Archive for June, 2010

• End of Q2
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 30th, 2010 at 4:56 pm, Comments: 0

  It was a quarter to forget for most, unless you loaded the boat short at the top in April with bets against the agriculture names and BP you were probably just trying to sneak out of the quarter with a positive number in the absolute return column.  Many hedgies got their asses handed to them [...]

• Economics Before Politics
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 30th, 2010 at 4:09 pm, Comments: 0

  I don’t write a lot about Israel here, it’s just too divisive an issue, and frankly, people are childish and have a hard time reading the words on the page instead of what they want to think they read.  Going further, people have a hard time finding that anyone coming from a religious, cultural, or just [...]

• What The Pace Of Innovation Is Doing To Our Economy
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 29th, 2010 at 5:00 pm, Comments: 0

  I was about to leave the office this afternoon when I got into a conversation about how Hulu is coming after Netfilx now with their new $10 per month premium subscription service with an application for the iPhone and iPad.  I’ve wanted to write this post for a while and have just never gotten around [...]

• Cash Now
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 29th, 2010 at 3:28 pm, Comments: 0

  My little buying experiment didn’t work obviously and I sold out of everything but CPLA this morning at small losses. The positions were very small, some not even 1/3 normal size. All in all, here’s how the last 15 days have gone for me after getting out at the top and picking up some coin [...]

• Nibble Nibble Nibble
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 28th, 2010 at 5:14 pm, Comments: 0

  I nibbled at a few positions today and added to some others.  Still very light with very tight stops, this market could crack at any minute.

• A Matter Of Strategy, Not Tactics
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 27th, 2010 at 8:35 pm, Comments: 0

  Back in school I did a good deal of research on the interplay between civilian and military leadership.  It’s an extremely important topic that’s often overlooked.  When the power in this relationship shifts too much to one side, we get pretty disastrous consequences.  In certain cases the military has been able to essentially control the formation of [...]

• Momentum Book Update
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 26th, 2010 at 4:47 pm, Comments: 0

  Another week of completely bipolar market action better left to the day traders.  As opposed to last week where we went only up, this week there were no bids in sight.  Staying disciplined to your strategy at this time is so incredibly important.  Not only do us swing traders have to fight the urge to [...]

• Financial Reform Farce
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 24th, 2010 at 9:41 am, Comments: 0

  So the Volcker rule is officially dead as of today, what a surprise.  As for the rest of the financial reform package that is in its last hours of debate, it’s a complete farce.  I won’t go through every aspect here, but just understand this.  The reform does not in any way address the idea [...]

• Long The Long Bond
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 22nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm, Comments: 0

  I bought 25% of my book in TLT today at 97.96.  Although that sounds like a lot, the risk is extremely low as the trade would have cost me less than .4% of total account values had it gone against me and stopped me out, it’s a slow moving asset. The long bond is breaking [...]

• Strategy Session: Dip Your Toe to Feel the Water
  Posted by Leigh Drogen on June 21st, 2010 at 5:06 pm, Comments: 0

  I’ve talked at length here over the past few weeks about how I’ve been largely paralyzed at my desk, unable to pull the trigger on the long side.  I had a great  Febrary-May, just about as good as I could have expected myself to trade.  I put on risk when it was appropriate, took it off when [...]