Blog Archives:

Why Me Failing At Scuba Diving Teaches You An Important Trading Lesson

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Tue 30th of Sep, 2008 04:12:05 PM

Yup, I couldn’t go scuba diving yesterday afternoon (I’m down in the Florida Keys right now) because I flunked the basic training program in the morning. For some strange reason, I’ve always had issues with putting my head under water so I tried confronting my greatest fear and I failed, big time.

As my girlfriend and the 2 others in our “class” went off scuba diving, I was forced to go snorkeling with the kids and older people. It actually wasn’t so bad after 30 minutes or so–saw lots of cool fish–but I even had problems with it at first!

Weird, I know, but life could be worse.

After my snorkeling, last night I grilled up some lobsters and slept on a hammock on a perfect beach.

So what can this teach you about trading?

1. Don’t be embarrassed –it’s okay to admit defeat! No matter how hard you want something to work out perfectly, sometimes it won’t. Learn from goes wrong, get better and move on.

2. Focus on what you’re good at–if you’re strangely good at Short Selling like me, focus on it. Don’t let Brig Brother SEC hold you down, it’s a fully useful and important trading strategy. If it’s buying breakouts, you have America on your side, but good luck finding many plays right now!

3. Control your risks and always have an exit strategy–even if I had overcome my fear and gone scuba diving, sooooooooo many things coulda woulda shoulda gone wrong down there, no easy way out, it was not be a good risk-reward situation. Snorkeling fit the bill much better for me.

In My House Where My Wife Sleeps And Where My Children Come To Play With Their Toys!

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sat 20th of Sep, 2008 02:52:28 PM

That’s how I felt when I read THIS post from my web designer Pallian.

(you guys better know where this quote is from or else….)

The schmuck has been working with me on this website/projects and new ones for nearly seven months and after I finally get him to open a trading account with Thinkorswim so he can profit alongside TIMalert subscribers, he goes and wastes his first trade, while I’m away in Japan, buying a stock I’ve shorted several times and would never ever recommend buying.

His reasons for buying:

About a week ago, I bought a certain Uranium stock called URRE. I bought it because 1) there was talk of a takeover by a bigger firm, 2) the stock was still reasonably priced for a company that had over $7 billion worth of the radioactive mineral and 3) I wanted to gamble.

All reasons go against my teachings–as I preach again and again in my PennyStocking DVD–which he readily admits:
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Critiquing One Reader’s Email…4 Important Points To Remember

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Thu 18th of Sep, 2008 02:35:19 PM

Just got this email in my inbox and felt the need to respond:
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How My Blog Made $70,000 Even While I Went Away For 10 Days In August

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Mon 8th of Sep, 2008 03:47:29 PM

Well, $69,972 for the month to be exact…pisses me off I was so close to breaking the $70,000 barrier, but came up a lousy $28 short! What can I say, it’s a tough life.

This getting-ridiculous-rather-quickly figure is up from $45,000 in July (see July details HERE), up from $25k in June, $15k in May (those are estimated cuz they weren’t high enough for me to spend hours dissecting everything in order to brag about it)

…and of course the icing on the cake is that I had a nice trip to Japan for 10 days (see itinerary HERE, pics/videos will be up shortly) even while my blog was more than paying for the trip as I was taking it!

Here’s the breakdown:
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Guest Post By Tony Ellis: How I Turned My Two Best Trades Into My Two Worst

Posted by timothysykes on Sat 21st of Jun, 2008 03:25:07 PM

If you read THIS post about grad student Tony Ellis making over $50,000 in trading profits over the past few months entirely due to PennyStocking, you know he hasn’t just gotten lucky, he’s been dedicated. As I posted this morning, successful trading really is all about practice and learning time tested rules through your successes and failures, so in the following guest post written by Tony Ellis is quite an important one. He’s had a great run, like many who have already purchased my PennyStocking DVD, but that doesn’t mean he ain’t gonna make mistakes.

