Be warned: … [visit site to read more]

And then, one kind Air Canada customer service soul, Jane, told me everyone else was lying and she processed my transfer rather quickly and for only a $200ish fee!

The key to my eventual success was … [visit site to read more]

I mean back when I was a media whore, I was pretty jealous when over a year ago Businessweek called him “The Borat Of Wall Street” (see article HERE), but now I’ve outgrown that stage so all I can take out of that article is the fact that Businessweek was impressed by his 120,000 monthly page views, which is basically a week’s work for me now.

And this, in a nutshell, is the problem with publishing books through traditional methods–it takes forever aka 2 years. 120k views might’ve been good for a business blog back in early 2007, but now it’s shit. And Leveraged Sellout, real name Amit Chatwani’s, amazingly inaccurate titled new book, “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker“, which I haven’t read, nor have the time to, nor really care to, is obsolete: … [visit site to read more]

I placed a 5% stop which gave the position some breathing room and now today it looks like the recent consolidation has panned out well. The break above $95 today signals a potential long term bottom for Oil and USO. Furthermore, the $90 support trendline held up even better than I expected.

Looking ahead I have now raised my stop to $89.50 to minimize risk and I am still sitting long.

Sean (epicadv) and I have been discussing and with oil heading up there is only room for alternative energy to move as well. Stocks like LDK, SPWR, FSLR, etc. should be on close watch lists.

Related Stocks:  USO

HDLM is one everyone is seeing breakout, took huge volume to … [visit site to read more]

Building a successful blog/internet brand ain’t easy. Nine months into this game, ‘m still workin’ 16-18 hour days…and lovin’ every second of it. Check out THIS awesome near-hourlong podcast interview I did with Mixergy.com, a site that interviews “web visionaries” as we discussed what’s worked (PennyStocking, TIMalerts), what hasn’t (TIMbucks, TIMaffiliates) and what you need to do to create your own successful personal brand, if you’re into that kind of thing. Mixergy’s founder Andrew Warner even did THIS snazzy video intro.

You like that? Yeah you did. Here’s the 2nd interview: … [visit site to read more]

DYAX had a continued failed brekaout, boring messy chart, next!

POGS Dark Bitch is bragging how he found the stock a day before me, forgetting common blog rules where you link to the blog you mention as I linked to Dark Bitch, guy seems to forget this is my bread and butter strategy for the past decade, he learned short selling penny stocks from me, I don’t miss these gimmes, but I don’t have a chatroom, I have a pre-market watchlist. … [visit site to read more]

I expect the next few weeks the indices will keep creeping up higher despite the  break in the support trend line today on the SPY and the lower dollar. I could be wrong though, tops are tougher to spot with the indicators I use. Here's one of them.

__________________________________________________________________________

FRE tanked on me all the way down to 2.95 :-( my position was down 33%

but the volume was so good today that I had to add more at 3.02 since my position was so small. Now I'm 25% in. As i'm typing this its breaking intaday resistance at 3.15 to the upside on fantastic volume! almost touching the 200M! amazing.

It hurts taking a 33% hit even on the tiniest positions, but no pain no gain.

_________________________________________________________________

I also made the bad mistake of selling a SEP 6 put at 3 when the common was 3.2 and I bought it back when it broke 3.15 taking a 20c loss on the option.

I realized that I cannot risk betting on the timing of this stock to reach my 12$ selling target within 30 days. So I bought more common instead.

Related Stocks:  FRE

I’ll still be doing TIMalerts each and every day, don’t you worry, I’m an addict, but please don’t email me questions – actually only if they’re about TIMalerts or my PennyStocking DVD (biz first!) – cuz it’s gonna be hard enough trying to manage my vacation/trading while working with a 14 hour time difference.
So I thought you’d like to know exactly what I’m doing—I’m bringing my newly acquired bad ass Flip Video (check out this beauty HERE) so we’ll have clips galore–but for now here’s my itinerary, basically wannabe-FU money, $11,000 blown in 7 days on extravagant hotels, meals and cool destinations….Jewww yeahhhhhh!

