Archive for April, 2008
ANALysts & Venture Capitalists Know S#@! About How SmallCap Stocks Trade
While I respect Andy Kessler for making a ton of $ back during the bubble and writing two superb books–Wall Street Meat and Running Money, this piece of s$#@ interview he gave on smallcaps really makes me mad. Not only does he believe it a foregone conclusion that investors should look for companies with emerging technologies, but he also refuses to name any names or give any kind of timeframe whatsoever for his theory.
To Andy and all other venture capitalists, do your thing with big companies, but don’t talk about smallcaps and microcaps—these companies ALL have cool technologies, but this isn’t 1999, most of these companies are gonna fail and their grim reality is reflected in their stock prices. While you have good intentions, interviews like this are what gets people investing / believing in these POS companies, inevitably losing $ and thinking this niche is random, which, if you focus on the proper variables—chart, volume, manipulation, message board hype etc—is clearly not the case. Dangerous dangerous dangerous, welcome to why media outlets are sooooo bad with smallcaps and microcaps–it’s a different world down here in the gutter, ain’t no place for WASPs!
To Short Sell Or Not To Short Sell, That Is The Question
There are a great many microcraps surging—some look to be potential shorts, while others, you just gotta sit back and watch them play out:
As I’ve repeatedly posted, I’m short (EDEN) cuz it’s the perfect mix: failing company, quick spike followed by gradual fade and most importantly, the spike was caused by erroneous reporting. Forget about guessing games, TheStreet.com handed this to us on a silver platter!
TIGR’s still great to short, but good luck finding shares!
PDO and MXC Two little oil plays that are spiking, be very careful, remember, they’re not pure pumps as they are tied to that strongly performing commodity (that ain’t easy to short…remember the KOG…which itself is breaking above recent highs aka not a short!)
ENT is another small energy outfit trying to spike here, although its spike is rather gradual as it’s seemingly going for a cup and handle breakout…not a short!
Speaking of not shorts, FEED, WSCI and UFPT can never seem to go down—when stocks go up 4, 5, 6, 7 days in a row, they’re obviously not one time pump and dumps and they can go a lot further than you’d ever expect—take a look at this GENC chart below to see what I mean!
When Timmayyy Is Dead Right: Manipulated Stocks Go Boom!
For the 3 most recently manipulated microcraps—CNOA (pumped by a CNBC “reporter” who mistook paid-for stock promotion for credible research, probly the result of majoring in theatre studies in college (seriously)), EDEN (agriculture product pumped by a TheStreet.com “journalist” who forgot to read the quarterly report mentioning they sold off that division!) and TIGR (I don’t wanna know the evil lurking behind that pump, possibly some SEC counter-intelligence subdivision trying to draw out fellow manipulators) I have been dead on. These are opportunities from which you can profit because I’m not talking about variables that indirectly affect stock prices (ie earnings, the economy)—no, these catalysts have a direct impact on the supply/demand of shares and consequently the stock price.
Since my expose when it was at $1.80ish, CNOA has dropped 30% in a few days—longs, don’t blame me or say “I don’t get it, it had all the trends going in its favor, I guess penny stocks really are just like gambling?!?!” Hello no, this kind of price action is the precise opposite of random, it’s motherf$#@en PennyStocking—learn to play the game or suffer the consequences!
Just Who The Hell Do I Think I Am And Why Should You Care?
It’s astounding how many lazy people refuse to click the ABOUT tab on this site when they want to know more about me. Instead I get anywhere from one to three dozen daily emails asking me—since I have an answer every email policy, I’m beyond tired of this. Guys, chicos, if you want to know how I got started, what kinds of stocks I trade, how I made so much $ so quickly, my life is an open book—literally–An American Hedge Fund. Hopefully this post can save me a few emails so here’s a quick rundown of my journey and how I’m gonna help you:
-My obsession to become the best tennis player led to a career-ending injury senior year of high school in 1999. Since I’d already gotten in to college early and the doctors orders were to rest, I had nothing to do so my parents gave me control of my $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money to play around with and I opened a discount online brokerage account.
-My parents thought I’d lose everything, but after concluding all the most popular stocks were too expensive / random for me, I became a penny stock 
day trader and turned my little account into $2 million by the end of 2004 (no leverage used). The first $1 million was pretty much all buying breakouts (I focused on chart patterns, little did I know why the charts were so perfect), the second $1 million was pretty much all short selling (when I discovered their charts were perfect for a reason, manipulation!). (Trades, strategies used and lessons learned are all detailed in my instructional DVD PennyStocking)
Lie Detector For Talking Heads: Grave Consequences For TV Interviews
You guys know I’ve been on my “nearly everyone in this industry is full of BS / the financial media is an unfunny joke” crusade for a while now, but with regards to a product that actually does something about it–or claims to–unsuprisingly, I’ve been outscooped by the world’s top financial blogger Barry Ritholtz.
