Saying that stock market prices are wholly unpredictable is like saying you went to a Sotheby's auction and you didn't know when people were raising their bids.

I like VWAP. I like $TICK. They help me figure out the structure of the marketplace as it makes moment to moment shifts.

This is ARNA today, 2/13/2009. This issue was trending down fairly strong off the open. Any aggressive moves back towards VWAP could have been aggressively faded. A strongly trending market, whether that is an individual security or a whole index will show an advancing/declining VWAP all day long and remain near its lows/highs of the day at close where, as you know, significant volume occurs.

February 12, 2009 showed a strong afternoon move off the lows of the day back towards and through VWAP, led by the financial sector. Notice the slight hesitation and pullback at VWAP before continuance of the strong upmove. Prior to this afternoon influx of volume, FAS had difficulties holding VWAP off the open on weak selling and the financial sector helped lead the market to new lows before it found significant and aggressive buyers.

Today, February 13, 2009 was a much more range-bound market as evinced by SPY action around VWAP and the boring $TICK.

pretty huh?

and here is the opposite situation from ARNA - BPZ on 2/13/2009

Just too much pressure. This guy agrees with me.

Also, it takes way too much time! I already 'journal' most of my trades in a certain sense so it is not hugely useful that way either.

But I do find it easier to trade when I don't really think about whether I am going to posting good results for the month. Lately I am just focused on hitting my current daily profit target, which is ~1.04% of my total trading capital, and hitting my weekly target, which is ~2.59% of my total trading capital. This may sound like an absurdly high goal, but could actually be a quite modest daily profit target for a savvy and experienced short term market participant that isn't working with a particularly large amount of capital (few million $ or less).

Every single day is a new day. How are you going to hit your target, today?

Focus is what I need. Just me and the goal for the moment.

so my former daytrading chatroom seems to be going somewhat to the wayside...

However, I have found an excellent new outlet via a public Skype chatroom hosted by the trader oulous. You can find me on Skype by searching for 'mhjacks'.

The chatroom can only be joined by a current member inviting you in; if you would like to join please message me on Skype. (my skype handle is mhjacks)

looks like I came back just in time for some of the best goodies around.

Missed a lot of hot trades. Plenty more to come though! Keep your eyes peeled.

Nice gap and crap on KRY that happened Friday. I desperately tried to short 1000 shares at $1.25 - none available although the stock had been in the easy-to-borrow list that morning.

Up in pre-market, quickly tops out on short term time frame early in the day, fills gap, closes red, wish that was my great short trade. Sometimes you just don't get those shares.

Having been an active participant of the July coal sell-off via NCOC, (a very novice mistake and a position which I am still holding...) the movements of the coal sector have been of great interest to me.

KOL is an ETF tracking the Stowe Coal Index. As far as I can tell, NCOC is currently not part of this index. However, NCOC and KOL have an interesting relationship. NCOC got hit real hard and fast on the July sell-off, much harder and faster than KOL. However, NCOC is now out-performing KOL. Don't listen to me, check out these charts of the last 60 days (hourly).

Perhaps we could say NCOC was far too relatively oversold. Perhaps we can talk about a potential buyout on NCOC and the various institutions that have initiated positions. Perhaps I could mention the gorillas (big orders sitting on the bid) that started accumulating NCOC (presumably the institutions). Who knows?

Whichever way NCOC and KOL decide to go, this market has some interesting action that could potentially be very profitable.

It can be difficult to watch 200+ stocks all at once; I don't do it but some do. Here's 4 stocks I believe that I flagged more than once this week, but did not appear on last night's watchlist. Nice spikes huh?!

All big day-rangers. (stocks with very large % difference between low of the day and high of the day) Notice how the close is below the open for every single issue; all were morning gap-ups that continued to run. Also, not one of these ever went red for the day. (so far of course)

Haven't been posting much on here at all lately. Perhaps I will simply put up my next day's watchlist if nothing else.

Lately, I have been mainly interested in stocks that have made large percentage moves the previous session (although this is not exclusively what I am looking for) - generally micro-cap companies. Sector themes have often been very important in trading these companies lately, although the last couple trading sessions featured (in my opinion) a relatively mixed market.

These are mainly NASDAQ and NYSE issues.

Gainers

UCBH
IBCP
IFC
MWY
XXIA
USS
COLB
COBZ
ICO
RHD
NCC
SIX

Losers

FRGB
IBNK
SSBX
AMFI
RDN
RF
PMI
MBI
MF
GENC
VNDA
BLUS
AFFX

AMEX wildcards

CFW
ORS
KOG
TGC

This last list is unlikely to feature any particularly good trades, but I like to be watching at least a few AMEX issues.