Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 44

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 44 ... Michelle Koenig (66:57)

  • Has a finance degree from Montana State U.
  • Went into pharmaceutical sales
  • Got office manager job at Edward Jones
  • Went into software sales
  • Started trading part-time on her own 
  • Trial by fire, read message boards, had no plan at first
  • Started reading books on technical analysis
  • When she started, had no chat rooms, no mentors available
  • Longer learning curve back then, no one to bounce ideas off of
  • Software company she was working for ran out of money
  • Husband had full-time job, she had a backstop
  • Went from trading part-time to full-time
  • Started with $40K and more than doubled it to $100K within six months
  • Filled with overconfidence as a result
  • Got sloppy and lost all those gains and then some
  • Craved independence that trading gave her, has an entrepreneurial spirit
  • Need to be stubborn and resilient to make it as a trader, can't give up
  • Need to treat trading like a business: need a plan, strategy, rules, working capital
  • Keep losses small and move forward
  • Have to be able to take losses, can't "hold and hope"
  • Took three to four years before she became consistent
  • Emotional roller coaster of trading: euphoria to depression
  • Time in the seat helps with controlling emotions
  • Technical swing trader: flags, triangles, rectangles
  • Starts with daily chart, drills down to 60  minute chart, finds a level that makes sense
  • Uses 50 period EMA on 60 minute chart
  • Doesn't discriminate between high price low price, big float small float, etc.
  • Wants the move to happen quickly, ten days max
  • Swing trading is a more relaxed style, giving the trade time to work
  • Overnight risk of swing trading ... gaps above or below stops
  • Never holds through earnings
  • Likes bull and bear flag patterns best, and triangles too
  • If only had one thing to trade would be 50 EMA on 60 minute chart
  • Uses Stockcharts.com, been a member for 13 years
  • Loves looking at charts, like putting together a puzzle
  • Puts a number of indicators on daily charts: RSI, MACD, moving averages
  • On her 60 minute charts uses slow stochastic and 50 EMA
  • 95% technicals, 5% fundamentals -- will look at float, short interest, institutional ownership
  • Uses finviz.com to look at those fundamental statistics
  • Her day trading usually news-based
  • Winning day trades becomes swing trades
  • Exits hardest part of the trade for her
  • Uses combination of trend lines and moving averages to move stops up once profitable
  • Flags and triangles give a measured move
  • Give trades room and time to work, the trailing stop will take her out
  • Tries to keep things simple, don't want to be paralyzed
  • She's not floofy or fancy, likes things to be simple and clean
  • Looks at 300-600 charts a day ... antiquated process of flipping through them
  • Looks at percentage gainers for day trades at finviz.com, looks through charts manually
  • Uses ThinkOrSwim, loves the charting there
  • Chasing an entry is never a good idea
  • Don't try to catch the bottom or the top, just catch the middle of the move
  • Patience is important ... set your risk, follow your plan
  • Easy to be impatient when you're staring at a screen which is blinking constantly
  • New traders think that trading is easy -- they're WRONG
  • New traders don't understand their personality type and how it matches a trading style
  • New traders have no plan
  • New traders want alerts
  • New traders mix up their styles, try both day trading and swing trading at once
  • New traders jump from one strategy to the next
  • New traders want to trade stocks and options and futures all at once
  • Market extracts a tuition cost from every new trader
  • Down time very important for traders, get away from the screens
  • She walks away at the market close, might come back to screens in evening
  • Afternoons for riding horses, fishing, hiking, cleaning stalls [lives in Montana]
  • You need balance, don't be tied to the screens 12 hours a day 7 days a week
  • Taking breaks during the day also very important, go throw the dog a ball
  • Trading is lonely ... you're a hobbit in your cave
  • Participates in Traders For A Cause, Las Vegas event to raise charity money
  • Runs swing trading service, chat room, private Twitter feed, and has DVD for sale
  • www.tradeonthefly.com
  • Twitter: OffshoreHunters

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 94

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 94 ... Kenny Glick (80:28)

A funny interview with a guy who must be right around my age, clearly a Gen-Xer. 

