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
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
Take Advantage of this Opportunity
Our new traders love to hear “back in the day” stories. You know the late 90’s when day traders were making 6 figures a month. What was the most you ever made in one day is a frequent question. And I tell our prop traders the story about when the Fed cut rates surprisingly intraday by 50 basis points. Now … Read More
Times are hard
Market Overview Looking at this picture makes me sick. There are very few days when you can see almost every sector in the red. If that’s not a sign of a bear market I don’t know what else is. I do have to say that I was not expecting that kind of sell off today. In fact, if you listened … Read More
Are You Making Money?
We teach our day trading desk, SMB Capital, in New York City to check to see which stocks they are making money in. I supposed a new prop trader reading this might say, “How could I not know that? Or that seems like a complete waste of time.” You would be surprised. The human mind is a funny thing. It does not … Read More
Missed Opportunity
One of the things I take great pride in is understanding the potential moves that may occur on any given day. This applies equally to stocks that I may be trading as well as the market in general. Today, I was unprepared for the large bounce that occurred in the market during the final 90 minutes of trading. Currently, US … Read More
Go Home Flat
We teach our day traders at SMB Capital to flatten out before the Close. We do so because they are learning how to trade and are not ready to take positions for extended periods of time. At the start of your career you should learn how to trade. Not load up on a position and hope for the best. Well … Read More
That’s a Good One Mr. PhD
It must be good to be a PhD quant for a hedge fund with plenty of money to spare. It is no secret that PhD quants get paid very well for the value they add to a fund. The funny thing is that a vast majority of these geniuses will hardly ever be good active equity traders. Yes thats right, … Read More