weaker dollar so even if you don't have any stocks, 401(k), pension plan of any kind and stuff your money under the mattress that money is going to be worth less. I fear for you, for me, for the people.

My Little Dutch Boy

2008-09-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

Well, that was interesting... futures broke the morning support and we got a big flush down. Yours truly just loaded up on some EWZ short. The rest of the day was pretty boring since everybody was waiting for the voting in the House to go on. We got C-SPAN on half of the TVs instead of CNBC (CNBC is pretty crappy sometimes, and this was one of those times). The speeches before the voting... honestly, not inspiring and I don't think they helped the cause at all. It started out as more ayes than nays but you can kind of see the nays start creeping up. Right before the nays caught up to the ayes I loaded up on EWZ again. It was a pretty good entry since futures was holding a steady ceiling and I wasn't really risking that much if the votes start to swing back the other direction. Sure enough, the nays overtook the yays and people can tell that this bill is not getting passed and it was just like the little Dutch boy pulling his finger out and we get a complete flood gate. I got some really nice prints at the close as well even though I should've done a lot better still with some of the imbalances, etc.

I'll admit that government or civics is not my favorite subjects in school, but I did learn something today. We didn't really know or remember how many members are in the House of Representatives but our pod quickly found out it was 435 so the magic number was 218 if this thing was going to get passed. I thought of a video that I'm sure we all watched when we were younger, so here it is....

My Expensive Nap

2008-09-22T17:24:00.002-05:00

I overslept on Friday... big mistake. There were some pretty simple set ups and I know I would've made at least a quick $10,000. I went to play sand volleyball w/ James until about 9, 9:30pm and went to bed about 10pm but my sister and my brother in law was in town b/c of the whole Hurricane Ike mess and they woke me up about midnight. I had trouble falling asleep until about 3am since I was naturally excited about the next day.

I knew I should at least came in and I managed to bang out what used to be a pretty good day for me, plus I knew we were going to have an office wide happy hour after the close if we finish the week w/ no down days as a firm overall. In fact, our firm broke a few records as well. Gosh, I don't even know how much cocktail shrimps and mojitos I had that afternoon.

It was quite interesting when someone sitting behind me was talking about the whole government bail out situation at the UT vs Rice game on Saturday. The gentleman's remark was that it's not right that the government is bailing out all these rich executives. I wanted to throw my 2 cents in but I didn't... I didn't want to cause a scene.

Here's what my thoughts are... should the gov't bail out these companies who took on excessive risk and now you have a moral hazard situation where you might actually be encouraging people to take on excessive risk? Yes and no. I don't think the gov't should bail out every company that is about to go out of business, but if the result of that company going out of business will thoroughly rattle the financial market and people's confidence, then yes it should be bailed out. It makes me nervous whenever I hear the phrase "too big to fail." Who's to be the judge of that? I do have to say, if company like AIG or god forbid GS went on... then yeah, we're going to be in big trouble.

All this stuff on banning short selling etc is all very REACTIVE. There needs to be a PROACTIVE approach. Yeah, I know that hindsight is 20/20 and nobody has a crystal ball but the gov't has consistently wait for something to blow up and then figure out how to put out the fire. b/c of Enron we now have SOX 404, which still didn't get the problem solved b/c you have companies reporting something on their balance sheet that's dramatically overvalued. Greed, in this case, is not good. There's been a lot of talk about regulating the hedge funds ever since I started taking accounting classes but I'm almost convinced that we're not going to see anything done in that area until a series of them start blowing up.

It was kind of funny that TV stations were still running AIG ads on Monday but the ads were yanked by Tuesday. (We have CNBC on at the office all the time; you notice silly things like that). One ad in particular, there are bunch of kids together talking about their parents not properly planning things financially and finally one kid said "my parents are with AIG" and the other said "you parents rock!" My buddy and I were at some bar getting ready for Monday Night Football and the ad came on; that's when he said "your parents are fucked!" There's also jokes of changing the AIG sponsorship logo on the Manchester United jersey to the U.S. Treasury seal. I'm not trying to be insensitive; sometimes you just gotta learn how to laugh.

I'm shorting the dollar by longing the Euro (143ish entry on FXE) and long oil since commodity prices are positively correlated with the strength of the dollar. A lot of these oil/energy companies that have been taking a beating might have a nice rally. I've also got a list of regional banks with high short interest and high trading volume... there's too many to list at the moment. There's like 120 on the list that I've generated. If anybody is actually interested I'll email it.

My Momentum

2008-09-18T16:24:00.003-05:00

Another very solid day on Wednesday. I took two losing trades at the close where the quotes are a little out of wack. I actually didn't get the closing print instead someone just hit my orders and I got owned in the face. If that hadn't happened, I would've set back to back personal best days. I finished the day maybe $100 shy of the record I set on Tuesday.

Today was just equally crazy. VIX went up above 40 and actually went past 42. For those of you not familiar w/ the VIX it's kind of a measurement of volatility. SEC has put in another rule on short selling so I think there were a lot of stocks getting short squeezed at the close. I should've long a whole bunch of EWZ but one of my trailing stops was just a little too tight and I got stopped out and never found a good entry to get back in.

I got some crazy ridiculous print for some crazy amount of shares and in my panic I covered and I just kept getting some really favorable prints all the way to the close and by the time dust settled I have set yet another personal best about SIX times the amount on Tuesday. I don't really like to talk about P&L here, in fact, I don't like to talk about P&L period. It just makes me negative. My parents don't even know how much money I make (or lose sometimes). They would try to coax it out of me sometimes and I simply refuse to tell them. Some of you are probably thinking... well, yeah, it's easy to make six times of $10. Let me assure you, it's not like that. I still don't feel very comfortable talking about the amount, but let's just say it definitely involves more than 5 figures.

This is usually how it is for me though. I'll set a personal best and I'll trade right around it before going back to my regular P&L days. I'm just trying to maximize this momentum right now and kick some major ass before this craziness go away.

I was at a Texas Exes Young Alumni happy hour event at a wine place and I tried to find this wine that I had on the flight back to Taiwan on EVA Air. I knew it was a German Riesling but b/c it was German I didn't really remember the name. Well, I managed to track it down and the wine place had just one last bottle left so I asked them to hold it for me. I picked it up to celebrate and treat myself a little for good trading and sticking to my rules lately. My sister was also in town since they still have no power in Houston after Hurricane Ike and she's been obsessing about the wine as well. I might try to find out where the vineyard is. I really love this wine even though it's borderlining the too sweet side

(Sarah, I know you read this... help a brother out)

My Triumphant Return

2008-09-16T16:30:00.003-05:00

Man, after yesterday's technology fiasco where my computer was FUBAR and I can't see squadush on my monitor I was still fuming a bit this morning so I went out to run this morning. I then promptly remembered I hate running but at least I was feeling better.

Everything went pretty smoothly. We got first some bad quotes from INET and then ARCA went bad later after the fed announcement came out. I tried to slam into EWZ right when the announcement came out but I couldn't get the price that I want. I was fairly light on the shares since I can't rely on the quotes too much and my level 1 was off so I had to modify all my stop triggers. I still could've traded EWZ better especially the break out after the bounce but I felt I was chasing a move that's already been made and not a very good risk reward. I had some orders at the close that I put out too late and I ended up not getting some prints. Traded lots of shares again today. After commission I think I still did make a new personal best.

I signed up for a trial subscription of the platinum briefing trader where you get to see some of the trades people make and what their logic is. The one trader I'm following at the moment is the Scalp Trader. This guys is pretty right on and his logic makes sense. It's nice to have an extra pair of eyes. However, sometimes he's risking more than what I would and I personally don't like to base my trade off of someone else's opinion. I think I took some positions in related companies if he was calling out a trade and they work out pretty well.

