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Posts Tagged ‘manipulation’

Why Nobody Trades During Regular Hours Any More (And How Prop Funds Just Stop Trading When Volatility Spikes)

Why Nobody Trades During Regular Hours Any More (And How Prop Funds Just Stop Trading When Volatility Spikes)

HFTCourtesy of Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge 

For those who follow our periodic updates on intraday stock volume, today’s article by the Wall Street Journal which focuses on the dramatic decline in activity during regular working hours will come as no surprise. In a piece looking at prop trading shop Briargate (oh so witty anagram of arbitrage), founded by several former NYSE specialists, we learn that at least one firm (and likely many more) now no longer does any trading during the hours of 11 to 2. As this creates a feedback loop of inactivity, pretty soon the core of daily stock market activity will merely be the half an hour of action at the open, and the dark pool-ETF-open exchange rebalance at the very close, with everything inbetween deemed obsolete.

Of course, what this will do, is create even more volatility in trading, force an even greater decline in stock trading volumes (and pain for Wall Street firms), and a further divergence between stocks and fundamentals, as momentum trading gains an even more prominent role in determine "price discovery."

From the WSJ:

On the day the "flash crash" bludgeoned the stock market and chaos swept over the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the founders of Briargate Trading were at the movies.

Rick Oscher and Steven Rubinstein weren’t playing hooky. Briargate, a proprietary-trading firm that the two former NYSE floor "specialist" traders started in 2008, is mostly active at the stock market’s open and close.

In between, when market activity typically drops, the Wall Street veterans play tennis in Central Park, take leisurely lunches, visit their children’s schools and work out at the gym. Dress shoes have been replaced with flip-flops, slacks with cargo shorts. Once during market hours, they walked about five miles and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to try Grimaldi’s pizza.

"We actually planned on working a full day," says Mr. Oscher, wearing a white polo shirt and blue-plaid shorts. "But from 11 to 2, the markets are pretty quiet—what’s the point? As a specialist, you have to stand in your spot all day and we did that for 20 years."

Briargate—an anagram of "arbitrage"—isn’t the only firm taking an extended recess during the 6½-hour U.S. trading day. Trading has become increasingly concentrated in the


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Non Farm Payrolls: The Devil Is In the Adjustments

Non Farm Payrolls: The Devil Is In the Adjustments

Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN

When the US government announced a ‘better than expected’ headline growth number in its non farm payrolls report for August, a loss of ‘only’ 54,000 jobs versus a forecasted loss of 120,000 jobs, people had to wonder, ‘How do they do it? We do not see any of this growth and recovery in our day to day activity.’

Here’s one way that those reporting the numbers can ‘tinker’ with them to produce the desired results.

As you may recall, there is often a very large difference between the raw, unadjusted payroll number and the adjusted number. Seasonality plays the largest role, although there can occasionally be special circumstances. Since this is designed to be a simple example I am going to lump all the various adjustments that could be and call them the ‘seasonality factor’ since it is most usual and signficant.

Here is a chart showing the unadjusted and the adjusted numbers. As you can see, a seasonal adjustment can legitimately normalize the numbers for the use of planners and forecasters. This is a common function in businesses affected by seasonal changes. Year over year growth rates, rather than linear, comparisons, can also serve a similar function.

Quite a variance in numbers that are very large.

Since it probably is in the back of your mind, let’s address the infamous "Birth Deal Model" now, which I have advised may not be such a significant factor as you might imagine. This is an ‘estimate’ of new jobs created by small businesses. A comparison of the last few years demonstrates rather easily that this number is what is called ‘a plug.’

How can the growth of jobs from small business not been significantly impacted by one of the greatest financial collapses in modern economic history?

