Trade Update: Sold YRCW after-hours

news came out about a reverse split- we just sold in the after-hours at .2615 for a 10% Loss. Not a big bet; however, we hate reverse splits. Oh well....

New Trade: YRCW

Bought@.29. Playing the technicals here and the auto market. Don't normally do penny stocks;however, we have played it before.

(Add on @ 12.09am 9/29 : actually it was .2925 for the readers who are lawyers.)

New Trade: Lagging Industry

We went long on a lagging industry today- the financials. The market should not continue their running without the support of this group. We are playing a break-out; with tight stops.

Trade Update: Took Profit in MGM

We sold our MGM we bought a few days ago for a nice 9% gain. Bought at 10.31 and sold at 11.24. Stay tuned for new updates and trades.

Missed opportunities!

We owned Bidu Oct100 calls at .26 and are now worth $2.80!
we owned Goog Oct500 calls at $1.25 and they are now worth $29.00!

All this happened in 7 days!

talk about missed opportunity. My goodness- if we just did not over extend our self on the RIMM trade. Oh well...........


Update: 10/7/2010: The Bidu calls went on to hit $7.oo/share for a approx 2700% gain
The Goog calls went on to hit almost $43/share or approx 3700% plus gain

LIFE CHANGERS!

New Trade

Check emails for stock. We are back into a trade on the long side (of course no betting the house this time!)

What happened to our other trades?

Our Bidu Oct100 calls we sold at a 50% loss to try and protect ourselves from the RIMM position. 3 days later we would have made 350%. The Goog Oct500 calls which we had to sell at a break even to protect ourselves from RIMM ended up going up 1500%. The lesson here is we made a huge position management mistake. Pure and simple. NEVER EVER EXPOSE YOURSLF TO A POINT WHERE YOU COULD BE DESTROYED.

We Escaped!

We got a chance this morning to sell our RIMM Oct50 calls for $1.41. We made a 17.5% gain. We were bitting our nails on Monday when they were hitting $.50 and looked like they may end up worthless! We held. We will not bet the ranch again.

We have a ray of hope

RIMM is still the choice of execs and now over 50% of revenues come from overseas. India and the Saudis will resolve their issues. The CEO implied a big news story will be out by the end of the month. The option market should release it now since quad-witching is over. The100-day is at least ast 54 and 200-day is at least 64. trading at 9.5X's. We have a chance.

A Devastating Day!

Today was one of the worst day's as a trader in memory. Not in a long time has my spirit been so broken. Just to recap the last 24-hours. We bet big that RIMMs earnings were going to be good and induce a "short squeeze" earlier in the week- in fact we bet "The Ranch". We bought Oct50 calls for $1.20 on Tuesday this week. Yesterday at 3:45pm the options were at $1.70 with RIMM reporting after the close (4:00pm). We were up a very nice amount ( almost 42% in 2 days!). We decided to hold for earnings even though we were nervous but held because we figured the stock would at least gap to $50/share after earnings. About 4:25pm Thursday earnings came out and blew away Wall Street expectations. the stock gapped to $50-plus in the after-hours. We figured our options might price near $5.00/share. Well, we could not sell our options in the after-hours. If we had the stock, we would have dumped. We were stuck til Friday at the 9:30am opening. Well, we were very excited to say the least. We figured we could at least dump the options at around $3-$4 bucks a share the next day (Friday morning open). We partied like rock stars Thursday night. We could not wait for the open today. THE DEVASTATION BEGINS. The stock opens up at $48 plus and the options open up at $1.60.- lower than the close even though the stock was $2 higher! Shoot! We know somethings up and the option market makers know too. I decide that the price is too low. These options are worth at least $3 by October. We don't sell. IT GETS WORSE. The price comes down to our break-even. We don't sell. I read a lot of reports and decide that this is still going up. We DOUBLE our position to include the horses as well as the ranch @ 1.15/a contract. BIG MISTAKE. By the close our options touched a low of $0.77. The technicals indicate a total reversal. The analysts hate the stock still, and the financial media hates it too (US media). By now the inside of our trading floor is askew with thrown objects and holes in the wall. We know that we are on the brink of destruction. Why did we bet so big? Why did we get so greedy? We could have taken our 40% and been on the golf course by now! We did not. I think the contracts are worth at least $3.00 by October 16th. But is it worth it? In retrospect- No! This is where we stand right now. Destruction or Glory. In poker- It's an "All-In". I just feel RIMM contracts are worth least $5. This is one of the greatest "bluff calls"in the history of the company. We either score or we are history. I am not happy at all! Now I how Lehman Brothers felt.