Oh, FUBAR stands for f**ked up beyond all recognition btw. Ref: Saving Private Ryan

My Black Monday

2008-09-15T17:51:00.004-05:00

By black, I mean what I see on my montage this morning. Oh yeah, and the market dropped 500 points, LEH declared bankruptcy, etc etc.

It is absolutely infuriating. Never had I have to restrain myself so hard from breaking stuff. David was in the office today so I went back to trading at my station. I was expecting my computer to be slower compared to David's (my CPU is about a fourth of his) but honestly the worst it has been is that I get my charts to update a little bit slower. I can't see any quotes, none of my charts would update and I can't tell if my stops really did go off if they get triggered. I restarted my computer. Twice. I closed down applications. First ECN cross, then I closed down Skype, then Einstein, and finally all internet browsers. Basically I lost half of the ways I look for trades, I lost communication with my team, then my bread and butter EWZ and EEM trades, finally I have nothing to alert me any updates if news was for or against my positions. While most people were up over a G I'm restarting my computer for the third time.

What pisses me off even more was that I was getting back filled when I don't want to and not getting filled when I need it. The first time my stops went off I thought I didn't get filled so I manually exited out of my position, only to find that I in fact did cover that position for a small loss except now I've reversed my position and losing money on that as well. This happened again where my stop got hit and I thought I would get a back fill again but I didn't... which leaves me to to try to trade out of the position. It happened again for the third time, except this time it was a trailing stop for only 1/3 of one of my positions so I didn't mind as much. Sure enough about a minute later it shows on my blotter that I did cover the position.

You might think a minute is a brief time and not a big deal, well, in what we do even a millisecond can get you a gigantic advantage over somebody else. A good deal of our edge comes from execution.

I almost hit my loss limit. I was prepared to throw a fit if they did turn me off for the day because the loss wasn't b/c of my poor decision making or lack of discipline. I spent the entire day trying to make it back and thank god I did. All I lost today was my commission charges and I have no idea how much that will be since I traded about 3 times as much as what I normally do. I'm still just absolutley fuming right now with all the loss opportunity when my screen is practically blank and while my computer is rebooting... except I'm mentally exhausted from grinding it out all day. I might take a break and then go run or take it out on the punching bag at the gym.

ARGH! FRICK! DOUBLE FRICK! FRICK ON A STICK! FUDGE! FIDDLESTICK! CHEESE AND RICE!! AAAHHHHHHHH.... I'm just so pissed right now.

(on the plus side, I did find out that I was in queue to get a new computer w/ quad CPU maybe by the end of this week)

My Ageless Question

2008-09-10T15:43:00.002-05:00

Ok, the title might not make a whole lot of sense and I'm probably just trying to be too cute w/ words, but as my birthday approaching I find me asking myself: "what is old?" It's a question regarding relatives and absolutes, but the question is still there... what is the standard and who sets it.

I met w/ a contractor yesterday to discuss renovation for the condo we owned since I was a freshman and while we were chit chatting he commented that I sound very young on the phone and he thought I was in school. I thought it was kind of funny given that the realtor has also said that I sound young after she called me and heard my voice mail.

To my friends that are still in school, I'm a freaking dinosaur but to I guess people that have been in the "real world" for a while I'm still just a little tadpole. Anyway, I don't feel old, and that's all that matters right?

My Whole Lot of Bark, Not Much Bite

2008-09-02T23:31:00.000-05:00

So Hurricane Gustav really didn't do much damage, even the helicopter inspection out on the gulf showed that the rigs were ok. There might be some distribution disruption but I really don't foresee a major effect on oil prices. Although, I do have to say that I think oil prices dropped too much too quickly and it makes me a little uncomfortable. I took off some of my positions today in ENER, LUFK, KOL, GMXR, HK, ARD, FWLT, and PTEN. I covered my CEO position short too quickly. It was my largest short position and I've been losing a crap load on it... stupid Chinse ADR. I think I only end up making 60 cents on this. I just don't really like how it'll gap up or down 5 points depending how it did in Asia. There were a lot of other stuff that I didn't get in or I wished I took more shares but really, I think I did the right thing in not risking too much capital on one idea.

I think it was Morgan that came out with the downgrade on DF today. I almost had to laugh when I read the news since that's what I've been hoping for since last week after SAFM and SFD's earnings. Let's see if we can get a few more of the herd to join.

I'm really a little surprised on what kind of prices some of these home builders are trading at. Is the housing market already rebounding? I bought some TMA at 40 cents. Normally I don't like to pick bottom on these low dollar stocks but honestly even if TMA goes bankrupt it's a good risk reward. I'm sure there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. CNBC won't stop talking about how XHB is the best performing sector lately... makes me want to short it just to spite them.

Gold and Silver is breaking down... hopefully I can still find some mining companies to short.

Three more hurricanes forming in the Atlantic. We'll have to see how much impact they have.

My Confusion, Pt. 2

2008-08-28T17:37:00.003-05:00

Boy, was I wrong about MW missing earnings. There is never a sure bet when it comes to these earning plays. Well... there's never a sure bet when it comes to trading, period. Sure was glad I didn't play it though.

You know, here's what I'm talking about the confusion... you got a tropical-storm-soon-to-be-hurricane coming. It's not like Katrina, but at least it's the first major big one since Katrina. You would think USO and UNG would go up, but they don't. It gapped up this morning and just losing ground all day. Whatever. This means that the downtrend still holds. You don't trade the news; you trade the reaction. My short order for the coal ETF KOL got triggered and I think I should've taken some profit in the middle of the day when it started bouncing.

I'm going to list the things that didn't quite make sense to me, with what I guess was the reason in the parentheses.

SHLD misses by 12 cents but bounced hard right around 85 (GDP data that came out today)

ENER beats by 8 cents but falls after the open (Oil going down)

Potential big ass hurricane coming but crude and natural gas goes down (Dollar strengthening?)

Oh whatever... what do I know. Nobody knows anything out there. If someone tells me exactly what the market is going to do tomorrow or for any timeline I'd call him a fucking liar in his face.

FNM and FRE is touching that down trend line... I'm tired of playing these two stocks, seriously I wish the government would just come out and we're going to save it or say "let it burn!" It reminds me of a song by Usher

I was looking at the projected path for Gustav, honestly I was more interested to see if our home opening game would be ruined, but it looks like we won't know the full effect of the damage until probably Sunday or Monday. Either way, makes for a VERY interesting open on Tuesday when we come back from Labor Day, especially when we got ISM data coming out at 10 am EST as well.

My Perfect Storm?

2008-08-26T16:26:00.000-05:00

Some of my oil/energy short orders got triggered with the fear of a hurricane and it can be pretty easy to push prices around in this low volume. I think this hurricane is a little different the previous two (or was it three?) we had this season. The previous ones were quickly dismissed as no threat to the rigs out on the gulf, but judging by the projected path of this one it might actually do some damage. I've changed my limit orders to just flags now. I don't want to end up with so many positions again that I can't think clearly. If the hurricane turns out to be a whole lot of nothing I think this little spike could get you some nice entries with a reasonable stop.

I'm still up on my ENER short position from 79.95... this coming storm, oil inventories on Wednesday and I think ENER reports earnings on Thursday make me want to take profits. I'm down on GMXR and I might give it only another point b/c I take a loss. I wanted to short SPWR when it was around 97 but with the recent report about LDK and STP's good earnings and contracts I wanted to sit out and observe more. I personally want to think the solar story is over for now. A lot of these contracts were in the past, it's more important about the future projection. We'll see what SOLF says on Wednesday.

MW reports after the close on Wednesday. I might play it if I was up a lot for the day. I'm short biased against Men's Wearhouse. I think it's crap.

SAFM and SFD reported today, I think one beat earnings and the other missed; can't remember which at the moment, but both cited challenging environment, particularly the cost. I put on my DF short and it's working so far; hopefully some analyst come out and downgrade the entire industry. HRL wasn't really moving and TSN I got in kind of late for only a slight profit. PPC started dying and I really should've gotten in with earlier and with more size. I knew about the two earnings today, I simply forgot about PPC was in that group so it too me some time to believe in the move. I think that was my best trade for the day.

