Hydro I hate specialists as much as you do, but today this stock traded 36million shares. Did you see the size of the trades going off at certain points. 20-90k blocks. Today you just had to watch oil (Crude, OIX,OSX whatever it is you use) get long and just believe. I ended up getting in at 100. Only 1500 shares but it just was just going higher all day. Never a reason to sell. A guy who trades next to me kept on buying (market orders and ECN's) and ended up with 5800 shares at an avg of 101.50 (somewhere around there). SUN, GI,LSS,BR,TSO they were all there for the taking today.
That stock was freaking amazing. I just got too freaking excited by the action and lost my cool and all sense of risk control. I also wasn't watching how oil and other oil stocks were doing. I blew a huge opportunity today cause I think in this historically low volitility market the only way to make money is by trading news or something going parabolic.
Worry not, there will be many more opportunites, will you take advantage of the next one? FWIW, Many things are working well in this market, I don't believe that you need news events or parabolic moves to make money, you must have a multi-strategy, multi-market, multi-time frame approach. This helps you have more consistency in your income, which leads to greater confidence, which leads to better trading, because you aren't trading the money! Good trading to all! Mike
You're right and I've actually been learning the sector plays lately, had some luck in steel last week. It's just that this month just left me a little sore from the NYSE crew. And no flowers either,
Hire a detective. Figure out the specialist rotations. Trade the man, not the stock. One way of doing it. VLO should've been a nasdaq stock. imo