Off to Berlin... Placing some trades...

I'm heading off to Berlin for a few days. I'll be back next Thursday, but I'm interested in a few things I think might happen.

So I'm placing two REED orders. I sold mine today 1000 @ $2.55/$2.54, profiting $217 on my initial purchase of 1000 @ $2.34/$2.32. (Since there is such low volume on REED, you can't typically complete your entire order for the price set. When my SELL triggered today at $2.55, there were only 500 bids at that price; the BID then shifted to $2.54 leaving me with an extra 500 shares. I moved my sell order down to $2.54 to move them and they sold.)

My order book also has some Tessera in it since it's due for a bounce. Their Amkor arbitration is hitting on June 10th, so I'm watching to see what happens there. I think they already won and are just determining settlement stuff but that's a big deal and if it's great news, we'll see a huge spike. My play is a mid-term, but if it doesn't auto-sell by the 10th, I'm going to cancel a sell and/or buy it if it didn't trigger to begin with. We could see a $5 (20-25%) bump on good news about this.

I am also still in 40 AAPL @ $184.35. Watch to see what happens on the 9th with iPhone chatter. I don't know how much of it is priced in but I think "amazing features" and "available immediately en masse" could be enough to push this past its support. There's been chatter of it for months but the steady increase hasn't been related to pricing in on that. I think it can break $200. Let's see what happens.

Here's my order book:

TIME		DESCRIPTION	STATUS
6/7/08 04:21:07		SELL -250 TSRA STP 14.00 GTC TRG BY #48238739 OCO #48238740	WAIT TRG
6/7/08 04:21:07		SELL -250 TSRA TRSTP MARK-.17 MARK GTC TRG BY #48238739 OCO #48238740 WHEN TSRA MARK AT OR ABOVE 19.65	WAIT TRG
6/7/08 04:21:07		BUY +250 TSRA TRSTP MARK+.17 MARK GTC WHEN TSRA MARK AT OR BELOW 18.75	WAIT COND
6/7/08 03:14:22		SELL -1000 REED @2.55 LMT GTC TRG BY #48238495	WAIT TRG
6/7/08 03:14:22		BUY +1000 REED @2.10 LMT GTC	QUEUED
6/7/08 03:12:47		SELL -1000 REED @2.50 LMT GTC TRG BY #48238484	WAIT TRG
6/7/08 03:12:47		BUY +1000 REED @2.25 LMT GTC	QUEUED

REED woes and cheers...

So I watched REED tank to $2.00 the other day. I held on, knowing it'd bounce back. But I didn't buy my belief: I should've bought in another 1,000 shares in if I really believed it'd hit the $2.50 range and average in. Instead, I just sat back. It bounced up to $2.47 in the mean time. Bad call; would've been up $470. Can't let that slip again.

Once it breaches $2.50, I'll sell. And once it hits $2.10-$2.25, I'll buy in again. This one might be my new fun time.

I'm also in AAPL, 40 shares @ $184.something. I'm hoping it pushes up past the $190 resistance we've been seeing.

Next time, read the damn email... (Wanting AAPL, can't buy...)

So thinkorswim has been bugging me about getting my signature card in. I haven't done that since I established my account and I guess the USA PATRIOT Act requires that. So I got this charming message when trying to buy 40 shares of Apple: "On this account you cannot open new positions." Great.

Time to send the card in. Also, time to hold Apple for a medium play. Their price targets are in the $225 range and they're about to announce something big—almost everyone assumes the 3G iPhone. This is only good news, since there's no gap 'til profit as there was with the last iPhone announcement. It's only going to further entrench the brand with an already successful product. And I think it could surge past $200 and stay that way.

I want to buy in at the $185 point (which is hilarious, considering my first trade was to buy a single share of AAPL @ $123.35 three months ago... Man.

Touching the stove with REED...