  • From Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
  • Did stand-up comedy when 19 years old
  • Opened up for Andrew Dice Clay, the "thrill of his life"
  • Did internship at Saturday Night Live
  • Hung out with Adam Sandler, had a lot of fun
  • Answered phone with stupid voice, got fired
  • "Who fires a slave?"
  • Worked on Jon Stewart show pre-Daily Show
  • Trading is hard but stand-up is harder
  • 5th grade math teacher did stock market project, Kenny got interested
  • Guy in suit at comedy club asked him to come sell stocks on Long Island
  • Turned out to be a boiler room, Kenny had to make 300 calls a day, paid $400 a week, hated it
  • Some guys from this Long Island boiler room opened another room, sponsored Kenny for Series 7
  • Kenny went 30 days without smoking weed before Series 7 exam
  • Kenny got 93 on Series 7, expected them to hold a parade for him, they laughed at him instead
  • Boiler rooms super shady, just pure fraud
  • "Don't put any of your friends or your family into this stock."
  • Kenny breaks into the schpiel he used as a boiler room man [I'm falling off my chair laughing]
  • Built a book of 80-100 clients, which was pretty good in 18 months
  • Noticed all slot machines in Vegas made by IGT
  • Recommended IGT to all his clients, one guy wanted to buy $100K worth
  • Movie Boiler Room dead-on, completely accurate
  • Knucklehead friend Ben made $25K a month doing boiler room sales, bought a Ferrari
  • "Rebuttal Book" the key to Ben's sales, no matter what the client said, he had a comeback
  • Kenny didn't like ripping people's heads off, he was just a funny guy, enjoyed schmoozing clients
  • 1992-1993, this was pre-SOES, pre-day trading
  • 1997-1998 Kenny started SOES trading with his Bar Mitzvah money 
  • 1998 Kenny started trading stocks on his own, quit the boiler rooms
  • Dawn of the Internet, mentions Netscape, Iomega, RealNetworks, Doubleclick
  • Saw the internet stocks jumping 10% a day, incredible
  • Adaptec, the SCSI drive, all these things started flying
  • "Once I learned about options, I got in trouble"
  • Developed a gambling habit with options
  • Got in a bad situation, wandered the earth 
  • Grew a beard, wore jeans shorts, Timberlands & Grateful Dead t-shirt [he hit rock bottom]
  • 1999 -- All you had to do was buy breaks of the previous day's high
  • Made $5-$10K a day, quit by 11 AM, would go to the park, smoke weed, and play hacky sack
  • Buddies at trading firm taught Kenny to think in "If Then" statements 
  • Trading buddy "Isaac" taught him never to rush
  • "It's better to be late and right than early and wrong." [Isaac is a wise man]
  • Isaac taught him about the "dash for trash" at the end of a bull market
  • Isaac told him in February 2000, "the end is near" 
  • Mentions CMRC, Crossroads, CMGI, SDLI ... Kenny started shorting them
  • Kenny made a lot of money on the dot com crash
  • But then he bought all the dot com stocks after they dropped 90% ... and then they went to zero
  • Akamai (AKAM) the only survivor that he still holds from that era
  • 2007 he had friends at Bear Stearns, they asked Kenny if he could find them a job
  • "Why are you asking an idiot day trader for a job?"
  • Shorted Bear Stearns on the basis of this
  • Didn't do as well on the 2008 Crash as he did on the 2000 Crash
  • Tried to pick a top in QQQ in March of 2011 or 2012?, position size 50x larger than usual
  • Got crushed, dry mouth, sweaty hands ... took only half off into the close
  • Gapped up the next day, ripped higher, his loss grew even larger
  • This experience turned him into a megabull
  • "The reason I day trade is to find swing trades"
  • Kenny tries to identify "exhaustion situations"
  • Trade from one consolidation range to the next consolidation range
  • "Analysts are paid shills"
  • Analysts only upgrade or downgrade stocks at the end of a move
  • Losers take a losing day trade and turn it into a losing swing trade
  • Losers take a losing swing trade and turn it into a losing investment
  • Kenny likes to take winning day trades and turn them into winning swing trades
  • Kenny will take off 80% of his winning day trade and hold remaining 20% as a swing trade
  • If the swing trade is a winning trade, then Kenny will buy call options 
  • Kenny prefers holding options instead of large stock positions
  • Once you find something that works, just do it over and over again
  • Trading should be boring
  • "I appreciate you having me on and shooting the shit like this"
  • Don't short until you see something gap up, roll over, and go red
  • "Let the top pick itself" -- another Isaac-ism [Isaac is a wise man]
  • You're never going to pick the top, so don't go broke trying
  • If you ever say "let's see what happens," get the hell out [tears of laughter rolling down my face]
  • You hear someone say they're stuck in a stock, you think, "Really? Rip the Band-aid off!"
  • If you're in a losing trade and mutter "let's see what happens," get out!
  • "What's the worst that can happen?" Get out!
  • Kenny has a list of stocks that he has "banned," refuses to trade them
  • Don't hang around all day watching the market
  • Once you win the money, you leave 
  • You don't need to trade constantly
  • Not trading is a position
  • If you're sitting at your computer between 11:30 and 12:30 or 2:30 PM, you're sick
  • "Flat, my friends, is a position."
  • Kenny runs a private chat
  • People can come and hang out with Kenny in his trading room for a month for free
  • "I'm a Jewish fellow [but] can make an amazing ravioli"
  • Can pay a one-time membership fee to be friends with Kenny
  • The hardest part is sticking to the concepts that you know work
  • Kenny says some kind things to Aaron in parting
  • www.hitthebid.com
  • Twitter: @HitTheBidRadio