Certainly the Birth Death model offers room for statistical mischief. It is important to remember that it is added to the RAW number before seasonal adjustment, and that number has huge variances. So the effect of Birth Death is mitigated by the adjustment for seasonality. If it were added to the Seasonal number from which ‘headline growth’ is derived it would be a huge factor. But it is not the case, although the timing of the significant annual adjustments and additions is highly cynical, and supportive of number inflation.…
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SP Futures and Gold Daily Charts at 2:30 PM EDT: Smoke and Mirrors

SP Futures and Gold Daily Charts at 2:30 PM EDT: Smoke and Mirrors

Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN

The spike in the overnight futures based on the vague assurances from China to revalue the yuan higher, a strictly political move to pre-empt the discussion at the upcoming G20 meeting, was a way to justify a classic ‘wash and rinse’ in the price, and bring in some coin for the needy Wall Street banks.

This is the method by which the moral hazard of bailing out the Too Big Banks has provoked the unintended consequence of strangling the economy and the very markets which the bailouts were intended to save (at least on the storyboard). They are unable to make their expected outsized returns using conventional business means, so they must resort to soft control frauds, generating market inefficiencies to support their unsustainable existance. They ought to have been broken up and liquidated where necessary. 

As I suggested last night, the spike higher was utterly artificial, and worth fading to the short side. But while it stays above the trendline now around 1110 I would not lean on it too hard, since the threat of a snapback rally in the last hour is always there on these thin volumes. If it breaks down, we are probably heading down to the 1060 support in a roundabout way.

There is also an FOMC rate decision coming up on the 23rd, Wednesday, so we will see some artificial action around that. It is also the day that GTU closes its shelf offering which should take some of the pressure off the unit price.

As a reminder this is the option expiration week (June 24th) for gold and silver July contracts at the COMEX. Even so, the pullback in the price of gold is well within the range of the handle. Short term it is relatively easy to manipulate the price within a certain range of the primary trend, given the current state of regulatory capture at the CFTC. At some point the primary trend will take a much steeper slope as we head towards a commercial failure to deliver. But no one can accuse the people in New York and Washington of long term thinking when there are short term profits to be made, and campaign contributions to be pocketed.


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Stocks Freak Out Again: 130 Point Move In Dow In 15 Minutes On No Volume

Stocks Freak Out Again: 130 Point Move In Dow In 15 Minutes On No Volume

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Once again, we get to see just how broken our stock market is, one which takes no prisoners, and will trample over everyone and everything as the Primary Dealers use your own money against you to shake every single person out. A 130 point move in the Dow in the matter of minutes on no volume is about all you need to know to lose all confidence in stocks, and call up TD Ameritrade and close your account (you won’t be allowed to trade when the market is crashing anyway). Good thing we had a fake rumor in the morning to prevent an all out rout into Friday with the Dow looking to open well into 9000. Additionally, with credit not moving, and obviously not buying this move, there is nobody left who can claim the market is anything even remotely resembling orderly, efficient or fair. SkyNet is again rising.

 


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Manipulating Gold and Silver: A Criminal Naked Short Position that Could Wreck the Economy

Manipulating Gold and Silver: A Criminal Naked Short Position that Could Wreck the Economy

Courtesy of Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture 

Close-up of traditional puppets, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Everyone from U.S. Senators to prominent hedge fund managers say that criminal naked short sellers had a hand in the financial collapse of 2008, but the regulators aren’t listening. Not a single criminal has been prosecuted. Indeed, the regulators continue to allow the miscreants to manipulate the markets — not just the stock markets, but also the markets for corporate bonds, derivatives, U.S. Treasuries, and all manner of commodities – even when the regulators are provided with indisputable evidence of a massive crime in progress. They could easily fix the flaws in the settlement system that allow much of the manipulation to occur, but they refrain from doing so either because they are too captured by the miscreants or too cowed by the possible consequences of throwing the lights on what may be an enormous confidence game.

So I am inclined to say that it is hopeless. Everyone loves an optimist – but, yes, it is hopeless. We are like the audience in one of those cheesy horror flicks – yell and scream all you like, but the dumb blonde is still going to walk into that room and get hacked to pieces. Except that it is not a movie. It is real. And it’s not just the dumb blonde who is going to get slaughtered. It is all of us. It is our economy. It is our standard of living. It is our financial system – the lifeblood of the nation.

