though i would just start posting my profit loss on my trades. Haven't made much yet but starting to learn. Hoping to get some constructive suggestions/critisims

portfolio as of 11/09/2011                                           

Symbol                        Qty                               Price    
AAPL                             4                              $395.28  
AMZN                            7                              $211.22
BAC                               250                         $6.16
AMZN                            1                               $16                     $230 Call for April 2012

Total Holdings : $6199.66

11/15/11 Update
Symbol        Qty     Entry Price        Total investment         Current Price            Current Holding        Profit/Loss         Status
AAPL           4        $395.28             $1,581.12                  $385.92                     $1,543.68                ($37.44)               Sold
AMZN           7        $211.22            $1,478.54                  $217.83                      $1,524.81                 $46.27 
BAC            400     $6.11                $2,444.00                   $6.26                         $2,504.28                 $60.28                 Sold
AMZN(call)  1         $16.00              $1,600.00                  $17.90                        $1,790.00                 $190.00 
AAPL(call)   1         $13.60              $1,360.00                  $14.35                        $1,435.00                 $75.00 
RIMM(put)   2         $4.15                 $830.00                     $3.60                          $720.00                   ($110.00)

NET + / -  = $224.11      

 "Insider Info : VLO going hot on Monday. "

n why it would go hot in monday?

@nepalkochoro

I am not sure what platform u use but for premarket and afterhours ...u have to route it through INET or ARCA (market makers) INET is cheaper I think ..at least for me

and I think options activity precedes what the equity is gonna do cuz options is where the big money(risk/reward) is .

Yeah the short and long thing was for the infamous wits end ...hehe ...I think lotus is pretty new...his/her first post on this thread was pretty darn confusing ...no offense
if wits end knew what was up..he would have caught that and come up with a more condescending rant...i dont think he's got legs at all..at least we got one leg...LOL

VLO had something to do with buyout chatters...at least thats what i read somewhere on some pumper website...but charts ugly...up too high..big fat red candle today when the market was up 250 points ...jst broke the MA line..hanging man candle on the second top ...and a double top ..plain old ugly chart..good for a short though

 thanks guys for the input. looking for monday. seriously hoping for some good news.

VLO : whatever the case may be, i am out of it. 

I am no stock expert but I suffered quite a loss on Amazon last time it tanked. Like about 12%. I sold it and moved it to something safe. I'm sure it will tank again next quarter because of the operating cost loss. PE ratio is too high and states are trying to collect tax from amazon purchases. I would be really careful with that stock because investors are crazy (like me and will dump stocks once they see some bad news)
APPL is probably a good buy. I don't think demand for apple will go down anytime soon. And Energy stocks are also good. If Europe crisis ends for good, energy demand will skyrocket thereby driving oil prices. BAC is probably at it's lowest and if you keep it long term you will probably end up with pretty good turnaround. 
Once again I am no expert but just saying something based on my own personal opinion. I think there are other experts in Sajha who may give better advice than me. 

Ha Ha ! Tyranny...you got that right. I've got no legs, but neither am I  in the a whuppin' game.

Jokes aside, if you are interested in fundamental aspect of valuations (DCF, comaprables, precedence transactions modeling)
let me know :o)

@ wits end,
thanks but no thanks !! I'd pick technicals over fundamentals any day...
All that matters to me is the price action of the stock..who cares what the company is worth...there may be a buyout and there might not be a buyout..who knows
I will look at fundamentals but I trust the technicals.

The way I look at it, a company's stock is only worth what the buyers and sellers decide the price to be (setting aside buyouts which is clearly luck cuz u really dont know...) and technicals evaluate the emotions that goes into these pricings

and besides there are analysts at wallstreet who do that and even they are wrong sometimes...

On a separate note, for instance the earnings/revenue estimates which are derived from the fundamentals...if the company misses the earnings consensus by even a penny..then the stock gets punished ...like AAPL and AMZN recently
Holding till earnings is a gamble anyways ..at least for me ..

The bottom line is everyone buys or shorts a stock to make money. Do you really think you and I (regular people not "analysts" ) exactly know what the company is worth and what its future looks like?
We might have some idea but it aint enough for me to dump my money based on that info cuz I know I dont know enough about the company. I am not saying fundamentals are BS but I sure think its not dependable whenever you are trading or even investing.

