Update: "JPT"

It is holding up ok and we are not bad considering another late day "bail out" on the markets. The position is up 2% on a net basis at the close. The late day selling is getting tiresome. let's see what next week brings. Check emails for price targets.

Update: May Month End

May was not a good month for the Stock Market. The "Europe Contagion" hit the markets in a grand fashion and brought the U.S. into "correction" territory. Volatility was the big word for most the month as investors experienced a new term "flash correction" and realized how little diversification there really is in the world right now. The correlation amongst indexes on a global level is evident and off the charts. Asset allocation has taken on a whole new meaning- what asset allocation?! It seems everything is moving in the same direction. I guess that is what happens when 70% of the trading volume is now controlled by flash trading firms utilizing the same models and probally all went to the same schools. They all think alike. WallStreetRamblings.Com did pretty well- all things considered. We are up 43% on the year vs. The S&P500's -2.30%. We left a lot of money on the table and look to correct some of our mistakes. It was not easy. Check emails for updates. have a great weekend and I'll see you in June!

Bought more "JPT"

Check emails for status. We doubled up.

New Trade: "JPT"

We put on a new trade late yesterday afternoon with about 40% commitment. I'll call it "JPT" because its an old favorite and it looks good technically. We will look to add more if it acts right. Check emails for update.

Update

Looks like we got shaken out early on "ABC". We had a really nice position at a great price; however, I had to leave early Tuesday for a friends Bachelor Golf Outing and noticed the futures were down big. Our position was so large that I did not want to leave it un-attended. Too bad- It is working out great right now. Oh well- should have trusted my instinct.

Trade Update: "ABC"

Sold this morning at 8:02am for a -1.6% loss in pre-market. It is just too risky right now. Check email for updates.

Sample Headlines Today

"It's beginning to look a lot like a correction or...worse" - WSJ
"Is your money safe? Big banks are looking riskiest" - Prechter
"One false move could set off global chain reaction - Washington Post
"Ready for WAR" - The Drudge Report
"Dr. Doom predicts more pain" - The Telegraph UK

What to do....What to do.....

Trade Update: "ABC"

"ABC" is acting well. We are currently up 4.5% on our net cost basis. The market continues to be in poor shape. I am surprised that it did not continue its bounce from Friday. There is a lot of risk right now and I am concerned about which way it will go. It is tempting to pull the trade with our small profit. If "ABC" can continue to hold during this period, we will be in a great position. Check emails for updates.

Trade Update: "ABC"

We couldn't help ourselves. We doubled out position on "ABC" at around 3:45pm. The price wasn't the lowest of the day; however, it wasn't the highest either. We got a mid range of the day. We are now fully engaged into the trade and closed the week completely flat on the trade. The headlines were so negative that I am hoping we have seen the worst of this correction and we might have a chance of "good news" over the weekend. Although I am a little nervous, I think it should work out. Check emails for updates and have a great weekend!

Nice Predictable Bounce!

A well scripted bounce. let's see if it holds. We missed our buy limit by 2-cents! If we had any guts, we could have had some nice 20% bounces in 2 hours. Now comes "The Test". We are back in "Hamburger Hill Mode". The lines are drawn at S&P500 Index 1040 and S&P500 Index 1100. Going to be interesting.

The Line Must Hold

The markets are at crucial levels. They are already in bear market territory from the high. If we do not find stabliity at these levels, it will not be good. The funny thing is that the volatility as measured by the VIX is sky high yet it is only going in one direction-down. That is disconcerting. Check emails for targets.

Trade & Market Update

Wow. The markets are falling fast. We did not get filled on our Buy Limit for more "ABC" yesterday. We put in a new Buy Limit price this morning for more at a slightly lower price. I am a little nervous because I am not sure that we want to get filled. The market looks extremely unstable. Check emails for the new buy limit price and updates.

Trade Update: "ABC"

Boy it is ugly out there. We could have played our shorts over and over. "ABC" has been fairly strong. We are only down 3% on our position; however, the market looks very bad. The question is: Do we pull the trade or not? It has been very strong on a relative basis but it is starting to get hit a little given the market's crushing. We have a limit order to double our position well below the market in place. I am debating whether to cancel it. Stay tuned and check your emails frequently.

Market Update

It looks brutal out there; however, it is acting as we had a hunch it would. Check emails for strategy updates.

Trade Update: "ABC"

We did some more shopping today. We bought more "ABC" and have brought our stake up to 45%. Check emails for reports and strategy updates. Now we go golfing and take the rest of the day off while the Bulls and Bears fight.

