Banks...............

[flabbybody]

tsafficianado: the timing of your trades are almost too perfect to believe.
You covered your short and put on a long at exactly the moment the market turned Thursday afternoon? that's almost 800 Dow points in a day and a half

you should be working for Goldman

[tsafficianado]

flabby....

it's not particularly modest to lavish praise on oneself for an occasional success (i could post a copy of my bad trade files but the HA server is probably not large enough to handle it), but it was a pretty exciting week and after a few drinks i was feeling rather full of myself. as far as the timing, i had SKF and MS on my primary watch screen and was on them like a hawk, the release came in on my news feed and i moved on it. it was actually not a big success because i didn't have enough skin in the game to make a big difference, but 9000% is the second best one-day trade i ever made so it felt great. one of my trading friends coughed up $50,000 on the MS collapse Thursday morning but banged the upturn for $300,000, he's a millionaire a few times over and when he makes a move it's big. this week was a very rare opportunity to make a pile and i'm sorry i mostly missed it, but it was still very interesting.

looking back over the week it is easy to spot opportunities i missed, but i have tossed lots of cash jumping on 'false positives' and i am a little more cautious now....that is leading to more errors of omission, but they aren't nearly as expensive as errors of commission. i am also learning that education doesn't necessarily HAVE to be expensive. day trading suits my temperament, to me it's just a game and i don't get too worked up about the ups and downs. i have lost EVERYTHING twice in the last 15 years, and I mean EVERYTHING, and that can be frightening, but i have more discipline now and i still learn a lot every day and the ratio of good trades to bad is improving.

as far as working for Goldman, i interviewed but they are looking for kids who will work for tidbits and cold call for accounts or grind dull analysis....not for me. i advise a few family members and friends and trade my own accounts and that is action enough for me.

[chefmike]

flabby....

it's not particularly modest to lavish praise on oneself for an occasional success (i could post a copy of my bad trade files but the HA server is probably not large enough to handle it), but it was a pretty exciting week and after a few drinks i was feeling rather full of myself. as far as the timing, i had SKF and MS on my primary watch screen and was on them like a hawk, the release came in on my news feed and i moved on it. it was actually not a big success because i didn't have enough skin in the game to make a big difference, but 9000% is the second best one-day trade i ever made so it felt great. one of my trading friends coughed up $50,000 on the MS collapse Thursday morning but banged the upturn for $300,000, he's a millionaire a few times over and when he makes a move it's big. this week was a very rare opportunity to make a pile and i'm sorry i mostly missed it, but it was still very interesting.

looking back over the week it is easy to spot opportunities i missed, but i have tossed lots of cash jumping on 'false positives' and i am a little more cautious now....that is leading to more errors of omission, but they aren't nearly as expensive as errors of commission. i am also learning that education doesn't necessarily HAVE to be expensive. day trading suits my temperament, to me it's just a game and i don't get too worked up about the ups and downs. i have lost EVERYTHING twice in the last 15 years, and I mean EVERYTHING, and that can be frightening, but i have more discipline now and i still learn a lot every day and the ratio of good trades to bad is improving.

as far as working for Goldman, i interviewed but they are looking for kids who will work for tidbits and cold call for accounts or grind dull analysis....not for me. i advise a few family members and friends and trade my own accounts and that is action enough for me.

And yet he manages to do all this and still be employee of the month at the 7-11 time after time...bravo...

[flabbybody]

if you have any ideas for the coming week, fire away
you got my ear

[edward almond]

Bring the fucking jobs back from communist china. Send every immigrant home, put everyone to work whether they want to or not.Tell welfare mothers if you breed you will pay for your own kids.Put kids in school and tell them if you cause trouble you will be thrown out.Make all lobbying illegal with 20 years in jail for first time conviction. Any politition or government worker convicted of serious crime in office,20 years. Take gasoline off the stock market and control it the way you do electricity.Quit giving tax breaks to corporations that send jobs over seas and tax cuts to the ones that really create jobs.Take all property away from the CEO's that created this mess including the government workers who have allowed people with sorry credit to buy houses.Just a start. This is what a conservative thinks.

[El Nino]

A true conservative that is. Not one of these phony neocons who love their ever-expanding, nanny state government...

[NYBURBS]

Bring the fucking jobs back from communist china. Send every immigrant home, put everyone to work whether they want to or not.Tell welfare mothers if you breed you will pay for your own kids.Put kids in school and tell them if you cause trouble you will be thrown out.Make all lobbying illegal with 20 years in jail for first time conviction. Any politition or government worker convicted of serious crime in office,20 years. Take gasoline off the stock market and control it the way you do electricity.Quit giving tax breaks to corporations that send jobs over seas and tax cuts to the ones that really create jobs.Take all property away from the CEO's that created this mess including the government workers who have allowed people with sorry credit to buy houses.Just a start. This is what a conservative thinks.

I agree with some of that, especially the 20 years for government officials that betray the public trust. However, disallowing lobbying is not such an easy task. "Congress shall make no law.... abridging the freedom of speech". How do you determine who is simply a greedy lobbyist and who is a citizen lobbying for legitimate political change?