I have that nagging feeling that I'm about to do something absolutely. fucking. stupid. I'm setting up an OCO bracket on a penny stock, complete with an idiotic trailing stop. Issue: Trailing stops won't trigger properly with such low market volatility. Issue: I don't want to set a simple sell limit, in case it maintains upwards momentum. Issue: I won't be babysitting the order at all. Issue: I'm completely stupid.

Order:
BUY +1000 REED @2.35 LMT GTC WHEN REED MARK AT OR BELOW 2.35
SELL -1000 REED TRSTP MARK-.05 MARK GTC TRG BY #4510 OCO #47304511 WHEN REED MARK AT OR ABOVE 2.60
SELL -1000 REED STP 1.05 GTC TRG BY #4510 OCO #4511

Wish me luck. Watch what happens to $2,350 worth of cash here, eh? My emergency stop is set damn low, below its 52-week low of $1.50, but it hit that only two months ago. It spiked shortly after, saw by some as a great price I'm sure, but has steadily slumped back into the $2.30 range.

Still, the bounce of this stock is impressive: from $2.25 to $2.85 in about a week.

Let's see what happens.

What's up with Berkshire...

I exited Berkshire Hathaway about a month ago because I was growing impatient and liked to see more movement. Ironically, I'm now trending towards more medium-termed plays, but I'm looking out for short-term/day-trades that will work, too.

Berkshire slammed down into the $4,035 range last Thursday, a support that it had broached the Friday before that before rebounding about $90. It's a pretty clearly established support; it hasn't dipped (more than 1%) below $3,900 since it first passed that point August 20th, 2007.

Clearly, a lot of people are recognizing it as a good time to average in for the long haul. BRK/B hit $5,059 in early December but started to slide real fast from that resistance point. It's probably closer to it's market-based "intrinsic value" at the near $4,400 mark, but I think it could easily continue on upward and break $4,600 next week. I'm not putting my money where my mouth is, but let's just watch what happens over the next week or two.

Things have been very busy at work, but I'll be getting back into this more and more over the next couple of weeks, as I'm consolidating my Scottrade and Thinkorswim portfolios. (I work at Phoenix, Arizona Web Development firm Synapse Studios as my day job. See my blog there.)

MOS hurts, TSRA heals...

So MOS shot back up, but my stops triggered properly and it only hurt me something like $40 or $60. Or something.

I initiated a fun TSRA play last night:
BUY +250 TSRA MARK+.10 WHEN TSRA MARK AT OR BELOW 18.55
I've stopped setting flat out limit purchases. The common wisdom is to never buy at MARK but to always place a limit order and wait for the market to come to you. Anything else is chasing and can be real trouble; you can almost always get a better price.

With a stock as volatile as TSRA, though, if it starts the day by shooting straight on down, it can be painful.

Say TSRA opens at 19. You have every intention to buy at 18.75. The market opens and it plunges downward, to 18.75, where your LIMIT order triggers. It then continues on its downward march to 18.35, before turning around. Here's the issue: Every penny below your purchase price is a penny you must now make back UP in order to come close to profitability.

One defense against this is the trailing stop on the BUY side with a threshold trigger. I set a trailing stop of 10 cents, only once it hit 18.55. What this means is that I can expect to pay no more than 18.65. But what it further means is that if TSRA is intent on tanking early on, I won't buy into a downtrend. My trailing stop will follow it on down, until the momentum shifts by 10 cents.

Now, on a very volatile stock with considerable spikes and lags, you can easily have a stock drop 40 cents, gain the 10 cents needed to trigger your buy order, and then promptly resuming its demise. I've had this happen. Twice. It then promptly ran into my STOP and sold me out, causing me to loose twice in a row. Things to carefully consider then: set your trailing stop level at something intelligent, based on a stock's tendency to spike and lag and its typical volatility. Truthfully, 10 cents is probably too anemic, but going much higher than that results in lost profitability; every cent the stock has to regain before you buy in is a cent you don't earn profit on.

Further, set your emergency stop further out. I should've had mine at 17, but I figured 18 wasn't going to happen. I was very, very wrong. And sad.

