Tue Sep 3, 2013 12:03pm ESTComments Off on Pay Attention to the Winners
…not the losers in Washington DC. The market sold off after hearing something from congress. That’s as far as my analysis goes on news flow because it’s far from my forte…instead I suggest you turn your attention to Zillow.
Even with the jolt in interest rates today, $Z is strong and flirting with $100.00 like it knows what it’s doing. You know what happens next, don’t you? Zillow goes to $125, getting the phone number of the woman you’ve only mustered the courage to talk to all night.
Zillow is the winner. You can be too.
As of this writing, I have no position in Zillow. I do however have a long position in TRLA, Zillow’s not so cute but still fine cousin.
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:09pm ESTComments Off on Necessary Aggression Initiated
I started feeling I was getting a bit soft after reading my latest post. I realized the USA is still the home of Jack Daniels and the Bible belt.
I’m not going to cower during Labor Day weekend.
No
I will stand, like a man, like an American, and improvise if need be.
I took a look at my portfolio and said which one of these stocks is the greatest abomination. RVLT was the clear choice, the flaming dung heap it is. So I bought more.
Meanwhile, I’ll be in the hanger this weekend tinkering with my drone strike algorithms, ensuring they’re ready to do battle when the globex session opens up at 1800 EST Sunday afternoon.
Because the monies, they never sleep. Niether do my robots.
Have a great holiday weekend everyone and remember…ignorance is bliss. Turn off the news flow and make people tell you what’s happening. It makes for more intriguing conversation anyhow.
I cannot say with any certainty if it made sense to eat twenty four dollars’ worth of grilled cheeses, but I can tell you that meal was the only thing that excited me today. Normally, in this country, I should be excited that a three day weekend approaches. As a matter of fact, during our last three day weekend, I ran an exciting back test on the /ES that has been profitable.
I expect this weekend’s research to further my quest to dominate the S&P 500.
But I don’t look to the weekend with glee. Instead I have been plagued by nightmares of global conflict. As much as I enjoy speculating during the turmoil, my vibe took a negative turn today. It rolled over, if you will.
Generation X and Y have mostly escaped war. There have been conflicts. Good people have been sent in to foreign countries to bring the fight to the villains, but no full fledged war has occurred. And I’m happy to live in boring times. Perhaps I’m getting older and becoming more aware of global brutality, and perhaps I should just tell my subconscious to eat a donut and STFU. But I really don’t like this situation…this situation in Syria.
I had a dream a few weeks back that an unknown villain nuked the entire taiga, destroying the atmosphere and ending the world. That’s the kind of vibe I’m feeling.
I’m also getting bled out every day by RVLT, WTF is going on over there? This crap still doesn’t look buyable. It’s almost surreal how poorly this stock is behaving.
The LVN I noted this morning at 1641.75 never came into play today. Instead it’s been a risk averse tape, but mostly the action has a smack of indecision and chop.
I raised a bit more cash, taking anther scale in AMBA for a win and closing ENPH for a loss. ENPH is entirely without trend here, IMO. I was playing for quick strength to trigger a short squeeze. It never materialized and I was too slow with my exit. Then I bottom ticked the sale today without even queuing up the chart. This too was quite perturbing.
My futures workstation completely broke today, froze, and needed a hard restart. Brutal. You know…the restart where you hold the power button for like 10 seconds until POOF, and then an eerie silence falls over the room. Then you count to ten as slowly as possible, giving the machine the official ‘ten seconds to settle’ before turning it back on. It worked, and my tools are 90 percent operational going into the close. My volume-at-price delta is still broken. Either that or every order today has been executed at the bid (I hope not).
My book is a sea of red except for YGE and FB and all I really want is peace. I don’t foresee much more action on my behalf into the weekend.
I shuffled the deck up a bit today, closing out MHR after a fantastic run and scaling off some bread in USO, AMBA, and YELP. Then I bought some TRLA even though deep down I wanted to chase Zillow. I think the concept behind both companies is ostensibly the same although a realtor who has worked with both firms may possess differentiating information.
I used both when home hunting and found their services to be indispensable, even with the help of a realtor. I could find listings and say, “Hey, guy, why didn’t this gem populate my daily emails?” I liked keeping him on his toes but mostly I wanted to find the right house which was painful in my price range.
I lightened up on the whole oil shebang because of how many false breakouts I’ve seen across the markets these past few months. The crude oil breakout looks so picture perfect, I don’t like it. Then everybody started getting soft about playing missile vollyball and everything started to unwind. Note: my profit taking occurred before the unwind.
Let me take a brief tangent at this moment and discuss bragging and the swag that goes along with it. First off, I’m a very humble person in real life. I don’t drive flashy cars or wear over-the-top fashion because I don’t like the attention it brings. Last time I dressed too nice, my gym locker was broken into and picked clean. I never dressed nice again.