Russia (RSX) gapped down and finished lower again, although I'm starting to hear CNBC talk about Russia more now. It could be that they don't have anything else to cover. I mean... c'mon, they did some story on Guitar Hero today that I think they even forgot to say the stock implication. It was more about this "new" guitar they have out. It could also be an indicator that it's bottomed, as we all know often analysts downgrade the bottom and upgrade the top. Sell the frenzy and buy the panic I guess.

My Slow Week?

2008-08-25T20:29:00.000-05:00

This is the week before Labor Day, typically really slow and I think volume in most stocks and ETFs today was about 60% to almost half of their average volume. I haven't dialed down my trading shares and I really ought to this week.

I was a bit surprised at how many important numbers and earnings, especially retailers, are coming out this week. Well, I say they're important I mean they're at least interesting to me. Too bad we might not get any reaction from them at all, maybe a hiccup and that's it. Maybe this will set up for a crazy start in September after Labor Day like what happened back on MLK Day.

I'll be watching the earnings for SAFM and SFD, they sell chicken and pork, respectively. DF I think would also be in play (DF sells milk products) other than the obvious HRL and TSN. DF and SFD have shown relative strength after having multiple downgrades. We'll see if maybe they go right back down to where they bounced.

Speaking of DF... I'm really surprised what a beating WBD has taken along with the Russian ETF RSX. I can't tell how much of the down slide is related to what's going on in Georgia. I want to say the down slide started long before Georgia and that only made it worse. I'll be watching and waiting for sign of rebound in both of them.

Oh, before I get back on track again... I just realized lately that there's an ETF for heating oil, except that the volume is really too low for my liking. It might be a good idea to find a good entry right now before winter comes.

Anyway, among the retailers reporting this week, AEO, BIG, CHS, JCG, TLB, SHLD, TIF, TWB, ZLC, WSM and DDS. I haven't been able to borrow shares of ZLC so I think I'll probably just play BIG and SHLD. On top of that, we have consumer confidence and FOMC minutes coming out on Tuesday, durable goods orders along with the regular crude inventories on Wednesday, GDP on Thursday, and Chicago PMI and Michigan Sentiment on Friday. Let's please get some consistency going and form some kind of trend, but I wouldn't be surprised we end up down 200 pts one day in reaction to one number and up another 150 the next day b/c the number is not as bad as anticipated.

Nevertheless, let's get ready for some FOOTBALL! USC @ Virginia, Alabama @ Clemson, Illinois @ Missouri, and who knows, maybe Appalachian State will repeat their upset last year over Michigan at LSU this week (LSU doesn't exactly have their QB issue settled, so I wouldn't be too surprised)

My Confusion

2008-08-23T15:44:00.003-05:00

No major trend going that I got in early enough. I've been trying to stretch out my trading timeline and start to think more like a fund manager, but before I'm confident enough to risk real capital I've been using a trading simulation application to test my result.

Although I can't say that I thorough enjoy Andrew Horowitz's The Disciplined Investor podcast (I think he can be very condescending), which I do listen on a somewhat regular basis during my commute to work, I do like his methodology. He uses a Quanta-Funda-Techna method, which is looks at the quantitative first, then the fundamental (EPS, etc), and then the technical (charts), to screen for stocks. I personally use a similar style except I don't have a fancy term for it. In essence I look first at the big picture first, from there I identify the industries that are in play and whether it's strong or weak, from there I find the leaders and laggers of those industries. After I have narrow it down to at least a manageable list of stocks, I look less at its P/E ratio and what not, but I tend to value the IBD data more. P/E ratio... well, people make arguments for buying stocks w/ low ratios thinking it's undervalued or shorting high ratios b/c it's overvalued. Personally... I think it's a load of bull crap if you think like that. I tend to believe that stocks trades w/ a high P/E ratio for a reason. I use it more for a screening tool, but I wouldn't formulate my opinion over a stock over that simple ratio. One additional note though is that I would almost never buy a stock w/ a P/E ratio more than two times its growth rate.

I don't believe that us traders should "predict" the market. What we should do is observe what's happening in our environment for changes and catalysts, find potential trades from that and wait for confirmation. I've come to the realization that the market doesn't care what I think. I might think short or long a stock when the tape is telling me the opposite and the market slaps me w/ a big F-U!

Although I usually don't spot the up trend early enough and I don't like to chase them, what goes up usually comes back down. I guess I have to thank my experience w/ JSDA. It's possibly the easiest pattern to recognize. These growth stocks shoot up after a few blow out quarters and then the analysts start praising the companies, but once the earnings slow down and you start seeing the lower low and lower high pattern... get in and short. There are tons of examples, CROX went from 75 to 4. CEA: 120 back down to 20. ZNH: 90 to 16.

Lately I've been just floating out shares on this trading simulation platform and getting whacked left and right. My entries are usually terrible and honestly nothing is trending very well... at least the ones that I got into. But I've cleaned out everything in my fake portfolio and starting over. Recently the craze about oil gave you some good chance shorting oil and oil/energy related stocks on the way down. Two days ago the pop in XTO, DVN, APA, CLR and CNQ gave you a good short entry with a reasonable stop... except for some reason I thought it was going to break out and longed it to "hedge" against my other oil and energy short positions. Really don't understand what I was thinking. I guess I thought these stocks were beat up way too much.

JRCC at 45 looks like a pretty good short to me, although the chart is not as clean as I'd like. PCX is also not as clear, but I'll definitely short it when it breaks 50. CWEI has a cleaner lower high and lower low pattern, although this stock is kind of illiquid and the spread is bigger. I'm looking to get in around 88, 89 on the next spike. SPWR above 80 is a clear break out; although now I'm looking to get short close to this 100 level. LUFK still looks like it's in an up trend, I'm waiting for it to break down. ENER at 80 also looks like a good short. I'm also looking to short some metal and heavy construction stocks... MEA is this only one that I know off the top of my mind would be a good one, but we'll see what happens w/ X and CLF.

It sounds like I'm a bear and I'd have to say I'm slightly short biased b/c stocks tend to move down faster than they move up, but you need to be able to go both ways, too. When oil starts to break the trend, you could find stuff that would benefit from this... namely, the airline stocks that have been beaten up so much. I've sort of missed the train going long on them so I'm going to wait to see if I can get a good entry.

My Possible New Home

2008-08-18T03:32:00.003-05:00

I'm posting some pictures of the new house that we should hear back from the buyer today (after finally figure out how to use the slideshow feature on Picasa). Chances are we'll have to raise our offer a little bit but hopefully there's a zone to negotiate in. This place will cut my commute to work by maybe more than half.

The view is pretty good. I don't want to sound like a brat but I know there are other houses that we looked at with better view but with the combination of price and distance to the office this one is great. I really dig the Tuscan style, although I think my mom hated it at first. My favorite room is the study. One of the houses that we grew up in my parents had someone come in and custom build a bookshelf for my sister and me in our rooms so we can put all our books. I can't quite explain it but I always loved that bookshelf. It's easy to put all the books and what not there. Maybe it makes me feel smart? Not quite sure. There is a tree kind of blocking the view of the hill but I think I can easily chop it down or even we put in a pool that's probably gotta go anyway.

Fingers crossed that we got a desperate selling on our hands. The seller has already moved out for a while, I think he's in Florida now? I just think that the house has a lot of character and I loved Chianti when I visited.

I do have to make a brief comment related to trading on this. Personally, my view of the housing market that is it'll probably reach true bottom next year, but we all know how hard it is to pick the exact bottom. There's a lot of news on how much the housing crisis has created and although I didn't see as many signs w/ the house that we made an offer on, the house the next door was also for sale and I could piece together some signs of just much pain the seller is trying to sell the house. The house next door is smaller and the view is better, but it's been sitting on the market almost too long and the price has gone down I think by about 300 to 500k. The realtor said the seller was an interior designer and designed the house himself. Although I can't say I liked the layout of the house... there were just... too much wall. My personal opinion is that he didn't utilize the space well enough and ended up w/ bunch of rooms that were just too small and cramped, at least for my style. Even the kitchen was kind of small.