Personally I think that no longer allowing political party affiliations on ballots, and requiring signatures instead of party nominations to obtain a place on the ballot is a start.

Also send every immigrant home is an ignorant stance, one that has plagued us for a long time. Immigration is a good thing, illegal and uncontrolled immigration is a bad thing. We should encourage well educated Indians, Chinese, etc to move here and become citizens. Illegals should be removed; however, they are not to blame for all of our ills. Also remember all the American citizens that work off the books and pay nothing from their direct income into the tax system. The whole method of collecting taxes needs to be redressed so it is no longer so biased against every day working people that follow the rules.

[tsafficianado]

flabby

generally i don't like tips. tips are a snapshot, investments are video, the landscape changes moment to moment and, as was obvious last week it can change dramatically in any given moment.

i have no idea how the market will act after the madness last week, but i would not be surprised to see some weakness early this week. there is some relief that it appears there will be some systemic approach to resolve the financial problem, but the problems are still there.

for the most part i TRADE as opposed to investing, at least when it is hard to predict the trend, and right now there is no trend. from 8am to 4pm i am on my platform looking for opportunities, so it is hard for me to tell you on Sunday afternoon what my plan is. when i am focused on trading i stay mostly in cash and pick spots, and right now i am mostly in cash. i have small positions in gold and silver in case things turn ugly and i have some S&P puts to protect against a quick downdraft. i have been short oil and commodities but NEVER hold a short in oil through the weekend, you never know what might happen, and both oil and commodities were strong Friday so i have no idea where they are heading.

that said, there are a couple of situations i like and a couple i am watching.
HOGS (Zonghpin) is a Chinese company, they are a processor and distributor of pork, pork products and some vegetables. By all appearances it is a solid company, they appear to be aligning themselves with Western standards of compliance and transparency, they reported a great quarter despite serious interruption of their plant in the area of the earthquake, and they are about to open a new facility which will double their output and they continue to open new sales venues. Their earnings rate is on the order of $1, the PE is about 12, and I would expect growth to be pretty strong. The price has been held down a little due to the collapse of the Chinese market, but the Chinese have lowered rates and I would expect some recovery. I see it as a play on the expansion of the Chinese middle class, it is one of my few long term holds and I expect it to do well over the next 18-36 months.

GFRE.OB is another Chinese company, they make specialty chemicals (primarily bromide salts) that are used in the paper industry. I don't know as much about them, but I do know they reported 6 cents in earnings in the last quarter, the PPS is 50 cents, and that gives them a PE of 3ish. The PPS is down sharply and I think it has a good chance for an uptick if the Chinese market improves, their business improves or if they get some visibility. It is more spec, but has a higher op.

My main focus now is on the bulk shippers, particularly DRYS, TBSI, GNK and NM. The bulkers are down hard in the last month as the Baltic Dry Index has collapsed as it does every year at this time. It is also down on the collapse in commodity prices in the assumption that commodity prices are down on collapsign demand ala the global slowdown. Friday all of the bulkers were up big time, especially TBSI up 19%, in part because the hard commodities were up big and possibly because the BDI shows signs of bottoming (perhaps). The fall is one of the periods when the BDI often surges as the NA grain harvest comes in and ore shipments expand to beat the next year's price increases. When the BDI surges the bulkers can run hard and fast, as much as 100% in a few months. It is not a sector for the faint of heart and there is an over hang of worry both for the concern about a global slowdown and because th order book for ships is loaded - in about 18-24 months there will be boats everywhere and the BDI will collapse and the bulkers will be up the creek so to speak.

I like Navios (NM) because they have lots of LTCs that isolate them to some degree from BDI spots, althought the market seems to ignore that. I also like DRYS because they have some LTCs and they have two deep drill ships (2 more on order) and in early '09 they intend to spin the deep drill asset off to shareholders. The drill spinoff should be worth about $25-$30 leaving the bulk business valued currently at about $25. They are making LOTS of money and if the BDI surges they should do well in the short run. In either case I expect to be clear of them before mid-December, and at this point I have some calls but am looking for a trend before I get too much skin in the game.

Want a wild card? MIDS.pk, 4 cents, they have built a platform for cross-border trading of stocks, options and futures between South Korea and the US, they have KSD sanction, they have a hard line into the SK exhange and are in fact the only company sanctioned to offer real time trading in either direction. The KOSPI index (SK futures) is THE most active market in the world, the volumes are enormous, and black box traders need instant closure. Unfortunately, the company is run by morons and they have made minimal progress in securing actual activity despite their repeated release of 'contracts'. I would say the chances are 90% that they will be belly up before Christmas. I would say there is a 10% chance they will make it, and if they do the stock could go to $3 easily, to $10 possibly, to $30 with a miracle. It's a lottery ticket, but it might be worth holding a few shares on the slim chance it works. 500 shares plus broker fee would cost $30, if the stock goes to $3 that would be a good trade, but I would consider it a write-off as soon as i booked it. Be forewarned, this is TOXIC. I should know, right now I'm down $400,000 on MIDS.
And, as cook mike will tell you, it takes a lot of hours at the 7-11 to replace $400,000.