The latest case of regulatory indolence was recently exposed by Andrew Maguire, a successful metals trader and whistleblower who went to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with data that strongly suggested that a small number of criminal short sellers had rigged the markets for silver and gold. Maguire not only provided the regulators with a Dummies’ guide to how the manipulation generally worked, but also warned them of a specific crime – a dramatic take-down of the gold and silver markets – that he said would occur at an exact time on a specific date in the near future. That is, Maguire told the regulators that a massive crime was about to happen, and the crime happened precisely as he predicted it would.

With Maguire’s warning, the regulators…
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Silver Short Squeeze Could Be Imminent

Interesting press release from the National Inflation Association about Silver price manipulation. 

Silver Short Squeeze Could Be Imminent

Close-up of Indian silver coins

FORT LEE, N.J., April 3 /PRNewswire/ — The National Inflation Association today issued a silver update to its http://inflation.us/ members:

On December 11th, 2009 NIA declared silver the best investment for the next decade. In our December 11th article, we said that it wasn’t a coincidence that the very day Bear Stearns failed was the same day silver reached its multi-decade high of over $21 per ounce. We went on to say, "The reason why we believe the Federal Reserve was so eager to orchestrate a bailout of Bear Stearns, is because Bear Stearns was on the verge of being forced to cover their silver short position."

JP Morgan took over the concentrated short position in silver from Bear Stearns and gained complete control over the paper price of silver. Within weeks, JP Morgan was able to manipulate the price of silver down to below $9 per ounce. NIA believes they were able to drive the price of silver down through "naked short selling," selling paper silver that is unbacked by physical silver.

On February 5th, we witnessed another sharp decline in silver prices, which NIA described on February 7th as being "just a temporary wash out, before a huge surge in silver prices later in 2010." Since then, silver prices have rebounded by 18%. The temporary wash out that occurred on February 5th was predicted by independent metals trader Andrew Maguire, who came out this week exposing the fraud that is taking place in the paper silver market.

On February 3rd, Andrew Maguire wrote Eliud Ramirez, a senior investigator for the CFTC’s Enforcement Division, giving him the "heads up" for a "manipulative event" signaled for February 5th. He warned the CFTC that JP Morgan was about to manipulate down the price of silver after the release of non-farm payroll data on February 5th.…
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Why We are Susceptible to Manipulation

Why We are Susceptible to Manipulation

Times Square Collage

Courtesy of Washington’s Blog 

Biologists and sociologists tell us that our brains evolved in small groups or tribes.

As one example of how profoundly the small-group environment affected our brains, Daily Galaxy points out:

Research shows that one of the most powerful ways to stimulate more buying is celebrity endorsement. Neurologists at Erasmus University in Rotterdam report that our ability to weigh desirability and value doesn’t function normally if an item is endorsed by a well-known face. This lights up the brain’s dorsal claudate nucleus, which is involved in trust and learning. Areas linked to longer-term memory storage also fire up. Our minds overidentify with celebrities because we evolved in small tribes. If you knew someone, then they knew you. If you didn’t attack each other, you were probably pals.

Our minds still work this way, giving us the idea that the celebs we keep seeing are our acquaintances. And we want to be like them, because we’ve evolved to hate being out of the in-crowd. Brain scans show that social rejection activates brain areas that generate physical pain, probably because in prehistory tribal exclusion was tantamount to a death sentence. And scans by the National Institute of Mental Health show that when we feel socially inferior, two brain regions become more active: the insula and the ventral striatum. The insula is involved with the gut-sinking sensation you get when you feel that small. The ventral striatum is linked to motivation and reward. 

In small groups, we knew everyone extremely well. No one could really fool us about what type of person they were, because we had grown up interacting with them for our whole lives.

If a tribe member dressed up and pretended he was from another tribe, we would see it in a heart-beat. It would be like seeing your father in a costume: you would recognize him pretty quickly, wouldn’t you.

