Today I saw an opportunity with NVDA. Last friday, it closed at $8.72 and this morning it started out in the low $9s. Earnings are coming up on the 6th, so we have a few more days until this stock gets in risky territory. The rest of the market seemed normal, so my prediction was that the stock was going to head down from $9. It has had a runup from the high 6s, so the chances of it going down from 9 instead of upwards from 10 are pretty high during normal market conditions.
I get the feeling that Apple is waiting to see how NVDA's earnings go and then there may be enough momentum to break past $110. Right now the fluctuation is between $105 and $110.
11/3/2008 NVDA COVER 1000 $8.7788
11/3/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $9.005
GAIN: $226.20
Monday, November 3, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
Day 13
It's good to be back. I was really tired this morning. I think the day off yesterday derailed my body from it's usual schedule.
I want to point out that Apple didn't shoot up today. Thank god. I hate seeing stocks going against the market for days, because it dramatically increases the risk of timing them. I stayed away from Apple today because I feel like it is watching me watch it. I want the dust to settle for a bit before I get back in bed with it.
My new favorite stock is NVDA. I also have learned that it is more sensitive to bad news than Apple. This may be slightly inaccurate. It is representative to usual Apple, but currently Apple has been defying gravity. So what I should be saying is that NVDA is representing the old Apple I like.
Today I took on risk because I was a little annoyed about missing yesterday. Yesterday I kept checking my phone and cringing whenever I saw an opportunity. I was thinking of getting setup so I can trade on my phone, but maybe that is too crazy.
Anyways, back to today's risk. You have a much better chance of predicting a stock movement after you have watched a significant gain or loss. So if in the first hour of the day, the stock shoots up 4%, chances are pretty damn good it will at least dip to 3% at some point in the day. The higher the initial percent, the higher chance you have of profiting on the zigzag. This does not apply around major announcements such as company earnings (as well as other company earnings which have relationships with the company you are watching.... example would be Nvidia saying they trippled their sales of graphic chips.... then you can probably guess Apple has something up their sleeve so Apple will probably go up), currency fluctuations, market conditions, and fed announcements.
So today I saw NVDA hanging out around $8.38. From then it shot up to $8.50. I put a short limit order for $8.60. It got triggered. Then it shot up to $8.80. I decided to then buy even more to dollar cost average. I now had 3000 shares at $8.76. Eventually it went into $8.90s, but I knew it was coming down. The market has been shooting up all week. Yesterday, was kind of flat and today we have the Friday evening scare where no one likes to be in the market, which almost always means the price goes down right before close. Eventually it went down and I was able to profit.
10/31/2008 NVDA COVER 3000 $8.6698
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 2000 $8.8202
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.60
GAIN: $231.00
I want to point out that Apple didn't shoot up today. Thank god. I hate seeing stocks going against the market for days, because it dramatically increases the risk of timing them. I stayed away from Apple today because I feel like it is watching me watch it. I want the dust to settle for a bit before I get back in bed with it.
My new favorite stock is NVDA. I also have learned that it is more sensitive to bad news than Apple. This may be slightly inaccurate. It is representative to usual Apple, but currently Apple has been defying gravity. So what I should be saying is that NVDA is representing the old Apple I like.
Today I took on risk because I was a little annoyed about missing yesterday. Yesterday I kept checking my phone and cringing whenever I saw an opportunity. I was thinking of getting setup so I can trade on my phone, but maybe that is too crazy.
Anyways, back to today's risk. You have a much better chance of predicting a stock movement after you have watched a significant gain or loss. So if in the first hour of the day, the stock shoots up 4%, chances are pretty damn good it will at least dip to 3% at some point in the day. The higher the initial percent, the higher chance you have of profiting on the zigzag. This does not apply around major announcements such as company earnings (as well as other company earnings which have relationships with the company you are watching.... example would be Nvidia saying they trippled their sales of graphic chips.... then you can probably guess Apple has something up their sleeve so Apple will probably go up), currency fluctuations, market conditions, and fed announcements.
So today I saw NVDA hanging out around $8.38. From then it shot up to $8.50. I put a short limit order for $8.60. It got triggered. Then it shot up to $8.80. I decided to then buy even more to dollar cost average. I now had 3000 shares at $8.76. Eventually it went into $8.90s, but I knew it was coming down. The market has been shooting up all week. Yesterday, was kind of flat and today we have the Friday evening scare where no one likes to be in the market, which almost always means the price goes down right before close. Eventually it went down and I was able to profit.
10/31/2008 NVDA COVER 3000 $8.6698
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 2000 $8.8202
10/31/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.60
GAIN: $231.00
Day 12
I was out of town this day and couldn't be active on trading. I'm going to count this as a $0 day rather than skip it. The stock market doesn't get a day off, so today was a missed opportunity.
GAIN $0
GAIN $0
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Fed Meeting Schedule
I found the schedule for fed rate meetings. These meeting dates don't guarantee anything, but should be known to have the ability to cause a market fluctuation. As you can see, they also appear to have unscheduled meetings. I don't have the experience, to know when these unscheduled events show up. If they show up after the meeting, then they may not help predict anything.
Anyways, this is another site that should be referenced.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
Anyways, this is another site that should be referenced.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
Prediction: Day 12
Before we get into tomorrow's prediction, I want to talk a bit about how today could have seriously been a disaster. I would have been in the negative today if it wasn't for the fact that scottrade wouldn't let me short.
I was lucky this time, but need to think through how to prevent this from happening again.
