My Reading List....Eight Website Links

My weekends and evenings are spent doing web research on stocks I own and potential stocks I would like to buy or sell puts on. I scan the web for headlines, opinion articles and scan the message board postings for comments worth noting. I look into short interest and insider buys or sells. Below are a couple of very useful links I use on a daily and weekly basis.

1. Top of my list is Insider Monitor - Find out if insiders are selling or buying - Link Here Type in the ticker symbol and your jaws may drop, you have been forewarned. Here you get a long list of insider buys and sells, dates, shares, share price and whether they are options exercise (See for yourself how much Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and Priceline (PCLN) executives have been selling their stocks as share prices hit 52 weeks high these few months). Do you see what I see...There is not a doubt whom QEs benefited, and who has been buying up California's luxury real estate last 12 months courtesy of the Fed's printing press? Still think it trickles down anyone? Someone sends this link to the Fed please, they should see it for themselves.

2. Looking for information on short interest? I like Nasdaq short interest Link page. Here you will find info on short interest first of the month and mid month, days to cover and trend, whether increasing or decreasing. If you are looking for a candidate for a potential short squeeze play (and assuming you have done all your other research into the company, products or services and management and financials), this is a good site for an overall picture where the shorts might be active.

3. I watch daily Gold chart - Link Here and Silver chart - Link Here for major spillover moves in mining stocks. They can be found on livecharts.com and I prefer their charts to the charts on Kitco.

4. Indexq.org Link for my pre-market morning dose of overnight closes and summary of world market indices and currencies while I am having my cup of homemade latte

5. Kitco for macro news and technical analysis on gold and silver and other precious metals. Must read if you are interested in the hard metals

6. Volume Leaders, Price % gainers, % losers etc Link if I am looking for a new stock candidate to buy or sell puts on. I have this page open first 30 minutes of the morning market hour to help spot movers and find potential stock to add to my watch list

7. Folks at ZeroHedge - Link Here and the many interesting, enlightening and non mainstream articles I enjoy reading daily. All gloves are off here in the comment section so don't take them too literally

8. Last but not least, my favorite site and favorite folks at Dailyfx - link with their up to the minute real time forex and econ news and awesome technical analyses. I have learnt much from charts and videos you put up. I do not trade forex but use the charts to help me understand equity market behavior. A big Thank You

No, CNBC is NOT on my Reading list....

I used ThinkOrSwim Ameritrade. It took a little getting used to switching from Command Center, but I am liking it. All the info on one page(or two pages depending on how you set your screens up). Level II bids and asks, volume, implied vol and greeks for options, broader market indices and all the technicals you need to monitor a stock closely plus latest news, earnings date at your finger tips.

Hope you find the above links useful in your trading .

A good week

Like many of you out there, after watching your portfolio ride the gut wrenching ups and downs of the stock market in August and September, I swore I was never letting that happen again. Watching the market gyration, it was dizzying to say the least, like being on a boat in high seas. In today's trading environments where HFT and hedgies are always ready to pounce and the shorts lurking around at every S&P resistance, I have pared back my holdings and abandoned Buy and Hold. Financial markets have clearly changed and they are so interconnected that today there is really no place to hide. Markets go up and down together, one can no longer hide say in Emerging markets if US markets and European markets took a hit. Yes, you can still hide out in fixed income, but at some ridiculously "obscene" low interest rate if you are lucky, going backward with your money. I am better putting my money under my mattress at least I know where they are or storing them in physical gold.

So I operate now on the new mantra of keeping a position for only a few days, often just overnight or I would close out end of the trading day. I hate doing all that reporting on my tax returns but that seems to be the ONLY way I will be in control of my portfolio. It has stopped going backward and it is now growing steadily. The market is now driven by headlines, rumors, speculations and fundamentals is not a place to hang one's hat on right now.

So with that backdrop, I wanted to say that last week was finally a good week. The market chart is a 3 day chart. If we get a big rally (short covering induced most of the time), that rally may extend itself a bit more the second day after the media and all the smart people chime on it. Those sitting on the fence may decide to jump in so as to not miss the boat. Unless we have more positive news from day 2 to day 3, that rally usually fizzles out as longs get scared and took profit. On a market down day, it works pretty much the same way except the inverse. I watch market sentiments closely.

This past week, I decided to sell cash covered puts at or before 10:30am when market got sold hard from the open into European close, I then bought them at the end of the rally as shorts covered and was able to lock in the gains. I like not tying up my cash overnight as I never know what events are going to be brewing in Asia and particularly Europe that might affect the market. I also unloaded my last LVS position that I held for a few days for a nice profit on Friday. I had gotten out of my other LVS position the Friday before for a 8% gain. I did not like how LVS traded the whole week and Level II confirmed my fear. It went nowhere and had trouble breaking and staying above 45 convincingly (China's less than good numbers did not help). It does not mean we won't see it rally above 45 or 46 next week, such is the market today and everyday is a brand new day. The broader market also rallied on low vol. My gut feeling said to get out and reassess Monday morning.

What do I watch daily during market hours? without a doubt the EUR/USD and AUD/USD crosses. I have this feeling that a lot of traders pair trade currency and SPY as well as GLD concurrently and watching the currency chart gives me a heads up. I normally have the Dailyfx real time new feeds with the live forex chart next to Ameritrade Command Center on two separate screens and that format works well for me. I am up early, by 5am. With my home made latte in hand, I watch Bloomberg for overnight and early news and at 6am, I switch to CNBC and catch up on live actions and news/insights from the bond pits. The TV is really just in the background with my ears tuned to it. (Not to digress, but I bet the market gyrations would be cut in half if there is no CNBC seriously, everyone seems to be have an opinion on where the market and their favorite stock would trade and sometimes I think it became a self fulfilling prophecy). Aapl makes up some 9.5% of Nasdaq volume so I watch it closely for signals that market may turn one way or another on cues from Nasdaq. (shouldn't Nasdaq do something about this so we even out?)

I enjoy trading and watching the markets and how the financial world managed to self destruct with the subprime crisis. It is an interesting world we live in today. One thing is for sure, I am guarding my hard earned money like a hawk. My cash is safer in my hands than anyone else's !!!