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 139

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 139 ... Bobby Cho (39:38)

  • Worked for Restricted Stock Partners which became Second Market, eventually bought by Nasdaq
  • Traded illiquid assets for these firms, trying to value esoteric stuff, on desk for six years
  • Discovered Bitcoin: just another opaque, illiquid market at the end of 2013
  • Worked for itBit, Bitcoin exchange domiciled in Singapore
  • Bitcoin missing infrastructure back then
  • Must establish exchange if you want to get institutional money into Bitcoin
  • itBit got first digital currency trust company charter, New York State Department of Financial Services-regulated
  • Gemini is the second company to go the trust company charter route
  • Now he works for DRW / Cumberland Mining
  • Lion's share of volume they do is Bitcoin and Ethereum
  • Cumberland Mining desk can handle institutional-sized cryptocurrency trades that exchanges can't handle
  • First thing you have to do is read the White Paper on Bitcoin
  • Bitcoin is a 24-7, global market
  • DRW Trading has a number of verticals: trading (HFT), real estate, venture capital, cryptocurrencies
  • Curious people are attracted to cryptocurrencies
  • Don Wilson is entrepreneurial and curious
  • Cumberland Mining -- no investors, shareholders or clients -- just trade their own book
  • Cumberland Mining was started in 2014
  • Market making in Bitcoin for block transactions, exchanges can't handle that size
  • Bitcoin is a push function, once you send it, it's gone ... scary to institutional investors
  • Bitcoin price discovery is still fluid, 200+ separate exchanges worldwide
  • Custody is the major issue with Bitcoin ... where to go for it? 
  • Institutional investors get nervous about custody issues, very leery of cryptocurrencies as a result
  • Top ten cryptocurrency exchanges all domiciled in different locations with different regulatory requirements
  • Liquidity completely fragmented
  • Every exchange has a different fee structure
  • Difficult even to wire money in and out of exchanges, different fees for each exchange 
  • KYC -- Know Your Customer ... all about compliance with anti-money laundering regulations
  • People are trying to arbitrage Bitcoin among exchanges, but not much of an edge there
  • People drawn to Bitcoin at first by the price volatilily -- pure speculation
  • Core investors in Bitcoin understand the technology, the ease of use, they're believers, not speculators
  • Bobby is just a Bitcoin market maker, won't speculate on its long term outlook
  • Twitter: @robertjcho

TV Shows Watched -- Fauda

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Watched season one awhile back and have been meaning to blog about it... this is the best TV show I've seen in a *long* time ... it's from Israel and it's about an Israeli counter-terrorism unit ... old readers know I'm not a fan of War Porn or anything that glorifies the Security State, but this is really well-done drama. 

Most important of all it shows you how absurd the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is. These are people who can't tell each other apart on sight, and they speak one another's language so perfectly that they can't even hear an accent! The root of the problem here can't be competing creation myths, it has to be about resources (land, water, capital, etc.)

Anyway, it's on Netflix and I can't recommend it highly enough. Here are my selected screenshots with comments: 

New Rules

Added on by C. Maoxian.

This young Albanian! lady (born 1995) has several 100,000,000+listens songs on Spotify, but this is the only one that I liked ... it helps that I've adapted the lyrics to incorporate all my stock trading rules: ♪♫♬My trading rules, I flout 'em.♪♫♬

MY DEBUT ALBUM #DL1 IS OUT NOW!!! A massive thank you to everyone buying and streaming it 🌹🌹🌹 THANK YOU MY LOVES 🚀💖 https://wbr.ec/dualipa-album Follow me online: https://wbr.ec/website_dualipa https://wbr.ec/facebook_dualipa https://wbr.ec/twitter_dualipa https://wbr.ec/instagram_dualipa

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 71

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 71 ... Eric Scott Hunsader (61:57)