RealScoop uses their special voice analysis technology to measure the believeability of what people say in videos–yeah that’s right, useless talking heads, corporate scumbags execs: get scared. Cute, right? A lie detector and a big scary guy patting a baseball bat standing beside them would def. work better, but baby steps…
Rounded Up A Bunch Of The Usual Suspects
Goood Monday morn, rounded up a bunch of the usual jokers…at least usual since last week…some could be setting up for something worth my time / capital, we’ll see:
(RDTA) now (TIGR) As I detailed HERE, this is the top stock I’m watching this week, hopefully my typically cynical article hasn’t scared away too any suckers yet! (not ideal…yet)
(EDEN) Remember this guy from last week? Yah, tough to forget, let’s see how many shares we can find to short—woah there got 2,000 borrowed and reserved—nice but I hate these low marketcap plays (not ideal)
(PWSV) Nice first down day, perfect afternoon fade included…too bad I couldn’t find any shares, no biggie, these things are too illiquid (not ideal)
(DGLY) People wanna short this, why? You might scalp a few cents, but it’s a perfect breakout on solid fundamental news…no no no kids too little downside (not ideal)
(ASIA) A TE special, might breakout this week, or it might be waiting until 2012 to do so
(ISRG) Big ass triple top on only decent earnings, good lesson in why you wait for the breakout, you don’t try to anticipate it…good avoidance
How To Short Sell aka What Is Short Selling
With all the time I spend scouring the landscape for ideal trades, preaching against random market noise and for disciplined trading, I often forget to explain the bare bones basics. Starting now, this will change—every few days I’ll have a detailed lesson. Today, I write about my all-time favorite trading strategy: short selling , which involves betting on a drop in an investment’s prices.
So, how does this backwards-sounding strategy work? Ever hear the saying “don’t sell yourself short”? That means don’t believe you can’t succeed at something. Well, in short selling , that’s exactly what you’re doing—betting that xyz investment won’t succeed at increasing in value. Whether you’re betting against a stock, currency or commodity, you’re “selling that investment short.”
Short selling is exactly like buying and selling the way that you’re only too familiar with except the order is reversed—you sell before you buy. The old adage “buy low, sell high” still applies, here it’s just “sell high, buy low”. What’s worked for me is to short sell when a stock goes up waaaaay too high waaaay too quickly on waaaay meaningless news and buy it back when reason pushes prices lower, back to reality.
TigerLogic (TIGR): The Piece Of Crap Formerly Known As Raining Data (RDTA)
Over the weekend, microcrap speculators everywhere have been debating (RDTA). While I wrote about the briefly HERE (Friday morning pre-market…before its 40% surge…thank you, thank you), I was right not to touch it in the morning cuz it was just too illiquid, but ‘twas wrong of me to be neck deep in fundamentally flawed / factually inaccurate but sub-par-chart-play EDEN, failing to see RDTA get pretty damn liquid mid-day after they released this fluffy PR about some crappy revolutionary new web search “add-on” and announcing a name/ticker change to blah bah blah.
Unlike ignorant financial journalists, I’m not even gonna dignify these laughable pieces of s#@! news pieces by detailing their BS contents). Those of you who’ve read my book An American Hedge Fund know these crappy companies loveeee trying to hype themselves with meaningless name changes—no different than adding a “dot com” to the end of their name back in 1999-2000…except now they’re just trying to get prospective suckers investors to forget their stock is 70% off its 2000 highs aka they’ve still got some bitter shareholders.
Sykes’ Saturday Seven: April 19th, 2008 Edition
I’m never gonna be able to find exactly seven so here’s 7-ish articles from the week that was…
THIS blog compares me to a Duke basketball player—I like the piece on the whole—especially the point he makes, but c’mon Duke basketball is just evil—I’m not—UConn forever!
Gotta love that 5 hedge fund managers raked in over $1 billion each in personal earnings last year…America, f%#@ yeah!
Welcome to my site’s newest sponsor, Speedtrader, a broker that charges as low as $3/trade, has access to 30+ market makers and ECNs and is OTCBB and Pink Sheet friendly. Holy hell, I might just have to open an account and see what all the hype is about.
Guess what I’m saying at the end of this video:
Minimizing Trading Losses: Two Overnight Trades That Didn’t Go So Well
From a few days ago, just hadn’t gotten around to writing about it…as I mentioned HERE, I shorted 2,000 (KOG) at $2.75 near the market close when it cracked sideways price action so I thought it’d go negative on the day—I was right that it did go red, but I didn’t take my 10 cents/share gains cuz I wanted a big drop—not a pesky $180 profit. Unfortunately, I had a flight to catch the next morning…
Took a later flight to watch the market open—wasn’t comfortable at all since it opened above the sideways price action crack of $2.80, covered at $2.82, a $160 loss including commissions. Screw that, played I safe…I can take $160 losses all day long. Later in the day, it went decently red down to the $2.60 area, so I wasted $400, but when I play volatile stocks, I don’t worry about predicting every 10-20 cent move—I take my 20-50 cents-$1/share gains thinking stocks will make much larger swings (so I won’t have to be perfect in my timing) (such as THIS trade)
Three days later and KOG is still bouncing between $2.60 and $2.90, a clear sign that a big drop was never in the cards. So, my loss wasn’t that bad. Decent trade…glad to hear any of you timed it better and escaped with some profits!
Navigate
$
Updated Daily!
136 Books
Up 52%
20 Videos
3 Podcasts
8 Talking Pics
65 Links
Stocks Review
UPDATES
May 15, 2008Yup, by next Monday, everything's gonna be real working-like!
May 15, 2008PDO, up $4+ today, will teach you not to randomly short strong penny stocks, get in, get out then run...cuz sometimes they squeeze stubborn shorts to death!
May 15, 2008No ideal short plays today, check out these 2 interviews while we wait for price action perfection
I wish I'd listened to my own rulebook, instead got squeezed for $400 shorting blatant-fraud KYUS too early...someone needs a refresher course this weekend!
I nailed NCOC's 20% rise today in my pre-market post, but I was too biased against buying little breakouts, learn from my mistakes!
May 15, 2008Lots and lots of new sketchy stocks to watch
TIMtrades
Learn from my successes, learn from my failures, learn from 
50% TIMreads
TIMtags
Loading ...
