A very talented experienced trader joined our desk about five months ago. Let’s call him Trader Dan. He decided SMB was a better fit for his personality than his original trading firm. His first trading job entailed shorting very strong stocks intraday and getting long very weak stocks intraday. Somehow he was able to earn a living with that strategy … Read More
Discover Your New Trading Home: Assent and eTrade
I heard from a friend yesterday that one of the largest prop trading firms was closing up shop. For those of you scrambling to find a new trading home, I have been there. My understanding is that Sungard Financial, a large financial services firm, that owns Assent is no longer interested in being in the prop trading business. … Read More
Trading versus Investing
This was gonna be a blog post on why I came in today with a long bias in RIMM. But there is so much chatter right now on StockTwits with respect to ABK that I thought I would throw in my two cents. Let me start with a few preliminaries before I get into the meat of the post. #1 … Read More
Don’t Let An “Idea” End Your Trading Career
In today’s AM Meeting I mentioned that AMZN has been unusually weak the past couple of days. If it got below 130.50 I thought there would be a lot of momentum longs who would panic and the stock would drop to 128. That trade never materialized. The first move in AMZN was up. The second move in AMZN was up. … Read More
Make Each Trade Your Own
This morning we tweeted our Best AM Idea (BAMI) in RIMM. Based on our observation from the after hours trading yesterday we thought it was likely that RIMM would bounce on the Open from 69.50 and have the potential to trade as high as 72. When the market opened RIMM quickly traded down to 69.50 and I got long. Not … Read More
Nice Idea But Poor Execution
I was interested in shorting CLF this morning below 73. My price alert was triggered when CLF dropped 73. It traded down over the next few minutes to 72.50. I offered some stock at 72.88 thinking that CLF would quickly bounce back before downtrending for the day. CLF did pop up to 72.85 but never traded up to 88 cents … Read More
The Importance Of Not Relinquishing Gains
This morning I came in long a small overnight position in QCOM. Chop Spencer! But based on several factors I was looking for another sizable up leg. I bought additional shares right on the Open when a seller at 42.50 was lifted. QCOM quickly traded up another point. I took my profits when the buying pattern changed in the 43.70s. … Read More
When The Tape Changes
My expectation for the past week or so has been that AAPL would break to new highs and offer another 10-15 points of upside. So each day I spend some time thinking about how to best enter an AAPL trade so that I will be in a position of strength when the breakout actually occurs. Based on the price action … Read More