Randy Pausch's Time Management Tricks

It's pretty long, but it's full of little tricks to free you up for the important things in your life... meaning not your email inbox.

My Renew Sense of Purpose

Pretty decent week of trading so far. Let's finish Friday strong into the week. Good trades on Monday with HES and PBR. PBR was shooting up as rumor/news of them finding the biggest reserve in the world and all the other oil/gas/energy guys are going up as well. But then news came out, supposedly that they didn't and it sold off quick. Both were for about 2 points profit. For slow days like we have had, that's really good. Tuesday, gave back about half of my gains on V and WM (after hour)... it wasn't that bad, it was just that I were in 500 shares so the loss were pretty big. Wednesday I was chasing USO after the oil numbers came out and my stop didn't trigger for some reason and I think was in 1,000 shares that time. Today got some sweet prints repeatedly... should've taken 1,000 instead of 500, but I did lose quite a bit on STP when SPWR earnings and conference call came out. I should've waited for the bounces to get short instead of chasing it...

I started bringing my laptop to work and hook onto our wireless internet so I can bring Briefing and Trade The News up and not take up space on my own monitor. It's cool too b/c now I can listen to Rhapsody or podcast on iTune in the middle of the day when it's slow.

Honestly, I was pretty frustrated last weekend but I started reading some of the blogs I've added to my Google Reader and finished Stock Market Wizards and got some ideas to watch this week. I started doing a spreadsheet of earnings just to observe the price change and try to get ideas in the future. I also started watching stocks that gapped up or down in the morning, wait to see what kind of range they establish the first 30 minute to an hour and then either trade the break out or buying/shorting in between the range. The tricky thing is how to define the break out/down, i.e. if it's near the low of the range, do you buy thinking it's the floor and how much room do you give it and vice versa? I've also been trying to trade along the trend more, not just SPY or EEM but other stocks as well.

After watching earnings play for a couple of days, I think if there's a big name coming out w/ report, I need to not just be on top of that stock, but also companies in related industry and the sector's ETF if there is one b/c they tend to move together.

On a more personal level... I've been having trouble sleeping again, maybe it's b/c all these trading ideas floating around in my head but b/c of that I've been going to bed late and sleeping through my alarm and getting to the office late. I need to stop this before it becomes a habit...

After some of the good earnings reported by INTC, GOOG and IBM, feels like a rally mode. Although volume has been lower than usual, right now I think we're going to test that resistance level after two failed attempts. The market in general is making like an ascending triangle move w/ higher lows. Once SPY gets back in the 139 level things will get very interesting. Will be break out to the up or reverse? Either way I think a lot of people are just waiting that's why the volume is low and we might get an explosive move soon.

Market Wizards and Their Firms

Maybe put money in their funds or get a job there??

Stevn Cohen - SAC Capital Advisor, LLC
David Shaw - D.E. Shaw & Co
Michael Masters - Masters Capital Management
Mark Minervini - Quantech Fund, LP & Quantech Research Group
Ahmet Okumus - Okumus Opportunity Fund
Alphonse "Buddy" Fletcher Jr - Fletch Asset Management
Dana Galante - Miramar Asset Management
Steve Watson - ??? I found it once before... can't find it now

Market Wizards: Ari Kiev

The objective of setting a target is not necessarily to reach it, but rather to establish a standard against which to measure your performance. It you are not reaching your target, it forces you to focus on what you are doing wrong or what you may not be doing that you should. The target holds you to a higher standard of performance.

Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning. Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.

When a trader is on a winning streak, he is fearless, intuitive, and makes the right choices. When he is on a losing streak, he needs to visualize, remember, and feel those same positive traits so that when he comes into the office, he has the same attitude toward his trading as when he is in the middle of a winning streak.

You shouldn't think about making the loss back---that's too burdensome. You have to start where you are. OK, you're down, but what can you do this week, this month, and for the rest of the year? You have to try to regain a sense of control.

Market Wizards: Steve Cohen

Most traders make money only in the 50 to 55 percent range. That means you're going to be wrong a lot. If that's the case, you better make sure your losses are as small as they can be, and that your winners are bigger.

I always tell my traders, "If you think you're wrong, of it the market is moving against you and you don't know why, take in half. You can always put it on again." If you do that twice, you've taken in three-quarters of your position. then what's left is no longer a big deal. I find that too many traders just stand there and let the truck roll over them. A common mistake traders make in shorting is that they take on too big of a position relative to their portfolio. Then when the stock moves against them, the pain becomes too great to handle and they end up panicking or freezing.

[Another mistake people make is that] They make trades without a good reason. They step in front of freight trains. They short stocks because they are up, as if that were a reason. They'll say, "I can't believe the stock is so high," and that's their total research. That makes no sense to me. My response is: "You have to do better than that." I have friends who get emotional about the market. They fight it. Why put yourself in that position.

You trade your theory and then let the market tell you whether you are right.

I felt that the inability of some traders to achieve success was usually due to personal flaws rather than a consequence of bad ideas versus good ideas. All traders have something holding them back.

Market Wizards: John Bender

There are a lot of similarities between gambling and trading, although gambling is a bad term because it implies that your results depend on luck. The people that I'm talking about look at poker or backgammon as a business, not a game of chance. There are a few things that are essential to success in both trading as well as playing gambling games as a business. First, you have to understand edge and maximize your edge. Second, you have to be able to deal with losing. Third, you have to understand gambler's ruin---not playing too big for your bankroll. As a professional gambler or as a trader, you are constantly walking the line between maximizing edge and minimizing your risk of tapping out.