[flabbybody]

will put this stuff on watch list
thx for the post
good luck

[tsafficianado]

flabby

soft market this morning, sort of expected that. Gold is up, yippee. Gold is sympathy-trading with oil so I'm letting it be my proxy. I don't think the spike in oil is real, but we'll see, expiration of the October futures contract today has incited a short squeeze and that is a big part of the move this morning. My guess is oil is setting up for another good short, have to wait and see.
Got some Allied Capital back this morning 8% lower after i sold it in the 'short ban' frenzy on Friday. I sold the ALD about a week ago the day before ex-div (they pay like 18%) and got it back the next afternoon down the div and 50 cents. I've traded in and out of the ALD about ten times in the last 4 months and halved my cost basis. Sold some NYX leaps Friday too, got 'em back this morning down 14%. With positions i'm holding longer term i trade out and in to shave down my cost basis, opportunity to make a few bucks on drops like this morning. Those two trades gained 8% and 14% in one trading day, that's what I'm looking for. I figured both were over-reacting to the short restrictions, the catalyst, and i had a pretty concrete goal and got the drop i was looking for....if i hadn't gotten my target today i would have waited for the price to come to me.

Bulkers getting hammered this morning, DRYS and TBSI off 6%, the BDI was down again this morning and there isn't a lot of general strength in the hard commodities. Navios is up 6% bucking the sector, not sure why -there are some rumors that DRYS might make a bid for them, but I doubt there's anything to it. I have a pile of Navios, waiting for the BDI to head up before i move on the others. I'm being patient on this one, something I never tried before.

As far as the 'tips' i mentioned, you don't know me or my motivations and i am by no measure some hotshot trader, so take me with a grain of salt. The one thing i HAVE learned is that every investor or trader has to find what works for them and they have to figure out how to tell the difference between facts and opinions and rely on others only for facts. Maybe that's two things?

MIDS.pk (Midastrade) is a throw-away. One thing I forgot to tell you is that EVERY trade in the last month has hit on the bid, so someone is giving up and salvaging anything they can get. The volume has been negligible so in itself it means nothing. The bid has been 3 cents most of the last few months, but has been 4 for a week and someone has been hitting it (some of the bid is me, i've added 100,000 shares in the last couple of weeks). The stock sometimes gets a bid and wiggles up to 8-14 cents and these shares are for the hopes of shaving off a few cents, there are probably several people doing that, so barring some significant event there is probably lots of resistance close overhead. If something real happens that resistance will mean nothing. Each percent of the existing trade volume MIDS can capture means a buck to the share price, if they capture any.

IF IF IF i had $50 to burn, i would buy 1000 shares for 4 cents (3 if i could get it). If there was a pop to 8-10 cents i would unload half and get most of my money back and let the other 500 shares ride on the ultraslim chance that the market overwhelms the crappy management and turns it into a real business. Not likely, but possible.

Another 'great opportunity/poor execution' story - ON2 Technologies, ONT, the greatest little video codec company in the world. ONT's VP6 is embedded in Flash and is the most pervasive codec on desktops around the world. The big gorilla is H264, Microsoft-backed, but VP6-7-8 are cleaner, faster and use a small fraction of the bandwidth that H264 requires. For mobile devices, particularly phones, the miniscule bandwidth reuirement is the key. Unfortunately, they have never figured how to make money on it. The management has been pretty inept, they have burned through two helpless CEOs in the last 5 years and had an accounting misstep in the last quarter, so the stock has not held up well. On the plus side it is a real company with real technology, the codecs are embedded on several chips and they have deals or agreements with lots of big dogs including TI and Sun and Skype and China Tel. Their business model is migrating towards back-end revs, and if they get per-unit or per-client fee deals with some of the phone mfgs or telecoms they will rock.

The shares have been mired between 50 cents and $1.20 for years, there was a brief spike to $4 on spec last year but the PPS has sagged to 40 cents. It is high risk but there is a real possibility that things will turn out well. The technology is far superior to the competition, but only profit will drive the share price. There is a slight possibility of a bid, perhaps Cisco, dunno.

ONT is far less risky than MIDS, especially with the share price near its 5 year low, but the risk is high. The upside, in the extreme, pales next to MIDS, but upside is far more likely. It's one to watch.

Weird Trades

If you have Level II you know that scavengers troll nickel bids and scalpers post $1000 asks on every stock looking for thin markets and market orders, and sometimes it works.

Friday I saw one trade on a RegSho bank go through at $23 when trades were going through at $4, a market order gone ugly.

About a year ago i saw a trade in pre-market on Google for 1000 shares at $5. Goog was trading just shy of $450. Hard to imagine that liquidity in Google could get that thin even for a moment, but some fool let a market sell order cost him $440,000 and some bottom fisher got a windfall. The 52-week high/low doesn't acknowledge the trade, but i saw it go through.

Earlier in the summer i put a sell on 1000 shares of Silver Wheaton just over the bid but forgot to put it on all or none, someone bit off ONE share and then the market softened and I didn't get another hit. I got $12 for the share and the broker fee was $9. Some market maker got a chuckle out of flipping that. Lesson learned, remember the stipulations.