Originally posted by buzzy2
ndqnca:
Some bit of constructive criticism: at 12:30 the sp futures broke an important time-price support level, i was looking to get long too, but the breakout made me change my mind and went short. it looks to me like csfb traders already had knowledge of the release at 12:20, and because GE is such a high beta stock, maybe it wasn't a good idea to be long GE after 12:30. you could benefit by paying more attention to the DJIA and the ES/SP/NQ/ND.
Also I never go short when the price is going down and approaching a support target unless I plan on taking a quick profit. But the risk/reward is not that good in those kind of situations. If you want to go long it's better to wait for the bounce. The bounce is kind of violent sometimes and happens a few ticks above the support level. It will hurt you if you are short and freeze without having stops in place.
Bottom line: today it was dangerous to go long after 11:30 and before 12:30. After 12:30 going long was clearly a mistake. Until the next bounce at 14:07...
I don't subscribe to any expensive news service. The ES/NQ feed is faster than any news service.
good luck
thanks for the advice, but i rarely look at all the technical mumbo/jumbo- i strictly play convergence/ divergence in correlated stocks- so TA (tech analysis- not tits n ass

) doesn't really play into my strategy- maybe i will look at levels more in the future- right now i make consistent money- why change??
but the selloff in GE was due to a bad news item being released- and people OBVIOUSLY knew about (insiders) and sold short all that they could minutes before they KNEW the report was to be released- a mere few minutes before the news was released, these sneaky bastards were already at work selling short to take advantage of their priveleged information- pretty shady...fair and equitable markets- yeah right......but i know its a fact of life on wall street- just sucks that we don't have a decent news service- and none of the traders in my office could find any news on GE until WAY after the damage had been done- briefing.com and realmoney.com are just not going to hack it anymore....they are too slow....
hey don- i trade at bright- what is the feasibility of getting us an office bloomberg terminal? believe me- we MORE than pay for it with our commissions- hell - i've paid for it 3 times over this month in commissions (assuming bloomberg runs $5K/ month)- and our office trades VOLUME!! so whaddya say? it would make us happy and happy traders trade more and make more commission revenue !!!

(plus it would be nice to level the playing field- its hard to compete with the limited resources (no reliable real time news) that we have compared to the institutions)
but as for the whole GE debacle ( i was pretty pissed off when i made my original post) , it worked out ok- i was, at one point down $2300 on the position, but through some hard work and serious trading, was able to pull it back out to an easier to swallow, $450 loss, so all in all, not a really big deal, but it does make me mad that we don't have the same access to news as our competitors, people traded on inside information and manipulated GE today. i know this goes on a lot, but the SEC/ NASD needs to crack down on this shady garbage......