Yesterday, the stock started at 18.69 and started its way on down. It hit a day low of 18.33 before turning sharply and heading on up. It gained 10 cents and my trailing stop triggered in and I rode an amazing little wave on up to $19.90-ish, before it caught a lag back down to 19.74/19.55 and sold me out right about there. Still, on 250 shares, that was a profit of $272.

I'm doing something nearly identical today. I won't touch it if it doesn't bounce up at all during the day; my emergency stop is set for 17 and I think that's been a healthy support level and if it hits that, shit's hit the fan already. But holding it for a day or two is smart; it'll touch on 20 again and then back back off. A stock like this is volatile yet generally so within a range and relatively predictable. Naturally, I can get myself burned with too cautious stops or bad trailing stop levels, or if the unthinkable happens and big news causes an epic gap. But for now, it's fun and a potentially good play.

Tomorrow's order:
BUY +250 TSRA TRSTP MARK+.10 MARK GTC WHEN TSRA MARK AT OR BELOW 18.55
SELL -250 TSRA TRSTP MARK-.16 MARK GTC TRG BY #46617 OCO #4661 WHEN TSRA MARK AT OR ABOVE 19.45
SELL -250 TSRA STP 17.00 GTC TRG BY #4661 OCO #46617

MOS Short Selling...

I've got to head to bed real soon so I'm going to keep this short. My brother loves Mosaic, a fertilizer company. Their performance is tightly bound to Potash prices so it presents an interesting study. Every time they've had a 4%+ drop in the past six months, it's been followed by another nearly 4% drop, at least in the intraday.

So I'm banking on that happening again.

Here's my play:
Sell -39 MOS @ 122.75
Buy +39 MOS STP TRG+126.00
Buy +39 MOS TRSTP MARK+1.50% WHEN MOS MARK AT OR BELOW 120.00

Maximum loss = $126.75, excluding any gaps and commissions.

Back...

Sorry for the lack of posts. I'm still jet-lagged. Got screwed by two Tessera plays that triggered and fired straight through my fucking stops. Lost about $160 on each, twice. Then watched it hit $18-ish after a dip in the $17s. Placed a buy order at $17.75 that never triggered because it shot through to almost $20. Hating it a bit about that right now.

Will be getting back into this way more actively next week. Liquidated Scottrade. Thinkorswim 4 life, etc.

On Vacation...

I forgot to post that I'm actually on vacation right now, on a cruise ship for about 2 weeks. I made a QQQQs play, looking for it as a long-term. Overbought, so that I was on margin, had bought at the dip, caught that I was in margin while at the airport, sold it off in afters for about $120+ profit.

I made some on my MOS play.

I'm watching V break its initial resistance. $100 by August, anyone? (I don't own any, though...)

And I have a standing bracketed OCO order for TSRA when it hits $19.45, stop at $18.85, trailing stop set to trigger at $21.25 for 17 cents. We'll see if that plays.

If you don't see any movement here, that's because I'm gone til May 13th. Cheers!

Long TSRA, Short MOS, missed on AAPL

So I bought 20 AAPL at $162.60 right before close yesterday. And then I watched it spike amazingly to the $171 point in after-hours. And I didn't hit sell. As I was walking around the office a few minutes later, and then back to my desk, I was wondering why I hadn't at that point. By the time I had come back, it had gone from a ~$160 profit to ($133). Awesome. Ended up leveling out, but I don't want to hold it long.

I've loaded up an interesting play in Mosaic Company (MOS). They had a rough day yesterday and a quick look at their 6-month charts shows that every time they've had a pretty rough day, they've continued to slide the next day, sometimes to much greater effect. But they've always bounced up enough to trigger an upper-limit buy-to-cover, so I've pushed it up a bit high.

My order looks like this:
Sell -20 MOS @ 131.50 LMT
Buy +20 MOS STP 136.00
OR
Buy +20 MOS TRSTP MARK+.10 WHEN MOS MARK AT OR BELOW 129.00

Basically, I want to sell short almost immediately when the market opens. If the stock turns around and spikes up to $136, I'll buy to cover my position, total loss: $100.

