One nice thing about having multiple bloggers in one place, is that when you don’t have time to write anything, the blog still stays active. Thanks, everyone!

I’ve not much felt like blogging this week, since my social calendar has been pretty full. I’ve got yet another party to go to this weekend, in fact. It’s been fun, but kind of exhausting. And, there really hasn’t been much to blog about anyway. The markets have been ugly, so I haven’t made many trades.

I did make two trades today, which were both winners. That may be a good sign that things are returning to normal. We’ll see about that, Monday, I guess!

Even when I don’t blog, you can still catch me talking most days on wallstreak and jaiku for semi-realtime info on what I’m up to. When possible, I call the trades I’m considering beforehand, so others have a chance to chime in, or join in the profit. (of course, if you don’t trade exactly like me, then obviously your results may vary). Today I called my trade in FDO, and a play on AKAM that I didn’t take because I was already done for the day, for instance.

I’ve adjusted the nightly scan for stocks that may make new 30-Day highs or 30-Day lows (which you can see on my scans page). The list was just too damn big every night. So, last night I thought for a minute about which entries I tend to disqualify right off. I thought of two criteria, which I adjusted:

• Upped the avg volume to 450k from 250k. I was usually automatically passing on stocks doing 200k on the day they show up in the scan, anyway.
• Demanded that the stock’s total range over the last 20 days to be at least 6%. I may raise this further in the future. The idea of the scan is to find stocks taking a rest during a good move. Too many scan candidates had been on the right side of their moving averages, but still essentially moving sideways.

Last night, that cut the scan down to about 2/3rds its normal size. A nice improvement. Tonight the list looks better as well, and I’ve posted the new version. It will be the version I use going forward, as well.

Jaiku Updates

I’m not promising to do this in any timely fashion, but most days I plan to make an entry on my jaiku stream pointing out which of my scan candidates I plan to focus on that day. I’ve been making the entry usually before the markets. Other traders on jaiku are also posting their candidates. It’s really great… check it out if you haven’t!

Web2.0 users are a fickle, unfaithful bunch… Initially, I was a little annoyed at the sudden interest in jaiku. After all, I love twitter and am patiently waiting for stability and features to come along. But, having played with jaiku for a couple days, I’m considering switching.

The two services are extremely similar, but jaiku has a few more features. The “killer” feature is commenting. Unlike twitter, you can comment on jaiku entries. Twitter-ers already do their best to emulate this via “@user: blah” formatted updates. But, that is far from perfect.

Other things I initially didn’t like about jaiku:

• it encourages you to put all your feeds in your update stream. I thought this would get old awfully fast. After all, I use a news aggregator to read my rss feeds… why would I want to use jaiku as a second-rate newsreader? But, it turns out that when I add someone as a friend, I can select which of their feeds I want to follow, if any. Brilliant!
• no mobile or IM interface like twitter has. I bet these are coming, as there is an API. But, if not, I can simply use twitter for my mobile updates, and these updates will be sent to my jaiku page via RSS. And people can still comment on it. Cool!
• no way to manage comments, that I could see. This seems to have been addressed now, as I have the option to delete comments on my updates. problem solved (except no way to ban an obnoxious user, but I bet that will eventually show up, too).
• no auto-update like twitter does. Or should I say did… Twitter went from 2 minute updates to 10, to not even mentioning it anymore… So, in both cases I’m hitting refresh a lot.

So, I am considering making the switch, even though there are good chances that twitter feels the pressure and rolls out these same features in short order. What to do?? Well, starting tomorrow I’ll be making all my web-based updates on jaiku, to see how it works out. Feel free to join me! Hey, a lot of you ended up liking twitter, no? Give jaiku a try… I am at http://richardtodd.jaiku.com/.

I’m suffering through an internet outage right now. That means no Buzz Out Loud, no twittering, and no scans. I’m typing this on my blackberry, which is a powerful device, but it can’t run my market scans.

I’ll be dumping all my VZ stock as soon as I get reconnected, so you might want to short it in front of me, while you can ;-) (since I am not an investment advisor, you should probably laugh at that suggestion and go long instead) (especially since I seem to recall that the telecom index was one of the few up sectors today)

Wednesday Update

Called VZ this morning, and they say it’s a Dallas-wide outage that they’re working on. From my trusty Blackberry it appears I’m missing out on a fair amount of action today.