ACL Official Lineup

The lineup is... well, up. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of bands that I would love to see, it's just that after seeing the Lollapalooza lineup where they have Radiohead, Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, the best ACL can do is.... Foo Fighters?

Let's focus on the positive. Here are some bad ass bands that will be coming that I'm excited about... if I don't end up selling my 3-day wristband and go to Oktoberfest instead.

Foo Fighters, Beck, The Mars Volta, Gnarls Barkley, N.E.R.D., Erykah Badu, Tegan & Sara, Iron & Wine, G.Love & The Special Sauce, Band of Horses, Silversun Pickups, Okkervil River, Hot Chip, Vampire Weekend, Duff, Ingrid Michaelson, CSS, MGMT, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Jenny Lewis (whoo... not as Rilo Kiley this time!), Mason Jennings, Yeasayer, The Octopus Project, White Denim... and South Austin Jug Band (they've been playing at ACL ever since I started going... so that's like what, 6 yrs now?).

I'm slightly happier about the fact Vampire Weekend and White Denim is on the lineup b/c I missed them during SXSW. Who knows, given how ACL does their scheduling, I'll probably end up seeing only about 1/3 of the bands that I want to see.

Austin City Limits Mash-Up

I've pretty much made the decision NOT to go to Lollapalooza this year since I've already bought tickets to ACL and sometimes they're kind of similiar... Lollapalooza has already announced their lineup and ACL will as well on April 15th.

To tease us, ACL has posted this mash-up, of some of the artists that will be performing. So far, here's some of the best guesses:

Hot Chip
Okkervil River
The Raconteurs
Silversun Pickups
Gnarls Barkely
N.E.R.D.
Ingrid Michaelson
Asleep at the Wheel
Man Man
CSS
Jamie Lidell
Eli Reed
Neko Case
Kate Nash
The Octopus Project
Del the Funky Homosapien
Heartless Bastards
Robert Earl Keen
Sharon Jones
MGMT

Looks pretty good so far... I'm particular excited about MGMT, CSS, and Hot Chip. I've been in crave for electronic music lately. If you haven't heard of MGMT, you will very soon. Their music was recently used for the movie 21's soundtrack. MGMT as the next Ghostland??

My Watching the Paint Dry

I came across this phrase somewhere this week in my reading... it's a fair assessment. It's so slow this week, relative volume is barely over half sometimes. Maybe it's the calm before the storm, at least I hope so. I didn't go into work on Friday b/c I was still kind of sick (I've been sick almost the entire week. I got this tickle in my throat since I came back from DC and the tickle turned into what feels like steel wool. It was not sexy) but apparently GE had missed their earnings estimate by quite a bit and the market was quite active, oh well...

I had set a goal to super yahtzee by the end of April and now I'm starting to lose faith, not just the goal to super but at time this entire trading career. I'll man up and admit that I have been complacent. I haven't been reading as much and working on new ideas to get better. Because of that I started reading the book I checked out from Billy and dug up some of the blogs that I've added to my Google Reader. Some of them are not relevant at all and I'm going to remove them but some like Trader Mike is quite good. I've also gone through my old entries to add labels to them so that I can review old trading insight and ideas that I've came across. I also want to start talking to some HP's again, or even just people that I've met that are better than me. I want to talk to Jon, Nish, Mark, Jon, and Mike and probably have a little pow wow w/ Lawrence as well.

A lot of traders have found what works for them and I haven't found it quite yet. I was doing really well in January with EEM but now it's not really working. I was trading SLV heavily at one point but that's not really working consistently for me now.

I also want to have a weekly game plan... instead of coming in and looking at who's reporting or what economic data is coming out that day, I want to know at the beginning of the week already, not the day of.

Earning season is here, I think I want to take the Series 55 again. I don't want to limit myself to the universe of stocks that I can trade. There's money to be made in Nasdaq stocks.

My Slow Start in April

sigh... first of all, let's hope that April doesn't turn out like February, which it shouldn't since earning season is kicking off. I was going to keep all the goals I had for March and use them for April but I had one day that I slightly overslept last week and broke almost every one of them. I didn't get into the office on time and hit my daily loss limit (maybe it was raised since I didn't get one of those "are you ok?" phone calls but still, I'd like to keep daily losses under a certain level). I can't say if the company tournament had any effect on my P&L... that one bad day I just kept adding to a loser and that was just dumb.

I've been trying to trade the trend, where if the market is going strong I'll buy on retracement and if it's week I'll short the bounces. I'm still trying to refine my entry points and I need to know when to get out when the trend it breaking. It's been working ok, that sometimes if I take 200 or 500 shares and I have very good risk reward. The times that have burned me is when I keep adding to a loser. I think I'll keep my rule of not trading a stock more than 5 times and that way when I get in a trade the signal is usually stronger so I'll take slightly bigger size and add to them slightly up to a certain point.

April is what I call "control the controllables" month, here are my goals:

miss no more than 2 days
in by 8am everyday
never hit daily loss limit
no down weeks (I seen to be able to work towards my goals if it's weekly instead of monthly)