Wave Chasing

Well, I managed to oversleep and missed Bernanke’s speech, but it sounds like he didn’t screw the pooch too badly today. I did catch Bush’s speech. Dear lord, I am not even sure he had any idea what he was talking about.

August has been one hell of a month to be sure. Can’t remember the last time I saw this much volatility in the markets. However, it’s also been excellent for refining strategies and really some awesome learning experiences. I’m really looking forward to September. (Which is something you will normally NEVER hear me say as I hate to see the summer leave…)

Looking at NPBC, TICC and ACAS as potential dividend plays on Tuesday.

Closed:
[a] INTU +.76%, held 4 days
[a] GILD -2.32%, held 6 days
[b] RIG + 3.00%, held 5 days

Opened:
[c] RVT & RMT
Moved a little into QID.

Month to Date:
Main trading port: 1.50%
Retirement port: -0.63%
Brokerage: 0.72%
BBE Overall: -3.14%
% of Trading Targets reached: 5.44%
I’m fucked ratio: 3.2 to 7.1
Long to Cash %s: 78.30% to 21.70%

~~~
[a] Stockpickr 3×2
[b] AAP
[c] Dividend plays

Asia is all green. So, given how great I’ve been lately with predictions, I’m betting on another 200 down day. ;)

I started really focusing on these when I got back from the beach. Done 26 of them at this point, 21 have had a good outcome, 5 went down. (Yeah, screwed up on a few of these in the beginning.) Even with the 5 down, they’re averaging .79% for an overnight trade, and I’m averaging one of these trades a day.

I am going to continue focusing fairly heavily on these – they’ve worked way too well so far to not give them a decent amount of consideration in my trading strategy. I’ve got a pretty boring screen I use – they have to have a yield of at least 1% (preferably over 2%) and be trading over 50K a day (and not just in large blocks – actual continuous activity throughout the day.)

I set my sell order so I’m looking at 1% inclusive of the dividend. I know they’re not all going to go my way, but so far it’s been very good. Even had one close out with a 3.4% gain. Very nice for an overnight.

Yes, there is the opportunity cost of waiting for that dividend to be paid, but at least the bulk of the capital for the trade is immediately freed up to go to work again. Only downside is that you gotta be at the desk at 3:45 to get that buy in.

I’m not abandoning the other services I use, but damn it is tempting to just run with this.

Ended up taking off the bulk of the day – yay for being able to have orders in the night before. :)

Seeing as how I didn’t get to the party until about 2PM, I thought I would have missed a lot of interesting stuff, but it appears that not a whole hell of a lot happened. Got my sell on PRN not too long after the open – it then proceeded to drift way down the rest of the day.

On a “D’oh!” note, GILD and INTU (3×2 plays) turned north right in the last couple minutes of the session and I missed that cause I was doing my sell on MEDX and I just didn’t see them go green – so those will be sold at the open tomorrow now that they’ve had 2 up days. (I usually close out these positions at the close of the second up day rather than hold them into the open the next day.) What I’ve got to decide is – do I just put in a limit order at today’s closing price, or wait and see what’s going on in the AM? Leaning towards the limit order – if it gaps below, I can always change it, if it gaps up, hey, I get my sells done before I even get my coffee.

Looking at RVT for a dividend play tomorrow, and wishing that stockpickr updated the 3×2 list a little earlier in the evening.

Looking at the after hours action, it’s hard to really say if the street liked Dell’s numbers or not – at this point it’s only trading about 10 cents higher than it did at the close. Maybe some time to digest it overnight will make people happy in the morning and give us a nice positive Friday. A girl can dream, can’t she?

I am concerned about Bernanke’s speech tomorrow. He’s got to be SO careful with what he says – the markets are going to overreact no matter what it is. Some are saying he’ll do the rate cut tomorrow – if he does, I’ll take it, but somehow I really, really don’t see him doing that.

Brokerage port won for the day, being off just fractionally. Retirement port off a little more, and the main port took a bit of a hit on an ex-div pullback – normal, but mildly annoying.

Closed:
[a] PRM, +1.01%, held overnight
[b] MEDX, -2.01%, held 4 days

Month to Date:
Main trading port: -3.19%
Retirement port: -1.11%
Brokerage: -0.58%
BBE Overall: -4.67%
% of Trading Targets reached: -30.10%
I’m fucked ratio: 5.4 to 6.3
Long to Cash %s: 72.38% to 27.62%

~~~~
[a] Dividend play
[b] Stockpickr 3×2

Can’t even begin to tell you how freakin happy I was to be wrong today. Ladies and gentlemen, this is also why we don’t panic.

