Recently one of our guys was struggling. His Luger’s fund (money donated by our desk for a celebratory meal at Peter Luger steakhouse http://www.peterluger.com/) jokingly(?) turned into Mike’s Survival fund as you can see from the picture. Trading slumps as they are usually known, happen to the best of us. To me it is just a psychological barrier that slowly … Read More
Picking Your Spots
We had a long discussion about picking your spots today with our desk. How many of you who are professional day traders feel as if you over-traded today? Today was a day where that was easy to do. But let’s take a look at the last 3 hours of the trading day and particularly with LEH and FNM and discuss … Read More
Feds Announce Plan For FRE and FNM
News broke today on the bailout plan for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/washington/14fannieweb.html?hp) We saw a strong bounce in both stocks on Friday after Paulson stated that the federal government wasn’t interested in an outright takeover but would support both entities in their current form. The above article gives more detail on how the Bush administration intends to handle … Read More
Always Be Ready
As indicated by previous posts, yesterday was a great day. Sometimes you don’t know when days like that are coming around. Sometimes you can tell. On Thursday night, my roomates asked me to go out drinking, but I declined because I had a feeling something could happen to the market on Friday. I know that when I’m hungover I don’t … Read More
One Good Day
Yesterday was a good day for our desk. It is days like yesterday that make me upset the market is not open seven days a week. Trading can be very frustrating but when you do the right things it is freaking sweet. It is nice to see that the hard work pays off. There are days when trading feels like … Read More
A Great Day for Two New Traders
Yesterday was a great day for our prop trading desk. My partner and our head trader killed it. One of our new traders who was a former Olympic trial swimmer put up a huge day. And on and on and on. But I want to highlight two of our new traders because we can all learn from them. For those … Read More
No FNM or FRE
During our AM Call we remarked that FNM or FRE are not good stocks to trade today for new traders. There is a very high likelihood that the government will announce a bailout plan and the stocks will get halted. You do not want to be in a position on either side if they are halted. The gaming stocks, LEH, … Read More
The Right Stocks
A trader is only as good as the stocks that they are trading. Recently, a bunch of guys on our desk have made money trading CHK and HK. They were making nice chops every day. Sometimes its hard to let go of stock that you have been consistently making money in. But it is essential for this job to recognize … Read More
