December 2007 Archives

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Looks like the Santa Claus rally showed up at the last minute. I just wonder if Bill "Grinch" Gross' "we're in a recession" comments will rain on the parade...

Anyway, this is probably the last regular post for about two weeks. I may post some charts if something interesting develops but if not, look for regular posting to resume around January 7th. I'll do my best to keep the links section updated. I'm also planning to upgrade the software that runs the site (WordPress). So if you happen to visit the site and it looks crazy or is down all together you'll know why.

I hope everybody has safe & happy holidays. See you next year.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there's a lot of good financial content 'buired' in audio and video files that's not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who's based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user's tracking list. That's the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the "discoveries" list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user's tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here's a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the 'New Tracking' link to add a topic to be tracked. When you're logged in you'll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You'll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic's name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it's discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike's tracking list and here's where you can see all of TraderMike's discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the 'discoveries' tab when you're logged in).

If you'd like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you've got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

This little newsflash brought a smile to my face:

Indian markets regulator says to allow short selling - Forbes Forbes reports markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India said it has decided to allow short selling of shares by all classes of investors. SEBI has also decided to stop institutions from day trading or square off their transactions intra-day, the regulator said in a release. SEBI also decided to put in place a full-fledged securities lending and borrowing (SLB) scheme for all mkt participants in the Indian securities mkt under the over-all regulatory framework. For the short selling and SLB, all the Indian stock exchanges will put in place systems and issue guidelines, said the mkt regulator.

Allowing short selling... what a concept!

Guard your wallets today, we've got the Philly Fed report at noon and you'll probably see the expiration pins starting to ramp up...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Leading Indicators
• 10:00 -- Philadelphia Fed

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We've basically gone nowhere in the two sessions since yesterday's gap up opening. I see signs that things are swinging to the bulls' favor in the short term but who knows if they'll step up ahead of the holiday week. Keep in mind that this is an expiration week, so watch for pins...

No change

The Nasdaq closed just shy of its 200-day moving average yesterday. I think that's the thing to watch today. A good move above that line could spark some short covering, if not actual buying...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:30 -- Crude Inventories

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

This morning's strength has saved the Nasdaq from breaking the neckline of that head & shoulders... for now. Let's see if we get any follow through to this early buying.

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Another ugly day as the indices finally took out the early December lows. The next levels of interest are the December uptrends, which also happen to be the necklines of head & shoulder patterns on the indices (excluding the Russell 2000). The Nasdaq is sitting right on that trendline but the S&P 500 and Dow still have some room.

Speaking of the Dow, I'm always harping on the fact that you can't trust the opening price on the charts of indices containing NYSE stocks because of their staggered opens. So I was very surprised to see this in tonight's Worden Report:

Three of the four Major Averages gapped to the downside today. This is very unusual for averages, which are usually kept tame by internal disagreements. The only Major that didn't gap down was the Dow, which might as well have, since its opening and high price for today was virtually equal to yesterday's close.

Worden, the keeper of all this stock data, should know better. If he wasn't around this morning to see the Dow futures below fair value then he could easily look at DIA to see how the index *really* opened. It most certainly did gap down. In fact, it gapped right across its 200-day moving average. Here's the DIA chart:

The S&P appears to be headed for the November lows and/or the August trendline:

The Naz just broke its 200-day moving average for the third time this year. The previous two breaks were buying opportunities. Will this one be as well?

I should probably mention that T2108 broke that important 20 level today. It's at 19.93 but could easily test it's lows from earlier this year of 7 and 12. As I always say at these levels, while I might not want to be a buyer I sure as heck don't want to be initiating shorts here, and would have my finger on the 'buy to cover' button if I was already short.

Not a single "Up" on the table now...

Thanks to everybody who posted broker recommendations / comments. (It's good to have a lot of comments for a change. I guess I need to start asking more questions.) It's been very helpful, especially all the little detailed stuff that I wouldn't necessarily figure out my doing quick trial runs. The most surprising thing to me was the fervent support of ThinkorSwim. They were totally off my radar but I think I'm going to park my long term accounts with them. I'm gonna decide on my day trading broker in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll have everything transferred and ready to go for the start of the new year.

As for the markets, somehow the indices managed to avoid breaking the December lows despite Friday's ugliness. But the bears are back at it today. Those December 4th lows will be important...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

Like they say, all good things must come to an end. I've been with CyberTrader since I started trading full time back in 1999. I can't even imagine how much I've spent in commissions with them. That first year I spent about $30,000. It's certainly dropped over the years, especially when I switched to per-share commissions, but it's still got to be at least an order of magnitude more than the average Schwab client. Which makes it so astounding that Schwab would push all of CyberTrader's clients away.

This was the week when Schwab turned off the lights at CyberTrader and moved Cyber's traders to Street Smart Pro. I haven't even had the energy nor motivation to even install the damn thing yet because I knew it was gonna be a mess. Looks like I was right. -- Dave has a post which details the major issues with Street Smart(?) Pro. I've been emailed by at least 4 other people complaining about Street Smart Pro and asking about other options for brokers.

I've now come full circle from when I made this post in summer of 2006 asking for broker/platform suggestions. My requirements are basically the same:

• A direct access, non-browser based platform.
• Server-held stops. (This is critical!)
• The ability to set a timed stop, e.g. close this position at 3:58 PM
• Per-share pricing -- less than $0.01/share
• A good shortable stocks list (one of my favorite things about CyberTrader)
• Reliability & execution speed

I also want to move my long term accounts from eTrade for obvious reasons. For that I'm fine with a more typical online brokerage like Ameritrade. Any recommendations besides Ameritrade?

Another gap down today. I'll be watching to see if the early November lows can hold...

On Today's Calendar:

• nada

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades: