Today at SMB’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan we watched some trading tape with our developing traders. And yesterday we did the same. A recurring theme jumped out. How to enter a stock above an important level when you missed your initial buy. Let’s discuss. One of our better traders showed his tape of GIS recently (Honey Nut Cheerios….delicious!). Between you … Read More
From Trade to Hold to Cover
As an intraday trader it is important to have a playbook of Trades to Hold. These are longer term intraday trades where we do not cover unless there is a reason to cover. And this means something substantially different with our stocks. I made a Trade to Hold in CVX on the Open and then I covered without anything really … Read More
Financials Are The Tell
I have spent a lot of time trading the financials for the past 18 months. Maybe too much time 🙂 Yesterday, when many traded to key support levels I got long. Some broke these levels briefly so I got out and even got short some MS. Not such a good idea. Every single financial closed significantly above their support levels … Read More
AIG over FAZ
We were pretty pumped about FAZ getting back in play today. However, we were also cautious of what the liquidity, computer algorithms and moves may look like on the open. We cautioned our guys from being overly aggressive on the open with the scalps until they figured out if the old programs seemed to be back in the stock at … Read More
FAZ Party Coming Back
During Dec-Jan our desk traded almost exclusively these two triple leverage ETFs. They provided plenty of opportunity as they would move a lot, had plenty of order flow in them and traded somewhat cleanly. We stopped trading them the moment FAZ went below $8 as the volatility died down considerably and felt like we were trading $AIG below $1. Direxion … Read More
Low Volume
Today was the perfect example of how we need higher volume to confirm a break of support. We see this with stocks and the overall market. We need levels to be broken with significant volume as confirmation. And today we did not see this. SPY over the past two days have violated 88.50, which was a level the market had … Read More
So What Now?
The SPYs finally closed below 88.50. This is the lowest close since the gap day on May 4th. Many people are talking about how the daily chart for the SPYs look like a head and shoulders with a neckline at 88. There will be many obsessively on tv talking about how “technically” we look like we are going to trade … Read More
What We Can Learn From Roddick as Traders
Since this Saturday I have been without internet and cell phone access. I like a remote location. It is calming. But not a spot without modern technology. Thankfully Sunday we had the Wimbledon Final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer. For those non tennis fans, Roddick was not given a chance to win by most experts, as Federer is arguably … Read More