@nepalkochoro

covering my RIMM tomorrow...its had some good news friday afterhours (some hedgefund bought a buncha stake in RIMM and something about a new OS).

Futures up about 60 points but EUR/USD trending downwards on news that German Finance ministry simulating several scenarios of Greek exit from the Eurozone. If the exit really happens its gonna be a disaster for the financials as well as the markets.

I am shortbiased financials again...based on how the headlines come out

shortbiased MPEL ..i think its gonna crack...lets see how it trades

Long biased on BRLI for a bounce watching friday's bottom

might even long RIMM after I cover first

jst my opinions, dont bet on it

G luck all

 @tyrannyoflogic

"covering my RIMM tomorrow...its had some good news friday afterhours (some hedgefund bought a buncha stake in RIMM and something about a new OS). "

sounds like a bad news to me. if it goes up in its value its going to whip my ass off. by the way what website do you follow the news. Hopefully my loss in RIMM will be covered by long calls on AAPL and AMZN.

Can you post the link for RIMM news? If its really poised to go up then I may sell my options early morning. In that way my only loss would be broker fees. 

I use a bunch for news actually

Investorshub.com for news and the actual filings
googlefinance   
Equityfeed the software free delayed edition
thinkorswim  free paper trading account for live streaming charts and news

The RIMM news was on bloomberg , I think I got it from googlefinance

Guys, I think downside to market is more attractive here at this point. we need to test 1150 on S&P before a sustainable rally.

I would hold on to shorts.  Be careful !!!

@Obama , the market kinda looks toppy to me too ..but RIMM is a beaten down chart, I guess a lot of its float is short..if a short squeeze happens its gonna be horrendous for new shorts....I am still short financials though

Even though the futures are up ,sustaining a third day of rally kinda is abnormal, there's gotta be some profit taking  but u can never say for sure...cuz its the freaking market

What do you say about the EUR/USD chart rt now ? Do u think it just filled the gap or is it headed lower?

Tyranny, i think EUR/USD is headed lower. It has consistently failed on 100 day MA on last 10 days. My personal trade looks like this

4 lots of  EUR/USD   avg. short at 1.3752 from last wednesday. Covered 2 lots at 1.3500  . I covered one more lot around 1.3560 seeing bounce up. So, currently in loss for few pips. But i wll be out if it hits 1.3835.  It should fail at today's high by the early hours of european trade. If not, it could hit 1.4000.

You might want to get out of RIMM coz its beaten down and they could squeeze the short ups. Staying short on financials seems good idea to me too.

My curiosity on RIMM is : u watch charts regularly and and u read them preety good. Why didn't u short it when it showed a failure on weekly level 5 weeks back. May be u didnot thought abt shorting RIMM then but catching the big move down or up is always more profitable. Remember all the airline stocks we talked abt in early summer, they showed failure on rallies, great short opportunites all summer. I may not be able to express my ideas clearly for now but Risk/Reward ratio must be considered before putting any trade and anything less than 2/1 should be unacceptable. Simply following this rule makes us traders a lot profitable. What do u say?

I think I am headstrong on holding RIMM. Their new BBX operating system is not going to be released until coming year. Other than some hedge fund manager investing in RIMM, they have no other news to uplift their stock. Their quaterly update is scheduled on Dec 15. I am just expecting an implosion with RIMM. Overall I am risking $800 buck on RIMM. Lets give it a shot. 

@OBAMA , nice call on the EUR/USD
I trade a lot, short term and small sizes and take small profits ..guess thats my way of "diversifying" and its easier for me to cut my losses quick and let my winners ride
I agree with you abt the big moves but catching them is the hard part and there's a lot on uncertainty with those moves

covered RIMM premarket ...-20.00
locked in profits for RENN and PRMW premarket
long some LNG ..something abt acquisition...got some off consolidation 11.36 avg

short JCP ...earnings today 33.50 avg ... in quite big on this one

long some OBCI 2.40 avg (earnings but very low volume) very speculative play ..

everything with stops

 seems like you guys did quite a bit of changes in the portfolio. 

