Squawk Trader Top Secrets Video

Ben Lichtenstein; from TraderAudio, discusses how professional traders wait patiently for activity to come to them. He uses a good metaphor in comparing Professional traders in the pit to the "local" gamblers at Las Vegas. The Locals wait for the "tourists" that are in a hurry to make a bet (trade) before they leave to catch their airplane flight, and then they find opportunity there.

Squawk Trader Top Secrets Video

Ben Lichtenstein; from TraderAudio, discusses how professional traders wait patiently for activity to come to them. He uses a good metaphor in comparing Professional traders in the pit to the "local" gamblers at Las Vegas. The Locals wait for the "tourists" that are in a hurry to make a bet (trade) before they leave to catch their airplane flight, and then they find opportunity there.

Horse Racing Tick Scalping

Its interesting to see Horse Racing Traders using the same types of tools and techniques that stock traders use, such as using a price ladder to scalp and tick charts with volume for technical analysis.

US residents are restricted from gambling on the Betfair website.

Horse Racing Tick Scalping

Its interesting to see Horse Racing Traders using the same types of tools and techniques that stock traders use, such as using a price ladder to scalp and tick charts with volume for technical analysis.

US residents are restricted from gambling on the Betfair website.

Another Mini Madoff Fraud Alert

I'll some up this juicy story, but I suggest reading the full posts and comments( my comments are most notably the best :>)
So LT (aka Lonely Trader, aka Jason Bourne) found a guy in San Diego that was trading a 10 million dollar forex account at the Currency Cafe (aka Douche Central) and from a few sources sounded to be legit. LT sat with the guy named Lee (aka Mini Madoff) a few times and saw how he traded and was impressed and was about ready to slap down his life savings to the guy (150 dollars or some big number). However, just by chance, a guy that was defrauded by Mini Madoff was looking for his videos on youtube to show to his wife and just by chance stumbled upon LT's "LonelyTrader Blog" where he was telling the blogging community (me, FX, LT, Jules, TraderGav, and a couple other third tier blogs) about his recent encounter with a "Multi Million dollar Hedge fund trader; aka Lee Madoff Young". BAAAMMOO!!!!!!
Mr.Good Samiritan emailed LT and immediatly informed him of the fruad Lee Madoff was.
LT Pulled out his funds from Mini Madoff so fast it was reminescent of the Pullout scene in Debbie does Dallas Part II. The Moral of the story is, Google is like a God,, it saves money and sometimes peoples lives, via search results everyday.

Part 1.Another non-trading trading experience

Part 2.Lee Young, Pt II

Part 3.The Lonely Trader has been duped

Here's Lee Madoff's youtube Channel- He gives away SECRETS!!!!! (ROFL)

Another Mini Madoff Fraud Alert

I'll some up this juicy story, but I suggest reading the full posts and comments( my comments are most notably the best :>)
So LT (aka Lonely Trader, aka Jason Bourne) found a guy in San Diego that was trading a 10 million dollar forex account at the Currency Cafe (aka Douche Central) and from a few sources sounded to be legit. LT sat with the guy named Lee (aka Mini Madoff) a few times and saw how he traded and was impressed and was about ready to slap down his life savings to the guy (150 dollars or some big number). However, just by chance, a guy that was defrauded by Mini Madoff was looking for his videos on youtube to show to his wife and just by chance stumbled upon LT's "LonelyTrader Blog" where he was telling the blogging community (me, FX, LT, Jules, TraderGav, and a couple other third tier blogs) about his recent encounter with a "Multi Million dollar Hedge fund trader; aka Lee Madoff Young". BAAAMMOO!!!!!!
Mr.Good Samiritan emailed LT and immediatly informed him of the fruad Lee Madoff was.
LT Pulled out his funds from Mini Madoff so fast it was reminescent of the Pullout scene in Debbie does Dallas Part II. The Moral of the story is, Google is like a God,, it saves money and sometimes peoples lives, via search results everyday.

Part 1.Another non-trading trading experience

Part 2.Lee Young, Pt II

Part 3.The Lonely Trader has been duped

Here's Lee Madoff's youtube Channel- He gives away SECRETS!!!!! (ROFL)

Dinosaur Trader Farewell

There comes a point in your trading, where you are against the ropes. You are afraid. You are near broke, and have a steady flow of bills coming in each month. You can't afford to lose any more money. You use to be profitable, maybe handsomely so, but your just not trading like you use to. You wish you could correct the problems that your facing, but your running out of time, money, patience, and you feel even more pressure from the accumulation of all these factors against you in your trading. You are in a death spiral.

