Today, the Market appears set to open lower after a negative reaction to the in-line initial jobless claims number. The levels we are watching in the SPY are 110.50 (inflection point), and 111.00 as potential resistance. The next resistance level above 111.00 is 111.50. On the downside we are watching the pre-market low, 110.25. Our best AM Idea for today, … Read More
What a Strong Stock Looks Like
DE was a strong stock this AM. I blog this point besides DE being at its 52 week high. And save that DE was up over 2 1/2 points. There was a telling movement on the open from 51.50 to 51 which foreshadowed a new intraday high to visit. Let’s discuss. SPY 111.50 is an important intraday level. We … Read More
SMB Morning Rundown for November 18, 2009
Today, the Market appears set to open slightly lower after the weaker than expected Housing Starts and Building Permits numbers. The levels we are watching in the SPY are 110.80 on the downside and 111.80 on the upside. Our best AM Idea for today, which we highlighted in our AM Meeting is: HAL – Long if it holds above 32.00 … Read More
Competitive Advantage
If a business has a clear understanding of what they do well they can spend time and energy fully developing these things until each becomes a competitive advantage that will have a direct impact on their bottom line. In the world of trading it is fairly simple to measure the impact of certain behaviors on our bottom line because we … Read More
Ten Interview Tips for Proprietary Trading
Written 11/13/09 It is recruiting season for SMB again. That means some long trips, like the one I am on now, stuck on a train Friday night between Providence and New Haven. I actually got on the early train mistakenly and am in danger of getting booted off the train at New Haven. Seriously, the Amtrak ticket collector (that is … Read More
If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It
A bunch of trader’s on our desk made nice chops shorting RIMM yesterday at the 65 level. The trade worked four times. Today the trade was highlighted in our AM Meeting and tweeted as our Best Morning Idea. I checked my risk monitor at 11:00AM to see how we did in RIMM on the Open. To my surprise we were … Read More
Buy the Tanking Futures Program
When trading we watch a stock’s corresponding futures or index. For MON the stock I was trading on the Open, SPY is my corresponding index. Generally when SPY trades higher MON should and when SPY trades lower then MON should follow. I say generally and this was not the case at one very important moment today. Again MON was very … Read More
Trading A Breakout: MON
The MON move that began at 2:30pm on November 10th 2009 was a classic breakout trade on heavy volume. The catalyst for the move were the documents that MON released on its website giving financial projections for the next three years. But put aside the fundamentals for now and focus on the tape and the technicals. 1) MON had failed … Read More