If you’re gonna work hard, you gotta enjoy the rewards:

Aug 20-21: $4,000ish Air Canada 2 people, 3 flight segments, only took a few days worth of research to find the Jewiest combo deal for 2 people, gotta go cheap on the 17 hour flight, aka no biz class, save $10k+, just gonna be full of Nyquil anyway

Aug 21-23: $500/night=$1,000 2 Nights at the Tokyo Ritz Carlton, 50th Floor, awesome views of the city, right in Roppongi aka the Rodeo Drive-like nice area, all around pimpest hotel chain, not just BS Trump-esque glitter either, these guys always come through, if all my readers weren’t so poor, I’d look to get sponsored by them in a heartbeat, as the spoiled Jew I am, I always look to book there. You hear me Ritz peeps! Look at that pool: … [visit site to read more]

Slightly higher volume would be ideal, but a volume over 1.1M and a sharp reversal to the upside would spell out D O U B L E  B O T T O M just like in mid October of '05.

Related Stocks:  RADS

Like my latest streak where I was basically 21 for 21 on my TIMAlerts.

And even though the probable fraud FOUR jumped 10% over my entry price/TIMalert at $2.80ish, I was pretty much dead wrong when I sent out this alert explaining why I bought this stock (yes, I have and will continue buying probable frauds…when I think there’s upside…frauds can run up faster than real companies…just gotta be more careful in these situations): … [visit site to read more]

Related Stocks:  FOUR

FOUR I thought would be good for a bounce yesterday, was dead wrong, even though I said it was “risky, risky, risky, risky” and it still went up 10% from my TIMalert, many got in too late and lost…I took a $300ish loss…detailed post coming, no way in hell should anybody be buying this thing, it’s for the vultures now.

RDN keeps going, bouncy 25-50 cents/share here and there, still not a suitable pattern for me

STAA I mentioned several days ago, but before it really started spiking…gradual mover turning volatile, watch out, let’s see how far it goes

BHBC is a spiking bank with the chart of a pump and dump…as much as I wanna stay away from financials, the chart trumps that due to its perfection…definitely a potential short.

ZYXI is being played by everyone it seems, why I have no idea, support at $5, $5.25, earnings play, gradual riser, might go down eventually, but not with this momo, even when it does, it’ll be messy, probly like YTEC, look at its chart from last October

GPIC is an earnings spiker, but a nice chart for a potential short, I don’t expect too much collapsing, but it’s possible.

POGS is an illiquid Pink Sheet stock that’s surging, rumors of aupmp, rumors of earnings in thenext week, these kinds of stocks can go a lot further than you think, but it’s definitely one to watch for a … [visit site to read more]

Related Stocks:  RDN, YTEC, ZYXI

The weak volume though is kind of leading me to think it will test the 3.9 all time bottom, so I'm going to wait for good volume and/or under 4$ drop first before pulling any triggers, this time i'll maybe play a part-stock part option combo for more exposure.

AMSC's chart looks like the long winded party is over for this joke of a company. Its breaking down all kinds of support and the shorts are starting to party.

BNVI is either headed for a another double top as its been frequently happening lately or a nice breakout over 1.4

UTSI is breaking down of important support level of 3.35

LFG is at 16.5 has 38% of its float short and is creeping up up up with resistance at 24 - may be a short covering fear play.

Related Stocks:  AMSC, BNVI, FRE, LFG, UTSI

Related Stocks:  CY

Finally! Last November, when I went back to my original $12,000 roots (see post HERE), many people thought/called me crazy…I wasn’t crazy, just determined to show everyone how it’s possible to make plenty of mistakes and yet–if you remained disciplined…or somewhat disciplined–still use small account size as an advantage to profit from all the manipulation and hype in this the gutter of the stock market.

Took me about 9.5 months to accomplish this rather unremarkable yet surprisingly difficult feat (last time I was this poor, there were no regulations preventing me from trading too much, which was a gift and a curse)–see all the trades upon trades upon trades it took me to get there by clicking HERE–and understand that in a free financial world, there’d be no regulatory difference between $2k, $20k, $25k or 250k, but in the real world, one that is subject to terrorism perpetrated by Osama bin SEC, this $25k mark means I can now do more than 3 day trades/week.