Instead of going over your trading plan and reviewing your strategy against the current market conditions, you may find yourself thinking of how much you need to get back to BREAKEVEN, or your searching random stocks on yahoo that are the highest percent gainers for the day, or maybe you've stumbled aimlessly onto some stock forum or some blog like this. How is this blog going to help you? The only thing I can do for you is maybe motivate, entertain, and maybe teach you something. Whether or not you put into action your knowledge or experiences is up to you. I only hope that you have a plan.

Last fall we saw some CRAZY Volatility (1000pt range in the DOW in a DAY!), but since the start of the year volatility has declined greatly.


I'll tell you what. I felt so bad after my video blowup that it really hurt me in a negative way. I'm sure a lot of people could have seen it as a great lesson to learn from, but being the "Internets' example of how not to trade" made me feel depressed and negatively affected my confidence in trading.

After I blew up I wrote a long list of things I did wrong, and what steps I needed to take to correct my bad habits in trading. My failure came when I didn't follow through on the plan. Arggh... I get so tired from writing that last statement in this blog because I've wrote it so many times before. What the HECK is wrong with me? Didn't I learn the first time? Over the last year I've noticed a plethora of traders that share many of the same bad trading qualities I have.

Most retailer traders have no edge. It may also be said most retailer traders that have no edge are "newbies" or have traded less then 2 years. To be able to design a working edge requires hard work and time. For the traders that have put in many years looking for the answer when it comes to trade automation and strategy development, many will share my feelings that even the most high end software out there for retail traders right now is just CRAP. You can spend months if not years wasting your time on a strategy that will never work. Perhaps you weren't smart enough to design a good strategy, or maybe its because the available software for retail traders is incapable of automation on a high frequency level, or the software is incapable of comparing multiple data series for correlation studies that you require for your strategy. Whatever the case may be, retail traders have it rough . In this case, maybe you should have gone a step further an hired a programmer to write you a black box. Us retail guys are trading against Hedge Funds that have hired guys with PhD's to make complex strategies that work on high frequencies. Maybe 10 years ago you had a better chance at making money in trading when technology was less of a threat. Maybe then you could have played off the general herd mentality of the market or jumped on to one of the hundreds of momo stocks during the tech boom.

There is a sliver of Traders out there that don't need a so called "edge" to trade. Some traders are able to cut losses quick and let runners run. There's been a few days where I felt I was one of these traders. Some days you may have felt the feeling where you were "in tune" with the market, only to see a total failure the next day. You have to realize some people are better at staying in tune with the markets then others. Practice makes perfect.

I've written hundreds of posts in my personal journal from my days trading performance, and I would notate the mistakes I would make on a repeated basis. The problem isn't a FREAK ACCIDENT in the stock market where I was long and the market suddenly did the unthinkable (OK maybe 1 freak accident), but the majority of my repeated losses were from not sticking to the plan. Have a plan, a stop, a setup, and don't overleverage yourself (be able to lose 10-20 trades in a row and not let it effect you emotionally). That's it in a nut shell.

Dinosaur Trader Farewell

There comes a point in your trading, where you are against the ropes. You are afraid. You are near broke, and have a steady flow of bills coming in each month. You can't afford to lose any more money. You use to be profitable, maybe handsomely so, but your just not trading like you use to. You wish you could correct the problems that your facing, but your running out of time, money, patience, and you feel even more pressure from the accumulation of all these factors against you in your trading. You are in a death spiral.

Instead of going over your trading plan and reviewing your strategy against the current market conditions, you may find yourself thinking of how much you need to get back to BREAKEVEN, or your searching random stocks on yahoo that are the highest percent gainers for the day, or maybe you've stumbled aimlessly onto some stock forum or some blog like this. How is this blog going to help you? The only thing I can do for you is maybe motivate, entertain, and maybe teach you something. Whether or not you put into action your knowledge or experiences is up to you. I only hope that you have a plan.

Last fall we saw some CRAZY Volatility (1000pt range in the DOW in a DAY!), but since the start of the year volatility has declined greatly.


I'll tell you what. I felt so bad after my video blowup that it really hurt me in a negative way. I'm sure a lot of people could have seen it as a great lesson to learn from, but being the "Internets' example of how not to trade" made me feel depressed and negatively affected my confidence in trading.

