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Curious Thoughts

The Humble Return of Raul

Let’s not get all mushy about the details of my totally awesome blog, flowpirate.com, or the back door dealings of the blog game.  Don’t get all gay and start reading me with frantic excitement like you do the champions who roam these halls.  Do listen very quietly to me for only one moment:

I made it

And I’m going to keep making it.  And losing it.  Because it, my friend, is what it’s all about.

Also, this place, iBankCoin, this place right here…it IS the internet.  Never forget that.

One final word: if you start a blog of your own, for the love of god, get excited about designer purses.

More later, I have top calling to do on twitter. @twosmuth is my pen name over there.

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So Many Missed Ideas

I get a certain type of perturbed when I miss a good opportunity.  It’s 2013, shit’s cray.  I’m calling a generational transformation right here, right now.  There are things we don’t even know we want yet, that will be indispensable in three years’ time.  In such a phase, if you don’t keep tight and on point, ideas simply drift by, like fat salmon drifting up stream.  With such a flow of fish it’s only natural that a few slip by.  Just know someone else is eating those delicious missed fish, living in the lap of luxury.

Things are going well, don’t get me wrong, but I missed two jumbos this month.  I’d say it’s a good problem to have, too many ideas flowing.  Being the opposite, following a template lifestyle of sorts, is certainly a drag.  So I’m venting two big trades I missed.

BBY all month and TPX this week

BBY was a certain type of fail, where I just continued to fail.  It was my Super Bowl pick.  I do things, like my Super Bowl pick, or March Madness pick, mostly by looking at the charts.  However, when I can incorporate an external, although often subject to extreme subjectivity, it makes the trade all the better.  I overheard (read) that BBY had a funny commercial game day.  I like funny; it’s the safe play for big time commercials.  I bought January 31st, a decent entry, of the higher octane variety.  I stopped out, and looking back that made sense.  However, I let it linger on my watch list, and it gave two more entries, and I missed them.  It’s been ripping.

TPX I have gotten so much of.  I’ve been on that trade all.year.long.  That is until missing today’s pump.  I sold it a few days back citing a very flimsy formation of a notorious double hammer position.  Truth is, I didn’t have much reason to sell, I found one, as Chess likes to say.

That’s all, just getting that off my chest.  Onward and upward.

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Lateral Moves

While Le Doctour has taken the market’s indecision as a cue to back off from his positioning, I have been aggressively churning my portfolio like a tap dancer in a minefield.  Stocks are blowing up, and blowing down.  Stock pickers are totally en vogue as money sloshes around in the market.

Today I sold my remaining shares of LEDS around 1.35 and a brief look back suggests I sold too early.  That’s the problem with knowing a company is complete shit, you’re trigger happy on the gains.  However, a 25 percent gain in two days is sufficient to keep bread on my table.

I bought ANGI back and it started ripping so I bought more.  It’s a full position now, threatening to make all-time highs alongside our historic market.

I closed out RGLD in a passive manner.  I placed a protective stop on the name ensuring I would earn 5 percent.  It triggered and I went on my merry way.  Plus the gold chart looks peak’ish.

Into the bell, @ragincajun dropped some breadcrumbs in the back ally, via the hybrid movers, and I curb-stomped two other bums to get my hands on the best pick, AIG.  I’m long AIG now.

Finally it took every bit of discipline I have to not sell ZNGA.  It’s been flirting with my stop all day.  It’s been trading like a loser all week, but it hasn’t crossed my risk parameter yet.  It’s simple ruffling my feathers in a most egregious manner.  Let’s hope she doesn’t gap down on me.  Come’own everyone, do some hoping for Raul.

Cheers,

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There’s Always Tuesday

Price clawed its way back to value before closing out the cash session.  There’s certainly indecision present.  Here’s more shorthand on what happened:

Major new highs overnight

Large opening swing

Sellers assert tape dominance

Price craters through the entire Friday range

Intraday shorts start working

Shorts get faded

Price pushes back up to value

Value settles lower than Friday

Big outside bar is formed

There was no clear winner, but I don’t like this Yen strength.  If it continues, we’re operating in a different environment than we’ve seen thus far this year.  Lots of charts are extended, like today’s winner AWAY.

