The SPY traded in a pretty tight range this week, not trading much below 93 or above 95.50. Again, we were looking for that catalyst to push us one way or the other, and I thought we were going to get it Friday morning with the much better than expected non-farm payroll number. We’ll see this week if Friday’s weakness … Read More
Where is the Next 50c Trade?
We are in the office watching tape on this Saturday. We just ended Part I one of our review session. An interesting trading topic emerged: when to forgo a scalp. Let’s discuss. There is this notion that day traders just scalp. Wrong. But there is also this elitist belief that scalping is somehow beneath some traders. Not me. … Read More
Trading A Secondary Level
JPM priced a secondary a couple of days ago at $35.25. JPM showed nice strength in the morning and traded up from around $34.40 to $35.25. One of the younger traders on the desk called out “JPM at the high of the day”. Rosie, the trainee who sits to my left immediately responded that JPM was approaching its secondary price … Read More
What Would you Do?
Today our best morning idea was to play $VLO off the $18 secondary offering price. From the daily chart you can see that the stock had just came off about 20% in the last 2 days and figured the underwriters of the offering would help support the beaten up stock down at this level. The play was to buy at … Read More
TIVO- Remember Me?
One of the great things about being a trader is you get to trade whatever you want whenever you want. I haven’t touched TIVO in years. Honestly I cannot remember the last time I traded it. Why would I want to? What is it’s intraday daily range? Ten cents? But I did today. And it offered a few great … Read More
SMB Capital Blog – Now in Russian!
For our Russian speaking traders, check out a translation of some of our blog posts: myidealtrade.blogspot.com Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!.
The key to my day today: stock selection
The key to my day today: stock selection. It was pretty clear this morning that the action was going to be in the financials that had announced secondary stock offerings. JPM, STI, AXP, and MS all sold stock to the general public so they could pay back the TARP money and get the gov out of their hair. In our … Read More
A Must Read: The Daily Trading Coach
The first time I met Dr. Steenbarger was in the smaller conference room of our proprietary trading firm in NYC. We were finalizing our training program and we wanted the best teacher that we knew to review our work. He wasn’t being paid, he was just a trading coach offering a helping hand. As Dr. Steenbarger offered his critique I was … Read More
