10/29/2009

Open Outcry by Ben Rubin

Interesting little audio documentary. Not to be confused with the video documentary Open Outcry.

Click here for RadioLab.

Click here for Ear Studio.

"A few months after 9/11, I was asked to create a sound that would commemorate the reopening of the Winter Garden, a huge atrium space in the World Financial Center that was destroyed when the towers came down. The place was still in shambles then, and the World Financial Center complex was mostly empty, but one building on the far end of the complex was already filled with people. And those people were doing something curious. They were standing around in huge circles, hundreds of them, and shouting at each other, for hours, every day. It turns out that this shouting has a name; it's called open outcry trading, and through it these people, almost all of them men, set the price that the world will pay each day for a barrel of oil, a gallon of gas, an ounce of gold, and a few other things. Although their building was surrounded by wreckage and accessible at first only by boat, the traders of the New York Mercantile Exchange had come back to work only a few weeks after 9/11. When I thought about what sound represented that place, it was this: the sound of these men shouting, each doing his best to buy low and sell high, a music of call and response that had been produced in lower Manhattan by generations of traders since the 19th century. More recently, it's here that the traders have been reacting to rumblings of war, and then to actual war, the prices of energy and precious metals lurching and trembling as events unfolded in Washington, at the U.N., and in Iraq. This piece was made before the war; it was first played last fall in the Winter Garden." Ben Rubin

10/28/2009

The Oracle of Omaha

If we let the ghost of Milton Friedman set the rules of the game and then we all played the game the way Warren does we would all be much better off.

I wonder if any of these students realized they just learned more in 85 minutes and 17 seconds then they did in their past 6 years of post secondary education.

I also wonder how many of you will spend 85 minutes and 17 seconds to improve your education.

10/27/2009

Free to Choose

I still think the market works if left alone. Meaning bankrupt companies actually go bankrupt. I think Mr. Friedman would have agreed with me. Or am I agreeing with him.

Whatever.










10/26/2009

Give us Trades

World: Enough of your obtuse ramblings blogger boy, we demand trades, we demand charts, we demand the Holy Grail, and we demand it now!

Solfest: Yes masters, coming right up, a relative plethora of trades.

2 Minute Crude Oil Charts
I hit my daily stop with a small profit and then simmed my way to a much larger imaginary profit.

Imagine that.

10/23/2009

It's Never Different This Time

An interesting look back at the crash of 1929. Sounds kind of familiar to the crash of 2008.

Remember these crashes the next time someone tells you it's different this time.

It's never different this time.

There is no "new economy", real estate doesn't go up forever, oil prices don't go up forever, dot com companies with no net income (or revenue for that matter) are not good investments, Asian tigers become lame ducks, tulips are not as good as gold, and you cannot spend more money than you earn forever!!

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana

10/21/2009

Who Are You



So far out of 377 posts one has proven popular.

That means the probability of this one being good is 0.26525%.

On the other hand, I'm due.

The "popular" post listed the reason why you should not be a trader.

Perhaps a more positive spin would be to list what a trader is.

A professional trader is a risk manager.

A trader manages risk, all day, every day.

A trader identifies opportunities and exploits them.

A trader only trades when his risk parameters have been met.

A trader does not take all the possible moves in the market place.

A trader misses opportunities in order to preserve capital.

A trader will limit their upside in order to limit their downside.

A trader knows that capital preservation is the first rule of each and every day.

A trader takes a fixed number / percentage of risk opportunities per day / week / month / year.

A trader does not exceed these limits.

A trader only increases these limits as their capital grows.

A trader decreases these limits if their capital shrinks.

A trader is someone who never stops learning, never stops questioning, and never grows over confident.

A trader provides liquidity and price discovery to the market place.

A trader predetermines how much money they can lose in a day.

A trader is a risk manager.

I trade the CME Group's New York Mercantile Exchange electronic crude oil futures contract.

I use Interactive Brokers for data and to clear my trades, Sierra Charts to display the last price in a visually attractive manner, and Bracket Trader to place my order, break even, stop, and target with Interactive Brokers.

I wait until the bids and asks move price into my predefined trend before I place my order.

This is what I do.

My name is Solfest and I am a trader.

10/20/2009

Superstition

Yesterday a blog post, today a small profit.

Hmmmm

That and the fact that Long & Wrong has banned me from commenting on his blog means I'm back.



Whether I have any thing to say is another matter.

I'll just keep blathering on until LW bans me from my own blog.

10/19/2009

Had to post this

This is an interesting interview so I thought I would point you to my fellow blogger to have a look.

Oh and since I stopped blogging my trading has gone downhill so maybe I should start again. Actually my trading has been fine it's the market that has changed. I find it odd that the 5 day ATR on crude oil has fallen under 2.00 while the market is making new highs every day.

I wonder if that means the rally is getting a little tired?

We certainly need a pull back or something to get some volatility / daily range back into the market.

Oops this is turning into a post.
(Edit)

Ok then let's make it a post. With a chart and everything.

Daily Crude Oil Chart

I don't need a price rally, I need a range rally.