After I blew up I wrote a long list of things I did wrong, and what steps I needed to take to correct my bad habits in trading. My failure came when I didn't follow through on the plan. Arggh... I get so tired from writing that last statement in this blog because I've wrote it so many times before. What the HECK is wrong with me? Didn't I learn the first time? Over the last year I've noticed a plethora of traders that share many of the same bad trading qualities I have.

Most retailer traders have no edge. It may also be said most retailer traders that have no edge are "newbies" or have traded less then 2 years. To be able to design a working edge requires hard work and time. For the traders that have put in many years looking for the answer when it comes to trade automation and strategy development, many will share my feelings that even the most high end software out there for retail traders right now is just CRAP. You can spend months if not years wasting your time on a strategy that will never work. Perhaps you weren't smart enough to design a good strategy, or maybe its because the available software for retail traders is incapable of automation on a high frequency level, or the software is incapable of comparing multiple data series for correlation studies that you require for your strategy. Whatever the case may be, retail traders have it rough . In this case, maybe you should have gone a step further an hired a programmer to write you a black box. Us retail guys are trading against Hedge Funds that have hired guys with PhD's to make complex strategies that work on high frequencies. Maybe 10 years ago you had a better chance at making money in trading when technology was less of a threat. Maybe then you could have played off the general herd mentality of the market or jumped on to one of the hundreds of momo stocks during the tech boom.

There is a sliver of Traders out there that don't need a so called "edge" to trade. Some traders are able to cut losses quick and let runners run. There's been a few days where I felt I was one of these traders. Some days you may have felt the feeling where you were "in tune" with the market, only to see a total failure the next day. You have to realize some people are better at staying in tune with the markets then others. Practice makes perfect.

I've written hundreds of posts in my personal journal from my days trading performance, and I would notate the mistakes I would make on a repeated basis. The problem isn't a FREAK ACCIDENT in the stock market where I was long and the market suddenly did the unthinkable (OK maybe 1 freak accident), but the majority of my repeated losses were from not sticking to the plan. Have a plan, a stop, a setup, and don't overleverage yourself (be able to lose 10-20 trades in a row and not let it effect you emotionally). That's it in a nut shell.

Traders Most difficult Problem- Trading with Stops

Lets say you go long the market at XX, but the market moves lower, so at this point you think that you've got an even better deal to average in on your original entry. Do you really know the future and how far this trade will go against you?

I'm bringing up a point of a major problem that I've faced as a trader. STOPS.
When I'm in the zone, I will exit a bad trade for a small loss and move on to the next one. When I'm trading relaxed or I've built a cushion of profits from previous days I will let my guard down and give a bad trade more room to breath and end up losing more money than I should have. Have you ever lost weeks or months worth of profits from being too relaxed or by breaking your "rules"?

Have you ever averaged your trade or widened your stop? There are a couple ways to deal with your problem of NOT taking stops.

1.Take out excess money in the account to the point to where you can only put on 1 trade and not be able to average into it.

2.Trade with a platform that has an automated risk management parameter that will close your position when you are down XX amount for the trade or reached a max daily loss.

3.Start working with another trader that can help train you on using stops.

4.Realize that you are not trading with a plan/system before you put on a trade, because your plan was for the trade to work in your favor immediately and not let it run against you.

5.Develop an Automated Trade System that will trade for you and take your emotions out of the trade.

Here are some of my Key Posts dealing with stops and problems traders face-

Realistic Expectations of your Trading Results

Dr. Brett goes over A Few Trading Psychology Observations

The stock market ruined my life

For FX.

Traders Most difficult Problem- Trading with Stops

Lets say you go long the market at XX, but the market moves lower, so at this point you think that you've got an even better deal to average in on your original entry. Do you really know the future and how far this trade will go against you?

I'm bringing up a point of a major problem that I've faced as a trader. STOPS.
When I'm in the zone, I will exit a bad trade for a small loss and move on to the next one. When I'm trading relaxed or I've built a cushion of profits from previous days I will let my guard down and give a bad trade more room to breath and end up losing more money than I should have. Have you ever lost weeks or months worth of profits from being too relaxed or by breaking your "rules"?

Have you ever averaged your trade or widened your stop? There are a couple ways to deal with your problem of NOT taking stops.

1.Take out excess money in the account to the point to where you can only put on 1 trade and not be able to average into it.

2.Trade with a platform that has an automated risk management parameter that will close your position when you are down XX amount for the trade or reached a max daily loss.

3.Start working with another trader that can help train you on using stops.

4.Realize that you are not trading with a plan/system before you put on a trade, because your plan was for the trade to work in your favor immediately and not let it run against you.