I swear I held my breath everytime something came over the news wire – with this volume, it doesn’t take much of anything to move the market, as the last two days have shown.

Main port won the day today (once again, gotta love the dividend plays), with the brokerage in second and the retirement port in third, up a very respectable 1% for the day.

I’ll be happy when we’re back at full volume trading, though – the swings are getting a little old.

Closed:
[a] PGR +1.02%, held overnight
[a] EDD +1.28%, held overnight
[b] IMCL +1.88%, held overnight
[c] INTC +3.01%, held 14 freakin’ days

Opened:
Added to an AAP pick
[a] PRM

Month to Date:
Main trading port: 2.96%
Retirement port: -0.68%
Brokerage: -0.50%
BBE Overall: -3.57%
% of Trading Targets reached: -5.53%
I’m fucked ratio: 3.1 to 7.3
Long to Cash %s: 86.78% to 13.22%

~~~
[a] Dividend plays
[b] Stockpickr 3×2
[c] Cramer/MM

Make that down 2.8% on the Nikkei…found an updated quote.

So, the Nikkei is still holding at down 2.5% at this point*, which I guess is better than being down by 3%, right?

I’m prepped for another down day tomorrow – if the EIA or mortgage survey numbers give anyone even the slightest cause for pause, we’re gonna see more selling – we tend to not get it out of our system in a day of late, and the light volume just makes things move more than they should.

Damn, I want to be wrong, and I would LOVE to be wrong, but I’m ready for more red.

Couple potential 3×2 trades tomorrow if I roll out of anything else and the markets aren’t absolutely ridiculous. PRM is also going ex-div on a special tomorrow as well and I’ve got my eye on that as well.

I’ve only got one holding that is really giving me some grief, and that is VFC. It goes down on any and all news, and doesn’t seem to be able to fight the tape at all. I’m still thinking back to school will be good for them – lord knows I buy a ton of their products between the North Face & Lucy brands. I’m not ready to dump it yet – I think once things turn a little overall and back to school numbers start coming in, I think there will be some strength in it again.

Guess we’ll see, won’t we?

*Well, as of 10:30 – Yahoo’s feed of it isn’t updating anymore for some reason.

Nikkei gapped down 1.5% at the open and has already slid to 2.66% down – reaction or prediction?

Mildly annoying.

Honestly, I don’t think today would have been as bad if it had happened next week – the end of summer volume just magnifies these moves. Ah well, at least we’ve learned from the prior nastiness earlier in the month that panicking does no good. Hopefully tomorrow we won’t have any weird news from the EIA or mortgage surveys – bad news with this volume just blows.  Had the minutes from the Fed meeting sounded better, I think we could have had a hell of a rally after the release.

Brokerage was the big loser today, basically right in lockstep w/the S&P, retirement port was off, but not as bad as it could have been (yay for that QID position) and the main port was UP. YAY for dividends!!!!

Opened:
[a] IMCL, INTU
[b] PGR, EDD
1 from the other pick service

Month to Date:
Main trading port: -1.44%
Retirement port: -1.70%
Brokerage: -2.61%
BBE Overall: -4.84%
% of Trading Targets reached: -56.95%
I’m fucked ratio: 5.1 to 6.3
Long to Cash %s: 104.61% to -4.61%

~~~~
[a] Stockpickr 3×2
[b] Dividend plays

I’d say “Meh” accurately describes today’s action.

Everything off fractionally, with the main port doing the best and the brokerage account doing the worst. (But still better than the S&P.)

Closed:
[a] DOM, +1.29%, held overnight
[c] COP, +2.73%, held 17 days.  This was a screwy trade.  First, I managed to miss a perfectly good sell early on.  Then today, I got a partial fill at my target price, but then had 30 shares just sitting out there.  This trade has dragged on for so long I just decided to finish it off at the close and be done with it.

Opened:
2 AAP picks
[b] MEDX

Main trading port: -3.85%
Retirement port: -0.31%
Brokerage: -0.46%
BBE Overall: -2.90%
% of Trading Targets reached: -21.09%
I’m fucked ratio: 5.5 to 6.3
Long to Cash %s: 71.13% to 28.87%

~~~
[a] Dividend play
[b] Stockpickr 3×2
[c] AAP pick