Anyway, what I saw from around the house I was willing to bet that this guy was divorced b/c all you see are pictures of his kids or him w/ his kids but there's no picture of the mom what so ever, which I thought at least was kind of interesting/weird. The master bedroom was just a full size, maybe a really small queen? It just seems out of place for a "family" bed. There were two rooms for the kids but as I peeked to seek the closet space there were no clothes in there, which led me to guess that the kids just visit on weekends. So we've got a below average interior designer in a struggling economy and housing market (I'm not trying to make fun of the guy but I really think the layout of the house is terrible), divorced, and the bank is about to foreclose on his house unless he sells it before a certain date. I feel for the guy, you know? Can you imagine families out there with more kids and worse jobs than this guy and how much they're going through trying to make payments on their mortgage.

Trading in the Zone Recap

2008-08-17T15:23:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading Mark Douglas' Trading in the Zone. It took me way too long to finish the book. The Dale Carnegie class started when I was in the middle of the book so I started reading for the class instead and I didn't really pick up Douglas' book again for a while. Plus, I just have to say that this book is pretty deep. There are time I felt like I was Neo from The Matrix reading something Morpheus wrote. It's in English and I understand the words but when they're put together I can't seem to understand them sometimes. It's like the author is using one string of long and complicated thought to explain another long and complicated thought.

Despite that, I'd still recommend the book. It talks about trading on a psychological level, which is something that I need to read at the moment. The main idea of the book is to get over the fear or other negatively charged energy that we have and trade in a state of mind where we're not scared of losing money or get upset if a trade doesn't work out, but instead treat trading as a series of probabilities. You can achieve consistent result if you identify what is your edge and have good risk reward, therefore if you win only say 50% or 60% of the time but you have a 3:1 or 2:1 risk reward you're going to make money consistently.

Here are the quotables from the book:

The defining characteristic that separates the consistent winners from everyone else is this: The winners have attained a mind-set --- a unique set of attitudes --- that allows them to remain disciplined, focused, and, above all, confident in spite of adverse conditions. As a result, they are no longer susceptible to the common fears and trading errors that plague everyone else.

I don't think I could put the difference between the consistent winners and everyone else more simply than this: The best traders aren't afraid. They aren't afraid because they have developed attitudes that give them the greatest degree of mental flexibility to flow in and out of trades based on what the market is telling them about the possibilities from its perspective. At the same time, the best traders have developed attitudes that prevent them from getting reckless. Everyone else is afraid, to some degree or another. When they're not afraid, they have the tendency to become reckless and to create the kind of experience for themselves that will cause them to be afraid from that point on.

So if you are afraid of being wrong or losing money, it means you will never learn enough to compensate for the negative effects these fears will have on your ability to be objective and you ability to act without hesitation. In other words, you won't be confident in the face of constant uncertainty. The hard, cold reality of trading is that every trade has an uncertain outcome. Unless you learn to completely accept the possibility of an uncertain outcome, you will try either consciously or unconsciously to avoid any possibility you define as painful. In the process, you will subject yourself to any number of self-generated, costly errors.

... It will feel like you can't trust the markets; but the reality is, you can't trust yourself.

Trading can be characterized as a pure, unencumbered personal choice with an immediate outcome. Remember, nothing happens until we decide to start; it lasts as long as we want; and it doesn't end until we decided to stop. All of these beginnings, middles, and endings are the result of our interpretation of the information available and how we choose to act on our interpretation. Now, we may want the freedom to make choices, but that doesn't mean we are ready and willing to accept the responsibility for the outcomes. Traders who are not ready to accept responsibility for the outcomes of their interpretation and actions will find themselves in a dilemma: How does one participate in an activity that allows complete freedom of choice, and at the same time avoid taking responsibility if the outcome of one's choices are unexpected and not to one's liking?

The hard reality of trading is that, if you want to create consistency, you have to start from the premise that no matter what the outcome, you are completely responsible. This is a level of responsibility few people have aspired to before they decide to become traders. The way to avoid responsibility is to adopt a trading style that is, to all intents and purposes, random. I define random trading as poorly-planned trades or trades that are not planned at all. It is an unorganized approach that takes into consideration an unlimited set of market variables, which do not allow you to find out what works on a consistent basis and what does not.

The best traders think in a number of unique ways. They have acquired a mental structure that allows them to trade without fear and, at the same time, keeps them from becoming reckless and committing fear-based errors.... the bottom line is that successful traders have virtually eliminated the effects of fear ad recklessness from their trading. These two fundamental characteristics allow them to achieve consistent results.

The consistency you seek is in your mind, not in the markets. It's attitudes and beliefs about being wrong, losing money, and the tendency to become reckless, when you're feeling good, that cause most losses--not technique or market knowledge.

It's when you're winning that you are most susceptible to making a mistake, overtrading, putting on too large a position, violating your rules, or generally operating as if no prudent boundaries on your behavior are necessary. You may even go to the extreme of thinking you are the market. However, the market rarely agrees, and when it disagrees, you'll get hurt. The loss and the emotional pain are usually significant. You will experience a boom, followed by the inevitable bust.

What separates the best traders from everyone else is not what they do or when they do it, but rather how they think about what they do and how they're thinking when they do it.

If your goal is to trade like a professional and be a consistent winner, then you must start from the premise that the solutions are in your mind and not in the market. Consistency is a state of mind that has at its core certain fundamental thinking strategies that are unique to trading.

You can't rely on the market to make you consistently successful, any more than you can rely on the outside world to make you consistently happy. People who are truly happy don't have to do anything in order to be happy. They are happy people who do things.

The best traders stay in the flow because they don't try to get anything from the market; they simply make themselves available so they can take advantage of whatever the market is offering at any given moment.

The threat of pain generates fear, and fear is the source of 95 percent of the errors you are likely to make.

Risk is relative, but to the person who perceives it in the moment, it seems absolute and beyond question. when the child encountered his first dog, he was bubbling with excitement and curiosity. What is it about the way our minds think and process information that could automatically flip the boy into a state of fear the next time he encounters a dog, even if it's months or years later.

If there is such a thing as a secret to the nature of trading, this is it: At the very core of one's ability 1) to trade without fear or overconfidence, 2) perceive what the market is offering from its perspective, 3) stay completely focused in the "now moment opportunity flow," and 4) spontaneously enter the "zone," it is a strong virtually unshakable belief in an uncertain outcome with an edge in your favor.

Not predefining your risk, not cutting your losses, or not systematically taking profits are three of the most common--and usually the most costly--trading errors you can make. Only the best traders have eliminated these errors from their trading. At some point in their careers, they learned to believe without a shred of doubt that anything can happen, and to always account for what they don't know, for the unexpected.

When you've trained your mind to think in probabilities, it means you have fully accepted all the possibilities (with no internal resistance or conflict) and you always do something to take the unknown forces into account. Thinking this way is virtually impossible unless you've done the mental work necessary to "let go" of the need to know what is going to happen next or the need to be right on each trade. In fact, the degree by which you think you know, assume you know, or in any way need to know what is going to happen next, is equal to the degree to which you will fail as a trader.

In what way does a trader have to learn how to be rigid and flexible at the same time? The answer is: We have to be rigid in our rules and flexible in our expectations. We need to be rigid in our rules so that we gain a sense of self-trust that can, and will always, protect us in an environment that has few, if any, boundaries. We need to be flexible in our expectations so we can perceive, with the greatest degree of clarity and objectivity, what the market is communicating to us from its perspective. At this point, it probably goes without saying that the typical trader does just the opposite: He is flexible in his rule sand rigid in his expectations. Interestingly enough the more rigid the expectation, the more he has to either bend, violate, or break his rules in order to accommodate his unwillingness to give up what he wants in favor of what the market is offering.

