NLV: $22,607.69

traded the ES today. some crazy stuff. up around $187 early, but then the market started rallying; it might be due to short coverings, or the treasury's new plan to revamp the regulators in the financial markets. i sold 2 more ES contracts trying to bet it going down. then i was down nearly half a grand. was about to sell it off @ $1230ish, but then it started to slide and then i held it down and sold it contract by contract. ended the day with the ES at +$187 but commissions ate into earnings.

i also negotiated the commissions with TOS. sweet! $3 per futures contract and i think $1.99 per option.

i also sold a five naked calls of best buy.

3/31/2008 9:07:11 AM

SINGLE

SELL

-5

BBY

100

Jun 08

47.5

CALL

$1.05

i think i'll sell 5 SPY calls too if the sp500 rallies.

XLF

A chart is worth a thousand words you say?

HSI SPX Divergence

The Asian market usually follows the U.S. after the close. However, this is a weird occurrence where they are completely diverge. FXI, I'll be watching you.

CItigroup, a bank we love

New Position: Bot 5 C puts Strike 12.5 June 08 @ 0.30

NLV has not move: $14500

I'm going to get into trading ES mini. A relatively dead market as it slowly churned downward. It goes to show not much buyers out there looking for bargains. No news has a definite impact on the market. All we waiting for its 1Q earnings.

The short in Citi is relatively easy to explain. First off, there were 40,000 of those contracts sold that day - ride the bandwagon. Next off is the lock-up in Auction rate securities market (ARS) is causing a run on the bank - People who had money in Merill or any other wealth management service providers are told to have their money in a relatively safe "money market" account. The money market account they have actually have ARS- which is dead at the moment. And firms are not allowing withdrawal. A lot of high net worth clients will shuffle and juggle b/w these banks. That will be the next shoe to drop. Financials are still dead money. I can be wrong about them, but the risk of going long the financials are not worth it at this point. I'll stay on the bench like I did in November. But if I have to buy, I would buy the best out of them all- Goldman Sachs.

NLV $22,618.69

loss for the day. didn't really have much time to trade today. lots of work. and the market was pretty slow.

im out about $100 including commission. for those wondering why my NLV is still so high, my URBN put picked up a bit but i'm still down $25. i'm considering selling it, but it's only a $400 position.


NLV $22,618.69

trailing stop and One Cancels Other (OCO)

so today i finally learned (and used) trailing stops. while playing with it i also learned how to use OCO and then 1st trigger then OCO. so basically a bit of risk management.

trading seems to be getting easier and i'm up +$175.00 for the day. about 9 round trips, so commission ate about (9x$7) $63. Good lesssons though.

I've also decided to stop posting my day trading of the ES and will only post my option trades that are the result of my "speculation."

NET LIQ VALUE: $22,680.19

NET LIQ VALUE: $22,550.19, day p&l +$150

so today i got to work at around 9am and checked the news.
Durable Goods Orders #s came out today. worse than expected. i wanted to short but had an uneasy feeling.
oracle also reports today after markets. oracle is a good indicator for tech spending. i was expecting it to be good and wanted to buy in, but held out. lucky me; orcl tanked about 9% from $20.90 to $19.20. earnings were in line with estimates, but revenue were a miss. this sent the sp500 down after markets.

the usual, day trading the ES

up $112.50 on 3 round trips.
i wanted to short 3 more times but missed out on what would've been a great run. no sour grapes though. at least i didn't lose money!

3/26/2008 2:16:48 PM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,344.25	$1,344.25
3/26/2008 1:59:25 PM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,345.50	$1,345.50
3/26/2008 10:16:03 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,341.25	$1,341.25
3/26/2008 10:06:25 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,341.75	$1,341.75
3/26/2008 10:00:19 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,340.50	$1,340.50
3/26/2008 9:57:14 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50				$1,341.00	$1,341.00

NET LIQ VALUE: $22,550.19
that last trade between 1:59pm and 2:16pm, it was a limit order that i had placed and kind of went off to do some work. it filled without me noticing and when i came back, i was up around 75. sweet surprises!

Daytrading is really not my cup of tea

A feeling that is all too familiar. This is on paper trading account of course. The Hang Seng sure as hell move quick. Better know your exit before you enter your trade.

$-522 First Losing Trade of the Year

So as I suspected, the shady BSC deal was revised today to five times its original bid. So JPM openly admitted that it was ripping off shareholders of BSC (30% of which is BSC employees). JPM share price barely budge today, that goes to show that JPM is still ripping BSC off. Like I mentioned in previous thread- BSC couldn't possible have $11 billion equity disappear in 1 quarter. JPM and the Fed is up to no good. The Fed could easily provided this $30bil cushion DIRECTLY to BSC to save BSC. Instead, the Fed engineered a take-under to destroy BSC- strange isn't it?

