June 2012 Trading Thread

[tastychicken2]

He speaks well. He graduated from a good program.

and he follows Ackman and Einhorn around on a lot of their trades/investments...

nothing wrong with doing that, but he tends to overdo it

[savant111]

I'm going to hold SPY through the weekend and very likely at this point am just going to ride it out until I hit profit targets or get stopped. Probably going to be in this thing for a while. Still don't think the lows of this correction are in.

I'll spare everyone my daily incorrect prediction for tomorrow. All kinds of crazyiness happening tomorrow.

Only real good thing about this trade is I don't have to watch my monitor all day.

A few things I thought noteworthy from Thursday:

Nasdaq really lagged the rally today.

AAPL in the red today. PCLN too

GOOG down for the day (still think this one is toast)

Jay not happy about WLT not moving today either.

Anybody who is reading Sam's forex thread on gap trading might want to check out LULU on the short side. It's got a big gap to fill.

All this choppiness not healthy market behavior imo.

[Xaston]

Do the daily incorrect predictions ever make you second guess your ability to decide what the market will do in the next 24 hours?

I'm genuinely not trying to be a dick; I just think that there is more of an edge to be made (at least for most people) if you try and value businesses instead of predict market movements. The other thing I don't get is why people do stuff with SPY. If you think the market is going down wouldn't you be better off shorting something that's more overvalued than the average (which by definition has to be less overvalued than many of its constituent parts)?

[highstakesfan]

Valuing a business is not part of the equation for a Technical trader. Millions of shares of SPY trade everyday. There is far less risk. Shorting individual stocks is extremely dangerous for all but the nimble and wise stay at home day traders.

[Xaston]

LULU and CRM both trade millions of shares a day too, and I have a hunch they are both more overvalued than SPY.

Even if you are trading on technicals, aren't the technicals on, I don't know, at least 10% of stocks or something, a "better" short or long setup than the SPY? What are the odds that SPY is really the best setup (or even close to the best) technically for a long or short than all the myriad stocks/ETFs you could short? Seems small.

If you think there is no validity to stock prices approaching the true valuations of the underlying companies over time, ok, then you have permission to not take valuation into your technical trades at all, from my POV, but I still don't see how SPY happens to be the best short/long setup all these traders find.

[highstakesfan]

In the real world overvalued stocks tend to become more overvalued. Up until very recently, a person would have gone broke shorting CRM and LULU because they were overvalued based on some widely excepted valuation formula. Year after year, CRM and LULU outperformed the market and BUSTED many a Short Seller who thought they were overvalued.

[Xaston]

Word

[JayTeeMe]

Originally Posted by savant111

Jay not happy about WLT not moving today either.

All this choppiness not healthy market behavior imo.

Correct on these. I took advantage of a green day today to sell 10 22jun 47.50 calls for 1.17. Just begging to get my shares called away at this point. (WLT trading at 45.90 right now)

[JayTeeMe]

Originally Posted by JayTeeMe

Correct on these. I took advantage of a green day today to sell 10 22jun 47.50 calls for 1.17. Just begging to get my shares called away at this point. (WLT trading at 45.90 right now)

Get out of the shower and this thing is trading at 46.60. FML I'm such a fish

[fanmail]

Originally Posted by savant111

Question for the community:

Im comfortable enough trading now that I'm going to rollover one of my IRA accounts online to trade.

Apparently you can't short in an IRA account. What are some decent trading securities in a bear market to go long in? I know i could go long TLT or GLD if the timing is right. Are there any inverse ETFs that are less dangerous to trade? HighStakesFan I know you like the inverse ETFs perhaps you can offer your opinion?

I've never traded an option before nor do I really want too as learning to trade securities is hard enough. Is options trading something that is necessary in an IRA account if you want to be active during downtrends?

Also fwiw I'm not totally closed to just sitting out in cash during downtrends if there aren't suitable alternatives. Thanks.

SKF and SH are easy. TLT I use also.

[savant111]

Originally Posted by fanmail

SKF and SH are easy. TLT I use also.

Tks!

[tastychicken2]

i don't know what makes you think it's a good idea to trade in an ira.

given it's ur first year w/ an ira i doubt u'll have the same scale. commissions will kill whatever edge you have.

my "trades" generally occur over at least a month and most of the time I can express them through commission-free ETFs. I assume that u'll be turning over positions in days or less

[fanmail]

Not sure what you guys use or if you would qualify, but I have 30 free trades/month in my IRAs.

[fanmail]

http://www.merrilledge.com/m/pages/z...ar-trades.aspx

[savant111]

Originally Posted by tastychicken2

i don't know what makes you think it's a good idea to trade in an ira.

given it's ur first year w/ an ira i doubt u'll have the same scale. commissions will kill whatever edge you have.

my "trades" generally occur over at least a month and most of the time I can express them through commission-free ETFs. I assume that u'll be turning over positions in days or less

My IRA was collecting next to nothing at my local savings bank. I'll try to keep trades to months or weeks instead of days.

Commissions are killing me in my brokerage account too . I have to find trades that have enough upside to compensate for the commission costs.