If the stock flies through the $129 mark, a trailing stop will take effect such that if it rebounds by more than 10 cents at any point, a buy to cover will take effect and lock in some profit. If that hits, minimum locked in profit: $49 or so.

Might turn out that I'm fucking up how I place limit orders with shorting, but I'm learning the platform and figure my stops are in place to protect me from my own stupidity.

This will be my third roundtrip if it executes, so it's a good thing I'm leaving. I need to liquidate my Scottrade positions or convert them into something more stable. Maybe try the DJIA; see if we can see some gains in 19 days. We're past the nasty bank stuff and the rough earnings period, so we might see some bounceback and growth. Berkshire is also trading at a near-6-month low, but I won't be here to lock in the profits on that and Scottrade doesn't have logical/bracketed trades.

We'll see if I keep losing with my position ideas. I need to get the hell out of AAPL as well. I'm going to put a stop on that to make sure it doesn't tank.
Edit: AAPL exit positions:
SELL -20 AAPL STP 156.00
SELL -20 AAPL TRSTP MARK-.26 WHEN AAPL MARK AT OR ABOVE 164

Sold 200 TSRA @ 20.00, Profit: $104.30

So after having re-bought into TSRA another 200 shares on thinkorswim for $19.4285, my trailing stop limit triggered at 20.00.

This is because I was fundamentally misunderstanding the utility of the trailing stop limit, which is to say, simpler than I was making it. Instead of a trailing stop that only triggers once it hits a limit, it's instead a trailing stop that triggers instantly, with an upper limit that will force a sale no matter what. A bit less useful, but basically a hybrid way of placing an order with two levels of protection in a single order.

TOS does allow you to create triggers and rules, though, so the way around this and to get the desired behavior I was talking about yesterday would be to create your basic bracketed OCO with a low stop where you want it and then to create a trailing stop with the MARK - whatever value, and a "AT OR ABOVE" trigger on the mark price.

Fortunately, TSRA swung back down just after hitting 20.00, but not before hitting 20.22, which means my TS would've triggered at 20.12, basically killing $20 in profit. Probably the cheapest form of that mistak I could make; if it had triggered on the next 20.00 touch, where the stock broke out all the way up to 20.70, I would've been much more pissed.

AAPL Earnings...

Every once in awhile, I set out to do something that I know is probably dumb, but I'm determined to do anyway. Most the time, this is a losing proposition.

There's all manner of speculation on AAPL's earnings coming out after hours today. Some are saying they'll at least meet, others are saying they'll exceed. Since there are expectations they'll exceed, they have exceed by something of a landslide in order to break past the priced-in pre-expectations game already being waged. An analyst downgrade today helped cool it down a bit by bumping it down about 8 points, settling in at 160. (You'll recall I bought AAPL in my first stock move; an ill-advised single share at 125 last month.)

It's been slowly trending up as we've been approaching earnings; again the market can price things in based on their abstracted layer of expectations. A meet or lightly exceeds is probably pretty tightly priced in right now.

The flip side of this of course, is if that fail to meet. I don't think this is likely, but if they pull a GE, watch out: The Qs will drop and you'll see the NASDAQ as a whole take a slide. It will be a bad thing.

I don't think they'll fail. I think we'll see some sell off heading into it in anticipation of missed expectations. And then hopefully that'll take some of the priced-in effect off and they'll post good numbers in the call. Apple is a strong brand that has become considerably more price-competitive and is outselling, in terms of growth, their competitors by a 10-to-1 ratio. This helps make them recession-resistant, but in any "splurge" item, we could easily see Apple issue crap guidance for Q3. Poor forward-moving guidance can take the wind out of any positive earnings announcement and can even cause a stock to slide heavily in the face of amazing earnings increases, as seen last week in Intuitive Surgical (ISRG).

There, the market had priced in some sky-high expectations and the guidance shifts scared investors who felt it an indication of hospital belt-tightening and further anemic growth to come in the "recessiveish" market.