Today, I just starred at the number. The beginning of the market looked really aweful. The two stocks AAPL and AMZN were down and the other, which basically is a dead cat walking, RIMM was high. 

But it didn't take long for AMZN to start rolling up with good news. AMZN made my day today. RIMM was just a hype in the morning. Nobody wants blackberry anymore. Outages of services are also against RIM. It tanked down but on the options market, it didn't gained any value for my puts. In fact I lost $10 bucks. Oh well I would have paid that amount to the broker if I had decided to sell early in the morning. I am really expection a powerful implosion with RIMM.

AAPL is basically making me throw up. Their stupid update didn't fix battery problem. Man somebody definitely knows how to kicks Apple's ass in Steve Jobs absence. If it goes further down, I am going to buy more to lower the average. For near future I definitely see a gain in AAPL though.

Overall I am $26 bucks positive today.

@nepalkochoro
My trades are intraday mostly and a couple of days at the most...so my portfolio changes jst abt every day

The thing abt RIMM is there was a mention of" merger" in the bloomberg article....not that it's gonna happen for sure but still ...and today was a down day and I did not see the stock that weak...and it did not break any previous lows either ... In fact it traded higher for most of the am
M not trying to scare u here... But u r dealing options here...jst putting up my opinions

AAPL it gave up 380, 362 test coming IMO unless they put out some good news... But as a long term investor I think it's a pretty safe bet ... If I were a long term investor...my portfolio would be full of apples..hehe

Covered JCP a bit early today...but I get anxious when m in big ...+30 cents avg , was a good trade though

LNG sold half ...keeping half for tomorrow ...RSI jst pulled back from overbought levels. Creating more room to run upside..

OBCI was a bummer .. My bag for today....waiting for a green day to get rid of it without causing much damage.....yeah all the painful wait till then LOL

 I consider my self a short term investor and I do not have much idea about option trading.  YTD +9%

Ticker     Avg Paid             Intention
AAPL       366              Long Term
HAL         37.74           Will wait till it go above 40
CJES       22.83           Mixed Bag. I was burned by this IPO. Had to pick up some in the dip to cover loss. Will unload some of the expensive one to get some tax break once it cross 23.
ABAT       1.00             Short Term
CMED     4.04             Long Term

I was looking for opnions on ABAT. I know the earnings was supposed to be out today, but I have not seen any where. The price was down 5% today so I was thinking if it is already out and I am the one who missed it.  Will appreciate any info on that.

 I am hoping to ride on MT tomorrow. I hit it at 19.01. I would like to quit it at 19.50.

 @tyrannyoflogic you seem to be trading quite often. do u have plus $25000 in your account to be doing day trades?
RIMM is the dead cat walking. Its in life support. Its possible that they might have a takeover but not in near future. If google hadn't bought motorola for patents then I would suspect GOOG prying over RIM but right now, I don't think any new player even wants to invest in the competitive smartphone business. Plus RIMM has market capitalization of over 9.2B and looking at HPs failure with Palm, I don't think anybody is even going to dare buying RIMM for over $10B . If anybody values patents, then that company would go for Eastman Kodak first. Its a penny infront of RIMM. Once EK is digested, then the RIMM's turn. Until then RIMM is going to suffer. Plus they have reports due on Dec 15. Playbook order at bestbuy going down from 500,000 units to 200,000, worldwide outages of blackberry services, iphone 4S launching, Amazon kindle fire launching and a swarm of android phones. That pretty much tells me or anybody that its report going to be crappy. The only thing I haven't decided yet is if I really want to take risk until after reports are made public. Even if the report is crappy but if it exceeds analysts forcast, its share will jump up. Lets see how things goes.

@80S welcome. seems like you ar doing quite well so far. I am new to options too. this is the first time i started with options. took me a while to understand it through youtube videos. then I finally got guts to trade with options. Other than AAPL, I am doing good. I am starting to feel more control on the options than stocks. The risks are greater but rewards are greater too. Lets see how things go.

@eastsidaz : do you have other stocks in your portfolio? insights from your trading experiences will be greatly appreciated. 


By the way, has anybody invested in penny stocks? Like the ones that are sold/bought for couple cents.