Don’t chase risk.  Our job as traders, especially at this juncture, is to take as little risk as possible.  Tighten up that risk.  Get it tight, get it right.

Warm Regards,

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So…Back To Gold Buggery?

After hearing the news that Cyprus depositors of the six figure variety are each getting a leg chopped off and tossed into the pig trough, and puking a little bit, my immediate thought was ‘people will run to their gold and guns on this news.’

Rather than blast the interweb waves with subjectivity on this peaceful Sunday morning, I thought instead we could revisit my piece on February performance in the metal and miner space, look at how they’ve performed since then (during March) and later this evening I’ll chomp some charts.

Exhibit the first, via my February blog, courtesy of stockcharts.com:

miners_febperf

Exhibit two, performance since:

miners_marchperf_intofinalweek

The March-to-date performance would suggest money flows are finding their way into the miners at a rate greater than would be counteracted by sell flow.

Are leprechauns invading the market, chasing rainbows in a completely non homo fashion?

Has Jakegint received a massive bonus from his feverous work last year, and cemented the market with a heavy bid?

Will you need three guns or more to protect your metal stash and family from the zombie banker apocalypse?

Tune in this evening.

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Your Trash Is My Treasure

penguin

When you’re bouncing around at the frothy peaks of a thrust higher, you want to be on the lookout for the trashiest of the stocks which are setting up nicely on the charts.

This type of trading is downright degeneracy, let me forewarn.  If you choose to partake in this lottery, be sure you define your risk, and don’t be a little baby when you lose.  Close that loser with confidence.  Being a confident loser is cool, guy.

I’m scraping the gutter with this one, after flaming the name for being a downright loser. I took LEDS long.  This is pure price gambling, the company itself is a fantastic loser.  But check out this daily chart, belissima:

LEDS_Mar2013

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Batten Down The Hatches!

We’re heading into some stormy weather people.  As I pen this piece the SPY is making new lows after a nasty thrust lower this AM.  I used the pullback after the thrust to get large in SDS, a hedge of sorts.

As we pressed lower I stopped out of many names, including ANR, INVN, and morning initiated longs HOV and HUN.  I sold them all.

My current longs are (by size):

CMG, TPX, F, ZNGA, CREE, RGLD, AWK, and Z

All together the above represent 42% of my holdings.  Most are faring decently into this storm, but I swear no allegiance to any of the names and will cut any that get too loose.

You have to get big in a slowpoke like SDS for it to have any effectiveness.  Right now it stands at an 18 percent position.  That leaves me 30 percent in cash waiting for the next high probability trade.

Try to stay dry out there folks!

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Slow Motion Decapitation

Today I’ve felt completely out of sorts.  The markets are levitating above their highs, yet I’ve only mustered the courage to buy more CMG.  Everything else, I’ve only stared at.  I keep checking in on BBY aka Best Buy.  This was my top pick going into the Super Bowl yet I sold it for a small loss.  It’s been non-stop ripping ever since.

For a while today was just another episode of Raul’s portfolio makes new highs then VHC died.  I have a tiny VHC position, I’m about to not have said position.  Holy binary outcome, yes yes?  The devastation of the name is enough to drop my portfolio by 30 basis points so I’m not exactly putting my head through sheet rock over here.  Nevertheless, I am dissatisfied to be knocked clean off my high watermark.

I don’t want to short the indices because I have no signal telling me to do so, yet I’m not confident in many of my longs.  Not even CREE.  I’m sitting on several 20 percent gainers here and a huge cash pile and I feel like a stick in the mud.  It could be this head cold I developed upon returning to the arctic north, or it could be I don’t have twitter running, or it really could be a hangover from being fired from iBC.  I need to find some motivation.