5.Develop an Automated Trade System that will trade for you and take your emotions out of the trade.

Here are some of my Key Posts dealing with stops and problems traders face-

Realistic Expectations of your Trading Results

Dr. Brett goes over A Few Trading Psychology Observations

The stock market ruined my life

For FX.

Hedge Funds Leaving Stock Market

Hedge Fund Article (Courtesy CNBC)

Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, burst into the spotlight last year after his one-year-old fund returned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse.

Last month, he did the unthinkable -- he shut things down, claiming dealing with his bank counterparties had become too risky. Today, Lahde passed along his "goodbye" letter, a rollicking missive on everything from greed to economic philosophy. Enjoy:

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, "What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it." I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

Hedge Funds Leaving Stock Market

Hedge Fund Article (Courtesy CNBC)

Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, burst into the spotlight last year after his one-year-old fund returned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse.

Last month, he did the unthinkable -- he shut things down, claiming dealing with his bank counterparties had become too risky. Today, Lahde passed along his "goodbye" letter, a rollicking missive on everything from greed to economic philosophy. Enjoy:

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, "What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it." I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

Successful Day HPT's Live Chat Room

Well, Today was a good day for the guys in the room. The trade signals seemed to work pretty well. I'm working on holding my trades longer. I cut myself off about 8pts on my gold short and 10pts on my NQ long at the close. Of course we got Gasparino coming in 10min before the close on CNBC to pulloff a 100pt rally on some more rumors about what the FED is going to next. Some shorts that weren't watching there positions closely, got ZOLTED pretty bad.







For ForexIntraday and the rest of the guys-





Here's a live Trade from today-

Free video chat by Ustream

Successful Day HPT's Live Chat Room

Well, Today was a good day for the guys in the room. The trade signals seemed to work pretty well. I'm working on holding my trades longer. I cut myself off about 8pts on my gold short and 10pts on my NQ long at the close. Of course we got Gasparino coming in 10min before the close on CNBC to pulloff a 100pt rally on some more rumors about what the FED is going to next. Some shorts that weren't watching there positions closely, got ZOLTED pretty bad.







For ForexIntraday and the rest of the guys-





Here's a live Trade from today-

Free video chat by Ustream

Cramer article from 1999, Daytraders

A TIME article from 1999, written by Cramer.
Title- Yeah, Day Traders!

"So you want a piece of me? Think you're such a hotshot e-trader that you should quit your day job to pit your wits against me and my fellow professionals, who swing around millions of dollars in stock a day without blinking? At one time, I would have laughed if you had even contemplated such a thing. You couldn't match my access to conference calls, information or quick brokers. You couldn't afford the $1,500 a month you'd need for a Reuters, Dow Jones or Bloomberg wire...."

What Does it Take to Be A Successful Trader?

Great post by Lord Tedders on- What Does it Take to Be A Successful Trader?

"1) Started talking to a friend who happened to be a Futures Trader. He had some interest in learning Forex.

2) Went to a Forex Trading Seminar in Los Angeles with said trader - cost $1k.

3) Got 2 useful things from the seminar. 1) Learned how to......."

How to Trade Crude Oil Futures and energy stocks

This is basically what I watch when trading oil stocks, crude oil futures, and gold futures.
Right Monitor setup-
Look for inverse relationship between XLE and SMH- (oil vs Tech)
Oil Daily chart
XLE- Fib levels
Watch the Euro- (Stronger US Dollar can be bearish for metal and energy futures)
Watch for inverse relationship between Airline stocks and Oil stocks.
Brent Crude oil futures
Light Sweet Crude Oil futures-
Gold Futures-
Natural Gas Futures
Gasoline Futures-

600 posts and counting

Todays post #601. Yeppie. Anyway I'm getting back into the habit of trading now since I've got my computer running without any "Blue screens of DEATH". Chucking Vista and moving back to XP was a wise decision.

Today I decided to join in and chat with some other traders on WallStreak. There were some great calls today such as: Buy on GS near low of day, buy on GOOG at 449, and V right before it broke out in the afternoon. Although I didn't take many of these great trades, I was able to stay focused better by paying attention to what others were saying about the market. Thanks Stewie, MJ, Johnson, Blue, RaginCajun, PinoyTrader, YoungChuckNorris, Ainkurn, Denarii and others.

