Vdsat.com

I re-learned an old lesson: always trade ETFs. Do not trade single stocks because you will only lose that way. I said I didn’t want to short Amazon because there are people out there with inside information who illegally trade on it and therefore I am at a disadvantage. However, my reasons to short [...]

Dec 22: 357k
Dec 29: 334k
Jan 5: 322k
Jan 12: 302k
Jan 19: 306k
The bulls were saying, hey look, jobless claims are going down! Let me ask you, what kind of company lays people off in the early half of January? Makes no sense.
Jan 26: 375k
Oh there we go. One big fat nasty jobless claims [...]

That Fed cut was a bad thing. I don’t see how this helps. Interest rates on mortgages will not go down materially and the cost of food and gas will only go up. The US consumer will have to spend less on other items. The only reason why Ben Bernanke is cutting rates [...]

Wow, what a day. Today was a BIG day in the stock market and that in itself would be an understatement. Big Ben slashed Federal Funds rate by 0.75% last week as an emergency move, and today he cut it by another 0.50%. Today was extremely difficult to play. Here were [...]

The S&P 500 rallied today and got stopped at the trendline again.

Would it be time to buy if the S&P 500 breaks this trendline? Absolutely not. My guess is that we breakout tomorrow and head towards 1370 again. Then at 2:15pm EST on Wednesday, the party will end. I will be shorting financials.

Bought SRS @ $113.36. Stop loss @ $112.25. Order placed right before 10am new home sales number. Currently trading at $116+. Good entry with limited risk.
Bought Feb AMZN 60 puts for $1.36. Bad entry but currently break even. Original limit order at $1.17 would have worked.
Stop loss on TWM moved [...]

I hope I am not over-analyzing price history to justify shorting Amazon, but this is what I am seeing. Yes, Amazon has reported good quarters in the past. For example, Q1 2007 results reported on 4/24/2007 burned a lot of short sellers. However, in this analysis I will only look at price action [...]

Bought TWM @ $82.80.
Stop loss @ $81.80.
With the stop loss, I know exactly what my risk is. I can go about my day stress free.
UPDATE:
If you remember correctly, I banned myself from trading for the rest of the week because I didn’t use a stop loss and I blew $300. I woke up this [...]

Looks like we’ll be getting $600 rebate checks by June because this year is an election year and our politicians want to look like they are doing something. This stimulus plan is a bad move because you cannot increase the national debt and give out free money to buy yourself into prosperity. However, the [...]

I do not like to go after individual stocks (long or short) because it seems like there is too much cheating with inside information in the stock market. If you are going to go long or short a single stock you either have to:
1. Be a very good speculator.
or
2. Have an edge [...]