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FRI. JUN. 25- Russell Day On the last Friday of every June comes a rather unique phenomenon: the Russell rebalancing. The Russell 3000 is an index which tracks 3,000 of the largest stocks in the U.S.; approximately 98% of all investable U.S. stocks are included in the index. The Russell...

THURS. JUN. 24- Real Estate And Day Trading Yesterday, the data for existing homes disappointed the markets in coming in below expectations. The market dipped a little at the time. But when one looks at the data, it has to be one of the grimmest statistics in modern history- no exaggeration...

WED. JUN. 23- No News Yesterday Was Bad News Usually, I try to devote this space to some sort of trading parable and/or an economic discourse, but for the 2nd day in a row, I feel the need to go over what happened yesterday. I tend to write the ‘review of yesterday’s action’ type...

TUES. JUN. 22- How Strong The Yuan? On Sunday night, there was an announcement out of China which helped maintain a worldwide rally in equities yet the uptick failed state-side yesterday. So, what exactly happened? Basically, China flashed a signal that is ready to put an end to the yuan’s...

MON. JUN. 21- Comprehending The News When creating a list of stocks to go on the morning’s watch list and blog, there are discernible reasons as to why each stock is placed in this space. Oftentimes, people will ask how particular stocks, but will not be aware whatsoever of what was going...

FRI. JUN. 18- Shakeup In The S&P The S&P 500 is truly the benchmark index of large capitalization U.S. equities with trillions of dollars of market capitalization. The index is capitalization weighted meaning that the larger the market capitalization, the larger the weight of the stock in...

THURS. JUN. 17- BP And The Debt Market There’s an old saying that the perception can become the reality. Recently, there have been all kinds of rumors as to whether it is possible (or plausible for that matter) for British Petroleum (BP) to declare bankruptcy. Very briefly, there are...

WED. JUN. 16- The Message Of The Markets In yesterday’s market commentary on the blog, I wrote this: "Markets were little changed in Asia overnight with Tokyo and Hong Kong both up 0.1%. In Europe, markets are shaking off a BP debt downgrade by Fitch as well as a Greek debt downgrade to...

No re the new criteria. I simply make a list of notable stocks that have news and/or closed up or down 5% or more and closed near their previous day's high or low. If the stock doesn't have news, I will trade it but in much smaller size witout the definitive news trigger as long as...

TUES. JUN. 15- The 'Circuit Breaker' Update Very quietly lost in the news flow on Thursday (five weeks after the ‘flash crash’), federal regulators put new rules into place at an attempt to eliminate another ‘flash crash.’ On Friday, the major exchanges put the new rules into place...

MON. JUN. 14- Being Aware of Everything...And Your Mindset I feel like I’ve discussed my 20 cent rule and the idea of liquidity quite a bit over the last several months. But based on what I was seeing in our chat room the last couple of days, I want to readdress both issues from two...

FRI. JUN. 11- Investing Vs Trading Somebody recently made an appearance in the middle of the day in our chatroom and asked why the drillers were up on the session. Let’s forget the fact that serial perpetrators of randomly appearing at work at random times indicate (to me anyway) a complete...

THURS. JUN. 10- Being A Zero When I was younger, I would make an annual sojourn to the NYSE and then into mid-town Manhattan with my father. I was developing whatever knowledge base of trading I now possess and miss those visits more than anybody can begin to imagine. One of the more...

WED. JUN. 9- Markets Never Sleep Many traders falsely think that the trading day starts at 9:30AM ET and ends at 4PM ET. In countless ways, they are mistaken. The specific tenet I have in mind today is that due to the trading of futures, there is ostensibly constant movement time-wise much...

TUES. JUN. 8- "Jobs" Report Last week, I noted in this space that both President Obama and Vice President Biden made positive comments about jobs growth in the United States. The implication was that the number coming from the unemployment report last Friday was going to be strong. This...

MON. JUN. 7- Hungarian Woes On Tuesday night, I ate some of the best Hungarian goulash that I’ve ever had. If it is done the right way, it is one of my five favorite meals (even if I do desecrate it by eating low fat meat and a healthy serving of veges on top- don’t worry…just frozen...

FRI. JUN. 4- The Annual ASCO Conference Over the upcoming weekend, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will occur. They always hold their convention the weekend after Memorial Day Weekend. There will be exciting things like dense abstracts, long drawn-out...

THURS. JUN. 3- Rally Day In this manic market, the last two days have been particularly manic with the shorts having a party on Tuesday afternoon followed by a weak overnight in foreign markets and then…and then…a 2.6% pop in the S&P 500 in going off at the day’s highs. There were two...

WED. JUN. 2- What Is Luck? The other night, a very close friend of mine who has been trading very well in the last several weeks inadvertently left an order out after a very hectic day...week...month...and year! He got filled an hour or so after the close. He immediately put an order out...

TUES. JUN. 1- The Next Trade I know many people who are on diets (whether they need to be or not). They pick out the type of diet/food they will eat (South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and so forth). They are attempting to adhere to the rigors of said diet and are focused on...