We'll see if AAPL follows the same trend.

I'm thinking we'll see some impressive numbers. If AAPL sells off pre-earnings and hits $153, I have an order for 20 shares, STOP @ 152.00, TRSTPLMT MARK-.30 @ 167, which means either it'll stop sell $1 down at $152, or it'll initiate a trailing stop of -.30 cents if the market price hits $167.

We shall see. Most I can lose is $20.

Getting burned by a slide: stops ahoy

So I placed my dueling strategies into place; one at $20.00 stop at $19.85 (there had been a lot of support just above that, figured it wouldn't trigger; was wrong) and another at $19.55, in case it broke through its support, with another stop at like $19.20 or so.

Sadly, it slid through both my stops, but that's only sad to the degree that those two plays only cost me $150, versus the $230 I lost holding my Scottrade 200 shares through the entire plummet. I know, how stupid to have the stops on one side and not the other; true story.

Moral of the story: you should never have to ride a downtrend. Every second a long position goes down at any speed costs you. If you bail at the start of a slide and pick back up once it starts to level/turn around, you can "gap" the dips and make money on each and every upswing. Of course, predicting accurately the turnaround can be a bit of a bitch; I didn't think it was going to break through its support so harshly but alas, some news moved it and down it went 5%.

Still, my strategies worked in that my losses were minimized; locked in at the level I had already determined. And much more expensive on Scottrade, where they weren't.

Building a better platform: Fun with thinkorswim

I put $5,000 or so into a thinkorswim account, the cheeky, quirky brokerage with amazing software and low fees. TOS does things a bit differently: for one, they offer 1.5 cent/share ($5 min.) trades, making them cheaper than Scottrade up to 466 shares, with a $10 cap. And they send you a stuffed monkey when you fund an account. I'm not even fucking kidding.

As if that weren't enough, they offer you plenty of platform tools and rules-based trading good times which will allow me to sleep instead of trying to wake up to make ill-advised, emotion-linked trading decisions in the 5am pre-market. TOS allows me to schedule pre-market limit orders ahead of time.

But one of my favorite features as I'm just learning to scratch the surface of their desktop surface, is the ability to perform cool trades like a bracketed OCO (one-cancels-others) trade. And the ability to perform trailing stop limits.

So check this out: I have an order to BUY 200 shares of Tessera if it hits $20.25. If and only if that order is performed, two possible trigger orders take effect: If TSRA bounces down to $19.85, I sell all 200 shares. If TSRA hits $20.70, however, a trailing stop is then and only THEN initiated with a 10 cent trail. This is two parts awesome right here: The power of the trailing stop is tempered heavily by the fact that it leaves you vulnerable at all price points along its increase.

Consider: If you buy 100 shares of TSRA at $20.00 a share, and you want to lock in a potential profit with a trailing stop of around 10 cents, it leaves you vulnerable as soon as the order is placed. If you place the TS order right after your purchase order, as Scottrade's regular, non-Elite (their daytrade product) tool forces you to, you're vulnerable if the stock bites it to $19.90. Worse, you're vulnerable if the stock bounces up to $20.20 and then dips back to $20.10. With a trailing stop limit, the TS only activates once the limit is reached: $20.70. Then, if it dips down to $20.60, a sell is triggered and you can be absolutely positive of the minimum potential profit threshold if the TRSTPLMT is triggered.

Further, you can set a regular, non-limit-triggered stop at the same time, a bit further down if you're expecting it to dip lower than 10 cents early on; in this case, 15 cents lower than where I bought it. It seems unlikely for tomorrow, and in fact TSRA may never hit $20.25 to trigger the initial buy, but if it does, I have a stop already in place, detached from "let's hope for a swing back up" emotion and playing by the rules I've set. What's better is that I can lock in my profit without worrying about a premature exit; the exit only plays once I've hit a level I'm satisfied with.

The OCO portion of the deal simply means that if ONE of those exits is fired, the other exit order is cancelled.