I really don’t want a huge cash level, but it seems like the only option as my brain is currently on sabbatical.

 

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Hopping Back in the Saddle

Right now is one of those times where looking back at everything accomplished in five days seems blurry and more dreamlike than reality.  After trekking through over 1000 miles of jungles, mountains, beaches, and cities I’m back at my desk staring out at the snowy landscape.  I feel somewhat out of sorts with the stock market.  After returning home at 3am this morning and catching a cat nap, I immediately went to my favorite deli and procured a prosciutto and cheese on a hard role.  Good deli meats are non-existent near the equator.

Once to my office I received the warm welcome of over 1000 emails.  This is something unique to the corporate world, robots mailing robots mostly.  I even consider many of the humans who send me 50+ emails a day to be robots.  I read about 10 emails and the rest were Shift+Deleted to their final resting place.  How much cover your ass (CYA) work is necessary when you do very little actual work?  I’m once again laser beam focused on my exit plan.

Normally I have a watch list primed up with hot stocks ready to rip.  Most of these names are poached from others.  I also have a few screeners in finviz saved and key sectors I’m watching.  Today all I have are my extended socials and LED stocks, tit ripping into the stratosphere.  I’m very tempted to liquidate and regroup.  I’ve been smashed to bits by March two years in a row.  Going into the midmonth with another 3% in gains has me very trigger happy.

With my personal enterprise, it’s interesting how little mistakes compile while I’m away.  However, it offers me an excellent opportunity to correct my minions.  If you don’t know how to correct your minions, you’re better off being a minion.  Behave accordingly.

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Forgetting About Sleep and Pressing Onward

It has been a day of pure intensity of the awesome variety today/yesterday where sleep has been traded for long night drives through jungle switchbacks and rocking up on a gnarly pacific beach.  I’ve been awake since Wednesday morning, and the thought of sleeping is still distant in consideration.

There sometimes comes a point where you look back at your body of work and where you currently are and realize you’re on the right track.  All the work we do as traders, internet addicts, and “professionals” pays heavy dividends when you’re calling a massive villa home base. I could go on about the amenities, but it’s sufficient to say the infinity pool is two-tiered with a swim-up bar.  The house follows suit making it one hell of a party atmosphere.

Earlier the internet was so-so but now it’s blazing DSL fast.  Interestingly, this seems very slow to me.  Then I remember that wretched 56k dial-up action.  We were so naïve in those days.  There’s a staff of three in the villa, including a strange man who shows up at sunset and sits out front.  We’re surrounded by other villas of the four-story variety and all have fortress like barriers that would make surviving a zombie apocalypse simple.  Think six inch spikes juxtaposed in voodoo patterns atop seven foot concrete walls.

They seem a bit much, but then perhaps there’s something you need to keep out on full moons?  Everyone I meet is happy and with good reason as they’re living in paradise.  I guess if left to their own device, hunger is hunger and these villas are sweet targets for pirating.  All the normal houses resemble tin can structures with just as much security.  But enough about that, the amenities and downtown are ace.

The market I can’t comment much on.  Without my finger directly on the pulse I seem to not have my feel for the rotations and hot spots.  ANGI ripped, but was faded.  It buoyed my portfolio into the green today.  The fade today in RGLD should tell you it’s a violent road ahead for the metal and miners.  To think they would just rip tits off of the Wednesday strength now seems questionable.  There’s a ton of work to do above.  The sharp rejection of the 9 ema would have me trigger ready tomorrow to sell.  But considering my jungle mentality, I’m giving the trade room.  Take out my stop, ga’head

I suppose that’s it.  Oh yes one last thing.  If we’re going to have a vote for the interim tabbed j-a-b, throw my name in the race.  If we end up not voting, all the same.  Like a hungry donkey, I will continue to forage for winning picks and bring them to you live, like a donkey.

http://youtu.be/qHxlzcAPbBE

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