Mind you, my dvd only teaches a set of trading guidelines, what has and hasn’t worked for me…it certainly doesn’t have all the answers and actually is quite different for everyone depending on the student, experience level, risk tolerance, discipline and goals. Some things as Mrs. Gump says, “You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself”.

In short, yes, I try to position myself ahead of big moves, but there is a reason why I’m so quick to take profits, allow so-far-successful-but-still-makes-mistakes-along-with-the-best-of-them
-awesome-for-sharing-not-only-helping-himself-but-others-too-which-rocks Tony Ellis to explain:
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Interview With Lionmaster, Founder Of TheLion.com, And Exclusive Pics Of His Lionness & Cubs!

Posted by timothysykes on Sun 15th of Jun, 2008 06:05:09 PM

You guys probly know this, but my favorite message board for microcrap stocks in play, TheLion.com, has been totally redone…before it was just a message board, but superhuman Lionmaster & his robot army (paid for with trading profits) have now launched features like a place to import your own blog and/or setup a portfolio to win…and now even a vastly improved all-in-one message board search feature!

I’m not getting paid to promote him or his site, I’m just a huge fan as Lionmaster’s trading profits blow me and everyone on my site out of the water…I was fortunate enough to interview him so you best listen when da Lion roars (and you gotta respect a fellow trader who writes in partial sentences, yeahhh no formalities here, this is the real sh#@!)…check out the exclusive pic of Lionmaster and family (I don’t think he’s ever shared it before!)
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Why Getting Hacked, Like Losing Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars, Is A Good Thing

Posted by timothysykes on Mon 2nd of Jun, 2008 03:07:53 PM

Yes it’s true, I’ll explain. While I’m a cynical old (in terms of market experience) short seller whose seen frauds, hype and pumping galore and think 99% of Wall Street is full of truly soulless scumbags, I’m also a big believer in learning through mistakes. Just like that time when I lost a few hundred thousand dollars, our Sunday night hack attack by some shady Russian hacker probly hired by a stock promoter I’ve pissed off (I don’t know how considering I have nothing against stock promoters and if they thought about what I’m trying to accomplish, they’d see that making Penny Stocks more transparent and hence more actively traded will benefit us all) is definitely a set back—all FORUM posts, new subscribers, recent TIMbucks, basically anything that happened on this site from Friday-Sunday has been lost forever.
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I’m Travelling But Who Cares, Here Are Some Hot Penny Stocks

Posted by timothysykes on Mon 28th of Apr, 2008 06:12:40 AM

Gonna be traveling all day to my U of M speech so considering how good some of these plays are looking, I’m gonna miss out and inevitably get some emails sayin’ I’m a failed trader, but that’s a small price to pay to get the expected 150+ students to think cynically about the financial industry freakshow! Here’s the microcrap landscape…cheers:

PDO just keeps it goin, showing why THIS trade was actually pretty damn good, at least for a short seller—as I preach in PennyStocking, shorting, while ultimately correct considering how shady these companies are, is much tougher, I really want you guys to learn to play these from the long side (something which I could never really master)…as for when to short, don’t stand in it’s way, this is a full fledged Supernova! Just sit back and let all the early shorts kick, scream and ultimately panic cover—that’s when I’ll start looking’ to enter

HDY is another sketchy oil and gas play that puts out exaggerated PRs, spikes and then does nothing…last 7 spikes have all been good short opportunities, their PR firm is Investor Awareness Inc whose business—judging by their other clients—is to take a few thousand dollars/month and do little to nothing offering up excuses like “it’s tough to get any upside in a market like this” and “no microcraps are doing well right now”. Too bad HDY doesn’t hire somebody scummier/more unethical so this stock can actually pumped like it should be!
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TigerLogic (TIGR): The Piece Of Crap Formerly Known As Raining Data (RDTA)

Posted by timothysykes on Sun 20th of Apr, 2008 09:35:11 AM

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.
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Why I Just Shorted Eden Bioscience Corp (EDEN): TheStreet.com’s Factually Inaccurate Pump And Dump!