When losing trades roll through, sometimes four of five at a time, I analyze them, painstakingly, live to the people of the internet. As honest as this all seems, I do it for myself and to learn from my ways. I read posts in the days leading up to the losses and peer into my mentality. It’s a useful tool, a journal, for finding behavioral patterns.
So if I’m going to self-deprecate all over the internet and loath losers because I hate them oh so much, excuse you, I’m going to take a victory laps too. You should try it. It is fun.
Now let me ‘splaine’ something to you. I nailed the oil trade and I will continue to do so. This weekend I’ll be eating a meal fit for a king because, if there’s one area in life I never cheap out on, it’s eating. Then I’m going to bring no less than two fast women along in my subcompact auto to sample the finest offerings our local scene provides. Trust me, we all gone eat honey. When they ask what we’re celebrating I’ll simply point upward and say, “Mother Russia” in a thick accent and then slam my fist onto the nearest table to summon the serving wench. Then it’s ‘eyeball Paul’ time.
“Babe, I had to nail the oil trade to finance the drubbing I’m taking in this RVLT investment.”
Investing, my friends, is hard when your first investment vehicle is a three dollar stock that was a penny stock in January. But I can tell you this, if their management team executes by collecting ALL THE LOW HANGING FRUIT spread across our country, a bumper crop if you will, they will make hundreds of millions of dollars. The hardest part of this investment isn’t going to be holding through a drawdown, it’s going to be sitting on my hands when it goes green. That’s where the money is made.
Or the whole shit house goes up in flames. Hey, it happens.
If you’re young, time is on your hands. We have many more years to earn any lost money back. Why not invest into a high spec stock? What else will you do with your money? Lease the same BMW as your douche bag friends?
Finally, I didn’t even fire up my futures platform until 3pm today. ELROI was dormant today and BOSSRAM took one winning trade in beta testing. I have 600+ unread emails, five overbearing fruit trees, and one broken database to tend to aka why I abhor vacations. I likely won’t be trading futures live until next Tuesday.
I missed you guys and I’m glad to be back in the saddle.
Taking yourself out of the proverbial shark tank that is the stock market for a few days leads to some interesting observations. Once outside the tank, you’re better able to observe the water you’ve been swimming around in. It’s a higher sense of self understanding, if you will.
After buying AMBA Tuesday morning, I’ve been inactive. This is in part because the purchase took my cash down under six percent. What little cash I have left must be used to average into CREE and RVLT should the opportunities arise.
Speaking of RVLT, I’m now minus thirty percent on my basis. Investing, it seems, is a tricky endeavor. On one hand, I know they have to potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars retrofitting businesses with LEDS. I also love the vertical model they’ve built with their recent acquisitions. On the other hand, I’m in an ugly chart in a company that was up over 600 percent in one year’s time. Yeah…
But I’m keeping my investor hat on and entrenching into the LED industry. CREE, AIXG, and RVLT are multi quarter holdings.
Just before heading out last week, I increased my oil exposure. Nice timing, yes? I still have positions in END, MHR, and USO. Until the Libyans find out they didn’t in fact kill Doc Brown because Mike Fox used the time machine to warn him to wear a vest, I’m sticking with these positions. I may trim a bit of exposure into further strength.
I passed through no less than four po-dung towns on my travels, and in every case I depended on YELP to find my palatable food with a reasonable atmosphere. I did the same in Traverse City, a much finer and top hatted community. Why not use Google? Because the YELP interface is BETTER, you jack asses.
ENPH and YGE are both lit sticks of dynamite. I intend to stick said dynamite in the tail pipes of the shortmobile.
LO will succeed in addicting teenagers to Blu Eciggarets and I will collect a lovely coupon, much higher than any government or corporate paper, at little or no risk to my person. Same goes for O, except for the teenager part.
IMMR, F, and FB round out my book of long positions.
I’ll be back this evening with an update on Bossram Alpha and El Roi, my drone strike robots.
The S&P squeezed above the bull target we observed this morning. Capturing and sustaining trade at these levels was a worthy accomplishment by the bull camp and instills a bit of confidence going into the weekend. The flip side of the coin is the complacent manner of the tape, where bulls are being led back into high energy momentum stocks and the market yawned off a complete NASDAQ freeze.
Regardless, I’ve made no changes to my book, nor do I intend to ahead of the weekend. Instead I’m day dreaming about hitting the magnificent road and leaving this filthy city behind. I’m heading for the pure air of Pure Michigan.
My only move today was buying ENPH, and old nemesis, near the open. I’m 90 percent long heading into the weekend, carrying a broad array of stocks and ETFs.
Could I get slaughtered come Monday? Sure.
But I’m confident I can trade my way out of it with my thick quiver of arrows. I look forward to doing so, live on the interwebs, like a boss.
We discuss the sentiment cycle from time-to-time since Option Addict graced the idea upon us and I find value in envisioning where we are in the cycle. It gives some perspective into how my comrades and competitors may be feeling at any given moment.
Unfortunately for RVLT longs, it appears we’re working through the rough side of the sentiment cycle. If you love a business model, you sometimes have to ride through some crummy conditions while the business proves itself.
