Short... Short... Short...

Don't be fooled. We haven't hit the level of support yet. While short term the bounces are tradable, I'm keeping my short powder dry.

New scans coming soon!

It's September...Do you know where your Lazy Trader is?

Holy Extended Vacation! Where in the world has the Lazy Trader gone? I have been working my regular job, trading a little with ETF's and testing some new strategies that show some promise both long and short and using some sideways action in  $IWM to do some credit spreads.


Up until this point my trading has been position based over a medium time frame (1 week to 3 months). My Lazy Trader mantra has been to have a life outside the computer screen while still making some decent returns. Everyone will agree that this market has been fueled by enthusiasm not good fundamentals. I believe that we are still due for a drop below 9500 in the Dow in the near term. The recent run up from the lows in August are looking a little overbought. With today being expiration day (Quad at that!) I'll be looking at a October 66/70 credit call spread at 1.23. We'll see how it plays out over the next couple of weeks.

Bottom at $AAPL?

AAPL has formed a nice head and shoulders bottom. Looking at putting on a put credit spread 90/85.

Batten down the hatches... shorty reigns

The uncertainty of where the bottom will find itself makes this a short market and a put buyers dream. We have a ways to go to find the next area of support (around 7700 on the Dow). Right now I’ll just start posting short candidates.

Tomorrow...

Let’s start with the basic scan. I use TC2000. Since the whole point of being a lazy trader is to not work too hard we need to find candidates in a trend. We then confirm that the trend in moving with the markets. I use a 20 day, 50 day and 200 day exponential moving average. I scan for stock that have the trend lines all moving in the same direction with closing prices above the averages.

A Good Month... to travel. Now let's begin

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I took a month off to work at my full time job. While trading has always been a part time pursuit, I have found it necessary to take time off to earn a living. The last month has taken me to Asia and Hawaii and I have been primarily in cash and out of the market. While no one can predict market bottoms, now is as good time as any to get our ground rules set up and start tracking my ideas and trades in real time.

I started this blog to focus my trading style and force discipline on me to use what works and eliminate what does not. My goal is to perfect lazy trading, primarily trend following long and short with well timed option plays as opportunities arise. Lazy trading involves determining your market actions in a pure environment -outside of the CNBC market noise. I highly recommend How To Make Money In Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad, 3rd Edition by William J. O'Neil, the publisher of Investors Business Daily. His CANSLIM method provides a proven method for finding good buy candidates. The other author I highly recommend is Dr. Alexander Elder. His books Trading for a Living: Psychology, Trading Tactics, Money Management and Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading. I primarily use TC2000 from Worden Brothers for scanning.

I have been an undisciplined trader for a good portion of my trading life. I have had many starts and stops of various degrees of trading discipline success. Like many traders, I read up on every new idea that gets published and want to try it right away taking focus from what is truly important -increasing profits and minimzing losses. A true trader is primarily concerned with increasing capital while minimizing risk (losses).

I will start out with a daily scan and then post my trades and trade notes and the trade develops. I also post to twitter under lazytrader and you can follow there. Much of my trading capital is in restricted accounts that only allow long trades and covered calls. As short opportunities arise I will take advantaage through short sales, puts and/or credit spreads.

We get started tomorrow...