As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by people in our large modern society when we incorrectly ascribe to them the role of being someone we should trust.

As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by people in our large modern…
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Personal correspondence with Phil regarding how oil speculation affects oil prices.

Personal correspondence with Phil regarding how oil speculation affects oil prices.

Man moving drums in warehouse with forklift

Phil to Ilene:

This is a complicated issue as it’s not just the act of creating a contract.

Let’s say there are 100,000 barrels of oil in the world and 10 are sold each day and they are shipped from various places in various amounts but generally there are, at any given time, 30 days of oil at sea (300 barrels).  If I am taking straight delivery, I would contract with the producers to deliver me 1 barrel of oil per day for a year or 5 years or whatever for $50 a barrel.  My interest is to have a steady supply and the producers interest is to have a steady demand.  He wants to charge as much as possible, I want to pay as little as possible.

Enter the speculators.  Rather than me (the actual user) haggling with the producer directly (as is done in most business transactions), the speculator steps in and offers to buy as much oil as the guy can produce for $40.  I can’t do that because I only need one barrel a day but if the guy can make 1.3 or 1.6 barrels a day or he can add a new pump and make 2 barrels a day, knowing he has a buyer at $40, he will be thrilled (assuming the profits work selling 2Bpd at $80 vs 1Bpd at $50).
In a perfect world, the speculator is simply taking on some risk and will make the difference between the $40 they are paying and the $50 I am willing to pay and they will sell the excess for $40-50 and make a nice overall profit.

But then the speculators get greedy.  They know I NEED 1 barrel per day and perhaps there was some seasonality to pricing or natural fluctuation but all the speculator has to do is wait for the price to rise and then hold it there.  If supply is uneven, they can divert some to storage.  They are still buying it, creating demand but they are not delivering it so there is suddenly a “shortage” where none existed before.   As they accumulate more barrels in storage (say 100) they realize that getting the price up to $60 makes them not only $10 a day more per barrel they sell me,…
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A Reader Asks “How Did 558,000 People Lose Their Jobs When Only 190,000 Jobs Were Lost?”

A Reader Asks "How Did 558,000 People Lose Their Jobs When Only 190,000 Jobs Were Lost?"

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

Obama Here is an excerpt from today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Non-farm Payrolls report.

"The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Household Survey Data

In October, the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points…

The civilian labor force participation rate was little changed over the month at 65.1 percent. The employment-population ratio continued to decline in October, falling to 58.5 percent."

An astute reader noticed that the BLS press release says that 190,000 jobs were lost from payroll employment, but the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000. What’s up with that?

The BLS report consists of two independent data samples. BLS has two monthly surveys that measure employment levels and trends: the Current Population Survey (CPS), also known as the household survey, and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, also known as the payroll or establishment survey.

There is the "Establishment Survey" which is based on responses from a sample of about 400,000 business establishments, about one-third of total nonfarm payroll employment. The headline payroll number, the job loss of 190,000, is based on this data.

Then there is the "Household Survey" which is a statistical survey of more than 50,000 households with regard to the employment circumstances of their members, which is then applied to the estimates of the US population to obtain the unemployment number. This survey was started in the 1950′s and is conducted by the Census Bureau with the data being provided to BLS. It is from the household survey that more detailed information is obtained about employment statistics within population groups like gender and age, wages, and hours worked. It is this study that is responsible for the unemployment rate of 10.2%.

So which survey is correct? Neither. The truth is somewhere


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Wonderland Markets: Part I and II

Here’s the long answer to a question regarding Phil’s thoughts on which way the market is going. – Ilene

Wonderland Market 

The Queen of Hearts, 1999 (oil on canvas)

By Phil at Phil’s Stock World (in comments)  

Market direction – Interesting that this is what’s on your minds as it’s what’s on my mind too.   What is real and what is not?  Keep in mind that when the market was down 50% in March, that was not real either.  You can go back and read all my posts back then, but the gist of my arguement was, short of annihilating a good portion of the global population, the global GDP is very unlikely to fall below $40Tn (down 20%) so anything beyond that is, by definition, an overreaction. 

