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TUES. MAY 4- Cancer Research The approval by the FDA of Dendreon's (DNDN) prostate cancer vaccine Provenge was a major coup for the company. It is in fact the only product that the company has been developing; they took a huge gamble and won with several analysts estimating the company could...

MON. MAY. 3- Volatility Is Baaaaaaack (Hopefully) The VXX (an instrument used to attempt to replicate the S&P 500 VIX volatility index) had its first higher close on a month-to-month basis since March 2009. What is interesting about this to me is that this was the first month in quite some...

FRI. APR. 30- Navigating The Oil Slick A few days ago, I wrote a piece about paying attention to all parts of the newspaper rather than just the business and sports sections of the daily rag/Internet site if you day trade. Such a very bold example occurred yesterday. I was taken aback when...

THURS. APR. 29- Focusing On The Best If you were a huge Yankees baseball fan with no obligations and plans to go to sleep on a Friday night but were given free box seat tickets three hours before game-time to a Red Sox-Yankees game, you probably would make the effort to get out to Yankee...

WED. APR. 28- Trouble In Europe Europe’s problems finally became a bit of a problem state-side for the American stock market yesterday. For the first time since the debut of the euro in 1999, a euro member lost its investment grade status as Standard and Poor’s cut its debt rating three...

TUES. APR. 27- Keeping Yourself In Check As any person with any degree of intelligence, reason, logic, and some degree of wealth knows, going to Las Vegas or Atlantic City can be a pleasurable experience- win or lose. Both the Las Vegas Strip as well as the Boardwalk have been gentrified...

MON. APR. 26- The Strong Economy I am as guilty as anyone of being a worrywart about many things. In the business world, I like many day traders have kept an eye on the Greek situation, geopolitics, and don’t understand how a nation having more debt than my little brain can comprehend is...

FRI. APR. 23- Relative Strength In A Strong Market When the market is moving, relative strength plays and relative weakness plays can really be good. When there is a news event involved in an individual stock vastly outperforming or underperforming the market, relative strength plays and...

THURS. APR. 22- Index Trading A few months ago, the stock of Roper Industries (ROP) went into the S&P 500. On the day of the announcement, the stock rallied about 4% and bounced around for the next few days. Two days before entering the esteemed index, the company announced it was going to...

WED. APR. 21- Probing For those people who despise buying a car, one of the only enjoyable parts for those individuals tends to be test driving. I mean, most people tend to know what they want when they go into a dealership car-wise. They may not know if they want a Honda or a Ford or a...

TUES. APR. 20- Taking It All In For those who have not been actively watching the story, the volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier has continually sent ash into the air for several days. The eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland has thrown up a several...

MON APR. 19 - Trouble At Goldman So what exactly happened in the middle of the morning on Friday? Well, first, we have to back up. During our morning call, I noted that not only was GOOG down on earnings, BAC and GE despite their wonderful earnings had slipped into negative territory. That...

Fri. Apr. 16- Three Factors To Watch Yesterday, I made passing reference to three distinct events which bear watching. First, the Greek bond situation continues to worsen. As of this morning, the difference between the 10-year Greek bonds and the 10-year German bund is at its highest point...

Whenever preparing meat for consumption, one does their best to cut out as much fat as possible before digesting it. In Corporate America, the analogy is the same. For a company which is trying to buffer itself in bad times, the first thing it does is to try to cut expenses. For instance, if...

The other day, someone asked me about something I’ve never addressed in this space. The question was how many trades per day do I do on an average day? The answer is going to sound like a really obvious answer to some, but for me, it wasn’t so obvious until about 10 years into my career. The...

TUES. APR. 13- Don't Overthink Rate this Entry Excellent Good Average Bad Terrible 0 Comments by Erik R. Kolodny View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Send Email on Today at 07:43 AM (0 Views) According to Yahoo Finance, “Houston...

Late yesterday afternoon, the major governments of the EU nations offered troubled Greece a lifeline package. The package is valued around $61 billion- at below-market interest rates in an attempt to slow if not halt the Greek financial crisis- and of course to attempt to keep the euro from...

Following up on a bit of a different tack from the self-analysis piece written recently, I want to go over what precisely sparked the entire dialogue about looking over one’s trades. In a conversation I was having with a fellow trader, he was very disappointed in himself because he’d lost...

THURS. APR. 8 - Broadening Moves In the last three days, I for one have seen a very welcome return to something that has been absent for a few weeks intra-day anyway in the equity markets- follow through on moves for traders honed in on 1-5 minute timeframe-based trades. What has occurred...

WED. APR. 7 - Suspending Disbelief Every so often, there is a trade so strange that it takes some degree of time to understand and comprehend. Such was the case on the first trading day this year in share of Alcon (ACL). At 1:28AM on Monday morning on the first trading day of the year...