  • Started programming in 1984
  • Programming then not offered in college, so he taught himself
  • Bought a book, C Primer Plus by Stephen Prata
  • Had written an oscillator in Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet 
  • Still uses C to this day
  • Used to read the Wall Street Journal, fascinated by that world
  • Traded for two and half years, made enough to live and buy more computers
  • Developed a love for writing software
  • Would always second-guess his trading system
  • Focused on writing code and quit trading
  • Used to use floppy disc to archive data
  • Sold that data online (long before the Internet)
  • 1989, Tom Joseph's [of Advanced GET fame] company called Trading Techniques was a data customer, hired Hunsader
  • Had real-time streaming charts using Compaq computer and a cellphone modem brick
  • CQG bought Trading Techniques and Hunsader worked for them
  • Three years later the Internet came along
  • Internet Revolution was obvious to him 
  • CQG cold to Hunsader's idea of internet-based real-time streaming charting application
  • Hunsader left and did it himself, wrote Java application called Livecharts, and desktop application called Qcharts
  • Quote.com saw Hunsader's programs and gave him a bunch of stock for the software
  • Within 18 months to two years went from 0 to 10,000 customers [and I was one of them!]
  • Lycos wanted to buy Quote.com out
  • Hunsader got Lycos stock in the buyout and he sold it all out in two weeks in December 1999 [great timing]
  • Then he founded Nanex in 2000
  • Wanted to design the ideal ticker plant, originally called it "Generation Five," with API on top of it
  • 25,000 hours later he was comfortable releasing it to first customer in 2004, called NxCore feed
  • Data Transmission Network (DTN) his partner then and still is
  • No advertising for his NxCore feed
  • Customers are hedge funds, institutional investors, high frequency traders, even the exchanges themselves
  • Working with the NxCore API is a joy 
  • An experienced programmer can quickly learn to get exactly what he wants from the NxCore feed
  • Other data feed providers normalize the data, NxCore doesn't
  • Data compression, data transmission and graphical interface all the important bits
  • "Serial latency cost" 
  • NxCore collects 20 billion data points per day, a petabyte raw
  • 1000 terabytes is a petabyte
  • Data is stored in triplicate in different locations
  • ARCA first place where he noticed penny up and down step patterns, someone testing something
  • Flash Crash the big event: May 6, 2010 ... SIP got crushed that afternoon
  • SEC couldn't even assemble the data to analyze the Flash Crash
  • Nanex could replay the entire day in real-time given their archived data
  • Analyzed the Flash Crash ... went down a rabbit hole from which he still hasn't emerged
  • ZeroHedge linked to the first analysis they posted about Flash Crash, then it all exploded
  • SIP (Security Information Processor) -- consolidated feed, should be the only feed but exchanges sell direct data feeds independently [the bastards]
  • US stock market has two data feeds, one is faster than the other
  • Reg NMS (PDF) brought high frequency trading into being
  • "Electronic trading brought down costs, high frequency trading brought down ethics"
  • High frequency trading is risk-free arbitrage, only possible since the exchanges sell direct data feeds
  • Exchanges collude with HFT by selling them direct data feed, which is faster
  • HFT has a wink-nod relationship with regulators, fined from time to time, no real change happens
  • HFT would be shut down if the regulators had any ethics
  • If there were a central limit order book, HFT wouldn't exist
  • Regulators wanted competition, multiple exchanges, tie it all together with SIP
  • HFT can front-run orders on one exchange and cancel their orders on another exchange given their faster feeds
  • When you talk about spreads, do you mean the spreads narrowest in a second or widest in a second? Can go from 1% to 1 cent in the space of second
  • "Quote-stuffing" is a term Hunsader coined ... Quote-spam
  • You slow down a data feed by quote-stuffing it ... more network traffic, like a tiny DDOS
  • Retail customers all working off the SIP ... HFT ahead of them
  • All about creating latency through quote-stuffing
  • Put noise into the system in order to slow it down
  • Must maintain latency tables ... must ping and test the limits all the time
  • HFT is theft and market-rigging ... visit the Nanex office for two hours and watch them at work in real-time
  • Everyone is a victim of HFT ... a billion paper cuts
  • You see things now, you think it's a bad tick, but it's actually 1000 trades going off, pennying down and back up in a half second
  • SEC says people shouldn't use stop orders anymore
  • Any retail investor who trades at the open is eaten alive
  • The regulators are corrupt, they get wined and dined by the firms they're going to work for when they leave the regulator
  • SEC gave Hunsader a $750,000 whistleblower award
  • The exchanges are the real culprits for selling a faster data feed for huge prices to HFT
  • Larry Leibowitz (brother of comedian Jon Stewart) is CTO at the NYSE
  • Leibowitz made fun of Hunsader as a conpiracy theorist on stage
  • Bill O'Brien has also argued with Hunsader; O'Brien a smooth talker on TV but just a soundbite bullshit artist, has no facts 
  • Exchanges are SROs (self-regulated organizations) ... means they can't be sued
  • Legal immunity exchanges enjoy has really destroyed things, the root of the problem
  • You need someone knowledgeable and with integrity at the SEC, then HFT will go away
  • Sarao being singled out like that [for the Flash Crash] is terrible
  • Hunsader offered to work at SEC for free, won't create any new rules -- offer met with dead silence
  • At least 500 trades within one second, spikes down and up, no net price change -- mini Flash Crashes happen all day long
  • Suckering people with these "poke plays" [as I call them] ... retail can't take advantage of these because they don't execute at all exchanges
  • These mini Flash Crashes never happened before 2007
  • Anyone with a standing stop order is going to get killed these days
  • Tight spreads being claimed by HFT are bogus given the constant mini Flash Crashes
  • People at IEX have integrity
  • All the exchanges' income comes from selling their faster data feeds to a select few
  • www.nanex.net 
  • Twitter: @nanexllc

Tramps Like Us

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Terrible video and audio quality, but this cover of an already great song makes it that much greater. Love that outfit too. 