A probabilistic ind-set pertaining to trading consists of five fundamental truths:
1) Anything can happen
2) You don't need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money
3) There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that define an edge
4) An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another
5) Every moment in the market is unique

The best traders are in the "now moment" because there's no stress. There's no stress because there's nothing at risk other than the amount of money they are willing to spend on a trade. They are not trying to be right or trying to avoid being wrong; neither are they trying to prove anything. If and when the market tells them that their edges aren't working or that it's time to take profits, their minds do nothing to block this information. They completely accept what the market is offering them, and they wait for the next edge.

Consistency is the result of a carefree, objective state of mind, where we are making ourselves available to perceive and act upon whatever the market is offering us (from its perspective) in any given "now moment."

To remove the sense of threat, you have to accept the risk completely. When you have accepted the risk, you will be at pace with any outcome. To be at peace with any outcome, you must reconcile anything in your mental environment that conflicts with the five fundamental truths about the market. What's more, you also have to integrate these truths into your mental system as core beliefs.

When you really believe that trading is simply a probability game, concepts like right and wrong or win and lose no longer have the same significance. As a result, your expectations will be in harmony with the possibilities.

When you believe at a functional level that every edge has a unique outcome (meaning that it's a dominant belief without any other beliefs arguing for something different), you will experience a state of mind that is free of fear, stress, and anxiety when you trade. It really can't work any other way. A unique outcome is not something we have already experienced, therefor it is not something we can already know. If it were know, it could not be defined as unique. when you believe that you don't now what is going to happen next, what exactly are you expecting from the market? If you said "I don't know," you are absolutely right. If you believe that something will happen and that you don't need to know exactly what that something is to make money, then where's the potential to define and interpret market information as threatening and painful? If you said "There is none," you are absolutely right again.

If you are not experiencing the quality of mental freedom and it is your desire to do so, then you must take an active role in training your mind to believe in the uniqueness of each moment, and you must de-activate any other belief that argues for something different.

If you asked me to distill trading down to its simplest form, I would say that it is a pattern recognition numbers game. We use market analysis to identify the patterns, define the risk, and determine when to take profits. the trade either works or it doesn't. In any case, we go on to the next trade. It's that simple, but it's certainly not easy. In fact, trading is probably the hardest thing you'll ever attempt to be successful at. That's not because it requires intellect; quite the contrary! But because the more you think you know, the less successful you'll be. Trading is hard because you have to operate in a state of not having to know, even though your analysis may turn out at times to be "perfectly" correct. To operate in a state of not having to know, you have to properly manage your expectations. To properly manage your expectation, you must realign your mental environment so that you believe without a shadow of a doubt in the five fundamental truths.

When it comes to personal transformation, the most important ingredients are your willingness to change, the clarity of your intent, and the strength of your desire. Ultimately, for this process to work, you must choose consistency over every other reason or justification you have for trading

What separates the "consistently great" athletes and performers from everyone else is their distinct lack of fear of making a mistake. The reason they aren't afraid is that they don't have a reason to think less of themselves when they do make a mistake, meaning they don't have a reservoir of negatively charged energy waiting to well up and pounce on their conscious thought process like a lion waiting for the right moment to pounce on its intended prey.

Self-discipline is a technique to create a new mental framework. It is not a personality trait. People are born with self-discipline.

Beliefs can be changed, and if it's possible to change one belief, then it's possible to change any belief, if you understand that you really aren't changing them, but are only transferring energy from one concept to another

sub-beliefs building blocks that provide the underlying structure for what is means "to be a consistent winner."
1) I objectively identify my edges
2) I predefine the risk of every trade
3) I completely accept the risk or I am willing to let go of the trade
4) I act on my edges without reservation or hesitation
5) I pay myself as the market makes money available to me
6) I continually monitor my susceptibility for making errors
7) I understand the absolute necessity of these principles of consistent success and therefore, I never violate them.

My Hibernation

2008-08-16T14:39:00.001-05:00

It's August... really, not much to update trading wise. We had a Fed day and even that was very much a non-event. The market barely moved at all when the announcement came out. Honestly, August is probably not that bad, I just always had a losing trade to close out the day. I had one day that I put in bunch of short sell orders when I thought I was putting in bids and another day I put in my bid price a whole dollar higher and end up losing a chunk of money.

Two more weddings in August... one was for my sister and the other was for Kristen, a friend of mine since high school. I actually ran into our Risk Manager from work at Kristen's wedding... turns out he knew the groom's grandparents. I think I'm done for a while, there are few more weddings I know are in the pipeline but it might not be as big of a deal and I'm not sure I'll be invited. It was a little awkward seeing an ex at Kristen's wedding, but I think at least I'm finally over her. I had to say though that I was a little bit disappointed in the food, maybe it was b/c my expectation was way too high. Seriously though, the salad the served us was like something they bought at Sam's Club. The food was awesome at my sister's wedding though. We're friends w/ the owner of Cafe 101, and they had sushi and sashimi for appetizer and the main course I couldn't even finish b/c I was way too full by that point.

I don't know if it's b/c of the fact that I've been staying up watching coverage of the Olympic games or what but I've been feeling kind of tired and honestly, not really motivated to trade. I probably should've booked that trip to NYC. Phelps is just amazing. He puts so much pressure on himself you have to be a little concerned whether he will snap or not and what happens if he ends up w/ only 6 or 7 gold medals. It really reminds me of some friends from Southwestern that sets extremely and ridiculous high goals for themselves and still manage to accomplish those goals. I don't care what planet you are from, the human race never ceases to amaze you.

Oh, and I'm happy to report that my family has made an offer on a house. The buyer hasn't responded yet. I think we've low balled him too much. He's moved out of the house for a while now, I suppose we'll be able to see just how eager he is to sell w/ this offer. We're willing to go a little higher, maybe to a point where he'll break even after paying commission to the brokers. I don't really want to count my eggs b4 they hatch though, a lot could happen in the negotiation process. It would be nice though to live much closer to the office. The view is nice and we have already made some plans on building a pool and where to put a ping pong table and all that. Again, anything could happen. We'll make more plans when we actually get the house.

Dale Carnegie class is going really well. I love seeing the breakthroughs people have in the class. Starting in September the class will be on Thursdays and I think I'm going to take furthers steps on becoming an instructor in the future and deeper in with the organization.

Sigh... I just feel like taking a really long nap. Wake me up after Labor Day. More detailed updates on the weddings, house and Dale Carnegie class when I get more energy.

My August So Far

2008-08-05T16:59:00.002-05:00

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.

July Review

2008-07-31T20:02:00.001-05:00

July's been a good month. I think I nearly doubled my P&L from June, which was already a career best month. Through out the first half I was doing really well, I would make two or three good trades and they all turn out to be really good winners. There's definitely a certain mental block I think and once you break through it's easier to get back to that level. That's pretty much what I try to do early July and to ride out my streak as long as possible. I knew it was unrealistic b/c my winning percentage would be in the 70 or 80's. At first it really help me build confidence and taking slightly bigger size but it got to a point where I was scared that the streak would end. Especially sometimes that I double down and add to losers and get away with it. When I talk to Lawrence that I was afraid the streak it going to end he pretty much flat out said "oh yeah, it will." I didn't like that at first; I felt at first almost as he's putting a curse on me. Then I starting to think that's pretty much how trading is... you'll be hot and you'll be cold, you just gotta adjust accordingly.