What do you think?

Is the market going up or down from here? Email your vote.

Trade Update: "ABC"

Looks good. We got a chance to purchase some more at the close. We bought another 15% stake. The market looks horrible-which is exactly what we want! Check emails for updates and strategies.

Done for the day.

A good start to the week. Take the rest of the day off. Check emails.

New Trade: "ABC"

We just took on a new postion "ABC". We will "pyramid" into the position. We used a 15% capital commitment and may look at add in the future. Check emails for strategy update and position notes. We are very active in here. When the volatility is high- you gotta ride the waves!

Trade Update: "HHH"

We had a good trade on "HHH". It was TZA again-which is 3x short the Russell 2000 index ETF. We bought 20% capital on May 13th for $5.61 and added more this morning at 6.01 for a 50% capital position (50% of our portfolio- a big bet) for a total cost basis of $5.82 and we just closed out a little bit ago at 6.58. That is a nice 13% net gain!
Check emails for updates.

Trade "HHH" closed.

OLE!

Tercio de Muerte! The final stage. We are now up 12% on "HHH" (our short). Please check your emails for targets and cover points.

Thanks! A reader helped us out!

Thank you so much to the reader D.S. who showed us how to change the glitch without sacrificing our posts. It is now EST. We are now and will be in EST. I love our fan base! Please ignore the previous post and DO NOT ADD 3 HOURS. We are all set for EST now. Three cheers for D.S.- Ourah! Ourah! Ourah!

P.S. Good Grief we need a web guy. Soon my friends soon.

Email Question of The Week

"What Time Zone doe WSR (Wallstreetramblings) trade on?"

Answer: We are in the Eastern Standard Time Zone (EST). The website had a glitch when we first set it up. It reflects Pacific Time or PST/PDT. Add 3 hours to all posts since we are in EST and trade EST. When the website was set up, it defaulted to "California Time". We choose not to change it because it might disrupt the accuracy of our posts. We will keep it the same time til the end of the year. Thanks for asking!

We are at "Hamburger Hill"

The Bulls and Bears are at critical points here. S&P500 1150 and S&P1172 is the battlefield. We call it "Hamburger Hill" based upon the movie by the same name. It is going to be bloody for both sides in here. If one of the levels has a confimed break-out or break-down, either the Bull or Bear is going to be crushed. Play it out. Check emails for updates and strategies.

So far so good on "HHH"

Looks like we are up 3.6% on our new short "HHH" (at the close)that we put on this morning. I figured they couldn't keep hitting the "ask". It's just did not make any sense and we were a little frustrated they pushed us out yesterday- no biggie. Our attitude is just fold, re-think the play, and then re-deploy. We are actually hoping the market goes UP tomorrow so we can add more. We have changed from "the hunted" to "the hunters". I feel a lot more comfortable in this play since it is extended by 3 deviations from the norm (i.e. something's gotta give). I figure the volatility is high enough that we can play "a pyramid" and catch a nice move without being out-traded by Citigroup and Bank of America (how embarrassing!) it looks like the HFT (high frequency trading) firms are laying low right now given the backlash for " TheMay 6th Ghost Crash". The retail investor is out of this game right now. It's mano y mano. GAME ON.

Call us gluttons for pain: We are going to try again

We still still are not buying this rally. We took a new position shorting something else. let's call it "HHH". We feel we are on the correct side. We got shaken out yesterday even though I have a "gut" feeling it will swing our way. It's like poker- we have a feeling we have the winning hand and we got bluffed off our position. The bulls keep firing at the pot. It seems too scripted for my tastes. Call us a glutton for punishment if you may; however, we are going to play the short side again. if the rally is for real, we can change sides. I don't buy it right now though. We will "pyramid" into the position so we don't get easily swayed off our belief.

Let's see if The Bulls can crack the steel resistence ceiling the indexes are at.

Update

Looks like the S&P500 closed almost exactly at our 1172 target today. I really hated closing out our short here. We will look to replay it. We got a little greedy. We could have taken a 4.5% gain; however, we wanted more. You have to be quick in here. Oh well, I thought we had a great chance to make some good profits given the news.(Our computers gave a 75% chance of us losing. I don't know why I go against our computers. I guess we don't trust the market anymore after last Thuraday) It is getting very tricky in here. We are probally going to take the rest of the week off and watch the roulette wheel spin for a bit. We are not going to ruin a good YTD performance in this environment. Check emails for updates.

Trade Closed: "TTT" or FAZ

We had to close out today. We bought FAZ at 12.42 total cost basis. We were forced to dump at 12.18 for a -1.93% loss. Not to mention a wasted day.