So, I’ve given the house servants the day off, and am doing my own shopping for once. And even getting the oil changed in my car! It feels good to be out among everyday folk. I’ve been considering putting a miniature village on the eastern lawn, so that I can “get away” like this whenever I want.

Hopefully by this evening I’ll be back online. I would go trade from Starbucks but I can never remember my T-mobile hotspot password….

A video about the responsibilities of running a website:

Please, no hatemail, I’m just poking fun at the issue, from the perspective of someone with rather loose standards (I’m finding out). I just thought I’d let you know why I’ve censored the pics that were already up, and why no more are coming, at least for now.

It’s impossible to please everyone when you run a website, so I don’t try. I personally enjoyed the environment at John (Tapeworm)’s old blog, and am more than happy to host a new incarnation of it here, whenever he wants. That means high-quality posts about the markets, mixed in with pictures ‘of interest.’ :-) John’s old site was one of the first (if not the first) to use that combination, as far as I know. I don’t think the imitators have quite captured the quality of the original.

So, a few pictures went up over the last couple weeks. I imagined some existing MtM readers might not like that, and was prepared to field complaints. But, I didn’t get any (maybe he did, dunno). Then, a case I did not foresee arose, though, where the other MtM authors started telling me they did not like the pics. One even said he would leave the site, to avoid being associated with them.

So, in order to keep the peace here, John has decided to stop posting the pics. I’m kinda torn about that decision, because the idealist in me would almost rather see more pics, to wave the proverbial finger at the idea of censorship. That’s just my personality…

Even though I’m being sarcastic here, there’s no hard feelings from me, and I certainly respect everyone’s personal standards for decency. It’s tough when people with different standards need to co-exist, though. It pretty much means we all have to adhere to the moral code of whoever in the group is most restrictive. So, I’m just poking fun at the issue. A website is too insignificant to get upset about.

Watch this post's video on Youtube

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This may or may not be good news. After taking a sabbatical, I am back to posting at MTM. Part of my hiatus was due to the fact that I was developing my futures trading system. The other part can be revealed now, but the news is not so good. I (aka King of the ‘Burbs) lost out to Shamrock on The White Rapper Show. It looks like I will have plenty of time for juvenile posts. If Richard gives the ok, I will post some pics that may be of interest.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I keep getting bored with the look of the site… I changed it all up in January, and now I’m changing it all up again. I’ll try not to break the site as I go, or at least have something stable by Monday.

This time, I upgraded to Wordpress 2.1.2, which should be transparent to all of you. I switched to a different base theme, and am still making changes to it. The basic ideas this time around are:

• A less busy look.
• You can comment on some pages now, as well as posts (like the one on books, or sites I like, etc)
• You can see the full posts on the front page. I got tired of the abbreviated front-page posts.
• Less ads. Right now, no ads. I’m thinking of making the ads contingent on the length of the posts… they don’t bother me when they’re in a long article, but when someone posts two sentences, it’s almost hard to find them among all the ads.
• Fewer categories, but adding tags. Over the next few days I’m going to drop some categories, but add tags to posts. I’ll put a tag cloud in the sidebar. I think the categories will be:
  • Trades: covering trades (duh!)
  • Articles: posts about some aspect of trading
  • Meta: posts about the blog
  • Markets: posts about interesting stocks, and general market observations
  • Reviews: a review of a book, website, service, product, etc.
  • Performance: week in review, month in review, etc… trading stats
  • Misc: everything else

  In general, a post will go in one category. Seems simpler. We’ll see… Tags will be where you can browse for posts that touch on certain keywords or topics, regardless of which category they are filed under.

I haven’t made any notable trades in the last week or so, which is getting annoying since I would like to make some money in February! I’m just not seeing a lot of opportunities right now. Take today, where most breakouts I saw ended up failing really quickly. But, it’s best to wait these times out, than to force a trade.

I’m trying out Twitter and have added their badge over on the sidebar of the blog’s front page. It’s basically like a microblog where you just log what you are doing/thinking/feeling at the moment. You can update it from IM, or mobile phone, as well as their web page. It’s got all the standard “social” friend-adding features that every site has nowadays. Seems similar to these tumblogs that are starting to crop up everywhere , but with the “status” focus. Whatever. If Twitter becomes a habit, I’ll be mentioning what stocks I am stalking during trading hours, and who knows what else. I think they have feeds etc. if your inner stalker wants to subscribe to my status.