July kind of cooled down though towards the end. Volume started sucking so I didn't get to finish July as strong as I wanted. Some of it might have to do w/ this stupid temporary Reg SHO the SEC put in place, which at first it was going to end on July 29th I believe but now it's been extended to mid August. Our office has been very good w/ the new change, we had a pool of borrowed stocks in the 19 companies that were included in the list and it would replenish automatically. Really except for a few occasions I think we would have always have the shares to short. I don't really trade the individual stocks as much so it affected me less. The ETF's that track these stocks that I trade might have been distorted price wise like XLF, SKF, KRE, and KBE, but really it doesn't matter to me... I just trade whichever direction the trend it going. It wasn't like nobody out there could short the financials, it's just that you couldn't naked short (shorting w/out first locating the shares to borrow), which is illegal anyway. But who cares, there are people out there doing illegal things on the street everyday anyway.

I've also put some focus into trying out new tools w/ technology for new trades and it's worked on a few occasions. That probably added a thousand dollars to my P&L for the month, plus there are other tools that help me stay in the trade longer or take bigger size although it's harder to quantify how much more money I made.

I've been slacking off on the reading... not good. I need to finish the Mark Douglas book so I can move on to something else.

So, here's to a good July and wish for a crazy August. Fed meeting next Wednesday, we'll have to see what they do. I hope they either raise or cut rate... get some good action going. Enough of this leaving the rate unchanged business.

Conversation with Jon

2008-07-28T03:38:00.003-05:00

I met with another HP on Tuesday and watched him trade for a little bit on Wednesday. I really should probably bring a pen and a pad with me the next time b/c some of the stuff we talk about is really valuable and I can't rely strictly on my memory, especially trying to recall almost a week after.

Jon's been trading for about three years now. He was actually neighbors with my coach when Lawrence started. What really surprise or impress me sometimes is how nonchalant he is. Some traders I've met or talk to they're really competitive or they get upset sometimes when they lose money. Jon seems completely confident in his ability, even if he had bad trade he knows he can make it back (that's my impression at least). We talked about this one bad trade which led to the worst day of his career and how he lost a lot of money shorting JRCC as the stock went from $4 to I think $60 and the entire he just has the expression that it was no big deal, you live and learn.
Apparently Jon had done something similar to what I'm doing with another trader. They wanted to interview the top traders out on the floor and publish some kind of magazine (for internal circulation?). He said that one of the top traders told him that it's ok if you lost a lot of money for the day as long as you learned something. It's only a bad day if you've waste the day.

As a trader, Jon says he'll trade just about anything. He'll be in tons of different stocks and some longer term trades. It seems Jon is making a conscious effort to improve his longer term trading as he's made goals in that area. I would love to stretch out my timeline as well once I've established that I'm good at one thing to build the confidence and increase my risk appetite like some of the HP's have. Jon says he typically gets in about 6:45am and scans the IDB headlines and if there's anything that interests him he'll read more in-depth.

The biggest takeaway for me is probably to watch the float and short interest, which I already kind of do but probably doesn't pay attention to it that much and maybe it's more for longer term plays.

My Weekend

2008-07-27T02:34:00.000-05:00

You know, when I started this blog I didn't really think about other people interested in applying for jobs at Kershner would find out much less read my blog, but hopefully this has been helpful in providing some information or transparency to the whole application process. Honestly, I think if I didn't know Nick I probably wouldn't have taken the job myself.

Trading update: July's been good. Really good, in fact. I'll post more in depth personal analysis later. Right now, I want to talk about my wonderful weekend.

First of all, it's great not having to go to any weddings. Originally I was going to take a trip to either LA or NYC this weekend but Brett literally told me that he was coming back from Cali to Texas this weekend for his birthday right before I booked my flight. So I packed all my stuff and left right after some happy hour action after work on Friday to his family's lake house at Coldspring, TX. Well, I realized that I have taken out my SD card out of my hand held and using that in the DSLR instead so unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures from the weekend. Having to drive 3 hours kind of sucks, but at least gas is cheaper now and who knows when I'll see him again.

I wish I could've stayed longer but Margaret and I have already purchased our tickets to the Roger Creager's birthday show at Gruene Hall a long time ago. Gruene Hall is the oldest dance hall in Texas. Although I wasn't born in Texas or really consider myself a Texan I've been wanting to check the place out for a while. I gotta say, the place is classic country. Everything is how it should be. It's not like those country dance places where it's still very cosmopolitan. When the band gets going, you can feel the floor starting to shake on account it being so damn old. Each plank of wood has its own personality just like the parque flooring of the Boston Garden. The floor is slicker than what I'm used to from the thousands of cowboy boots that have caressed and buffed the floor over the past 130 years.

Margaret and I almost found out how slick the floor is the hard way. Nobody was really dancing the entire night but we want to be able to tell people that we've danced at Gruene Hall when Everclear came on we found some open space in the back and just went to town. Well, first I should say there's this thing that I do that I would spin the girl out and catch her as she spins back in to me and straight into a dip. Margaret doesn't really like this as she is kind of scared that I would drop her since she's moving pretty fast and I kept telling her that she's just gotta trust me. On our first attempt, one of her feet slipped out from underneath her as I go into the dip so I was surprised by all the extra weight and momentum I have to carry... but I caught her. Her pony tail might've touched the floor but I didn't let her fall. After that I think we pretty much cut out all of the heavy spinning stuff that could risk us getting on American Funniest Homevideo.

Oh, and I know this is coming out of the left field quite a bit, but for the first time ever that I actually like a haircut I got here in the States. Yes, I like to do something with my hair but it doesn't mean I'm gay or metrosexual. I haven't really done anything to it in a while so I decided to go for the faux-hawk, except mine is more like a faux-fauxhawk. A fauxhawk is like a mohawk except you don't shave down the sides. Mine is really just a hint of a mohawk, it's very tastefully done. I might post a picture of it, maybe from this weekend's wedding.

Conversation w/ Mike

2008-07-18T03:08:00.002-05:00

So I started this thing where I'm taking an HP out for drinks each week. This week was Mike and I already got Jonathan lined up for next week. Mike also told me Anthony would be a good one to talk to as well and that would be pretty easy since he was one of the guys that did the round robin interviews with me.

Mike is predominantly a momentum trader and he gets in big size when he likes what he sees. It doesn't seem like he does anything too special preparation wise for the day, just spending some time watching bloomberg and reading WSJ in the morning. He also uses Thompson I think for more technical levels, which I might have to ask some follow up questions on that.

Since Mike trades a lot bigger size, which obviously I'm not there yet but it's something to think about as my position size gets bigger, he usually doesn't play some of the ETF's he trades unless it's got 1.5 times the average volume for the day. He also watches the NAV. I tried watching it thinking maybe the ETF will converge back with the NAV or have some other theories but basically b/c I couldn't find anything conclusive to validate my theories I stopped watching the NAV but now I think I'm going to pull it up on one of my tapes and see the trend the NAV is making. I don't suspect it'll make a drammatic effect in my trading but it's just another indicator for me to get in/out quicker or judge my position size. Mike also says he uses the NAV for some pre market trading, like couple minutes before the market opens and there are programmed ECN's coming in. If futures gapped up/down big, like 15 points then he'll try to play it and get hit close to yesterday's close.

We also spend some time talking about flipping a trade, which is something I have thought about but when you're in an actual trade and you've just lost money on you sometimes don't think about flipping it to go the other direction or you think you're revenge trading, but if something is breaking the trend then get out and flip to go the other way is one strategy, or if you're getting in front of a big size and that big size is getting hit, go ahead and take your out and flip the other way b/c chances are other people are trying to get out, too.

I also ask him how they're trading BRK shares and really it's no different from any other stock in that it moves in correlation to the futures and the A shares correlate w/ the B shares. The value is a lot higher but you're trading 1 or 10 share lots so the spread is really not that bad. Maybe the next time there's an imbalance I'll play it to get my feet wet b/c otherwise it looks really scary. There are other guys in the office that play a lot of the high dollar stocks like WPO, MKL, Y, SEB, WTM but I don't think I'm there yet, even if Mike says there's some really good money to be made in them.