Yes, that’s right, after 9+ months of having to … [visit site to read more]

First, as those of you who’ve read my book An American Hedge Fund know, I started my Tulane scholarship “The Timothy Sykes Award For Student Who Learn Good” (that’s the name I wanted, but was prohibited from using) waaay back in 2002, really just cuz I’d made too much $ too quickly and wanted to commemorate my feat by giving a bit of cash each year to inspire others…

I’m waaay behind on my posts, but this May my award went to Maureen King–not a student as my award is open to all in the Tulane community, professors, alumni, etc.–who built a house from scratch and is living off the land…literally. Check out the whole article “How Does Her Garden Grow” by clicking HERE.

The year before the winner was Susan Zaluski, an incredibly talented girl who builds big ass boats from scratch and teach others to do it too. See her article HERE.

And now, the latest PennyStockers to give something back are the bad ass folks at … [visit site to read more]

ZYXI just keeps going higher and now it’s an earnings play. God love em…longs beware, I think this runup is being constructed, no different than APII, FEED, all the little crap companies that wanna raise $/use their stock for acquisitions…its magnificient artwork…their latest earnings report hints: … [visit site to read more]

Related Stocks:  APII, FEED, ZYXI

Timmay…baby…look’s like this site is dying a slow death. Better ratchet up the ol’ promo machinery. Perhaps this explains your surly mood that cut short this past Friday’s LIVESTOCK. Oh…and a little advice on LIVESTOCK - when you bring nothing to the table with absolutely no preparation and simply respond to inane questions, what do you expect?

Well, to quote a genius Matt Damon music video (see it HERE) from a disappointing movie–Scotty doesn’t know!

Namely: … [visit site to read more]

At around $3.15, i was noticing how the volume wasn’t very much, and that when Tim covered I thought the price would spike as his subscribers covered as well. I debated getting in at that point, but decided to wait until his official e-mail alert. When I got the e-mail that he covered at $3.25, I got in at $3.29, and watched it squeeze all the way to a $3.45 close. … [visit site to read more]

Check it out: … [visit site to read more]

Ciaran is better known as “TheMagician” on TheLion.com and the guy is cool enough to offer you guys a special 50% off his newsletter right HERE.

Here’s the questions I posed to him:

1. what’s your background, let’s hear al the sordid details!
2. trading style? what variables do you care most about?
3. how have you done this year, summary time!
4. give us a brief overview of your website and all its features
5. best trade
6. worst trade
7. let’s hear some crazy story of some crookedness–feel free to omit
the names and people involved–or not :)
8. where do you stash your winnings?
9. what do you think the most comon trading mistake is?
10. let’s hear advice for somebody just starting to trade

His answers: … [visit site to read more]

Don,

Thanks for your comments.

Please note that the three studies reported in http://www.cxoadvisory.com/blog/external/blog8-11-08/ and http://www.cxoadvisory.com/blog/external/blog8-04-08/ are done by others. Prior to these studies, I had not noticed any formal studies on stop losses for some time. The authors of the studies are generally academics at universities, although I believe Andrew Lo ("When Do Stop-Loss Rules Stop Losses?") is probably well-grounded in real hedge fund activities. I assign highest credibility to the study in which he participated. As noted, this study concludes that “in the presence of momentum and/or regime-switching, stop-loss rules can add value.”

I do not have the resources to test all the permutations you suggest, but I can offer some general observations derived from reviewing hundreds of academic papers and practitioner claims:

 - Academic researchers tend to use somewhat simplified and rigid rules in their studies. These limitations may stem from data availability constraints, programming complexity or lack of theoretical arguments to support refining assumptions (related to a desire to avoid data mining/snooping bias). They sometimes focus on abstract statistical outcomes difficult for practitioners to interpret or implement.

 - Practitioners often rely on small samples and/or poor sampling methods. They tend to be very empirical in approach, incorporating substantial hindsight bias/data mining bias into their analyses (exacerbated by importing data mined rules from others). Many practitioner analyses do a poor job of addressing trading frictions. Some say that what they do is “more art than science.” The “foundational” books by Taleb and Aronson listed in the right margin of CXOadvisory.com are antidotes.

 I’ll take a look at the study you cite. You may be interested in the 30 items on trend following at http://www.cxoadvisory.com/blog/internal/blog-momentum-investing/.