There was some external factor pushing Apple and companies related to it up, while the rest of the market was just acting normal. How can we catch this case? We need to look at pre-market for other stocks that follow Apple's usual trajectory. One of these is NVDA. Today NVDA was doing exactly what Apple was doing so we wouldn't have caught that.
Google, however was following the market trend today, rather than Apple. Normally, it is very similar. So if we looked at pre-market of Google, then we would have noticed that something was off.
The goal here is that we are trying to look for an indicator to prevent us from acting on our initial prediction, because something appears to be off balance.
With that being said, tomorrow just feels weird. A lot of stuff has happened in the past 2 days. The general trend still feels negative, so I am predicting that Apple will go back into the 90s at some point, however, I don't know when. We still have a lot of days left in the qtr, and now that this rate cut is over, where is all the good news? We need some good news or things will keep heading lower. However, I feel this burning in Apple to do just the opposite, but I don't think it will last long because eventually the bad news overcomes the hope during the waiting period for the next big announcement.
In summary, tomorrow feels very risky and I wouldn't do anything until I see how things are going. Today, I capatilized on sudden huge fluctuations, which always tend to go up a lot, then down a bit. So you can watch for those and profit there.
I was lucky this time, but need to think through how to prevent this from happening again.
There was some external factor pushing Apple and companies related to it up, while the rest of the market was just acting normal. How can we catch this case? We need to look at pre-market for other stocks that follow Apple's usual trajectory. One of these is NVDA. Today NVDA was doing exactly what Apple was doing so we wouldn't have caught that.
Google, however was following the market trend today, rather than Apple. Normally, it is very similar. So if we looked at pre-market of Google, then we would have noticed that something was off.
The goal here is that we are trying to look for an indicator to prevent us from acting on our initial prediction, because something appears to be off balance.
With that being said, tomorrow just feels weird. A lot of stuff has happened in the past 2 days. The general trend still feels negative, so I am predicting that Apple will go back into the 90s at some point, however, I don't know when. We still have a lot of days left in the qtr, and now that this rate cut is over, where is all the good news? We need some good news or things will keep heading lower. However, I feel this burning in Apple to do just the opposite, but I don't think it will last long because eventually the bad news overcomes the hope during the waiting period for the next big announcement.
In summary, tomorrow feels very risky and I wouldn't do anything until I see how things are going. Today, I capatilized on sudden huge fluctuations, which always tend to go up a lot, then down a bit. So you can watch for those and profit there.
External Factors
I learned yesterdays runup was related to Japanese Yen stabilization. That took me buy surprise. I haven't been paying attention to currencies, but clearly they can be a factor for market fluctuations.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=USDJPY
The good news is that this is right on the front of finance.google.com, so we don't need any additional sites to monitor.
Another thing causing a runup is anticipation for a fed rate cut in about an hour. I'm not sure if there is a schedule somewhere on when these cuts are possible. I have been bit by this before and I need to make sure I figure out when to anticipate this type of external factor on the market.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=USDJPY
The good news is that this is right on the front of finance.google.com, so we don't need any additional sites to monitor.
Another thing causing a runup is anticipation for a fed rate cut in about an hour. I'm not sure if there is a schedule somewhere on when these cuts are possible. I have been bit by this before and I need to make sure I figure out when to anticipate this type of external factor on the market.
Day 11
Well today was another interesting day. My advice yesterday was to watch out for Apple because something may be brewing due to the sharp rise. However, I said I still would short between $98 - $102.
This morning I tried to short, but scottrade said there were no more shares to short. I remember a month or so ago, when "naked" shorts were made illegal (something like that).
Anyways, this is kind of interesting because it means that you can't always short, unless your broker has shares to short. I need to look more into this.
So anyways I went back to bed and woke up 30 min later.
The market was level but Apple was shooting up. Some forum posts were saying that Cramer said to buy Apple. I'm not sure if I believe that. Sometimes what he says causes a fluctuation, sometimes it doesn't.
Anyways, Apple was up 6% after yesterdays 10%. Wtf is going on?
I have recently been following NVDA, which is a company that so far is mimicing Apple. They do video cards for computers (including macs). NVDA was up as well. I decided an additional 6% in about 30 minutes is a bit ridiculous. I shorted and covered 30 min later.
10/29/2008 NVDA COVER 1000 $8.6788
10/29/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.7601
10/29/2008 NVDA COVER 1000 $8.3188
10/29/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.5612
GAIN: $323.70
This morning I tried to short, but scottrade said there were no more shares to short. I remember a month or so ago, when "naked" shorts were made illegal (something like that).
Anyways, this is kind of interesting because it means that you can't always short, unless your broker has shares to short. I need to look more into this.
So anyways I went back to bed and woke up 30 min later.
The market was level but Apple was shooting up. Some forum posts were saying that Cramer said to buy Apple. I'm not sure if I believe that. Sometimes what he says causes a fluctuation, sometimes it doesn't.
Anyways, Apple was up 6% after yesterdays 10%. Wtf is going on?
I have recently been following NVDA, which is a company that so far is mimicing Apple. They do video cards for computers (including macs). NVDA was up as well. I decided an additional 6% in about 30 minutes is a bit ridiculous. I shorted and covered 30 min later.
10/29/2008 NVDA COVER 1000 $8.6788
10/29/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.7601
10/29/2008 NVDA COVER 1000 $8.3188
10/29/2008 NVDA SHORT 1000 $8.5612
GAIN: $323.70
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