Mike's imbalance strategy seems a little different from what our pod does. He seems to be getting in big size almost right before the close and then put limit order out just a few cents away to ensure that he'll be able to get out

Other than that, I think I'm on the right track. Some of my strategy are pretty similar to what Mike does so that does make me feel better. What I need to work on is just making good trades and gradually get in more size, like 100 or 200 shares more at a time to increase my comfort level.

My Solid Day

2008-07-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

Yet another very, very solid day. ODP lowered guidance and OMX went down in sympathy so I got short. Took profits all the way down and finally tried to let the last few ride and set a wider trailing stop and was able to ride it for about a point.

Big Ben came on very early in the morning and I think the news was that there would be more liquidity in the lending market so the Dollar strengthened, driving oil and natural gas down. I personally didn't know quite what to make of all that's happened within the past 24 hrs w/ the whole FAS 140 mark to market and the news this morning and seems like I wasn't the only one so I didn't really trade any EEM or that type of plays until I could see the trend or support/resistance level. That worked pretty well... saved and made me some money. Market broke out of its range and I should've gone long much earlier but I couldn't make up my mind.

There's been a lot of talk about super yahtzee... I just much rather not think about it and try to ride my streak as long as I can. I know I get into trouble when I start thinking about dollar figures. Tomorrow is Wednesday and I usually doesn't do too well on Wednesdays so let's be careful.

My New Streak?

2008-07-07T16:15:00.002-05:00

Trading back at the old desk today since David comes in on Mondays. Frankly, I just feel more relaxed and focused. Relax and focus seem to contradict each other but that's how it is. I'm focused on looking for new trades and I'm relaxed just trying to maximize my profits. I had a pretty nice day, and almost made a new personal daily best.

Banking is still weak, now that FRE and FNM comes out with this FAS 140 news I don't think it's going to get any better. IMB dropped 29% after market (well, it's like 70 cents and it dropped 20 cents so the percentage looks more drammatic). In my long term I've dumped all my longs... don't know if that's smart or not but I'm not going to get long until I find where the money is flowing. I'm short a lot of car makers, airlines, regional banks like ZION, MTB, STI, BBT and all the exchanges like CME, NMX, ICE, and NYX.

My KRE and STI short worked well around the open but it could've been better. This might be one of the places where I should use the wider stop once it's in my favor like Andy said, especially if something is trending very well. I think KRE dropped another point since I got out. I was looking for SPY to break that 126 support today and it happened right around lunch time. I'm glad I was zoned in and decided to skip lunch and shorted bunch of EEM and shorted the bounce with that and EWZ again. I think the plan tomorrow is to see what the market does around this 126 level if it gets back there.

I caught Andy for a few minutes today while he's walking around the office and asked him about Hirschhorn and he said to look for sample journals from him and what I found was the following 15 points, although in certain sites or interviews I've read it's 18... oh well.

1. Establish your trading rules for the day. For example, if you've been struggling lately, you might establish a rule that you'll take 50% off your winners on the first hint of a pullback.

2. Identify the major world events that are currently in play.

3. Figure out which economic numbers are in play today.

4. Create a motto for the day. Keep it brief and positive.

5. Develop your morning game plan (be sure to do so before the open).

6. Evaluate your morning game plan (how did things really play out? How did you react? Did you stick to or stray from your game plan, and why?)

7. Prepare an afternoon game plan (create it over lunch, say, before the afternoon session begins).

8. Evaluate your afternoon game plan. A quick retooling of strategy could pay off in the second half.

9. Ask yourself: What did I do well today? What could I have done better? Use this step to dig deep and engage in some genuinely tough self-analysis.

10. List all your trades that appear to be working and all those that aren't.

11. Call the market -- is it range-bound? Trending? Which sectors are in play?

12. Determine for yourself: On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), your level of focus and concentration for the day.

13. Your daily question: Am I a better trader today than I was yesterday? If so, why? In other words, what exactly have I learned? A day without learning is a wasted day in a trader's career.

14. Which trades should I pay attention to tomorrow?

15. My goal for tomorrow is?

My Messing with the Streak

2008-07-06T22:46:00.002-05:00

"A player on a streak has to respect the streak"
--- Crash, from Bull Durham

Trading certainly has been interesting to finish out the month. The Fed day and the day after resulted in me giving back a good chunk of my month, but then I put together a streak of three really good days, and I mean pretty damn good, at least for me at this point in the game. Then one day Lawrence came over and asked me if I'd like to trade at David's desk since he's going to be gone or trading from home pretty much all summer. Mind you, David's an HP, his computer is a lot better, plus he has four monitors that I can use and on top of that I get to sit between two really good traders. Obviously I like the idea very much, but at the same time I know I'm very much about comfort. It's not that I'm afraid of change, it's just that once I grow accustom to something, anything that's different just kind of throws me off focus and it takes time for me to get use to the new environment. It was like that for me when I play tennis if I used a new string or grip. My focus goes to how this was different compared to before instead of on the game.

Well, the first day I trade at David's desk, his primary monitor is different so I have to turn my head slightly at an angle the whole day. Sure, not a big deal but after a few hours it can create a discomfort. David's keyboard is different and I pressed the limit or market order key intead of loading the price that I want and got some pretty bad fills. David's admin is also different, which is cool that I get to see some other trader's style but I don't get to see what some of the traders that I'm used to. There's also a noticeably increase in cursing on this other side. On my side it's usually pretty quite b/c it's some of the programmers or IT guys' office and occasionaly someone might walk by but holy cow, the amount of cursing that goes on really surprises me.

I had two very very minor down days but I'm taking steps to make everything as close as to the environment that I'm used to trading in, that means making some changes to my layouts and getting rid of distractions. We'll see how this goes, if it really bothers me I might just forgo the two extra monitors and better computer and stick to my own setup.

My Meeting with the Big Kahuna

2008-07-06T04:09:00.003-05:00

I had requested a meeting with Andy before he returns back to China. There was so much I could ask him about I didn't know where to start. Unfortunately that morning I needed IT to help me set up some stuff it ate some precious time. Also we spent time talking about my past/path at the beginning, which was nice that the CEO was taking interest in me but again, this takes up time that I'd rather spend trying to get some words of wisdom from him.

One of the biggest take away I got from the hour or so we spent was that Andy said that in his personal traidng he would try to hold on to winners as long as he can until they force him out. I asked him to expand on this and he says that he would basically use a much wider stop once a trade was going in his favor, which makes sense but I know for me that's really hard to do. I hate to see profit unrealized, but at the same time you can tell if something is really week.

We took a look at my growth chart and Andy informed me that to get to the next stage of higher, more consistent profit, you have to lose your fear. After that you'd have to lose your anger to get to the next level, meaning revenge trade and things of that nature. This coincides with the book I'm reading by Mark Douglass about trading in the "zone" where you lose your fear of losing money and instead trading the set ups that work for you and sticking to your stops.

Other than that, Andy just try to encourage me to develop the habits of the best traders have, such as getting in early and be aware of any news that might affect market movements that day, spending an hour a day after trading to review, and spending an hour a week learning new technology and an hour a week talking to other traders. He also encourages me to go back and watch some of the videos we have done with HP traders, which I have since our first casual chat. I watched them all when I first started but maybe they'll have more meaning this time around. There also was a period where I kept strict recording of all my entries and exists, looking at charts and indicators to see if I could've done better but over time I either got lazy or see the diminishing return of the time I spent that I stopped doing it. Andy sent me a template that another trader uses and I think I'll customize it a bit and start using that.

Lastly he left me with the name Hirschhorn before I had to run back to my desk and get ready for the day. I don't really remember what Andy said about him so I just jotted down his name with the intention of googling him later. Apparently he has a nickname as the Trading Dr. Seems quite interesting... I will have to check him out later.