They might not have been known as the greatest live band on earth, but they should be remembered for the raw energy they created. A wonderful tribute to a great artist.

TV Shows Watched -- Frontier

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Another Netflix original series ... six 45-minute episodes so not too great a time commitment ... and it wasn't terrible. I'm not usually big on "period" pieces, but the fur trade / history of the Hudson's Bay Company does interest me. One episode did have a gay porn vibe with the half-naked hero hung by his bound hands and tortured ... not that I've ever seen gay porn, but that's what I've been told it's like, by a friend, a very distant friend. 

My screencaps with comments below: 

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 62

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 62 ... @chigrl (41:02) [recorded May 2016]

  • International relations major, Middle East focus
  • Sold medical supplies, "medical grade plastics," hated it, was living in Newport Beach
  • Quit job, moved to Chicago [what year was this?]
  • Knocked on every possible door
  • Begged for first job at a boiler room, later shut down by NFA
  • Nobody wanted to hire a woman
  • Making 200 calls a day trying to get Mom and Pop to part with 10 grand to trade options [laughing]
  • Her Dad was a commodities trader
  • Wanted to learn the industry from the inside out
  • Went from working as broker to working on trading floor
  • Clerked for Fed Funds trader
  • Moved to grains floor, was head of trading desk, when Fed Funds went to zero
  • Then moved to bonds floor
  • First ticket she ever wrote she wrote backwards, ended up being a 30K winner
  • Left the floor in 2012, started trading for prop firm, got funded
  • Being a prop trader forces you not to do "stupid shit" ... someone is watching you
  • She is an intraday, technical trader, but also has fundamental knowledge of oil market
  • She has a system, makes the same trade over and over again
  • Your worst enemy is your own head
  • If you have a system where you always take the trade, can take your head out of the equation 
  • Rotation levels, Fibonacci, volume profile, footprint -- these are what she uses
  • Fell in love with oil market, has traded for ten years straight
  • Doesn't trade crude during Asia hours ... too illiquid, a 50 lot can move the market
  • Crude is a "manic" market ... trades fast 
  • She's a market junkie ... 120 hour work week in front of the screens
  • After ten years of trading, you can "go with your gut" ... but not at the beginning
  • Government websites, esp. EIA, full of good information
  • Follow her Twitter stream since she tweets all the best information
  • [She has a smoker's laugh ... wonder if she smokes?]
  • Supply-demand drives the oil market, it's simple
  • Day traders trade what's in front of them, not the macro view
  • Twitter is invaluable, there are experienced traders on there, only dicks don't reply to your questions
  • Start with a mini contract
  • Have to find a system that works for you
  • Don't be afraid to lose money in the beginning
  • Successful traders don't care if you have two followers, they'll answer your questions
  • Key skill good traders have: patience, they wait for the market to come to them, they don't overtrade
  • She has a swing trading account and a day trading account, separately
  • Twitter: @chigrl

Trying To Turn My Black Nights Blue

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Andy Fairweather Low still crowing 50 years on ... great song, esp. for those who rely on the bottle to get through the night. 

Filmed for BBC Radio Scotland's The Jazz House at the CCA in Glasgow For more from BBC Music at Celtic Connections visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/celticconnections

Dirty Dozen, Long Only Portfolio, End of September 2017

Added on by C. Maoxian.

One change this month, getting long Amgen (AMGN) tomorrow (Oct. 2). Why sell it at $139 last November only to buy back at $186 this October? Good question ... and the reason why buy and hold (and forget about it) is so compelling. But look at the exits on Chipotle and Gilead and Starbucks and Twitter ... I don't always get it so wrong. 

20170930 dirty dozen.jpg

Movies Watched -- Hell or High Water

Added on by C. Maoxian.

102 minute running time. [SPOILERS]

Inexplicably has a 96% Fresh rating from "Top Critics" at Rotten Tomatoes, which caused me to borrow it from the local Redbox, to my chagrin. Mumble, mumble, couldn't understand half the dialogue and for some reason the subtitles were disabled on my disc.

Has a weird No Country For Old Men copycat vibe (that was a *great* movie), but it just doesn't work. Jeff Bridges plays Tommy Lee Jones, but he's mumbling worse than ever, even worse than his Texas Marshal role in True Grit. He has a half-Mexican, half-Injun partner whom he insults endlessly ... don't worry, the "half-breed" has his head blown off in the end.