Therefore, I won’t candy coat what I think RVLT could do in the intermediate term, instead I’ve mapped out exactly how I envision it aka brutal, but eventually victorious. Trade accordingly:
The S&P isn’t relenting as we settle into the lunch hour, however my satchel of straight crack rock aka my swing portfolio has been faded back into its place: the fag box.
On the day, I was up nearly two percent before I finished my coffee. Now I’m up a sultry one percent and that may dry up too. It wouldn’t surprise me, the way many of these stocks are trading.
Stock pickers talk about the risk cycle and how it resets and where you want to be is contingent upon where we are in the cycle. It’s not my jazz to make such analysis, I simply go where the momentum traders frolic, and I frolic along with them, much like Pepe Le Pew. By that I mean I move slowly, letting my prey exhaust itself. Then I slowly walk up and spray a loaded gland of stink on the market.
I like trading like this, because if a giant boulder falls on the other homo momo Joes, I can sashay around the crater and reach the promised land.
That being said, I’d like to see some liftoff soon, as my patience grows weary on a few of my names.
Here’s my investment basket of LED technology, representing about 25% of my swing money, largest to smallest:
RVLT, AIXG, and CREE
Another 40 % of my book is spread across the following long trades, largest to smallest:
YGE, YELP, END, F, MHR, and IMMR
And another 10% is ‘invested’ in the following positions:
LO, FB, and O
That leaves me 25% cash that needs a home, and soon, because cash is a waste of time.
It was another frustrating day of RVLT sucking wind only today it was accompanied by APP. I’m a huge fan of the APP brand, so their ticker is a permanent fixture on my Always Stalking watch list. When it fell out of the tight/multi-month consolidation I took it to be the head fake, the shakeout, before the actual move. Well wouldn’t you know it, I was -10% on the name in a flash reminding me how important entries are on these low priced stocks. I simply don’t have a ton of conviction here, so I cut my loss and moved on.
You know my thoughts on RVLT.
YGE was interesting today, being one of my largest positions and all. I want better prices before parting ways with any of my shares. They’re Chinese and solar, I mean, what’s better?
Yelp had a decent day and some clown ‘angel investor’ put on his big boy pants and bet five stacks Yelp will be out of business by 2015. Oh, you bad. He made his bet via FB, BTW. Have you heard of the stock market, you coward?
Nothing else really materialized in my swing portfolio.
Meanwhile, you hear traders calling days like today a day trader’s dreams or a day trader’s environment and I’m pleased to report #BOSSRAM concurs. On the session, Bossram Alpha took 12 trades covering three different cycles and went 12-for-12 to earn a staggering 13.75 handles.
Based on a one contract position size Bossram yielded $687.50 before commissions. Considering the position size can increase by one contract for every $1800 earned, you can see the scalability. All trades taken must have seen price to go through the entry and exit by a tick in order to validate the walk forward and provide conservative numbers. I think it’s safe to say BOSSRAM does well in choppy environments. Aka, this is the perfect fix for a momentum trader stuck with summertime sadness.
I’ve been overly excited for algorithms I’ve built in the past, so believe me, I’m still a skeptic. But today’s performance was dead on with what I’ve seen occurring in my seven month back test. ROBUSTO!
I look forward to taking the cycle live alongside my current /ES trading repertoire.
Be on the lookout for odd moves overnight, it seems like that kind of night…especially with the rare moon.
Wed Aug 21, 2013 12:30pm ESTComments Off on $RVLT Becomes a Flaming Bag of Garbage
Clearly we’re just beginning to see the panic set in with shareholders of RVLT. Something about a stock being up 600 percent in a year’s time has folks a bit…oh I don’t know, spooked?
Meanwhile, a company I hold near-and-dear, OESX, a company I bought for $2.60 then sold for $2.30 in March is running circles around the old men with their stupid CREE and RVLT. And I liked OESX MONDAY, for the love of bologna.
It’s all simply too much to bear, for a coward. However, I don’t care about the severance pay RVLT dished out, it’s peanuts. I don’t care about how RVLT’s stock price slashes through one support level after another. All these jackasses need to do, and please excuse my retarted penmanship, is retrofit. RETROFIT.RETROFIT.RETROFIT. That’s why the purchase of Relume and Seesmart got me excited.
They now have the technology on hand to measure the savings their clients receive from retrofitting their bulbs. This allows them to structure financing deals based on the savings they produce—eliminating the capital outlay a business may be hesitant to forego. And they have a line of stupid LED bulbs to peddle: total vertical integration.
CREE’s bulbs are no better than anyone else’s. It takes China like 72 hours to bootleg anything American companies do. Hence, RVLT’s bulbs are in fact stupid, but no stupider [sic] then Cree’s.
So as long as RVLT hones in on retrofits, focusing on the low hanging fruit, they have the tools in place to go Johnny Appleseed on the USA. We’re in the management’s hands now. Are they closers or not? That’s all the matters.