I've added a second layer: If TSRA tanks miserably down to $19.25, a BUY order will trigger for another 200, with similar spreads up and down. This allows me to exit on the trip down and pick up once it hits what I perceive to be bottom.

TOS has a ton of other tools, and this is just my impressions after my first hour playing with it. It's definitely daunting software, but they have lots of video tutorials that are straightforward and really helpful. I think I may be moving my Scottrade holdings over to TOS, which is a bit sad because the Scottrade people are very nice, but TOS just beats them in features AND price and I can't play my mini-strategies with Scottrade—that leaves me too vulnerable...

We'll see how things play out tomorrow and if any of these trigger.

GOOG spikes dramatically...

Damn. 17% in aftermarket from $445 to $525. Should've jumped on board, but it was looking kinda scary with their new quality controls. Be greedy when others are fearful, though...

ABT is just festering for no good reason. I'm going to hold it a few more days and then dump it if we don't get Xience news. Sad that it beats expectations, beats guidance and posts strong numbers and still drops. Worse still that it's doing this in the midst of plenty of other pharmas posting bad numbers and it's not able to pick up slack from them.

Still waiting on Amkor news from TSRA... Still have high hopes.

I think I'm going to buy into AAPL for next week's earnings call and go long, perhaps for the trip. We'll see how risky I'm feeling. For now, I'm still down about $100 total. Kinda sucks. (The Coverstor shows the return on my brother's in-and-out movement, so that's why it's showing a positive return.)

Feeling the burn...

Definitely a painful few days, as I'm now at a net loss of about $150. Awesome.

The market has just taken a drubbing the past few days. It doesn't help that this is "banks tell us how hard they've fucked up" week, with WaMu and a bunch of others writing down and taking losses like crazy. Add to that GE's performance on Friday and my tech and pharma stocks are eating it just from the halo effect.

Intel posted good numbers which should help, Abbott SHOULD get approval for their coated stents, perhaps this week and they announce pre-market today, in about 2-3 hours, I'd imagine. Hopefully good news; all signs point to yes. If they're anything below expectations, I'm pretty rightly fucked.

Rumor abounds that Tessera won the arbitration with Amkor; they're just discussing awards now. That will be huge for them, so I'm holding both these long for now, basically tapping my cash reserves entirely. Need a bounceback here; it's getting brutal and I'm not even in financials, aerospace/airlines or retail. Ugh.

This is why you need stop losses...

Today was a bloody day all around and not something I needed to be around for. Let's examine what I did wrong:

I hesitated in setting a stop loss for Tessera at, say, $21. In my mind, if it bounced to $21 again, it was just going to bounce back up and I didn't want to miss the swing up and lose some money. Instead, it tanked right through its support to $20.29. Jesus. Each of those cents it dropped cost me $2. I'm down $206 on $4,058 worth of Tessera, because I didn't set a stop loss.

Tessera isn't dropping on any news. It's not dropping because of a loss of value or patent issues. No, it dropped, like just about everything else today, on news that GE fucked up and didn't hit their estimates. Because GE is such a far-reaching conglomerate and because they have some exposure to subprime with GE Capital/Finance, they double-whammied and took everyone down with them.

Since I want to be in Tessera *anyway*, this was a particularly painful lesson: I should have had a stop loss at $20.90. It would've tunneled right through that before landing where it did and I would've saved $122 of pain. I could've bought my 200 shares back at $20.90 and dodged that pain. But instead, I kept myself from establishing a decent stop loss. It's part art, part science to establish a proper stop loss that will keep me from exiting just as it's about to upswing again. But I needed one today.

Abbott started to dive and kept on going. I should've held off on purchasing ANY stock at the beginning of the day with something as significant as GE's news, especially considering how sterile ABT has been the past few weeks. I'm really hoping things bounce back Monday. I also need to examine stop losses to set now.

I also have a great deal more exposure with 200 shares. A relatively meager bounceback will bring this all back and a spike will boost me quite happily. I'm guessing and hoping TSRA makes it back into the high $21-$22 range next week, on no news.