Back to trading: The market continues to make its way to 1400- HEAD resistance. If the S&P can close above this, we got some upside to go. This remind me of 1998, when the Fed lower rate to save LTCM - the market then have an unprecedented rally for 2 years. Could we be in the midst of a similar rally? The S&P chart show recent double bottoms. What's the next shoe to drop? We know housing is crap, we know earnings are shrinking, we know unemployment isn't getting any better, the war in Iraq is costing more, the dollar is weak....We know all that already....what's next?!!?!?!?

The geek, the dork and the nerd...is me

NLV: $14,533
New Position: Long 4 Apr 08 Strike 5 BSC Put @ 1.35

Being the geek/dork/nerd that I am, instead of getting drunk at some bar, or club, I am home looking over Bear Stearns 10-K with my excel ready to go. As you can see, I've put on a position on BSC. And this is the time to analyze why BSC shouldn't be trading at this price, or should it?


Assumed that Bear Stearns did in fact have to write down $11.5 bil worth of asset- which would wipe out the equity portion as it did. On top of that there is $30 billion Fed loan backing $67 billion of already written down "bad" assets. JPM, which is to buy this bank, is effectively taking risk on only $37 billions of assets. Not bad for a bank that has $156 bil market cap. $37 billion with probably $10 billion + upside on top of $30 bil Fed back loan- make this the best corporate take over of the century.

This deal is engineered so that NO ONE can duplicate it. Who is willing/can to take on $67 billions of risk without any financing? In a perfectly fine credit market, this would be no problem- but that is not the case here. Companies are scrambling for financings- which is what causes this "collapse" in the first place.

The biggest question remains- what causes a $11 billions write down overnight? Alan Schwartz said the bank is fine and couple days later- $11 billions - GONE. That's a 14% write down on the assumed illiquid asset (Total Asset- Cash). If your asset has 14% default rate, how did you get investment grade ratings from S&P and Moody's in the first place? This is rather strange.

On top of that, Jimmy Cayne is also looking for a different suitor. So it means he disagree with Alan Schwartz over the price/worth of Bear Stearns. Every idiot shareholders can argue about how much BSC really worth- but only Jimmy Cayne out of all of them know for sure- he has access to insider info, he knows how much BSC assets are really worth- Why did Jimmy Cayne challenge a decision Alan Schwartz made if he doesn't think the assets didn't really suffer a $11 billion writedown? This boggles my mind.

$10,000 deposit and day trading

NLV: $22,521.19

So my account showed the $10k that I transferred yesterday. Nice, more buying power.

So I began my day trading by shorting the sp500. i was up $350ish. decided to close my position and msg yin. go back to check and shit, my NLV is fucking moving! instead of closing my position, i bought another short and was like whoa. lucky for me sp500 continued down and i was up about $550. i decided that's it for today. but i got greedy and started trading again. shorted sp500, and then the chart showed a breakout upwards and it started jetting up. i quickly closed my position and i basically day traded a bit to earn my money back. towards 2pm, i had about 2 open shorts and covered just enough for a tidy $312.50 net profit. checked back later and sp500 rallies. i think it was the Fed:

2:35 pm : The major indices climb to their best levels of the session. The New York Fed has announced modifications to its new Term Securities Lending Facility (TSFL). The TSFL auctions will now allow schedule 2 collateral, instead of the schedule 1 collateral previously proposed. Schedule 2 collateral will now include collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and AAA rated commercial mortgage-backed securities

In other words, the Fed will be lending banks highly liquid Treasury securities in exchange for less liquid assets. Banks will now be able to use a wider range of collateral than previously announced. The first auction will take place on March 27.DJ30 +202.60 NASDAQ +36.41 SP500 +21.77 NASDAQ Dec/Adv/Vol 1116/1660/1.90 bln NYSE Dec/Adv/Vol 1004/2120/1.77 bln

good thing i stopped trading after that.

might short on monday. tomorrow's good friday. no trading; it will be a slow day to pass.

i'll post trades tonight.

edit:
trades

3/20/2008 11:38:12 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,306.50
3/20/2008 11:36:04 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,308.00
3/20/2008 10:11:57 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,312.00
3/20/2008 9:54:16 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,313.50
3/20/2008 9:22:19 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,309.50
3/20/2008 9:15:34 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,307.25
3/20/2008 9:00:44 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,308.00
3/20/2008 8:54:34 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,302.00
3/20/2008 8:42:05 AM	FUTURE	BUY	+2	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,297.00
3/20/2008 8:40:52 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,298.50
3/20/2008 8:30:26 AM	FUTURE	SELL	-1	/ESM8	50			FUTURE	$1,304.00

screw citibank

so i was down about $3,700 this morning and i got an email for a margin call! it was only for $300, but if i didn't wire the money today they will close my position and suspend my futures trading for a day. so it was a fucking mess trying to get citibank to fucking wire some money over to my broker. i was so fustrated. i am about to open another bank account.

in other news, the sp500 swung back down in the afternoon saving me from posting margin (i didn't find out till much later). so i ran a couple of errands and im sitting in front of the trading screen at 4:55pm and put in my buy order to cover my shorts.

today:
Sold WBT BOT +2 /ESM8 @1301.00 CME
netting me a nice $537.50 for a day's work. it was damn stressful though.

