I made some mistakes early on today. Call it lack of sleep. Call it ego. Call it “Martha”, for all I care–it sucked! But, I finished the day strong and made some money! That’s all that matters.
And check out the news clip from that fateful Monday in 1987 over on Howard’s Blog. That was neat to see, since I was 10 years old and completely uninterested when it actually happened. They sure took it calmly!
At some point in that coverage, they point out that the TRIN was at 6.44, as if it’s just another piece of data. To contrast that, I remember during the mini-correction we had in late Feb 2007, I had CNBC on. There was a reporter on the floor of one of the exchanges pointing out that the TRIN was close to 2 as if it were a major problem!
August 6th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I was actually there, sitting in front of the screen.
I remember coming into the office totally hung over. As the day went on, the ticker tape (yes, we had ticker TAPE) was so late that no one had any idea of the actual carnage.
The quote machine was configured to handle two integers and two zeros. It went from -99.99 back to zero to -99.99 so many times, I was unable to keep track of how many times cycled through.
Teresa
August 6th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I was at Silicon Graphics, and we hadn’t been public for a year yet, I think. I remember everyone thinking the world had ended, and our stock options were worthless, and they would never be worth a dime. This was the same comment made when most of the early crew was at Netscape when it was bought by AOL. (Un-related really but connected in my memory because of the stock). Most of us needed wheel barrels for our money, eventually, but at the time it was over.
- TraderD
August 6th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I “Martha’ed” this morning too. Threw away 1.7R on four losing trades. Then StreetSmack came to the rescue, and I made a 5R scalp in 8 minutes! I was floored–that guy is incredible. I’ll detail the trade tomorrow.
Good job pulling your trading out of the spiral today, Richard. Your “Keep Swinging” article has run through my mind a lot lately and helped me pull out of downward spirals myself lately :)
August 7th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Awwwww, 10! And I was there babysitting you. I recall it all so vividly.
Didn’t I make steak for dinner?
August 7th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
@Teresa: I also sometimes come into the “office” totally hung-over… I must be on the right track! :-) yeah, it was funny to see the end of the video, where they are talking about “as far as we can tell, we closed at …”. It must have been crazy.
@TraderD: I remember when SGI made some of the coolest computers available. I really wanted one, but by the time I could afford them they were getting to be a little janky. Something went very wrong at that company.
@Prospectus: You are doing great!
@TG: yes, it was steak, but you withheld dessert until I found you an undervalued stock. Thank goodness you brought some IBD back-issues with you, since we didn’t have an internet connection!