How fitting with the email reply you sent me. Up $250 on an $1800 account YTD. Not a bad start. Thanks Jeff and have a good weekend!

Wannabe,

Thanks for the info, friend.

Peace,

Jeff and other OAs,
Thank you very much for all your time and effort in teaching and helping us to become a better trader,

Wanna Bee,

My apologies for the misspelling :)

Have a good one,

Sledge

Sledge,

No worries. Good luck with your trades.

Jorge, I guess some here don't know any Spanish. (There were a few more posts after you announced clean cups!) :)

Doug, Have you tried switching to "Line" charts instead of bar charts or candles? Sometimes that helps me to draw my lines when things don't seem so clear.

Today wasn't a good day, but it wasn't a bad day either. Gave back some of what I made yesterday, got stopped out of EOG but took half my profits in VMC which more than made up for that.

Jeff, thank you....you deserve a break. Hope you have a great unplugged weekend. I'm off to bang on the drums.

Jeff,
Beat you to the punch. Catherine has always been a proponant of doing goals. We used to go away for a week and set our goals by the pool with a Margharitta or two but after "More Margharittas!!!" ten years in a row, it seemed like a different setup was in order. We now do our goals Jan 1. I missed my main trading objective from last year with all the tumultuousness (look it up) in the markets... but it has made me a better trader (a generic goal, I realize) and I believe will have made this years goals entirely atainable.

I'm pissed that I wasn't around at the end of the day to bail on EOG. I will get out my magic beads and hope for a bounce on Monday. There are a couple I should have got out of too, as they have brought me paper riches that I need to convert into the cash cow my grandmother always told me I should own.

Good weekend to all, and to all a good night.

Krystal,

Hah! At least someone got it!

Doji,

I see the downtrending channel on CYT you described. If you do use that channel then you're right, there's another couple of points left before hitting the lower part of the channel. I'm just not as creative when I draw my lines. Channels bother me too and not because NVDA burned me. I'm not bitter about NVDA so it's okay. It's a shame to see NVDA crash and burn today though. No really, it is.

Krystal,
Thanks for the suggestion of using line charts...i've been playing around with that and it seems to clear out the noise from the candlesticks.

One question, The Murphy TA book says to use the wick...switching to line charts to create trendlines will only use the closing prices....what gives?

Thanks.

Thanks Jeff. I will have something to do this weekend. Re-draw...I am not far off on most of my charts but I like perfection.

Just looking AIRM....I think it might be time for it go down more. It didn't get hammered today..unusual for sure.

AIRM....I also meant to point out the increasing volume over the last 4 sessions.

Today was rough, and not a good 1st week for me. However,it's only the 1st week, so much time and opportunities to correct the butt kicking I took today!

One of my goals is to trade the downside as well if not better than the way I trade the upside of the market.

Here's to a very successful 2008.

Here's to ya Sarah! Good Luck.

Past two days have been the best trading days ever. I have nearly doubled my account. Ready to move!

Jorge, NVDA puts last week helped me get there today.

Last year I lost a lot of money but learned alot. Well worth it. This year I will "try" to follow my rules. Mainly rules about getting out of bad trades.

I love 2008 already.

Jeff,
I know what broken support means. The NASDQ broke through my 2 yr. support line 2,525 today. I have drawn the next support line 2,450. The DOW is sitting near my drawn support 12,730 as well as the SPX, support 1405 and closing price near 78.6% fib line. My question is what does your crystal ball say? Until the SPX is broken with more down trending volume, I want to be aware of a possible bounce come Monday or sometime next week. Seems like there could be a lot of value buys out there.

I did close out some calls today with small profits and a couple of puts; perhaps too early. But, I can always reenter these stocks when the next signal comes. Afterall, it isn't a profit or a loss until the trade is closed.

Thanks again for your watchlists because I do incorporate some of your ideas into about half of my trades.

Can anyone recommend a real time quote and charting service not affiliated with an online broker?

I am wondering if anyone has ever used esignal, quotestreaming.com or iqc.com or another they could recommend.

JB,
Jeff and a few other on this blog turned me on to Prophetcharts.net. I subscribed (silver level) and it is the best ever. Everything you need in a charting software. You pay an extra $1 per month for the real time quotes.

I would recommend going ahead and biting the bullet with at least the Silver Level membership.

TOS customers have access to prophetcharts.net for free.

I hope this helps.