Two scrawny brothers ... old Ma dies with family ranch in hock to EVIL banksters and back taxes ... one brother recently released after a ten year stretch in jail (though not for killin' his Pa) ... non-felon brother gets the bright idea to start robbin' banks across west Texas to pay off them EVIL banksters and the gubmint, and dumb criminal brother is game.

Scenes of these desolate, shitty towns and FAST CASH billboards (hint hint) ... oh, and the movie starts off with graffiti on the side of a house that says, "Three tours in I-raq but no bailout for folks like me," or something along those lines. Ya know, subtle.

Badly done poker scene where criminal brother splashes the pot with a bet -- I winced. And you can't exchange more than X dollars at the casino without having your tax ID attached to it. 

They keep burying cars that are worth more than the bank drawer cash they're stealin', but I guess they're stolen cars. Old Jeff Bridges mumbling and stumbling after them across the vast expanse of west Texas. Jeff will forever be The Dude, he isn't going to shake that no matter how much he mumbles and stumbles. 

Surly ex-wife of the non-felon brother, ya know, once a purty girl but run-down by her shitty life ... it isn't clear what he's done to earn such derision from his ex- and boys (one, a fatty with glasses, only get a glimpse of him at the end) ... maybe it was explained and I didn't hear it (possible), but I doubt it.  Did I mention that this brother is a dead ringer for Josh Brolin's kid brother? 

Dumbest part of all is there's Crude Earl or Natty under the ranch, and old Ma could've leased it to Chevron decades ago and been pumpin' out $50,000 worth every month since then ... but nah, scrawny cows were the way to go. And the boys couldn't have done the lease at any time before her death, just cuz. 

Ends with Bridges and Brolin's little brother exchanging mumbled threats across a bare lawn, pfffffft. Only saving grace here is the movie stopped short of the sacred 100 minute mark.

Ah, I see now that the kid who wrote it also did Sicario, which I didn't like either. 

There were some funny bits, and some clever bits of dialogue in the little I could understand, but damn, this movie is NOT recommended. Let me go find some critics who agree and paste their stuff below ... only able to find ONE! Crazy, what a bunch of hacks. 

Peter Sobczynski: "it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts ... [the writer] appears to have elected to raid the Cormac McCarthy playbook in order to employ the celebrated author’s sparse and laconic tone wherever possible ...  it tries so hard to emulate the likes of 'No Country for Old Men' at times that you can feel it practically straining from the effort without quite pulling it off" ... and the key paragraph in its entirety, with which I agree:

"It’s frustrating that 'Hell or High Water' contains so many good things that just don’t coalesce into a fully satisfying moviegoing experience [He means movie but needed more syllables]. The story as a whole is a little too derivative for its own good and not even the strong elements are quite able to compensate for that. Of course, seeing as how even vaguely competent films have been so few and far between as of late, some viewers may be a little more willing to overlook its flaws—to wildly paraphrase one of the key lines from 'No Country for Old Men,' 'If it ain’t a good movie, it’ll do till the good movie gets here.' [SAD] If only it had spent a little more time trying to find its own voice and a little less overtly trying to ape the styles of its influences, 'Hell or High Water' might have been as good of a movie as it wishes it was."

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 63

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 63 ... Nicola Duke (44:00)

  • Has a posh? British accent [I'm no judge of accents]
  • Mom gave her money when in her teens and she bought stocks
  • Joined the Royal Air Force
  • Later worked as air traffic controller at Heathrow
  • Chemical Bank did experiment training air traffic controllers as traders, before her time
  • Working in Toronto, running a company
  • Boyfriend gave her a copy of Victor Sperandeo's book, she thought, "I can do this"
  • Trading FX from Toronto, not getting much sleep
  • Sold company and went full time trading FX
  • Air traffic controllers feel they're always minutes away from disaster
  • Trading is similar, you're often uncomfortable
  • Must learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable
  • Joined a live trading room, learned a lot
  • Doesn't believe people should trade alone, should at least have a mentor
  • Blew out first account ($10,000) within a month after being "the queen of paper trading"
  • Got a mentor who helped her with discipline
  • Got through her first year flat, mentor said "this proves that you can make it"
  • Bad days where you stick to your rules are good days -- treat yourself!
  • Mentor was friend of Tom Dante's ... met in a forum
  • Mentor taught her how to take emotion out when you win or lose
  • She's an introvert, doesn't like shouting
  • Mentor never gave her a single trade idea or set-up ... just worked on her mental game
  • In Toronto she would trade London open (2 AM her time), no social life for two years
  • Trading knocks keep you from getting full of yourself
  • 2008 lots of money to be made, went full time
  • Got lucky to sell her travel? business before the crash
  • Swing trader using Fibonacci levels for entries / exits
  • Uses Heiken-Ashi charts and moving averages as triggers
  • Looks at 36 markets every day
  • Scans weekly and daily charts
  • Average trade lasts a couple of days in 2016
  • In 2015 she would hold trades for two or three weeks
  • Volatile markets hard to trade as a discretionary trader -- too much emotion
  • Rules-based triggers, targets, stop adjustment ... all systematic now, no discretion
  • Won't move a stop until price has made a new high or low
  • Looks at closing prices only, close below a 50-period MA would instantly get her out
  • Has lots of "time of day" rules
  • Don't spend mental capital in an "offside position" for too long, use a time stop
  • Don't be patient with losers -- they don't just cost money, but "mental capital"
  • Only risks 3% of her capital at any one time
  • Avoids news events 
  • Looks at monthly, weekly, daily charts
  • Finds entries on intraday chart
  • Planning is everything
  • Looks at Fibonacci patterns, measured moves ... marks all the levels on the chart
  • Levels of confluence, high probability of reversal (or support)
  • People who can make a plan and stick to it can be good traders
  • Trading is really hard work, not a hobby, don't treat it that way
  • She is not competitive, you're only accountable to yourself, be better than you were yesterday
  • Compete with yourself, cooperate with others
  • When she sees squeezes, she feels that "us versus them" thing, but fleetingly
  • People fail because they can't lose money well -- it's all about mindset 
  • Trading is the hardest simple thing to do
  • Everyone she follows or re-tweets on Twitter is awesome
  • She uses:
  1. CQG for charts (expensive, over GBP1000 a month),
  2. TTX Trader to execute,
  3. started off on MetaTrader 4