Weekly Watch List 7/7

2008-07-06T03:43:00.002-05:00

Last week was a short week due to 4th of July and not a whole lot of earnings or events going on, but this week gets us ready for earning season. On Tuesday we got Alcoa (AA) reporting after the close and Friday we got GE reporting before the open. We also have the Univ. of Michigan Consumer Sentiment coming out on Friday. Too bad I will be gone to Arizona this Friday. It was a hard decision. I haven't taken a break in a while and like I said, earning season was starting soon and it's going to be even harder to get away. S&P is at this critical 126 level and I think we're just about to open the flood gate for another crazy summer. We have seen SPY breach this 126 support level, or the low from January and March. The first time it broke we bounced right back and when it broke again on Thursday you can see a more pronounce selling, even though it's to safe to assume a portion of traders are on early vacation. We're also seeing money flowing out of coal, metal, and some of the energy/gas stocks. The money has got to go somewhere though, could it flow into tech or some of the safer big cap stocks? We'll have to see what this summer brings us.

My Class So Far

2008-07-03T23:18:00.002-05:00

There's so much to talk about, but I suppose I'll start with the quickest one and talk about the Dale Carnegie class, some of the other stuff still require more pondering and thinking.

I'm really enjoying myself with the class. It's great working with Jim. I think I'm still trying to find my place in the class. All the GA's have different styles. Mine is more really just there to listen and only interfere when absolutely necessary. Say for example if someone was dominating the discussion or if anybody hasn't really spoken or made the progress we'd like to see. I get to go through the course with them myself and it's quite refreshing after 6 years. These life principles we teach in the course are so simple but why we simply don't put them into practice in our everyday life and what a difference they make amaze me.

I can already see the impact it's having on some of the people and we've only finished week 2. I want to peg people for what kind of break through or path they'll take through out the class from my experience but after this week and their first talk I have to remind myself that everyone of them is different. They all have a story. Gosh, they seem to be so into it though. The energy is high and they all seem to be eager to share with whatever they're struggling with and the little victories they have.

This is going to be pretty cool, and I get to try to have my own break through as well, even though with this position comes with more reading, lots of prep time and an unfathomably long Wednesday that usually leads to a tiring Thursday morning. To give you an idea, I typically get up a 6am, get to the office about 7:30. On Wednesdays the class starts at 6pm and ends at 9:30, then the GA's and the instructor would meet to prep for the following sessions for about half an hour. By the time I get home it's already 10:30pm and if I'm lucky I get to finish the other stuff that I need to do and my head hits the pillow before midnight.

Weekly Watch List 6/23/08

2008-06-23T16:08:00.003-05:00

I'm writing this on Monday since I was away for a wedding this weekend and didn't get in until late Sunday night. Luckily there wasn't any major events on Monday except for WAG reporting.

Tuesday
10:00 - Consumer Confidence

Wednesday
MON reports before the open... too risky, I don't think I'll get in it. Although if you hold a gun to my head I'd get long.
8:30 - Durable Orders
10:30 - Crude Inventories (D-Day for my UCR/DCR trade)
14:15 - FOMC Policy Statement
Reporting after the close - NKE... not sure which way, probably won't play this either. I'd get long ORCL if I can get a nice entry, RIMM... no clue

Thursday
Before the open: depending on the housing numbers I'll determine which way I want to go w/ LEN
8:30 - GDP, Q1 Final
After the close: PALM if I can get shares short

Friday
Before the open: again, depending on the housing number and LEN's numbers I'll decided which side to take my position.

In general... coal is still on fire, with the exception of PCX, maybe it's drawing some short selling attention. I picked a few of these guys for the CNBC contest and it's been working well. PCX, JRCC, NCOC, ICO, FDG, ACI. HK I think is being added to the Russell 1000, strong buying indication in this guy. WNR I think is leaving.

Made some nice calls on the FDX, KMX, and WGO. I'm feeling even better about these earnings trades when I have a stronger feeling or more indication which way it's going to go.

Back to back positive week. I was actually kind of nervous going into Friday since I was still down slightly for the week b/c of a few trades that I took big size didn't work out in my favor. Missed a few great opportunities... and I'm still grieving about it as well. I know I can do better. We got one more solid week of trading left in June, it's time to kick some butt.

My Weekly Watchlist

2008-06-15T19:36:00.002-05:00

I've been watching the earnings calendar and trying to pick a few that looks interesting and either go long or short right before the close, hoping for a big one or two point move in after market trading. The stock that I played this week were OXM and SEH. OXM missed and dipped almost two points, but SEH beat their estimate by 2 cents so I covered really quickly with a 3 cent loss. I saw what happened to SEH in March when they reported, the stock loss almost half of its value I think and I thought it might happen again. Plus they're in the chemical/plastic business. Higher oil = higher cost in plastics, but it was not to be. Thank God I covered too, b/c this thing went as much as 2 points higher the next day.

Monday
ADBE and LZB after the close. I don't have a strong feeling about either one, but if you hold a gun to my head I'd get long ADBE and short LZB.

Tuesday
BBY and GS before the open. Still don't have a strong bias either way but their numbers could definitely move the market one way or another.
PPI, Housing and Industrial Production numbers out all before the opening bell, should be an very interesting day

Wednesday
KMX, FDX, LNN, MS before the open. Depending on the risk reward, I'd get short KMX, FDX, MS and long LNN.

Thursday
CCL, PIR, MESA, and CC. Short bias against all of these guys, but again, depending on the risk/reward. HRB after the close, the estimate seems too high in a down economy, I'd go short
Philadelphia Fed Index right after the bell.

Friday
WGO before the open. Most likely short.

My New Strategy

2008-06-15T19:07:00.003-05:00

I've been wanting to try out the IBD data to look for trades but there are so many plays. I decided I was going to try some out on the CNBC challenge and on other trading simulation platforms.

Play #1: Stocks that are news to the 80/80 list or even the 90 tend to run up

I don't know how many plays I can find with this assumption, because from what I've seen stocks have already made somewhat of a run before they get on the list. The idea is that there are other funds using the IBD data and they'll reallocate their portfolio to these stronger stocks. I'll just have to add them to a watch list somewhere and keep watching.

Play #2: Stocks off the 80/80 list

Same idea, except the reverse. Funds will probably dump the stocks that moved off the 80/80 list, but chances are the stocks have already made a significant down move, therefore diminishing your risk/reward.

Play #3: Stocks with strong EPS or Fund Buying Rating dipped

This is the one that I'm trying out on CNBC this week. The idea is that there's a strong buying by other funds and there's the likelihood that they'll buy more of a stock that's retraced so the stock will bounce back. Some of the oil stocks have retraced but now the news just out that Saudi is going to increase production... I'll have to get it in the mornig early to see how oil is trading and maybe cancel some of my allocations to these oil stocks.

Here's my watch list:

Oil/Energy: SWN, OXY, CWEI, KWK, RRC, PQ, GLF
Coal: JRCC, PCX
China: XIN, EJ
Other: BAP, WBD, MTL, NCS, PAC, TNH, SDA

If oil is gapped down in the moring I'll probably dump these oil energy guys and I don't know how that might affect the two coal stocks I'm watching. I'm guessing it's going to have some negative effects. China hasn't been trading that well recently, maybe it's due for a bounce? All the other ones are pretty good I think. Like TNH, which is a top performing stock in a top sector selling fertilizers has been hammered pretty hard or SDA which produces steel and cement in Brazil is touching the bottom of that uptrend gives you a great entry and risk/reward.

Santogold and Bud Light Lime

2008-06-15T00:36:00.004-05:00

I don't know if anybody noticed this, but Santogold has been used into BOTH the new Bud Light Lime commercials. It's kind of weird but kudos to whomever the creative director is at Anheuser Busch. He or she must be a big Santogold fan like me. The song in the first ad is "Lights Out" and the second one is "Creator."

Does this make me want to buy the beer? Eh, a little bit more than I would normally, but I hate a lot of the domestic beers, especially Miller and Budweiser. They just taste like bland fizzy piss, so I imagine Bud Light Lime taste like sour fizzy piss. But if you offer it to me for free at a BBQ, maybe I won't turn it down now.