Interestingly... prophetcharts.net redirects to Investools.com

Not that it matters to me... since I'm riding on the "Guest" coat-tails of my mother's InvT PhD membership...

I just thought it might be something different.

But lets just say that I wasn't... since I'm also on a live TOS, would I be able to log into the InvestTools site using my TOS credentials?

chris and catherine

congratulations
would you elaborate on your success
not necessarily what options (unless you care to) but how many positions made up the 50%
how did you control your risk?
thanks

( from MON Appétit)
My first three days of 2008 have my account up 25% with only 50% invested. I say this not to brag (well... OK I'm bragging a bit) but to prove to anyone who cares to listen, that it is possible to recover from a dramatic loss without going crazy and taking unnecessary risks.

I

Jeff, first time comments ... just found you a week ago. I am new InvTools PHD student and find your blog to be the BOMB ! Real good stuff, thanks for being here for all these cool people. I tested your KBH put and success, I am here to learn, keep it up. FYI .. put your profits to good use, Offspring in Australia MARCH 08 .. good clip, made my day !

Popeious,
No you can't sign into IT unless you have paid for a membership - which I think is +/- $50/month for the website. I know, I know, they have mucho different offers with different prices, but this is a ballpark number. Furthermore...you can't sign up for a membership to the website without taking one of their courses first...unless they've changed that too.

New Year's resolution: Sell

Jeff,
Do you use line charts for all time periods? I find them very good for 1year+ but more confusing for short term lines.
Thx

JB,
Try this website www.prophet.net

Drawing Trendlines -

I want to thank Raimo. One of his posts help me clear up my charts a bunch.

I set my charts to line chart. Go to time frame
"All" - Weekly - Draw solid color coded line (s)
"5 year"-weekly- Draw solid 2nd color coded line (s)

Set charts to candle chart. Go to time frame
"2 year"-Daily- Draw dashed 2nd color coded line (s)
"1 Year"-Daily - Draw solid 3rd color coded line (s)
"6 month"-Daily - Draw dashed 3rd color coded line (s)

Finally if I think a pattern is setting up I will use a 4th color - dashed until confirmed, solid after confirmation...

I spent 3 days during my holiday vacation doing this.

Now when I am looking at a 6 month chart I know how long each line has been on the chart. That way I can determine quickly how much weight to give each line. Also if I have a 10 year line just under a break of support it will keep me out of the trade until the longer term trend has broken.

Just The way I am doing it now - seems to be working well. Anything we can do to make the chart reading easier and quicker helps.

Flying-Pro

As promised, I have a trading excel worksheet to share. Email me at Free2Trade@live.com. Disclaimer, this email is not for the nut case solicitors out there. Even if believe you are a sane solicitors – my sign reads, "Do not contact." Lastly, this is a short-lived email address for said subject matter only.

That said, I have a small snag with the Black-Scholes calculation with PUTs. I work around it but to minimize explanation, we are fixing it. Unless you want to help, here's the formula:

=G6*NORMSDIST((LN(G6/G20)+($A$7+G4^2/2)*((G18-(G2+G7))/365))/(G4*SQRT((G18-(G2+G7))/365)))-G20*EXP(-$A$7*((G18-(G2+G7))/365))*NORMSDIST((LN(G6/G20)+($A$7+G4^2/2)*((G18-(G2+G7))/365))/(G4*SQRT((G18-(G2+G7))/365))-G4*SQRT((G18-(G2+G7))/365))

That's the Black/Scholes calculation for calls, which needs a little tweaking for the PUTS side.

Here for you serious types go to this WEB site if you really want to understand the 'nuts & bolts' of trading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-Scholes

Once there, take the B-S formula and convert it to an excel spreadsheet.

Grass root stuff, aye?

Free2,
I'd like a copy of it please. You already have my email address.

Everyone -
I posted a question in the Trader Chat about BookKeeping. I would really appreciate some input, especially from those of you that do this full time.

Thanks

Could someone explain to me what the "references" are that appear next to the "Comments" at the top of the blog. Where did they come from and what are they for. One is from Jorge -- seems to be his personal blog?????

sorry if this is a dumb question...

Sue,

I believe the references are the equivalent of trackbacks. In other words, I linked to Jeff's post on my personal blog and as a result he gets a notification that someone's linked to his work. So when I posted my goals for the year, I linked in my post to this thread and as a result it shows up on here as a reference. I think that makes sense. Was attempting to nap before my mom called... sigh...