No More Yellow Clover

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Completely unintelligible lyrics but I dig the sound ... I heard Kacy & Clayton interviewed, they come across like nitwit inbreds from backwoods Canada, but I love that retro-folk sound. 

From the new album 'Strange Country' on New West Records: smarturl.it/strangecountry

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 29

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 29 ... Brian Shannon (63:13)

  • As a kid, watched Wall Street Week with his doctor Dad on Friday nights
  • Made money as a kid from caddying and delivering newspapers
  • First stock he ever bought was LoJack, made $6,000, hooked him for life, "why work?"
  • Grew up in Massachusetts?
  • First job after college as a stockbroker
  • Passed Series 7, realized job was glorified telemarketer
  • Went to Lehman Brothers next and learned how to sell
  • Learned how markets worked using other people's money
  • Read the Cabot Market Letter, idea was buying above levels of resistance
  • Read Investors Business Daily, saw prop firm ad that offered 20:1 leverage
  • Made $25,000 deposit with this prop firm
  • Excited with his 48K baud modem trading from his home's basement for the firm
  • Opened office for this NYC-based prop firm in Denver
  • Prop firm made money from commissions
  • People are their own worst enemies in the market
  • Still astounded by dumb decisions he makes even today
  • Chantal Pharmaceuticals, miracle skin cream, stock got halted after hit piece in Barron's
  • Lost $8-$12K overnight in Chantal Pharma ... one lesson he learned along the way, position with too much size
  • In 2000, 2001 market was getting crushed and he was losing pretty consistently, thought about quitting
  • Slowed things down, reduced size dramatically, ground his way back
  • His first six or seven months, he was profitable every month, then he got cocky
  • Trading is an evolution, you always come back to the basic principles
  • "Only price pays. Follow the trend" -- these are his catchphrases
  • Hold yourself accountable, don't blame other things, only yourself
  • Uses multiple time frames
  • Swing trading his preferred time frame
  • Looks at direction of 50-day moving average: uptrend or downtrend
  • Looks for volatility contraction, diminished volume, pullbacks to "support" on daily chart
  • Drops to 30-minute chart next, looks at 5-day moving average on 30-min chart
  • Distance from entry to his initial protective stop, distance to perceived targets measured -- figures his risk : reward
  • Drops to 10-minute chart, looks for an entry that makes sense given all of the above analysis
  • Don't gamble on earnings plays
  • Accountants lie, CEOs lie, only price pays
  • Ego and the need to be right clouds your judgment
  • Fan of using Volume Weighted Average Price -- VWAP -- esp. since some specific event (e.g., the IPO date)
  • Been looking at VWAP for 12 or 13 years
  • Stumbled across VWAP, it spoke to him ... now becoming more widely used by retail traders
  • Stan Weinstein's book, Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets, had a huge influence on him
  • "If they don't scare you out, they'll wear you out"
  • Traders tend to be ADD looking for action
  • Time frame must suit your personality ... how much time, capital, and experience do you have?
  • Never start off by day trading, that's something you evolve to, or devolve to [chuckling]
  • Start off with a longer term horizon, like swing trading
  • Swing traders should make more money than day traders
  • Trading is extremely difficult ... anyone who says it's easy is lying ... misleading you for nefarious reasons
  • You need a lot of capital to start
  • People get impatient, make big mistakes before they learn who they are
  • First master yourself (understand yourself and which time frame suits you)
  • Brian says some nice things to Aaron in parting ... Aaron not as polished in these early episodes
  • www.alphatrends.net
  • His book: Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes
  • Twitter: @alphatrends