Ouch! Getting run over here.

Well...I was wrong. We can only hope for a little pull-back here to ease our pain. let's hope we can get out with minimal pain. Wasted a whole day. We could have bailed with a small profit this morning. Now we just have to try and escape!

I expect a reversal from here to the close

You can play technicals for only so long-and they have played them about as far on the long side as any good trader would play. I would expect some to close out and take some profits. There is still a lot of uncertainty out there. lets see if they back off. They found the stops and the way down, lets see if they found the stops on the way up. Going to be interesting. lets watch.

At top of resistence: let's see if they can break it.

S&P500 1172 is the top ceiling. lets see if their little game can break it or the theives will scatter and turn on another.

They don't make it easy

We will probably be looking to get out of our short position. They are not making it easy on the long or short side. This thing may go either way. Gold is hitting new highs, proposed stike in Greece, Morgan Stanley may be investigated, blah blah blah- and the market is still holding strong (for now). We don't like 50-50 bets-not to mention going up against a market that has 4 top banks that just reported a quarter where not one of them had a losing day! I guess they were all on the same side of the trades. It makes it easier for them when the bad boys (Lehman and Bear Stearns) are out of their way. I can understand Goldman accomplishing such a feat; however, Bank of America and Citigroup? Hard to believe. They are normally on the losing side of trades. We are going to have to think this out. Either join them or get out of the way.

A Strange New Market Era: "Barter Town"

I have been talking about this all year with some of my friends at other institutions. We just couldn't put our finger on it- the market has been acting very strange since the beginning of the year (view the archives). It seems that everything is correlated and sometime artificial. I have been trading markets for 16 year-plus now and I have never quite seen anything like this year. Most stocks have not been moving independently and many actions have been suspicious. It has not seem like "normal" price action all year. I am not alone. Many traders on the floor with many more years experience than me have been scratching their heads. It is interesting to note that it is also doing this period that Goldman did lose 1-cent on any day in Q1. I know some very smart and much more nimble traders who at least was down 1 day! I'm not going to digress.......We now find out some exchanges and trading platforms decide to pull the plug whenever they want resulting in "Ghost Trades" and new "Circuit Breakers". Kind of reminds me of 'MAD MAX: Beyond Thunderdome". You remember when MastBlaster shut down "Barter Town" and asked Tina Turner's character..."Who control's barter town?". Well....Who controls the financial markets? We know it is not the majority anymore, we know it is not Congress, not The Senate, certainly not the general public. We know it was quoted that 73% of trade volume is now run by High Frequency trading and some top brokerage firms. What ever is happening, it is true that "MasterBlaster" what ever that is- Is running the show.

We are taking a chance here!

Check emails for updates. Bought more "TTT". We feel the exuberance over the trillion dollar bail-out is over done and the market is due for a pull-back. You never know in this environment though; given a small few control the direction of the markets these days. We think they will change their mind given the fundamentals. We are now 80% short. It is a dangerous game given the amount of short-term manipulation in the markets these days. Our computer systems are somewhat convinced and the volatility will give us a chance to bail if we have to. We are betting the "Big Boys" are going to fade this market in here. it just makes sense. it is the smart thing to do in here. let's hope we are right.

A Very Interesting Article on Last Week's Crash

Decide for yourself. It talks about manipulation. An interesting take on the events.

http://www.alternet.org/news/146793/was_last_week's_market_crash_a_direct_attack_by_financial_terrorists?page=1

New Trade: "TTT"

We couldn't help ourselves! We put on a new trade today. Check emails for update. This one seems like a no-brainer. We will see.

Monday Update

We don't do anything today-It is still Murky out there. Stay tuned.

The "JJJ" trade explained: 19% gain.

When we put on the "JJJ" trade, we noticed that THE SPREAD between the S&P500 (large cap stocks) and The Russell 2000 Index (small cap stocks) was considerably wide. The small cap stocks were trading at huge premiums compared to their large cap brethren. We were betting that gap would close given the uncertainty in the markets. Our computers were indicating a 75% probability of success. We were betting the Russell 2000 would go down to a more equal parity. We decided to play a stock that gave us 3X's down leverage on the Russell 2000. The stock was TZA. For every 1% the Russell 2000 went DOWN, we would be UP 3%. We decided on a 25% capital commitment. We bought at 6.45 yesterday and sold at 7.65 this morning. It was a nice 19% gain in 24 hours.

"JJJ" Trade just closed.

Will update later. I have to step out for a bit. A nice gain. We are now back in 100% cash.

