News broke today on the bailout plan for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/washington/14fannieweb.html?hp) We saw a strong bounce in both stocks on Friday after Paulson stated that the federal government wasn’t interested in an outright takeover but would support both entities in their current form. The above article gives more detail on how the Bush administration intends to handle … Read More
Always Be Ready
As indicated by previous posts, yesterday was a great day. Sometimes you don’t know when days like that are coming around. Sometimes you can tell. On Thursday night, my roomates asked me to go out drinking, but I declined because I had a feeling something could happen to the market on Friday. I know that when I’m hungover I don’t … Read More
A Great Day for Two New Traders
Yesterday was a great day for our prop trading desk. My partner and our head trader killed it. One of our new traders who was a former Olympic trial swimmer put up a huge day. And on and on and on. But I want to highlight two of our new traders because we can all learn from them. For those … Read More
No FNM or FRE
During our AM Call we remarked that FNM or FRE are not good stocks to trade today for new traders. There is a very high likelihood that the government will announce a bailout plan and the stocks will get halted. You do not want to be in a position on either side if they are halted. The gaming stocks, LEH, … Read More
Take Advantage of this Opportunity
Our new traders love to hear “back in the day” stories. You know the late 90’s when day traders were making 6 figures a month. What was the most you ever made in one day is a frequent question. And I tell our prop traders the story about when the Fed cut rates surprisingly intraday by 50 basis points. Now … Read More
Allure of the Fast Mover
So while reviewing my day’s trading film with a senior trader and a group of young up-and-coming millionaires, I was caught taking a position in a “fast mover”. I characterize a fast mover as those times when you can buy a small amount of shares (or large, if you possess the dinero y cajones) and possibly catch a point or … Read More
Times are hard
Market Overview Looking at this picture makes me sick. There are very few days when you can see almost every sector in the red. If that’s not a sign of a bear market I don’t know what else is. I do have to say that I was not expecting that kind of sell off today. In fact, if you listened … Read More
Are You Making Money?
We teach our day trading desk, SMB Capital, in New York City to check to see which stocks they are making money in. I supposed a new prop trader reading this might say, “How could I not know that? Or that seems like a complete waste of time.” You would be surprised. The human mind is a funny thing. It does not … Read More