Meanwhile, I'm still looking for a 19-day strategy. Ideas are welcome.

Buying Abbott Laboratories (ABT)...

Lackluster day today. Tessera bounced around and ended low, no big deal, it'll bounce back up tomorrow. Will try to sell in the $22 range.

American Airlines completely surprised me with a BUNCH of short covers and support actually bringing it *up* 7%. Who knew.

Buying Abbott Laboratories in advance of their earnings announcement on the 16th. Could get bitten bad on this: 65 @ 53.91. Hoping to see maybe 3-7% gains, though. Could easily swing down up to 10% on missed expectations, etc. I'll bail if it looks choppy before the call. Shouldn't be an issue though, I think. Pharma is stable if there aren't any massive, unforeseen patent/lawsuit issues and Abbott has had some good news coming their way and little movement elsewhere so let's see if this pans out. Getting on board a good few days before the announcement to allow myself to profit from any gaps. Again, though, it could swing either way.

I'm beginning to look for a short-medium-term strategy for the trip. I'll be gone for a full 19 days and completely out of touch with regards to stock and such. I'm thinking I'll buy into either GOOG or back into BRK, since they're relatively low impact—but GOOG's earnings announcement could affect that a lot. Same with AAPL, but they have both traded really strongly this past month. Not sure if they'll correct back down or not.

Averaging in TSRA...

Bad day on the market, but I bought another 100 shares of TSRA, this set at $21.31. As it closed at $21.66, not a bad scene. Should've sold off the first 100 at open, but no big deal. Since I bought the first 100 @ $21.55, still doing alright. I'll sell at least 100 if it hits $22.40-ish again. $22.60 or whatnot would be ideal.

Why not sell the whole load? Because I'm still expecting news on the Amkor settlement and don't really want to miss the bump I'm expecting we'll get on that. Though the settlement talks were to end on the 8th, so perhaps nothing going til next week, once a decision is made...

Want a near sure thing? Short AMR (American Airlines' parent company). They've had to nix another 1,000 flights for MD-80 checks and that's going to hurt them something awful. Note to American Airlines: Get this shit fixed before I fly you on the 25th. Seriously. They already tanked 10% Wednesday, so they might his some support (because stuff like this can only "damage" you temporarily so much) but I think we could see another 5-10% today. It'll probably gap before pre-market and not be worth waking up for, though. Let's take a look at what happens when the market opens.

Fun fact: If I had bought 10 shares of GOOG at the beginning of this and held them until Monday, without any other activity, I would've made $536, instead of the $374 I'm sitting on now. Not sure what'll happen with their earnings though, but might be a good buy if it gets beaten up again, which some are expecting.

Even sadder? If I had bought 34 shares of AAPL (about the same price as 10 of GOOG at the time) and sold now, I'd be up $998. Medium-term may really be the way to go, at least with some of my liquidity. Berkshire's only up $30 from when I first bought it though.

AMD in and out, back in to TSRA...

Symbol	Action	Qty	Acct Type	Price	Total
AMD	BOUGHT TO COVER	500	SHORT	$6.06	$3,037.00
TSRA	BOUGHT	100	MARGIN	$21.55	$2,162.00
AMD	SOLD SHORT	500	SHORT	$6.10	$3,042.98

Can't short in pre-market. Fun. Wouldn't have mattered since it gapped pretty hard. Entered at market at open 500 @ $6.10, watched it climb to the $6.18 range, but held tight, covered at $6.06 for a net profit of all of $5. Woo.

Tessera bounced around a bit more today before triggering my limit order 100 @ $21.55 before closing at $21.87 / $22.10 (A.E.) netting roughly $55. I'm going to set another trailing stop and let this one play on its own again. If it keeps wanting to trade in this range, I might as well ride it each way. I just hope I'm on board when the Amkor news comes through, assuming it's good news.

Also, a veritable bounty of earnings calls coming up over the next week. Time to pick some tasty picks... Bed Bath Beyond, Circuit City, Progressive... and a bunch bunch more the week after.