Fishing For Points

Today was a day for scalping the Russell 2000 E-mini. Objective was to get in quick and get out. We're still in the post-holiday volume, so I knew I should decrease my contract size to 5, instead of 10. Today's volume was approximately. 58,728 contracts traded, and the average daily volume 187,000 contracts according to CME.

I had a net gain of 3.58 points.




Nothing too exciting today. When I'm not trading in the Futures market I tend to take a glance at my old 50 stock trade screen I used to trade from each day, and I just think to myself, that is seems much easier to watch 1 chart, with MACD, Exponential Moving Average, and Stochastic.

Check out the panic selling in Telik, Inc. (Public, NASDAQ:TELK) down 70% today. Does this bother anyone to know that someone might have to 2nd mortgage their house to cover the losses in this stock for missing Phase III clinical trials on a lack of evidence to help cancer patients? Sheesh. I hope I never have to worry about a market I'm in, crashing 70% of my investment.



Also, I'm taking a 1 month test drive of Phil's Stock World & Options Recommendations. I've been reading his blog for quite some time now, and he's very knowledgeable, legit, and I love his market commentary. He had a average gain of around 80% gains in his realized option gains. He also had a 1400% winner in one option. I will keep an update of the progress and success I'm having with his website. It's $40 a month, and with winners like those, I couldn't refuse.

Can't Wait For the New Year & All that the Future Holds,
-CalTrader

Apple Computer Puts Up 183%

Hedge Fun!

I've been hedging my long term positions, one of which is Apple Computer (AAPL). The idea of buying Put options is to buy the strike price at a higher price in which the stock is currently trading so when the stock goes down, you profit from the fall. You must remember that you still are Long shares of the stock, because one would be long term bullish, short term bearish, and the idea is to protect your initial investment from short term losses. Your Put Options contracts lock in your specified sell price for however many shares you would like to have covered, based on the amount of contracts you bought. Let's review my trade, and chart.

I bought the DEC 2006 Put on APPLE COMPUTER INC at $90.00 for $1.20 a contract.

Apple's Chart:



I think this is just a short term breakdown, Apple has been ridiculously overbought by every mutual fund, and hedge fund manager in the universe to "window dress" their portfolio's for the year end preview of their % figures they've gained. The Stochastic Indicator clearly show's the stock has been Overbought for over a month now, without breaching the 80 level which would signal selling and weakness. I hope this gives insight as to how I trade. I like using techinical terms, and never understood a single one of them until I started reading other blogs and sat down to due my own research and find my style of trading. I'm still on a personal adventure to further my knowledge in the options world, and so far, it's paid off quite nicely. Icing on the cake.

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section!

-CalTrader

Good Morning

News UpDate
09:00am ET Dow , Nasdaq , S&P : [BRIEFING.COM] S&P futures vs fair value: +4.4. Nasdaq futures vs fair value: +7.0. The stage remains set for the cash market to open on an upbeat note as investors continue to rally around evidence that the economy is not slowing as much as expected. Throw in an analyst upgrade on Dow component Verizon Communications (VZ) and Bear Stearns raising their price target on tech bellwether Apple Computer (AAPL) to $100 from $94 and it appears buyers will pick up where they left off a day earlier recouping more of Monday's sell-off. Nasdaq at... NYSE Adv/Dec 0/0... Nasdaq Adv/Dec 0/0.

Anticipation

Dear Readers,
I just wanted to point out that there is possibly a new Financial/Investment/Stock Trading series in the works. If you haven't heard yet, the producers of the popular "Entourage" HBO show are looking to create a show that deals more with young Wall Street investors making $40-$60 million dollars a year. Great Idea! as this would be the ideal time to release a show with the market at it's all time highs. There is currently a show called, "Wall Street Warriors" but is only available on HDTV's Mojo, channel (paid subscription). However, if you'd like, you can check out, (4TV) for a free glimpse of the weekly show, under HDTV Channel 1, Sunday's at 10pm. This new show will re-enact some real-life trading situations with a comical twist. I am very excited to see such a show, as a trader I'm always thrilled to get into the life of another highly successful trader, so see how they work, operate, and daily routines. Aren't you?

How did the 2nd Richest man in the World start out?

He bought a pin ball machine at age 12 for $25 and put it in a barber shop. Within 3 months he saved up enough to buy 3 more pin ball machines. This man is Warren Buffet.

As young college students we should all be constantly searching, thinking, and imagining what we would like to do to make money. In my opinion there is a market for anything, you just need to get there first. Beanie Babies, baseball cards, even putting old things on ebay are good examples of different types of markets. I for example found out that some people were in the market for 3 Letter Screen Names on AOL Instant Messenger. So what did I do? I obtained as many as I could and sold them for Profit. Sounds Crazy? But it worked..$125 per screen name, not bad eh?

I have many more insights, thoughts, and investing blogs on the way...

I appreciate any comments..


"We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy, and to be greedy only when others are fearful."
-Warren Buffet (2nd Richest Person in the World)