I haven’t made an article in a couple weeks, and need to do that… I’ve been spending my free time learning about IB’s TWS API, since I am doing a StockTickr add-on for TWS, and have also been doing some custom TWS programming for a fellow blogger. So, that’s been eating up some time.

I have a swing-trading type of scan that is starting to look promising enough to post to movethemarkets. I haven’t made any trades off it yet, but the ones I’m watching would have made February a very nice month. We’ll see if it holds up to more time. The idea would be to trade these ideas via Options (which, I realize, I also need to start posting about! always more things for me to do!).

Only 7 of my stocks are keeping up with QQQQ, in terms of relative volume. If I wanted to watch 7 symbols, I’d trade futures ;-) Though the nasdaq saw some morning selling action, it’s back basically flat now. The dow is sort-of going up, with its TRIN starting to drift down in concert with it. But, the bottom line is, I did not get enough sleep last night, and this is not enough action to keep me awake. I’m too conservative to place bets on the FED aftermath. So, it looks like I’m taking the day off. Not a very exciting way to end the month, but it was a pretty good month for me regardless.

I do like QuoteTracker, I think. I am already addicted to trendline alerts (scottrade only has price alerts), so I can get notified when a stock breaks a trendline. Trendline alerts helped me find one of my scalps yesterday. Very nice.

I am also seeing that the registered version has an API, that would allow me to program it similar to the way that TWS allows. So, finally, I have free access to a program that can get me streaming real-time quotes. WITHOUT changing brokers. And I could have had it all along, if I had known! This means, hopefully in the next couple months, I will be looking at charts of my own custom indicators, and working on ways that I can auto-detect patterns like the box play, etc. I think at this point, the main thing holding my profits back is my ability to find the plays I want to take in time.

I read a short book about the TRIN last night, written by the creator of the TRIN. So, that should be pretty definitive. :-) I didn’t know how people were going about applying the TRIN to multi-day timeframes–I thought it was mainly for us daytraders. So, that was interesting. Most of the intra-day stuff was material I already knew. Still, it was a fast read, and I enjoyed it. I have a couple more things to say about the TRIN, but not until I am more rested. Maybe this weekend I will write something up.

I’ve also started reading another one of the Bulkowski books on chart patterns, and I’m finding it very entertaining so far.

I just realized via a post on uglychart that I can use QuoteTracker as my charting software for free, since I happen to have an old Ameritrade account lying around. That may be great news for me, since I spend too much energy fighting with Scottrade’s platform (and their occasionally wrong charts!). I wonder if I can set it up to get quotes from Ameritrade, and place orders through scottrade? If not, I can just enter orders through scottrade’s platform. No big deal. I’m going to play with it this weekend! Thanks, Ugly!

Great… one more thing I want to get done this weekend… it’s amazing how fast things pile up! I’ve got so many articles I want to write, now that I’ve been staring at options stuff for a week! I hope you’ll all enjoy it. Between that and some StockTickr work I’ve been promising Dave for a while, and some IB TWS API investigation I’m doing, not to mention all the binge drinking I have planned, something’s going to have to give :-)

Secondly, I wanted to point out the Trade 4 Cash blog, to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. I think this trader’s style is interesting, and quite a bit different that what most of us day/swing-traders do. That’s why I tried to convince him more than once that what he really wanted to do was contribute here. I think he would have been a great addition and contrast for Move the Markets, but it just wasn’t meant to be. So, until I can get him to change his mind, check out his site. Even if you don’t end up following his trades, you will probably still find some of the weekly articles interesting (such as this one about how some of his systems do better without stops).

If I get anything written this weekend, then I’ll see you then. Otherwise, have a great weekend and let’s finish off January deep in the green next week! I’m going on 10R so far in January, which in risk:reward terms is my biggest month ever, I think.

Ever have one of those days where you keep thinking to yourself “man, none of my stocks are moving”… and then you realize you’ve been monitoring a screenshot of your platform by mistake? :-) I don’t think I’ll put on any trades today…. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.

I’ve been taking snapshots of my options quotes at times that I think are interesting for certain stocks. I really want to get a feel for how they move, and I don’t have charts of options available through my broker. I haven’t really gone back and reviewed them much, but I can tell already that it is a mysterious and complicated world.