On the other hand, the run up to S&P 1,500 was itself overdone as we can’t just keep expanding insanely forever (outside of inflationary expansion).  There’s an interesting article in Scientific American this week asking if current economic assumptions inherently violate the laws of physics, something I used to rant about back in ‘07 but got bored with as the market went up and up anyway – despite my efforts to talk sense to it…  Oddly the chairman at Utah State is feeling my pain already, saying: ""Of course I’m trying to send a message - I just don’t expect there’s anyone out there to receive it." 

So we have a low that was too low coming off a high that was too high.  We have MASSIVE government stimulus and I not only don’t use the word MASSIVE lightly but MASSIVE is wholly inadequate to describe the level of stimulus in comparison to anything that has ever happened in the history of the world.  We have a runaway global money supply, the worst global unemployment since the great depression (and that didn’t end in 12 months you know) and pretend shortages of commodities, which is usually something that ENDS expansion, not kicks it off.  We have a dellusional population where 60% of the people surveyed believe their home prices have appreciated over the past 12 months while anyone who read this week’s housing reports can see that there is virtually not a single zip code in the united states that hasn’t lost 10%…

To say the media is uncritical is like saying my mom doesn’t think I suck.  This is not surprising when you consider…
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Zero Hedge

Whither Gold

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

The prophetic words of Antal Fekete in his now infamous 'essay' on Gold are as relevant now (perhaps more so) as they were when he first wrote them 15 years ago - especially as the Euro-zone migrates from lossening fiat-money to quasi-money (greek pharma bonds for instance). While summarizing this must-read discussion of mainstream economic orthodoxy's mis-teachings is impractical, his initial introduction sets the stage for what is to come: "The year 1971 was a milestone in the history of money and credit. Previously, in the world's most developed countries, money (and hence cred...



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Market Montage

Whitney Houston Dead at 48

Submitted by Mark Hanna

Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.

Damn.  Two (MJ and Whitney) of the big 4 of the 80s gone – Madonna and Prince remain.  Probably the most well known Star Spangled Banner ever…

Disclosure Notice

Any securities mentioned on this page are not held by the author in his personal portfolio. Securities mentioned may or may not be held by the author in the mutual fund he manages, the Paladin Long Short Fund (PALFX). For a list of the aforementioned fund's holdings at the end of the prior quarter, visit the Paladin Funds website at http://www.paladinfunds.com/holdings/blog

...

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Phil's Favorites

It's Well Past Time for Plan Z

It's Well Past Time for Plan Z

Courtesy of The Automatic Earth

Mario Draghi captured the utter ineptitude of him and every other Eurocrat out there when he said the following at today’s press conference in response to a question about a Greek exit: “To have a Plan B means defeat already. I am confident that all the pieces of this will fall in the proper places.”

Most 5-year old children in pre-school have already been told not to believe that they can always win and that “winning isn’t everything”, but Draghi & Co. still refuse to consider the possibility of failure even as it is staring them in the face. What’s really disturbing is that the stakes here are obviously much, much higher than they are o...



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Chart School

The Student Loan Debt Bomb

Courtesy of Doug Short.

Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.

It's interesting to watch some of the terms bandied about in headline news. For example, the LA Times headline reads S&P says student loan debt could be next financial bubble.

Next? Could Be?

What with the word "next"? Also what's with the words "could be"? Without a doubt student loans are in a bubble and have been for many years. The source of the problem, as it always is with financial bubbles, is cheap money, loans to nearly anyone, and in the case of student loans, no way to discharge the debt, even in bankruptcy.

From the article:

"Student-loan debt has ballooned and m...