Jorge, thanks for the explanation...yours I think I understand -- the other reference still doesn't make any sense to me -- it looks like the entire blog is copied there --does this make sense? Is the owner of that blog a subscriber to this blog?

If you're not watching American Gladiators right now, you're not living.

Free2Trade; Re "small snag with the Black-Scholes calculation"
not sure I want to wade thru all your cell references to try to spot the source of your problem, but here is my Excel spreadsheet formula for PUTS. As you can tell, I like using named variables instead. Makes it a whole bunch easier to de-bug. Way back in the dark ages (when a 286 with a 20 Meg hard drive was HOT), Basic Programming language replaced Assembly - best thing the 'Basic' language did was bring us named memory locations. Anyhow, this seems to work for me. If you can relate any of my stuff here, to your "G2"s and "G-whatevers", then maybe you will be up and running. Hope this helps.

Option Value for PUTs:
"=Strike_Price*EXP(-Interest_Rate*Time_to_Experation__days/365)*NORMSDIST(-(((LN(Share_Price/Strike_Price)+(Interest_Rate+Volatility^2/2)*(Time_to_Experation__days/365))/(Volatility*SQRT(Time_to_Experation__days/365)))-Volatility*SQRT(Time_to_Experation__days/365)))-Share_Price*NORMSDIST(-((LN(Share_Price/Strike_Price)+(Interest_Rate+Volatility^2/2)*(Time_to_Experation__days/365))/(Volatility*SQRT(Time_to_Experation__days/365))))"

And, YES, an Excel spreadsheet is the ONLY way I know of to do a lot of What-Ifs and target setting without spending all night using InvesTools' Blk-Shls calculator :-) [...at least until I can figure out how to get ToS's Analyze tab to overlay 3 different strikes at 2 different expirations.]

Happy New Year to all.

Jack,
First of all... I don't control risk. Risk controls me. I have to admit I've been fortunate to have had 5 puts and only one call over the first three days of the month. Also... remember that there aren't a lot of these profits that are locked in yet. So they're not really profits.

I've ridden CAM Feb 40s from 1.10 to 2.30, EMC Apr 19s from 1.80 to 2.85, ESRX Feb 75 calls from 2.20 to 3.20 and then got a bonus on Friday of SHLD Mar 100s that went from 7.80 to 9.40 in the few hours I owned them.

I have COF and EOG (although I thought about getting out of EOG on Friday but didn't because I was out) as well. Right now I have about 7% of my account in each trade and allow it to lose 2% of my account value before getting out, unless it's broken support before that. That's what REE is all about. If you get in very, very close to your exit point then you should only have to put up with a .5% or less loss before getting out. This makes all the difference in the world.

Don't know if this helped at all. Three days does not make me an expert. But it does make me tall, dark, and handsome... so it's not too bad a tread-off.
Chris.

NIHD---what's the news on NIHD popping over $2 this morning?

NIHD
New CEO & 500m share buyback

Lovely. Thanks Trader J

Another morning surprise I didn't expect was HWAY up $6 on what? Can't find anything except the Marketcast recommended it as a "buy". I laughed because I had 65/70 bear calls that were in great shape. They aren't looking so healthy at the moment.
Stan

what is happening to SOLF?

Don't know about SOLF, but I got in @ $22 and just got out of it @ $34.. after seeing 1st 1/2 hour action. SPWR taking a hit also.

That sucks.

HWAY was going to make it into the watchlist this morning as a potential ascending triangle, and as a group to watch. Oh well.

Now I'm ticked for getting out of most of my puts on friday.

Kinda quiet today, Is everybody as lazy as me waiting for the ever enlightening watchlist.

Is this another entry point for NIHD ?

What the hell is happening to solar today?
Did I miss something?

NIHD
I was thinking the same thing Sniper.
The new CEO doesn't bug me as much as the $500mil in buybacks. What do you think Jeff?

I think it was due for a pullback. SOLF rose what.. 300% in the span of a month? Reminds me of the tech bubble... well it would remind me of the tech bubble if I was in the markets at that time. I may have been taking Calc 3 though... sigh.

When the VIX keeps creeping up like this .. take it from one who got kicked in the butt in November ... it's much much more risky with OPTIONS and the $VIX is this way .. Pricing becomes crazy and you have to change your strategy almost immediately. It's like turn the curve and change or get thrown off of the road ....

Just a bit of caution for those who don't remember November....