Net liquidation value: $12,325.69

also, i'm depositing another $10,000 to the account. no more margin calls.

03/18/2008

NLV: $14,542
Open position: 100 S @6.06 and 100 KRY @4.02

Two light penny stocks and rest is all cash. Wrote 20 VIX Apr 08 30 calls @2.07 avg price and bot back @ 1.30 this morning. The trade netted me a nice $1400 or so. A nice profit for short period. As Borat would have said it, "I likeeeeeee!"

The pre-clearance process at my company hampered my ability to trade. I would put in a request for approval at 8:30-8:50 A.M. The approval wouldn't get to me until 10:00 A.M. - which is really retarded because I would miss out on some good trading opportunities - such as closing gap trades, those usually disappear in the first half hour of trading.

I see that tjy is taking quite a beating on those short ES minis. I would probably go nut if I ever risk 20% of my account overnight. The market is in the midst of a furious battles b/w the bulls and the bears. The bears could not force the market to close below 1260-1270's area. Breaking those levels are critical for the bears. Either way, this volatile market has provided some excellent trading opportunities. I haven't seen stocks swing more than 3% since the tech bubble hay days. Volatility is back and its the new game in town- I love it.

sp500 index futures

fed announces 75 bp rate cut today. i short 2 e-mini s&p 500 index futures, june 2008

today:
SOLD -1 /ESM8 @1305.25 CME
SOLD -1 /ESM8 @1307.50 CME

swings down -800, then goes back down, then swings up +800. i head out for school leaving my position opens. checks at school and bam i'm down -2,600. I go to class and check back after market closes: down -2,800.

I'm still very bearish about the markets and I sold off a few ETFs on another account. If I had more buying power, I would short -2 more contracts of sp500s.

we'll see how the overseas market looks tonight.

Week recap 03/15/08

Relatively hectic week in the market.

Net Liquidation Value: $13173
Position: Long 100 S@ 6.05, Long 100 KRY @4.21

My GS short position was liquidated for 158/sh. The Fed meeting next week along with earnings make me relatively uncomfortable holding this stock short. Afterall, the analysts already started to downgrade the stock- so the expectation for GS is set lower at current stock price. The risk to reward for holding out is no longer favorable.

Lately, there has been more LONG ideas than SHORT ideas coming from me. It is perhaps too early to call a "bottom" in this market. But some stocks already appear to be relatively "cheap". On top of that, we already have most of the recession expectation build in. The risk to reward on playing on short side right now is about 50-50 IMHO. There will be more stocks collapsing in prices, but the selection has to be more careful compared to 3-6 months ago.

And whoever bought 55,000 BSC $30 March puts, he/she is going to jail. That was just plain stupid.

03/13/2008

The market got a little exciting from a b/s S&P report about subprime and credit crunch is about to be over. Just another news ticker- ignoring it for the time being. Why not focus on the hard facts that the retail numbers were sh*t and foreclosure numbers were dog poop.

Hit list:
S (Sprint Nextel) - trading at book value- with everything nextel related written off this first quarter, they stand a pretty good chance on making a come back. Cost- cutting effort and lower churn rate should help. Also the asset on the book looks solid for a takeover play. AT&T and VZ can easily do a stock swap with 25% premium. Let's not forget Google, who is trying to get into the cellular/wireless biz. $20 bil is not bad price to pay for the infrastructure and spectrum.

STP/AMAT- These solar stocks are the tech stocks back in the late 90s. STP looks like a survivor.

FXI - Solid China index based on H-share, valuation isn't completely out of whack. The price action said other wise. It is making new lows. The short term play is to short on the bounce.


The Bulls are holding their stubborn support 1270-1280. Near-term bullish.

Intro and URBN

Hi guys, tjy here.

quick bio:
senior in college
part-timing in a vc and a startup = full time work
trading/managing assets since high school

starting assets: +$10,000 December 2007
Net liquidation value (as of today's close): $11,935.77
Holdings include 150 shares of BX (a dumb mistake on my part)

Today:
URBN +5 June '08 puts @$22.50 for $0.80 each
I don't like retail in this recessionary environment and P/E valuation is too high (trailing: 31.78 forward:22.59). If the fed cut rates on the 18th and URBN rallies, i plan to buy 5 more contracts.

03/11/2008

The Bulls refused to give up the critical level of 1270 on the S&P 500. With the help of the Fed injecting $200 billion in the banking system, which helped eased concern about the banks' liquidity concerns that has kept the market trading down 7 out of the last 8 sessions.

A quick look at the volume confirmed my suspicions that this rally is probably a temporary short covering rally. Look for 1270 & 1400 on the S&P. Between 1270 and 1400, its a stalemate b/w the Bulls and the Bears IMHO.

YC Trade log 03/11/2008

Let's get the party started.

Capital:
+$5,000 in Feb 2007
+$5,000 in Nov 2007

Current Liquidation (Net) Value: $12,926
Current Unrealized PnL: + $1543.73

Current Position: Short 30 sh GS @ 225, Long 100 sh KRY @ 4.22

-YC