Overall a good day trading today. Started out with covering PNC stock in pre-market. As it turns out PNC had a lot more life in it and kept going higher throughout the day. My experience with pre-market trading is that prices can be very out of tune with how the open will be because it doesnââ¬â¢t take much to move the market a lot. As a result when I am long which is a more risky trade to begin with I will cover if the gains are good during pre-market. Of course that means I often miss a bigger gain but it also means that I am out and if the pre-market would have been the highest of the day as it so often is I am out with a nice gain. + 2803 Covered half of the PNC Feb 12.50 puts and will hold the rest overnight again. + 221 Scalped APOL and ended up with a higher ave cost basis for my short (a good thing). APOL then went on to fall off the cliff that I thought it would. Still holding my current 400 shares short which is covered with Feb 85 puts. + 104 Scalped NTRS + 210 USB + 100 AMR +26 PHK + 73 IDCC 6b, H, was a trade that met the H signal but did not fully meet the 6b signal for intraday pricing. Scalped and traded it and as I write this with about 40 mins to go its looking like it may make another setup for an overnight trade. + 448 +4016 Day
Ebay and AAPL came out with earnings after the bell and provided for some very good scalping. Well at least AAPL did. ebay seems to have lost its luster with auctions and with trading. Today marks the best day of the year so far and will be the next challenge to beat. ebay + 25 AAPL + 487 2000 Shares + 4529 Day is the net result.
Today started out with scalping APOL. ESI another educational stock reported better than expected and gave guidence that was better than expected. This gapped up ESI and moved APOL to much higher ground but not without moving all over the place. I went on to trade it throughout the day which I made some gains with as well as raised my average cost for my swing short. At the end of the trading I stayed with the covered short swing trade at the same 400 shares at a new ave of 88.77 and a short put at 85. + 460 DV H, 6B - DV gave a very nice setup. The only thing I didn't like about DV is that I was unwilling to pull the trigger for large size. + 429 I expected to be trading AAPL as the guidence was good yesterday and I traded it in afterhours to give me a heads up yesterday. just a few scalps + 108 ESI reporting was well received. Gapped by a large amount, especially for a high priced stock. I traded it both from a scalping and from a option play. ESI will be on my watch list for a swing trade if it can get above todays high tomorrow. + 229 and feb 145 calls + 77 SMG 6b(old) - SMG moved around a bit and I traded and scalped it. + 282 IDCC discrectionary - IDCC was near a short at the close yesterday and I waited for most of the day to see if it went into overbought for the day. It really didn't make it there but idcc 31.25 it appeared to be near a pivot point so I shorted it. I only went with half size in case I needed to run for the exit. I did not make the full gain as I didn't want to carry into the close but it was a good trade otherwise. +45 NITE started jumping around and I traded it twice. the first time I made about $100 in 6.5 mins and then again for the rest of the gain when it went above 18 again. + 309 In after hours trading I traded GOOG with the earnings release. Only 100 shares traded as I didn't want to get on the wrong side of that dragon in after hours trading. + +279 Once again it was a good day and very happy I was able to raise my cost basis in APOL as that is a pretty large sized price stock. + 2222 Day
The day started out really nice. GE earnings came out around what everyone expected and I saw pre-market trades above 14. That didnât last long and GE started back down the hill. By the end of the day we could see trades going off at under 12 per share. I feel that GE is a stupid low prices and that to sell this stock which currently is like a never ending AAA rated option just does not make sense. Even with a dividend cut it just not make sense to bail out at this point. GE is priced like a stock with negative PE and no dividend. At the end of the day I started to sell Feb $9 puts. I was able to get two sold at .31ea APOL fell off the cliff today. Down about 4% for a loss of 3.43. That put my covered short in the money and I will be looking for an exit at some point. The goal of this trade is to let time eat away at the option premium and to have the price of the stock at or below 85. As I am using a new signal that was developed over the last few months I am very happy with the third trade with this signal. It will be interesting to see how many trades in a row traded with this signal before it has a loss. NEM H- Only trade of the day. Looks like the gold bugs were out today in full force as several other gold stocks came close to giving over bought signals. NEM was scalped and traded for a nice gain based on the few shares I actually traded. + 966 +966 Day
Thanks, and I am sorry for taking so long to say so. I am at Disney with the family this week. Still trading though and actually doing well for only trading 2-3 hours per day.
1-26-09 Today I am trading in Orlando Florida as I am doing a location evaluation of DIS (Disney World). Other than having it a lot warmer I can say that adding to one of my things I hate (standing in line) by keeping notes on head counts and how long a ride takes to get on (normal vs. easy pass and time of day). The good news is that I have been able to make some trades today and its nice to see the market up again. AU H, first trade of the day and with gold higher but not that much higher it was an easy fade. + 344 NITE H and gave a 6b warning, I traded NITE last week and when it poped up again on the radar I was ready. It didnââ¬â¢t give me a chance to get as many shares as I wanted but still a good trade. + 260 MS H, Morgan took a while to develope and I am currently trading it as I type this. after this trade I plan on leaving the room and going back to my head counts and timing the waits. By the time I finished typing the below comments it was time to come back and enter this last sentence and call it a day. (day meaning one hour and ten mins after the open) + 103 APOL continued its fall from grace and both the 105 calls and the covered short continue to increase the gains. SQNM is up a bit today but not enough to cost me anything with the FEB 30 calls that I wrote. Actually in summary all options are performing well today, LVS, GE, USO. Of course the GE 14 and 13s are now in the money but after counting the premium collected only the 14s are a loser at this time. + 708 Day / Week + 15615 Month 3200 Shares 325,800 Shares / Mth
1-27-09 Another day at Disney and another day of hurry up and wait the Disney way. Today again I traded only the first couple of hours. MCK + 270 Day + 270 Week + 978 Month + 15885 4400 shares 330,200 Shares / Mth
1-28-09 Midweek and I am still trading short days as I spend this week looking at Disney from the customer experience. On a side note today was the breaking point for my wife. She has now grown tired of hurrying up and waiting. Especially the Disney way. Back to todayââ¬â¢s trades. Not much but for about three hours it was not bad. It was mostly a scalping day APOL continues to stay below 85 allowing the puts to continue to melt away. GE finally found its way again and was able to move up and get above 13. The SQNM options written have melted away by over 50%. PNC options are next to worthless as well. Total unrealized gain is now over 4000 with about three weeks to go before options expiration date. STJ + 92 SCHN + 153 NUE + 215 HUM + 25 DB + 223 + 710 Day + 1688 Week + 16595 Month 26352 Shares 356,552 shares / Mth
Another day and another line stood in at Disney. Actually thats not totally correct. I stood in many lines. Short trading day at there where lines that needed to be stood in and my family did our best to do it. We actually left the park early today as we just grew tired of it. Even my seven year old said he would rather go back to the hotel room and play with his toys as he didnââ¬â¢t want to stand in line anymore. GE fell out of bed once again. At least the time decay is starting to take hold of the puts that I wrote and I am starting to get into the money with them. APOL found its way up but still below the magic mark of 85 Just a few trades today ALK H, + 572 SYMC, discretionary trade /scalp + 249 WDC, H, 6b, +456 + 1278 Day + 2966 Week + 17873 Month 19600 Shares 376,152 Shares / Mth Cant seem to get the capture image screen to work so no image.