Best regards,

Steve LeCompte

CXO Advisory Group LLC

(And here was my not to CXO)

Dear CXO, Thanks a bunch for your recent research on whether stops work. Although I'm not in a position to challenge the validity of your findings, as presented, I was really surprised at the results. I wonder if I might suggest adding a couple of variables to the mix? I'm a trend follower, with a fully automatic system. It has done fairly well over virtually all test periods, and in actual use (Don't ask about my discipline in sticking to it religiously!:) There are several ingredients that I believe are essential to a good system, and if stops are combined with those, I believe the very same parameters that you tested for would look better if whipsaw trades are filtered out at the onset. For instance: 1. If I only enter a trade on a high volume (say, at least 1 StDev above average) high range (ditto), with my own system, that has made a significant improvement. 2. I got the impression from your article that your stop would be moving up steadily as a move progresses. Does it stall out and go flat during brief consolidations? If not (mine does), I believe some simple rules to enforce that would also greatly improve the score. Years ago, as you probably know, Welles Wilder's Parabolic was all the rage, but a great drawback to it was that it automatically raised the stop into a parabolic curve, without regard to the stock or future's price and volatility. By modifying that, increasing the acceleration factor only if there are new highs (up to the max of .20), and decreasing it for every day that there is not a new high (down to a minimum of 0.00), made a great difference for me and my commodity clients. It greatly improved their score. 3. Throwing in any kind of long term filter also made a great difference. I'd really like to see your test rerun with some of these ideas. Thanks a bunch! PS: have you looked at this super report using a 10 ATR stop?

http://www.blackstarfunds.com/files/Does_trendfollowing_work_on_stocks.pdf

Stock up 700% in 1 month + shitty earnings = inevitable bigtime tank

I knew entering my short ahead of earnings was risky, as I wrote in this TIMalert sent to subscribers when the stock was at $3.30:

yes the volume has faded, yes its finally red on the day, yes, it just took out the day low, but this is dangerous with earnings coming out tomorrow. i prefer to live dangerously. but that’s just me. no idea how long i’ll hold, could be 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, i am aiming for a crack ofyesterday’s lows as that would make me feel very comfortable holding overnight, but we’ll see…the key is to judge these plays by price action, enter when you’re comfortable, exit when you’re not, always try to minimize losses.

…but that risk paid off

…which is the definition of a good trade: understanding one’s risk…Personally, I didn’t think it would collapse so quickly–most don’t, but my last 2 TIMalert shorts on USS and MKTY (see how they fared HERE) prove the current market environment loves punishing these turds–so when I covered into the morning panic at $2.66 for a $1,200 gain (5 minutes later stock was at $2.20ish…right now it’s sitting at $1.80…blehhhhh $1,500 profits left on the table) but I just wanted to get over $25k) pushing my tiny TIM account over the key–at least according to Osama bin SEC (see explanation HERE)–$25,000 threshold to $25,716, up 9% on the month, 107% since I started this quest back in November 2007. Which I do have to mention crushes ANY return of ANY newsletter writer/gruru/expert–percent-wise–especially considering all my trades are verified by Covestor, all trades are detailed HERE and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way aka haters got nothinnnnnnn!

PS Haters, learn to attack you’re opponent when he’s down, not when he’s just made his single greatest call to-date and has these ridiculously amazing TIMalert testimonials (see all the rest from previous alerts HERE) below to back him up and drown out the small losses–think average loss of $100–when he was too early with his short the first time around: … [visit site to read more]

Related Stocks:  APII, MKTY, USS

Related Stocks:  AGA

Related Stocks:  IXYS

APII dropped 50% off my outrageously successful TIMalert (detailed post coming today), I covered for $1,200 profit or just under 20% overnight…amazing how much it collapsed, but earnings really were pathetic so I shoulda woulda coulda had more balls—sadly influence by my desire to get over the $25k hump, which I did, now at $25.7k. Don’t expect a bounce, probable further downside, stock was 50 cents/share 1 month ago, total manipulation to get the stock up to acquire BE. Gotta love these gutter games.

MRGE broke out of an 8 month base, but look at the chart and you see all the bitter longterm shareholders…also up 50% in 3 days makes it not a buy in my book, although it could be like MNKD. Gotta know what you’re good at, this ain’t it for me

RDN is now up 350%+ since its lows a month ago, finance play, I don’t pretend to … [visit site to read more]