Posted by timothysykes on Fri 18th of Apr, 2008 12:36:17 PM

As I mentioned in this post, this near 100% runup is entirely due to THIS laughable Thestreet.com article mentioning this failure of a company as a “below-the-radar company that produces Messenger, a highly effective and revolutionary agricultural product.”

I could easily rip the company apart for its $23,000 in revenue in their latest quarter down from $189,000 just a few quarters ago—wow, their product must be really great! Even funnier is their yearly results—revenue of $350k vs. $4 million a few years back. Or before this miraculous article, EDEN was a $3 million company that was forced to do a 1-3 reverse split just two months ago in order to stay listed on the Nasdaq

But I shorted 1,000 shares at $2.55–that’s all I could find, trust me, I wish I could borrow 50k–because I prefer to go to the heart of the matter, the fact that EDEN SOLD OFF THIS “REVOLUTIONARY” TECHNOLOGY AS IS DETAILED IN THEIR ANNUAL REPORT!

From that beautiful annual report, filed on March 28, 2008:

“On February 28, 2007, under the terms of the Asset Purchase Agreement, we sold our Harpin Protein Technology to PHC for $1,396,824 in cash, net of transaction costs incurred after January 1, 2007 totaling $103,176, a promissory note in the principal amount of $700,751 payable on December 31, 2007 and the assumption by PHC of certain of the liabilities relating to or arising out of our Harpin Protein Technology…”

That’s right, EDEN isn’t even in the home and garden business anymore, they’re just a licensee! Gotta quote some more of this fine work of literature
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First Quarter 2008 Review: Earn 21% Every 3 Months And You’ll Live A Happy Life

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sat 12th of Apr, 2008 03:06:42 PM

Coming off my best week since I started TIM 5+ months ago ($900-ish profits), it’s good to review past successes and mistakes. Without further ado, I give you the first quarter of 2008 in a nutshell, where TIM used small account size–finishing at $17,388–combined with PennyStocking to thoroughly dominate the performance of ALL major indexes, even while making tons of mistakes. Follow along and learn to do the same…already 5% higher in April and I’m just getting warmed up…

Successes:

How I Made An 8% Return Before Lunch

How I Made 25% Just By Holding A Distinct Pattern Overnight

How I Made 8% In One Morning, Leaving 40%+ On The Table One Day Later

Why My Strategy Works Even For Stupid People

God, I Love Short Selling Penny Stocks!
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Sykes’ Saturday Seven: April 12th, 2008 Edition

Posted by timothysykes on Sat 12th of Apr, 2008 11:29:29 AM

Stupid stupid teenage girls film assault on another teenage girl specifically to post video on Youtube, video’s gone viral, but they’re in jail…no joke…disgusting…

10 movie gadgets that have become reality

Forget website analytics, time to start analyzing your email, but only if you have Gmail (Gratzie PK)

Another successful—if not legendary—trader gives his rules for success (awww c’mon Todd, no banjos?)

Learn your history, venture capital history that is

Get the WSJ for free!

Inside the panic at E*Trade…you stupid stupid longs don’t even know how close to disaster many of these financial firms are coming

TIM Lesson: Never buy or short sell falling knives, much is happening behinds the scenes, none of it is predictable
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Why Low Priced Stocks Crush High Priced Ones aka I Love Frauds & Failures!

Posted by timothysykes on Thu 10th of Apr, 2008 01:17:26 PM

Let the records show (CRY) and (NOG) as Exhibits A and B, whose charts I’ve posted HERE and HERE, respectively. Both have gone in the direction I predicted—CRY higher on the breakout and NOG lower after going vertical—but I haven’t touched either one. I’ll tell you why.

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5 Stocks In Play Right Now: Day Trading Charts For One And All!