Take the AMGN puts today. I thought, maybe if AMGN closes weak, I’d look to buy some puts monday after any buying pressure in the morning plays itself out. As of around 1:30PM or so, the stock was at 71.21. The Feb 75 puts had 3.90 on the ask. Which means they are basically entirely intrinsic value. I think, well, maybe that’s normal since they’re in the money and it’s nearly February. But, isn’t volatility supposed to be a factor, and isn’t AMGN making a big swing right now? Warning sign (since it confuses me… not since I think I know enough for this to warn me about anything specific).

Then, to confuse me even more, I see that the March 75 puts also had 3.90 on the ask. So, not only can I get Feb puts without paying any kind of premium, I can get March puts without paying any kind of premium. I have no idea what this means, but whenever something looks like a free lunch, I assume someone smarter than me is around the corner waiting to hand me the bill.

Anyway, I certainly find situations like this interesting. Hopefully I’ll feel more knowledgeable about all this sooner rather than later.

[EDIT: if you want to know why I got no sleep, it's because I finally had enough comment spam that I had no choice but to do something about it. I'm not a fan of the filters, and I'm not a fan of captchas. So, I've opted to change my copy of wordpress's internals. I think I've mucked with it enough that any generic wordpress-attacking bot won't work anymore. If someone wants to spam me badly enough that they'll write custom code to attack move-the-markets, then I think they deserve to get through! Of course, I'll still just delete those comments in a moderation queue, so they won't win no matter what...].

Since I got a request for one, I’ve put together an RSS feed of the market scans I publish here. You can subscribe to it at this location. The link is also on the scans pages themselves. Let me know if you have any problems with it… it’s kinda hacked together but it does validate, and works for me in google’s feed reeder.

From now on, all the scans I post will be on pages that I update in-place. They are available through the “Stock Market Scans” button at the top of the page. The scan pages can be bookmarked and checked at will. Also, I’m trying to stop producing repetitive posts that no one will want to read a week from now. This way, the scans are taken out of the stream of the normal blog posts.

If you wouldn’t mind, could you all go to http : // legendaryportfolios . blogspot . com (sorry, no link… I don’t want search engines to find them through me!), and look at the bar at the top, and click “Flag” to flag it as objectionable content? It’s not hard to see that this site is trying to rip me off by putting my content up with their ads. Luckily, I think their adsense account has been terminated, since their ads do not appear right now.

It seems I can fax some DMCA complaint forms to google and try to get them to take the site down, but it would be nicer and easier if they noticed it themselves via a whole bunch of “flags” on the site. In the very least they might keep the site from being indexed… since multiple sites with identical content hurts my search rankings, etc…

I found the site because I was getting periodic traffic from it… if any of you notice other sites with copies of my material (hopefully less blatant than this!) I’m always interested in knowing about it. Thanks!

[EDIT: I've added some code to redirect hotlinked images to a spam warning... let me know if I overdid it, and you see the warning image on this site!]

Several market blogs I used to follow died in 2006, and I thought I’d give them a mention here, to put them to rest. In many cases, it was sudden infant blog death syndrome, as they were also started in 2006. In some cases, the blogs may not be technically dead, but they sure haven’t bothered to post in a while.

Maybe more died, and I’ve already forgotten them. Some that I do remember appear to be on the ropes, but if they posted as recently as mid-November I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Shameless Self-Promotion
If you have a sickly blog, why not make this list bigger next year and kill it? You can post here instead… just ask! Blogthanasia is a compassionate choice that you can make with pride in several situations. Such as: you’re tired of maintaining or paying for it, or you don’t want to put the effort into building a readership, or you only want to make posts occasionally. It looks like I’m about to have 3 contributors, which I think is really cool.

If I Threw a Funeral and Nobody Came?
I’ve often wondered what would happen if I suddenly died (other than my cats eating my remains, and people claming that I wiped out my account because I focused on risk rather than dollars). Okay, maybe saying “often wondered” is an overstatement; I don’t sit in a dark corner and dwell on it, or anything. But, there’s really no good mechanism to post a farewell post so people know what’s up. I guess maybe I could tell a friend how to write a post here, but that’s kind of morbid. Now that I have contributors posting so much great content, it might be a long time before anyone even notices I’m not posting! Oh well, I guess you’ll have to be left in suspense.