Today I did something I normally don't do, which is getting up early to trade. I'm sick for the 3rd time this year. I fell asleep in my recliner last night at 8pm tired as hell, got up at 3am and went to breakfast as Denny's(I ate SLAM IT UP, pick 4 breakfasts entrees- I had 2 scrambled eggs, pancakes and suasage). I came home and played CALL OF DUTY 4 online for an hour and then at 6am I went to my computer to trade. I traded the whole day while taking small breaks to snack on lunch meat. If you look at my trade log below I was making trades every few minutes pretty much the whole day while also chatting on WallStreak. The key to my success today was averaging in on every position(It helps keep stress down). Even my shitty trades on FSLR and GOOG that popped in my face, I was able to recover from by averaging in on each trade.

Volume Profile works, but my computer doesn't

If your read my post on saturday, you knew what I was planning for today to have happen. I initially saw the volume gap between 824-819 on Feb 20th as noted in my jorunal, and I've been keeping a close eye on it. ER2 hit 819.1 around 1pm EST. Although I predicted what the market was going to do today I was timid to short the VAH on ER2 this morning. I have to admit, it was the ideal setup for the professional traders to inflate the market this morning with a gap up, putting YM right at the 38% fib level for my planned short. The initial 30min of trading I normally avoid because I'm normally still trying to figure out the markets direction. Today I lacked confidence in my execution of trades although I kept to my trading plan of shorting the market down to 819 and remained postive. I had computer hardware problems this morning, having my IWM tick chart stop working(which is the main chart I trade off of) and my internet connection went out 4 times this morning. For some reason my computer is running super slow right now and it is popping up with the message that my virtual memory is too low. My charts kept freezing today, so I'm stopping trading and taking the profit I got until I can figure out how to make my computer work right. I'm pretty sure it's from running too many charts at once(I have about 25 charts up, I'm thinking about getting rid of A/D and Volume market internal charts to free some space, as I rarely use them) I saw that 828 was a good short, however I was timid. The first trade of the day is always hardest for me because it could be a good trade, but I will often put a stop that is too close or once I get a small profit I trail the price too close, only to be stopped out and watch the price continue my direction. Today I bought the LOD again for the 3rd day in a row(it was the LOD when I stopped trading, also I just noticed it was an AMEX -100 tick reversal setup!), I took the trade this time on YM because I wanted to take less risk; however, I did it again. Once I had a profit of 1 tick, I trailed the stop and got hit, only to see 3 minutes later 10pts in my direction(If the trade was on ER2 it would have worked better, I'm begining to think I should stop trading YM altogether). So, my plan is to keep the initial stop and give the trade 6-8 minutes to move, or use my own discretion and exit if I feel the NSYE TICK doesn't favor my position. This weekend I was thinking about trading all day and what I was going to do. Today I made 1 bad trade by shorting ER2 when the NYSE TICK was in the low range and I didn't exit the trade soon enough, instead of -0.2pts, I let the trade run -0.8pts, this is all because I got greedy and tried chasing the trade instead of waiting for shorting on a pullback. This past week I've been getting better at exiting my losers by using NYSE TICK. Also, what has been helpful for me in determining market reversals is by watching VOLUME in USO, SMH, XLB, and most importantly this past week XLF.



Here's the daily chart:

Feb 23 daily chart

I'm done early today, leaving a little frustrated but with a positive P/L and a positve P/L for the week. I bought ER2 3 ticks away from the low as noted in my trade execution report, however, I trailed the trade with a stop that was too close, which is something I need to work on. I should have instead used a 0.7pt stop with a profit target placed at the POC or VWAP. Instead of taking only a few trades, I scalped many trades today using the NYSE TICK extremes as guidance while also making sure professional traders were making trades during the same time at these tick extremes. Although I bought the LOD, most of my money made was by scalping during the mid-day by buying tick lows and fading tick highs. You will notice I lost money on YM while making 3x as much in profit on ER2. This is because I normally trade YM when I have less confidence in the trade setup, but I still want to take the trade, so I enter the trade with less risk by trading YM.



Most of my trades today were made around the #'s noted on the chart. During the day I mainly watch ER2 and IWM on a 2 tick chart with block trades noted by red and green blocks while also closely following NYSE TICK. I also watch the key sectors moving the market,(today it was XLF, SMH and XLE). I also watch NQ, YM, ES, NYA index, the 5 year note, and the market internals like VIX and A/D issues and up/down volume for the 3 exhanges. I don't watch the TRIN because I have never seen any edge in using it based on my style of trading.



This weekend I plan on analyzing my charts for patterns in the LOD and HOD with respect to block trades, NYSE TICK, and volume based market profile.