And Here She Is

And here she is, the USS New York, made from the World Trade Center. Those liberal jackasses that run NYC can't (won't?) get anything rebuilt at the World Trade Center so the Department of Defense is picking up the slack.

She's The One

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has wowed me at her appearance on the Larry Kudlow show a few months back and I new Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty or Ridge were massive mistakes. She's quite a good speaker, direct, plain spoken and America (real America) is going to love her.

Game, Set, Match McCain/Palin win in a landslide 1980 style.

An Appropriate Repsonse to the Latest Jobs Report

600 Down, 11,999,400 to go.

LAUREL, Miss. (AP) - Federal officials say nearly 600 suspected illegal
immigrants were detained in a raid on a manufacturing plant in southern
Mississippi, making it the largest such sweep in the country.
A spokeswoman says more than 100 of those caught up in Monday's raid on Howard Industries were released based on humanitarian concerns, mostly because they have children.
Most of the rest were transferred to a federal Immigration and Customs
Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine 17-year-olds were transferred to the
custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The Mississippi raid was one of a series of recent high-profile crackdowns on illegal immigrants. In May, officials swept into the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa and detained 400 workers.

The original post over at Drudge Report included info that ICE was tipped off by a union organizer and that the workers cheered when the criminalians were marched off. Why wasn't management marched off also?

In related news:

WASHINGTON, Aug 28 (Reuters) - The number of U.S. workers filing new claims
for jobless benefits fell by 10,000 last week, government data on Thursday
showed, but remained at elevated levels indicating a weak labor
market.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits declined to
a seasonally adjusted 425,000 in the week ended Aug 23 from a revised 435,000 the prior week,
the Labor Department said. It was the lowest reading since the week of July 19.

So the immediate quota for ICE should be 425,000 . At this point, no American or legal immigrant should be without a job.

So what of this recession?

Going Long the Semis

I've taken up the challenge of several of my Investools instructors and laid down a trade strictly based on what I see on the chart and somewhat against my "gut." I see a little bounce trade on SMH, the Semiconductors Holders ETF. I'm buying NOV 08 29 Calls which are in the money with paw-lenty of time before THETA chews my butt up. Hmm.. maybe I should have bought OCTs but here goes nothing.

This is only papermoney but I take my paper account deadly seriously because until I can stoke it up ... I've prohibited myself from trading for real. I'm up about 5.2% in one month which I suppose isn't too bad.

Hail, Holy Comrade

Cosmological Confluence

A TFNN/thinkorswim confab represents for me a cosmological confluence of epic proportions. Tom O'Brien from Tiger Financial News Network and Tom Sosnoff, founder of thinkorswim, are having a webinar. See here for details.

These two firms sorta need each other. TFNN attracts quite an audience and I see the need for some education for some of the "Tigers." Some of the callers to Tom's show actually sound less experienced than me, and that's freaking inexperienced. On the flip side thinkorswim/Investools could stand to use some sort of media outlet.

I had a daydream today about a merger between these two entities. Tom O'Brien could continue his subscription newsletter the same way the folks at RedOption still sail their ship under the thinkorswim banner. thinkorswim/Investools could continue to pump out media like their Marketcast and/or their would be bloggers at Mytrade and add it to the amazing broadcasts streaming out of TFNN.

This education/investing/trading juggernaught could really give CNBC and Bloomberg a run for their money in the long run simply because all these folks are awesome. I see it as Technical Analysis for the Masses. Let CNBC have the monopoly on assclowns like ..... well you know who. Bloomberg is so stagnant it could suck the liveliness of a funeral.

And Yet the Box Remains

Until a few days ago I was confused by the higher lows traced by the tan line. Some thought it bullish, some claimed it to portent doom. Either way it all points to witching hour: tomorrow, options expiration Friday. I do believe, however, that this is the ole bear flag. My guru, Tom O'Brien, say we're going downtown!

I'm glad I grew the nads to close out of my SPY 130/132 bearish call vertical in my real money account last week for a small loss. Good ole Investools did that for me. Previously (in May/June) , I had just stood there like a deer in the headlights praying for the market to turn away from my precious $.36 credit verticals. Instead of taking a $.70 - $1.00 loss I discovered the roll button and doubled my losses the next month. How about them apples?

Its only when I got kicked in the face that I ponied up for some edu-MAH-cation. This self flagellation, posted to the world is quite necessary before posting on any winning trades.

Still In A Box

Still in a box even though my box needed a slight adjustment upward so as to coincide with a minor resistance line. It's interesting to see the SPY (a proxy for the SP500) crash through 10 and 30 day moving averages. On Friday she stopped just short of the 50 day moving average.

I still think the SEP 136/138 call spread was a good choice, it is going to take a massive upsurge through all kinds of resistance to get up there by SEP expiry.