Posted by timothysykes on Thu 10th of Apr, 2008 08:51:39 AM

Yesterday I posted charts I was watching without commentary, thinking–or hoping–you guys were beginning to understand this game…other than 1-2 correct answers, the lot of you are still lost…tells me I’ve got a lot more work to do! That’s fine, bring it, one opportunity at a time…here’s today’s watchlist in order of the likelihood of me playing them:

(COT) Multi-day breakdown if and when it cracks $3.25, several failed tries now, scary scary stock to short…got me thinking that even if it does crack, it might still bounce…we’ll see

(NOG) Who says the 3rd up day of a big runup is usually a down day? Well, I do…but not when it’s during a multi-month breakout on solid news with a solid base just $2 below…last time this thing spiked, it jumped 55%, that would put a similar spike at $11..before shorting, wait to see the whites of their eyes!

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The Joke That Is Financial Commentary: Some Frauds, Morons, Comedians and Marketers You Should Beware Of

Posted by timothysykes on Thu 3rd of Apr, 2008 12:32:00 PM

As bad as corporate management, brokers, and value investors are, financial commentators and journalists are some of the scariest monsters out there. Similarly, they pretend to ALWAYS know what they’re talking about, while NEVER disclosing their audited track records or personal trades and investments…because the truth hurts–they suck. More often than not, they will lose you money if you listen to their advice. This picture is an accurate rendering of those who dishonor this industry:

This game is BS, we should want more–we deserve more–and my newfound goal in life is to right this wrong. Over the next few months, I’ll be adding many names to this list:

1. What kind of sick and twisted SOB buys the Adword phrase “Timothy Sykes” when they are no way shape or form affiliated with me WHATSOEVER. Scumbag and probable fraud Ross Jardine, that’s who. The schmuck links my name to a shady shady shady sales page—don’t buy into that BS. How is that even legal? Damn that really pisses me off!

No idea if his stuff works, but based on his manipulative advertising practices, the 1-page sales sheet featuring a stock he claims to have called that trades less than 500 shares/day (yes, five hundred shares), common sense and industry workings, I’m gonna bet he’s a fraud. He should probly be in prison. (Feel free to prove me wrong RJ, just setup a blog and let’s see your results day in, day out, c’mon, what are you chicken, balk balk balk, yeah that’s what I thought you scumbag)

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Sykes’ Saturday Seven: March 29th, 2008 Edition

Posted by timothysykes on Sat 29th of Mar, 2008 11:51:23 AM

Gotta start this linkfest off with one of the best quotes I received all week:

“I’m 150 pages into An American Hedge Fund already. Best trading book I’ve read since Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, something Tim’s book reminds me of.”

Comments like that just keep streaming in; I’m extremely honored—after all, Reminscences is my all-time fav book

THIS article says my now 2,800 Facebook friends aren’t really my friends. Noooooo!

Another blog comment (you guys are givin’ me some good stuff, thanks!) showed that TIM is not the first totally transparent trader, not by a long shot. I’m about 8 years off. Unfortunately, those other guys lasted just over a year, probly cuz they were also trying to raise capital…that won’t be a problem here!

This blogger tries to pick a fight with me in order to get some press for his crappy little blog…that’s fine, I’ll oblige. See my comments under his post correcting his assumptions with facts. Only one thing worse than a value investor—a value investor who jumps to conclusions without doing the proper research beforehand!

Now these are some real blogs, the TOP 25 BLOGS, all seriously banking (I might get up there one day, but rest assured no value investor will EVER get close, they’re all sooooooo boring!)

Former Countrywide guy creates a new loan company, just like the LTCM guys founding other hedge funds—we really need some kind of law to ban these bastards from business if they lose x billion dollars, would prison sentences be too much to ask for?

