July 21 Choppy Day after OPEX

I spent most the morning taking trades on the simulator and working on new audible alerts. I was a net loser on my simulator trades, but managed to scrape out a profit in my real account.


Big trading ranges seen in BAC and LEH.

I Needed about 30 minutes more patience for this trade to workout but kept getting stopped out of my long mid-day.



The NASDAQ A/D signals worked better than NYSE A/D signals today.Choppy trading in the bonds this morning with some bearishness in stocks.

A long eventful weekend awaits us

Remember Bear Sterns last March? This weekend, people will be waiting to hear if FRE & FNM will be the next to be bailed out by the US Government.





Today I missed the first 2 hours of trade from sleeping in (worked until 1:30am last night), but I still managed to scalp some good profits during the mid-day. I quit trading around 2:30pm EST, but then the market exploded soon after(about the Time CRAMER came on CNBC), and I new I could get some good scalps from the increase in volatility, and I was right. Overall, I traded 74 contracts and had a good day. Most trades were 1-3 contracts held for 3-6min max, with most trades exited within less than a minute. I screwed up from not holding onto a long that I bought near the bottom. Scalped like crazy today. Very choppy. Block trade signals worked well today. Bonds bearish all day. Bond/stock inverse relationship didn't work at all today. I'm not trading the last 30min. The market was nuts today.




I shorted ZN on the simulator account around 4am this morning and it has been going down all day.

Trading would have been a lot easier if I had just traded bond futures today because the trend was great.

Apr 14, choppy day

I traded the morning and didn't get too many setups because the market was chopping, so I decided to quit early.


I covered my NQ short 30 seconds too soon.
I sold my ER2 long too soon.
I get pretty good signals from the indicators on my AAPL chart.

The inverse relationship between bond and stock futures played out great today.


Word of the day- CEO
Definition- CASH EXTRACTING ORGANISM

Apr 8, more Chop

Overall I sucked today. I actually shorted a buy signal and ate a huge unrealized loss on ER2 this morning but got lucky by holding it into the afternoon.





I think I need another monitor. Space is getting cramped with all these stocks I'm watching.

A Wild Week and the Chop continues

This market must be tough for swing traders. Are people surprised to see the market chop around for a month. Perhaps another month of chop is to come. I imagine there were a ton of Puts bought and Strangle strategies put on in the last few weeks. One thing is for sure, it looks like Option sellers have been making bank on the high premiums and increased Vol.

ER2


ZF


In order for this market to grow some BULL legs, C and XLF need to show some buying.


EWZ, Go Brazil!


ZB 30yr


ES- Option Sellers are making Bank. Not sure how Option buyers are making out.


My simulator hedge trade is now negative $600. I'm looking to see if it will go to $-2k or $-4k before reversing back. The market is behaving as I expected now that this trade is negative; moreover; ER2 and ZB are more bearish and ES and ZF are more Bullish. The reason this trade was in the green by $2k a few days back had to do with the steeping yield curve.

BondTalk.com is a great website for learning

Checkout Daily Treasury Yield Curve Rates for historical data on interest rates.

Also Checkout The Living Yield Curve



30yr swap bond futures

Feb 19 Choppy Light Volume Trading

Scalping index futures is difficult on light volume choppy trading days like today.



Crude oil and the Oil related stock sector have been making big gains.



Gold seems to be stuck in a trading range.


Since DT and iBankcoin came out bashing Dennis Kneale, CNBC have been airing him more than ever. Perhaps even bad PR is good PR.

What if the market doesn't retest the lows?
Think of all the PUTS that were bought last month. It would be a shame for all those traders to see there PUTS expire worthless from seeing the market Chop around for the next month or two.

I was thinking about the terrible storm China experienced last month and the correlation that this natural disaster has on the stock market. One article I found looked at Hurricanes the US experienced with the corresponding price action in the stock market afterwards. Check out
How Is the Stock Market Affected by Natural Disasters? (by D.R.Barton Jr.)

Dec 4 $525 on 87c and 800 shares

Considering I missed the first 3 hours of trading, I faired OK trading the CHOP-FEST.
I almost got myself into a bind, because I was loading up short ER2 at the close because ZN was rallying, but ER2 just kept crawling higher from weak short covering. Thankfully the inverse relationship panned out and I was able to cash in.

Overall, trading the stock index futures was tough today, which is reason for me to start scanning for stocks IN PLAY if this choppy action continues. Tomorrow brings a number of reports coming out in the AM, which should hopefully bring some volatility back for us Day Traders, as DINO has already noted on his blog as well.

P/L= $525 on 87 ER2 contracts and 800 shares

Waiting for the FOMC decision

I don't plan on trading until after the FOMC decision. If you look at the index futures you will see a trading pattern that no one is good at trading; the trading pattern is called CHOP, because that is what it does to your account after trying to trade it.

In bond news, the Fed funds have dipped just below 95.50. This has got to be the most straight forward instrument to swing trade and the best way to measure investor sentiment along with 90 day T-Bills. As noted earlier last week I shorted ZQ around 95.65 on the simulator.



In other news Trader Bubs had a BLOWUP trading day today. Not a blowup like one of my bad days where I lose an average Americans years salary in one day, but a blowup for his account none the less. I promised Bubs increased traffic, so go check out his site and make the guy feel better.

Today's educational link comes from TraderMag, which discusses risk management and risk analysis.

I'm working on my "trading system" and working on adding some cool new features to this blog.
As some of you may have noticed, I decided to monetize this blog, so that in the future I may be able to put this money towards upgrading the blog, donating it charitable foundations, or giving out prizes to readers.