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Tuesday, September 14, 2010 TUES. SEP. 14- Basel Is Not A Spice A term tossed around yesterday was “Basel III.” It was arguably the number one influential factor with regard to yesterday’s stock market action yet most traders (including myself) could not give a coherent explanation of...

As I discuss in my firm's chat room daily, I've dabbled a bit re scale. For instance, yesterday, I bought 1/2 my position in PCG through unchanged at 10:02AM ET as there was no follow-through selling from Friday on their natural gas explosion. When it got positive, I bought the other 1/2 just...

MON. SEP. 13- Trading Appropriately In The Immediate-Term In this relatively slow intra-day trading environment, many people are sorely tempted to trade with more size to make up for the lack of movement. When things are moving, one can obviously trade their normal share size to capture...

FRI. SEP. 10- Testing An Adage One of the oldest adages in the stock market is to ‘sell on Rosh Hashanah and buy on Yom Kippur.” For those not familiar with Jewish custom (disclosure: I am Jewish) , Rosh Hashanah marks the start of the Jewish New Year while Yom Kippur is a Day of...

THURS. SEP. 9- Using ECN's As a Guide At Times As day traders, we must seek an edge- any edge. Well, among the continuing battle of the ECN’s versus the NYSE routes, there are two definitive and important nuances one should know over and above having the basic understanding of the ‘flash...

In the first portion of the typical blog post, I try to go over something that I hear discussed i the trading room and/or not understood by many traders (including myself). So, I do some homework and try to write it in terms that I and hopefully any reader can understand. The market section...

WED. SEP. 8- Back To Watching Europe After a mammoth stock run-up last week, perhaps a bit of a reversal was to be expected yesterday. But the attributed reason for the downdraft was quite sinister. The euro suffered its biggest drop in several weeks against the dollar and notched a new...

TUES. SEP. 7- Welcome to Autumn? So it’s unofficially autumn. Even though we lose the beach with its warm days, at least we get football! However, although the rush of everyone coming back is still there as it has been in past years, one ingredient is not likely to return this week...

FRI. SEP. 3- Some Facts and Fiction Re Day Trading There was an article in the “New York Times” a few weekends ago about day trading: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/business/28trader.html?hpw One can have any opinion of the article that one wants to have (and I encourage all day...

THURS. SEP. 2- Not Taking The Bet So you’re standing 4th in line at a grocery store. Three people ahead of you, you notice the cashier ask the customer if they’d like to play double or nothing meaning if the coin lands on tails, she gets free groceries; however, if the coin lands on...

WED. SEP. 1- My Name Is Earl The only two dates applicable to this piece-at least applicable to the NYSE website- are August 9, 1976 and September 27, 1985. Anyone know (or remember) those dates off-hand? The are the dates with which two names were spoken by the populace of the Northeast...

TUES. AUG. 31- Things Could Be Worse... Sometimes, in the dreariness of January chill and clouds, there are sudden bursts of warmth. Expectations are for cold, cold, cold particularly in the northern half of the United States. So when the temperature in a place like Chicago warms to a...

FRI. AUG. 27- A Jackson Hole Friday I stared at the computer screen for a good 10 minutes before beginning to write this piece. After all that time, I figured I’d get to writing and still cannot think of a better beginning than “I stared at the computer screen for a good 10 minutes...

THURS. AUG. 26- Homebuilders And Their Stock Prices On Tuesday, existing home sales data came in much below the expectations of top economists. Yesterday, new homes sales data came in much below the expectations of top economists. Yet, a very interesting thing happened on Tuesday amidst the...

WED. AUG. 25- It's Not The End Of The World (Yet!) The year 1999 was an extraordinary one for the stock market. The NASDAQ that year was up almost 90%. But I remember specifically was December 1999 and my New Year’s Eve that year. What I recall in the best year for the NASDAQ in its...

TUES. AUG. 24- You Play To Win The Game A couple of mornings ago, I was speaking with a colleague who started trading a few months ago. After a little ‘getting used to it’ period, he actually had a relatively sustainable period of success. To his absolute credit, he didn’t go nutso...

MON. AUG. 23- The Last Two Weeks Of Summer There are time when one is watching a baseball game, it’s the first inning, and your team falls behind 3-0. But you just know that your team has every shot in the world to come back (in what ends up a 12-11 game). There are also times when it’s...

FRI. AUG. 20- It's Not Always Sunny In Philadelphia The Philadelphia Federal Index, according to Investopedia, is defined as such: “A regional federal-reserve-bank index measuring changes in business growth. The index is constructed from a survey of participants who voluntarily answer...

THURS. AUG. 19- Merger Time On March 3, I wrote a piece about a potential mini merger mania (which also referred to a May 13, 2009 piece on the mechanics of day trading mergers): http://epiphanytrading.blogspot.com/search?q=mar+3+mini+merger+mania I won’t repeat anything from either...

WED. AUG. 18- Grains And Day Trading Having grown up in the South, I am very used to hot summers. Of course, as I type,I realize it can get very hot in every place I’ve lived from Savannah to Chicago to New York. Everyone always comments that it’s not the heat- it’s the humidity. But...