Classic clip from one of my all-time fav movies, There Will Be Blood

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How To Short Sell Stocks: Why It’s So Important To Trade Scared And Use Protection

Posted by timothysykes on Thu 27th of Mar, 2008 03:47:57 PM

Early morning, reserved shares in 3 hard-to-borrow stocks, all multi-day runners, COIN, WSCI and REED. Since I typically do better with low priced stocks, I focused all my attention squarely on REED…mistake #1 (today’s only its 2nd big up day, not 3rd or 4th when its infinitely more likely to run out of steam) WSCI and COIN both took nice morning dips (though neither ideal WSCI just made a massive cup and handle and COIN, well, it’s COIN, enough said)…missed ‘em both since my 3 screen monitor busted and I’m on a laptop

TIM Lesson: Either use multiple trading screens miss simultaneous opportunities, the more screens the better…up to a point

In the first hour of trading, I considered shorting at $3.89—solid big sell orders padding me above—but all the trades were buys and a morning squeeze was possible…10 min later the squeeze was on and once it took out $4, it went straight to $4.50…I thought $4.50 would hold (yesterdays high) so I shorted 1,000 at $4.39 with the goal of buying into a quick reversal around $4.

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I Had A Rough Day aka No Playboy Centerfolds For Me :(

Posted by timothysykes on Mon 24th of Mar, 2008 04:57:09 PM

COIN’s $1 spike at the open makes me feel better about covering too early last week, gotta be careful with momo plays in this sneakily-emerging bull market. MALL and VVTV displayed the exact same kind of forced buying Thursday into the close, same dip afterhours, so I awoke early to reserve shares of each, fully expecting big drops growing bigger throughout the day (return to normalcy). No MALL available so my focus was on VVTV. Shorted 600 shares at $5.90-ish pre-market, didn’t want to take a full position in case of morning spike…at the open there was a wall of sellers at $5.90 so I doubled up, shorting 400 shares more at $5.87…20 min in, looking good at $5.70, but instead of taking my $175-ish in profits, I got greedy, rationalizing this should retrace all the way down to $5-$5.25…mistake #1

Overall market exploded upwards, stock held that important $5.70 level (mini-support from Thursday), broke through the wall at $5.90 (bad for shorts like me!), spiked to $6…I still held, thinking it was a multi-day holder—especially with earnings coming up and their tendency to screw up…back down to $5.90, but held…gotta cover when former resistance becomes support…I didn’t…mistake #2
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JPMorgan (JPM) To Buy Bear Stearns (BSC) For $10 Per Share!

Posted by timothysykes on Mon 24th of Mar, 2008 12:05:22 AM

JPMorgan (JPM) in talks to quintuple the buyout price of Bear Stearns (BSC) from $2 to $10/share. Read the Marketwatch article HERE. Basically to shut up angry shareholders–including one very angry billionaire. I’m sure there’ll be updates…

Remember how I said how everyone had an opinion on BSC the other day–shorts said “$2 is guaranteed by theFed”, longs said “no way this deal gets priced so low” and thanks to all the opinions BSC was priced somewhere in the middle @$6…now at $10, turns out the longs, the less popular opinion, were right, you should know what I’m gonna say next:

TIM Lesson: There’s NO way to gets the odds in your favor so never never never play mainstream Wall Street guessing games

UPDATE: I know I posted JP Stearns new logo HERE before, but now I’m getting word it’s being redone to the pic below:
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Yup, Even A $12 Loss Offers Important Trading Lessons

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Fri 21st of Mar, 2008 02:04:04 PM

Why bother detailing a $12 loss? Because every trade matters, the good, the bad and the scratches. Important lessons are everywhere…

Shorting 400 COIN at $8.78 right before the market close on Wednesday turned out to be a good idea. I shorted because the stock was breaking down over multiple time frames, intraday, multi-day and multi-week, failing to hold keep support at $9 that I’d expected to put up more of a fight. And the daily wall of sellers have entered. Oh yeah and the company is a true POS—no pumpers or Garty the faux guru—can change that. Only problem was I had a Thursday morning meeting so it’d have to tank quickly or I’d have to risk it while I was away from the computer.

Since TIM is so tiny (must protect every $ to get the magical $25k SEC freedom hump), I’ve never used stop losses and COIN is known for squeezing shorts, holding was out of the question. In after-hours action Wednesday night, I tried taking a $100ish gain at $8.51, but discovered Thinkorswim closes after-hours action at 6:30pm. Wasn’t that pissed until the next day when the stock gapped higher to the low $9s.
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