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Sabrient

Sabrient Risers - 2/11/2012

Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisICABUYThe projected value for Empresas ICA is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.XBUYThe projected value for US Steel is still rising quickly even though past earnings have already improved significantly.FEICBUYProjected value continues to rise for FEI while long term increases in earnings growth are also becoming more widely expected.ASBCBUYMany analysts are expecting higher than previously expected long term growth from Associated Bancorp, and its near-term earnings outlook is also improving....

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Insider Scoop

Benzinga's M&A Chatter for Friday February 10, 2012

Courtesy of Benzinga.

The following are the M&A deals, rumors and chatter circulating on Wall Street for Friday February 10, 2012:

Actuant Acquires Jeyco Pty

The Deal:
Actuant (NYSE: ATU) announced Friday that it has acquired Jeyco Pty Ltd (“Jeyco”). Headquartered near Perth, Australia, Jeyco designs and provides specialized mooring, rigging and towing systems and services to the offshore oil & gas industry in Australia and other international markets. Additionally, its highly engineered products are used in a variety of applications for other markets including cyclone mooring and marine, defense and mining tow systems. Jeyco generates annual revenues of approximately $20 million.

Actuant shares closed at $27.33 Friday, a loss of 0.18% on average volume.

...

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ETF Selector

ETFs Skid On Greece (VGK, EWG, FXE, DIA, SPY)

Courtesy of John Nyaradi.

Greece was “saved” for less than 24 hours but now major ETFs around the world skid into the weekend on Greek fears

After wangling for a week or more, Greek took their new deal to the European Ministers meeting, only to have it promptly rejected and so as we go into the weekend, major global markets and ETFs have again hit the skids on Greece.

After two years of wangling, the European zone is demanding yet more and deeper cuts for Greece to qualify for the next round of bailout loans that will keep the country from going bankrupt on March 20th.

Major European and United States ETF responded negatively to the new developments:

SPDR Dow Jones Industrial ETF (NYSEARCA:...



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All About Trends

Mid-Day Update

Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Click here for the full report.




To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...

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Option Review

True Religion Falls Apart At The Seams After Earnings

 

Today’s tickers: TRLG, KR & IGT

...



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OpTrader

Swing trading portfolio - week of February 6th, 2012

Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current  trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).

We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options. 

Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.

To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here

Optrader 

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Stock World Weekly

Stock World Weekly: The Relentless Pursuit of Meaningless Metrics

NEW: Elliott and Ilene are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.

Here's the latest Stock World Weekly, called "The Relentless Pursuit of Meaningless Metrics."  

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IRA Strategy/Income Trader

Weekend Virtual Portfolio Update 1/30/2012

Here is a quick update of past trades and our current position. AA Money No trade this week as we wait for AA to settle. Phil remarked last week that AA seemed overvalued. In the meantime, it looks like we might have to roll our Feb 9 calls. Good thing we sold only 5 of them against our position. Last week P&L - 310.00 We lost ground last week, but we still have 11 months to sell premium! FAS Money Very good week for FAS Money as we benefited from the large amount of premium sold the previous week. We covered most of the shorts in advance of the Fed speech, but sold another set of options on Wednesday after the speech - 2 FAS calls that expired worthless on Friday, 2 FAS put that we are still holding and 2 FAZ put that we bought back for a profit on Friday. A late stick comparable to last week's almost gave us problems at the end of the day though! Last week P&L - $4277.00 IWM Money A decent week in this virtual portfo...

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Pharmboy

Biotech Investing for 2012

Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.

Finding new and exciting Biotech companies that target novel mechanisms is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Sure there are many companies working on cutting edge science, but investing in those companies to reap the rewards of their work is a very dangerous game.  More often than not, companies fail because the mechanism does not pan out, the compound(s) do not have pharmacokinetics (get into the body or last very long in the body), or an adverse event happens that knocks years off a development timeline.  In addition, the stock can be manipulated by market makers so investors don't know which way is up.  I approach investing in biotechs as a long term prospect.  I continue to like our current portfolio of biotech companies (join in chat for many of those plays), and we continually add/subtract shares and sell/buy options on ...



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