In A Box

As a newb, I've been having grave difficulty trading this market profitably and I think more than a few professionals have been too. We're in a box, so one idea I had is to sell bearish vertical spreads at the top of the box and then consider sell bullish put spreads at the bottom. The white downward sloping lines at the top denote my bearish outlook (I'm unphased by the highter lows) and I'll post on that later.

Others have ommented elsewhere about the "lack of decision", "whip saw", "lack of conviction.

This is providing one hell of a education for would-be traders. In order to join an investools Memebers Group I was asked "Do you have an accountability parter." To that I answered "No." But maybe I'll hold myself accountable to the entire planet by blogging my trades. (Warning: there's no evidence that I have ever or will ever make any money in the stock market.)

The green circle denotes where I sold a 136/138 bearish call spread on the spy for $0.35. I also used the Investools/TOS market forcast oscillator to guide my decicion ...we'll see how that goes. In May/June I got smoked pretty bad with real money by selling bullish put spreads basically because I had no clue where the market was going. Hopefully, I can develop a clue this time around.

The Paris Hilton Rally

I'm calling this one the Paris Hilton - big deal for nothing. As a homework assignment in a stocks course my task was to watch the fed 2 year funds rate 5 minute chart at 2:15pm on Tuesday and then check out the SPX 5 minute chart and just watch the action. The funnt thing was that the 2 year Fed Funds rate wasn't really doing anything and the SPX took off like a rocketship. I didn't know what to make of this.

What is the catalyst for this meteoric rise, a 300 Dow Point day? I'm a neophyte and this just makes no sense. Slope of Hope called it the Seinfeld Rally (a show really about nothing.)

My call is that this baby is going down, she's gonna get back to where she belongs. I hope I'm right as I have a SPY 130/132 bearish call spread going on. I know I screwed up the entry a few weeks ago but overall .. there's no beef here.

How Much Is Too Much?

About a year ago while sitting on the couch on a Sunday morning about 5AM after a bout of insomnia. An extended infomercial came on from a company named INVESTOOLS. The stock market had piqued my interest ever since my mother had died and I discovered she had a ton of stock options from Whole Foods Markets. Well, the options never got above water (I think they were 45 calls) as Whole Foods Markets slunk to new lows and then their creepy CEO was caught pumping the stock on Yahoo Finance.

Some time later I resolved to take the free Investools course, attended, signed up with T hinkorswim but said no thanks to the $1200 stocks course. Six months later Investools dropped the price to $295 and it was kinda funny because for months I thought for sure the price of the Foundations Stock course was $295 x 6 monthly payments, that the price was concealed in a sly way.

After thinking about the power of trading in options, I resolved to spend the $1800 thinking it was worth it anyway. I called Investools and the guy was like, "no way, it's $295 flat."

I declared, "Well, then Lee Barba (CEO of Investools) is insane because the course is worth way more."

My trading had become quite active by then as the insane twin of Investools, Thinkorswim, had thrown on a FREE options course and I was making money hand over fist selling vertical spreads on the SPY, DIA and IWM.

But this question: How Much Is Too Much? Is not about $1800 courses slashed to $295 or about the balance in my brokerage account (later reduced by assinine trades resulting from lack or training.) Its this: How much thinking about the market/about trading per day is too much?

In this amazing webinar by Tim Knight on Fibonacci ratios a few days ago, Tim quipped, "I had better stop here because I could talk about this until 1:30 am." Somehow I knew exactly what he was talking about. I could literally listen to Tim, take Investools classes, seminars, chats, virtual coach sessions and trade room capstones 20 hours per day.

For me, its been about 4 hours a day on this stuff in between a full time job and a full time family. On the markets, on trading there can never be enough.

Oh Yeah, And Another Thing

A few people have wandered into this site via various means so I better fess up that I have a habit of going to deep blogging hibernation followed by an extreme profusion of activity. Let the activity commence.

Better Than Peanut Butter and Jelly

Had a funny episode of synchronicity today when my brokerage firm ran an ad on my favorite radio show. Previously, these two things that I slavishly follow in a cult-like way had been separate, but now they are flowing into one.

Thinkorswim is a really great brokerage through whom I stepped into Investools (which is kinda backwards because Investools bought Thinkorswim and kinda expected its students to use the brokerage.) For me, Thinkorswim/Investools are not just vendors through which I purchase brokerage and education services, they are my way of life.

Tom O'Brien is this far-out cat from 1970s who does this wild version of technical analysis to analyze the markets. Check out his book in my Amazon banner. I'm going to order his book soon. Tom has some really great associates like Larry Pesavento who, in the middle of discussing Fibonacci ratios on international forex markets will jump into right astrology. He also has a book on Amazon (to be loaded in my banner at a later date.)

So, now Thinkorswim is a major advertiser on the TFNN. I'm addicted to both, and it would be funny if these two entities flowed together in even a minor way. I know already that if the they click, Tom O'Brien will really push them on his show because he does the same thing for www.carinsurance.com (which has the most annoying radio ads in the history of radio advertisement.)

It will be fun if those zany guys from Thinkorswim make some fun radio ads for Tom's show.