We Don't Believe The Story

We saw on hundreds of stocks that "The Bid" disappeared. If it was not a system failure on the exchanges, I don't know what is. It was not just a few stocks. I see the "Spin" coming from the exchange bosses and don't buy it. it was a very scary time. You can pull up the 1 min. chart on almost any stock and see that the system shut down for a few minutes. We saw it and our friends at other locations saw it. I have never seen or heard anything like this before. This was the day "The Matrix" sputtered. We are not sure what this means. We will do a full due-diligence on what happened today. Stay tuned.

"Ghost Trades" NYSE steps away!

The NYSE said it stepped away from bids for 90 seconds and the trades went to other exchanges to get filled, thus printing "Ghost Trades" with little or no volume or bids at other exchanges. Are you kidding me?! They are supposed to be specialists and working the book- you can't just "step away"! This is ridiculous! What is wrong with our system today? The confidence in our exchanges just took another big hit today. A big score for the "trading gamers" and "black box flash traders" Who is in control? The NYSE and NASDAQ were a joke today. A real shame!

P.S. The Down 1000 points is a misprint. Thanks NYSE and NASDAQ! The "Ghosts" got you again.

Market Update: Wow! Something is Fishy!

If you were watching the market today, it had to be the one of the most violent swings I have ever seen. it shows how much computer trading has evolved and involved into/in the market. It does not instill a lot of trust in the systems. It was down 700 points in 15 minutes and up 600 points in the next 20 minutes. Seems very fishy. It would have been nice to sell out "JJJ" trade at the top; however, I don't think it would have been filled. The point is "a Fat finger" trading mistake or not-people are selling. The market looks very unstable here. We are up 9% on our spread trade; however , I am not willing to pull it off just yet. The Market Systems are screwed up. Given the current environment, I am not sure that we even want to bottom fish until the "Mystery Hour" we experienced today can be explained. It shows investors are very nervous about the current levels. We remain in CASH except for our "Spread Trade". We are not in a big hurry to play in this "Murky Sludge". If we see something crazy, we might play. Check emails for updates.

"JJJ" up 17% today-so far!

Holy Cow! What to do now. Check emails and be ready!

WOW! WOW!

WE ARE SCORING!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! The spread is narrowing very fast!

We are up 7% on our "JJJ" spread already! Looking Good!

The "JJJ" Relative Value Spread Trade

Our computers are showing the spread between the two asset categories should narrow to the point where our trade may make 30% in the short term (75% probability) as it closes more towards parity. We will keep that as our target for now. We may add more. Check emails.

New Trade: "JJJ" Spread Trade

We put on a new trade today- "JJJ". It is a "Relative Value" SPREAD trade. We believe one asset is overvalued compared to another. The spread is very wide and we are betting that it will narrow substantually over the next few weeks. Check emails for details.

We continue to be 100% CASH

We still are not willing to commit any capital in this environment until our targets are hit. Check emails. We may change quickly as we continue to sell off. Enjoy Cinco de Mayo!

CNO Update

Looks like our computer systems were correct; however, we could not risk it. Oh well, we folded our hand early with a minimal hit. At least we know they are working.

Market Update and Targets

Check your emails for supports and targets.

Why we put a "SELL" on the market 4/28/2010

When the Federal Reserve failed to raise interest rates at their meeting, it seemed strange. If the economy was doing so great-Why no raise? As it turned out. They may have known about problems with Greece and how deep they really turned out to be. Wall Street was way too extended.

Too Choppy: Sold CNO @ 5.93

Doesn't look good out there. We will take our 1.5% loss and wait. The market is in strange days. Check emails. Update later.

PLSN: Is Paulson, which is CNO

We are playing CNO. ( We decided to share our trades for awhile to add drama and improve the website). We bought today at 6.02. The Earnings come out Tuesday (after close) with a .13 estimate. We chose not to play SIRI; although, it may hit 1.40 as they report earnings Tuesday. Too many "retail" in the trade. Our computers give CNO a better "play rating" than SIRI. Our computers are looking for an "above 7" if the earnings play out. CNO did disappoint last time-and disappointments are like cockroaches-never just one. We will go with our computer program here and see if it works. Paulson owns 5% plus of company (at last filing). This will be another test of our systems. I don't want to play-the computers do.

New Trade: We are going to play earnings

Check emails for details. We have played this one before. Let's call it: " PLSN ". The computers give it a green light and their earnings will be out within 48 hours. We will play quick moves on earnings even though our "sell" rating on the market has not changed as of now.