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 66

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 66 ... Dan Shapiro (66:25)

  • Return guest (Episode 32)
  • First started looking at charts in 2003
  • Fast talker, native New Yorker? ... sounds remarkably like Joe Fahmy
  • Looks at 60 minute charts exclusively
  • Social media the best and worst thing for new traders
  • Most new day traders obsess over the one minute chart
  • Uneducated, underfunded, no-process bungee jumpers are down on the one minute chart
  • "Barry Sanders Effect" -- getting stopped for two yards twenty times a day -->
  • Instead you should wait for a hole to open up, run 60 yards
  • Most stocks are not tradable
  • Get rid of the social media noise
  • He's "not the sharpest tool in the shed" [sounds pretty sharp to me]
  • He's been trading since 1999, has a lot of screen time
  • Netflix and Tesla his two favorite stocks
  • Hasn't updated his eSignal in at least a decade
  • His charts are covered with squiggly lines: moving averages, Bollinger Bands, linear regression lines
  • You need to know where the bodies are buried (areas of supply)
  • Most traders don't know what they're being patient for 
  • [Likes to use football analogies]
  • Stocks go from supply to supply (areas of support / resistance)
  • FANG (Facebook, Apple, (Amazon?), Netflix, Google) names are market sensitive -- is Netflix weak when the market is strong? Why?
  • Don't win the day, win the intervals of the chart
  • Is the trade worth it? Distance from one zone to the next large enough?
  • FANG stocks have great range and volume ... tradable [i.e., Usual Suspects]
  • Six years ago started doing live webinars
  • Looks through 500 daily charts every night, finds things "coming out of a range"
  • Writes down six to ten ideas every day
  • He'd rather drink cyanide than trade the pre-market highs and lows lists
  • Everybody wants to drive that fast car, but new drivers should drive slowly
  • Newborn babies don't come out of the womb running
  • How many horror stories are there of people shorting a pre-market screamer ("Flying Pig") and busting out
  • Trading should be boring
  • Watching six candles a day (60 minute charts) forces you to be patient 
  • Doesn't want to be fighting a guy with a $2,000 account who is getting stopped out every two minutes
  • Traders have to be humble but also killers, willing to take food out of some other guy's kids' mouths
  • Don't turn a paper cut into a severed head
  • [He's a fun guy, fast talker, should be in sales, maybe he was, maybe he still is]
  • During monthly review, looks hardest at his losing days
  • "Don't trade like a putz" -- spot those days you were trading like a putz
  • "Ish happens" [instead of "shit happens" ... a Yiddish thing?]
  • Advice to new traders: don't be undercapitalized (and max risk should be 1% of account)
  • Trades only have three parts: process [method], tier size [risk management], result [trade management]
  • Don't risk $1000 to make $300
  • "Let me give you the reality"
  • Prop firms used to make so much money from commissions, they didn't care about how much risk people were taking
  • Only four or five major players left in the prop business ... it's dead
  • Game has completely changed -- no money left in commissions
  • The money isn't in commissions anymore, it's in "education" 
  • Prop firms won't give you any capital now, won't let you trade any more than 100 share lots
  • Offshore prop firms are bookies 
  • Avoiding "Pattern Day Trader" rule by going offshore to a "bookie" broker a bad idea
  • What's a good amount of money to start trading: A LOT
  • "You, my friend, are a commodity"
  • If you're doing millions of shares a month, you can negotiate a very low commission rate
  • "You are the rising star ... invest in youself."
  • Peter Luger doesn't serve his steaks on paper plates
  • You need screen time to learn what NOT to do, not what to do [yes, indeed]
  • Borrowed money from a loan shark to get his start [I'd like to hear more about this]
  • In 2003 he was at Spectrum Securities, bought out by Schonfeld Securities, met Dan Mirkin then
  • In 2003 he started using Trade-Ideas [should have Dan Mirkin on the show]
  • Trade-Ideas still cheap at $500 a month [it isn't that much]
  • He doesn't upgrade anything he uses, 2003 version of Trade-Ideas, ancient version of eSignal
  • Turned profitable after 2003, a coincidence with Trade-Ideas adoption?
  • Many years of desperate trial and error before he found success
  • Has no need to show off, hates the social media circus
  • You need to put in the time to learn how to trade ... people will doubt you and you will doubt yourself, but don't give up
  • "Some random avatar isn't a superstar, you are the superstar"
  • How does he have this level of energy? Lots of cocaine [he's a funny guy]
  • www.accessatrader.com
  • Twitter: danshep55