So much for after hours

Unfortunately you can't sell options in the after-hours. The stock hit a high of 51 and is backing down to 48. I guess we have to sweat it out again. never an easy game. Talk tommorrow at 8;30am

TCM Scores!!!!!!!

Wow! Our Oct50 calls that we bought on RIMM should be up huge Friday. We bought them earlier this week when the stock was $45 and paid $1.20 for them. The stock just reported earnings that blew away the numbers and is around $51 in the after hours (up 5$). This should make our options worth at least $5 or about a 500% gain if the levels hold! Now comes the hard part-hold our sell. Check emails for details and strategy. A strategy call will be at 8:30am tommorrow. Have a great night!

Trade Updates

We have been quitely accumulating some trades the last few days. We now have two call options for the TCM account that expire in October and we picked up some CROX at 10.68. Check your emails for the options and strikes. let's see how we do.

New Trade: TCM bought some calls

Today we decided to buy some call options in our TCM account. The options expire on October 16th and are way out of the money( We got them for under 40 cents). It is a tech company. The technicals look like a breakout and we have a chance to make some good profits. When it runs, it runs fast. let's see how we do- check emails for details and stock.

Sold FAZ@14.12

We took the bounce this morning to close out our trade.

Artificial Pricing?

Anyone watching the markets this week noticed a very strange anomaly. The closing prices on the indexes were always right on or near an exact technical market. There was not any volatility on the way up. It looked as if the market makers were absorbing every single sell order at the bid. You wondered if there were two sides to the market at all! I mean when you have a VIX at 21 to 25 you would expect some up and down movement. The indexes looked like paint drying. What does this mean? Does it mean that demand for stocks is so great that nobody wants to take any profit? Does it mean the pricing is being inflated with no real demand? Is this a "flash rally"? Is anybody out there? In my 16 years of trading, I have never seen such strange price movement.

Talk about being wrong!

We totally blew this one. Talk about missing a great opportunity. We got caught up in all the negativity instead of playing the bottom of the channel. I think a lot of people were expecting the market to break. The numbers were not great enough to warrant the huge upswing; however, that didn't matter. Everyone was on the same side of the see-saw. The damage could have been worse -we got hit 6.7%. Some traders we know got hit 20% or more on this move up. The market made us look very silly the last two days. Although we had a gut instinct that the market was too bearish, we went along with the crowd. Sometimes not matter how good you think you are, the market can make you look silly. The Market 1.... WSR 0. Back to the drawing board.

The Contrary Contrary Trade

Today set up for a "Contrary Contrary Trade". We believe most traders bought today because they were playing a contrary position. Many pundits in the financial media were commenting on the fact that everyone is bearish and the Hindenburg Omen was on radio so now is a great time to buy stocks. I can't tell you how many said stocks are a great bargin here. Why the hard sell? (funny huh? Sometimes people are selling because it really IS bad).The fact that so many are recommending a contrary trade-it now becomes non-contrary. So we bet contrary to their recommendation and shorted the market at the close. A contrary contrary trade. Ain't Wall Street grand?!

P.S. We bet fairly large short so we will have very tight stops.

Update FAZ

All targets played out exactly. We were looking for a 1080 close on the S&p500, Dow 10,250, and a perfect target on the XLF of 14.08. We are looking for a sell-off by Friday's close. We will keep tight stops if it does not play out.

New Trade: FAZ@14.96

The Mother of All Trades

We have been tracking a trade the entire year that we believe will be The Mother of All Trades. It has taken extreme patience and we think it may be getting close to the time. Our systems indicate it will be a violent move. If we have options on the right side of the trade, the profits could be enormous. The difficult part will be applying the position in a timely manner. We don't want to be too soon and we don't want to be too picky on our price. We are tempted to begin our acquisition program now. Check emails for details.

August Portfolio Summary

The month of August was a frustrating month. We basically had to sit on our hands or buy and cut. Our decision to make a huge bet (75% of our portfolios) against the financials on August 17th was our saving grace. It was not easy (frightening) and we were tempted to cut and run many times. We had to trust in our trading programs which gave us the highest probability of success this year. It helped advance our YTD performance up to +44.65%. vs. The S&P500 return of -4.62%. Although we should be pleased, it has been a grind this year. We remain diligent and focused. It is extremely difficult in here. Check emails for full report.

Morning Update

We continue to avoid taking a position in here. The market could go either way depending on how the employment numbers are interpreted. Stay tuned.