NYSE Day Trading

Monday saw a small rally in the market with S&P pushing back up to the 1,400 level and recovering some of its losses on Friday. The DOW was up 1.02% (12,876) while the S&P Futures closed at 1,403 (up 1.10%). The Market is expected to continue its sideway movements as economic numbers come out this week. Investors and traders alike will be looking at these numbers in order to determine the shape of the economy and market direction. Stocks rallied today due to the decline in Oil prices to around $124.23 at the NYX (New York Merchantile Exchange) as it eased some Inflation fears.

Major moves included Bank Of America (BAC) in early morning where the stock continued to rally throughout the day. Some decent size and volumes along the way helped taking easy positions for quick profits as well. American International Group Inc. (AIG) was another stock which allowed good short positions around 10am and the stock pretty much tanked the rest of the day. It closed at $38.37 with $41.15 being the high of the day at around 9:45am. Good short positions with decent size were available at around 10:00am -10:05am.

The most significant move was ofcourse Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) at around 3pm where the stock litreally crashed in a matter of minutes with big market orders. Wall Street apparently did not like the logisitics of the new acquisition of  Electronic Data Systems Corp (EDS) which is HPQ’s biggest acquisition after Compaq. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to capitalize on this move despite being a second away from punching short at $28.25. Fear and Greed are the two dominant emotions which run the market and in this case my fear prevented me from getting into this insane tank. With hindsight ofcourse one can argue of the lack of courage on my part but in these moments it is hard to determine the direction of a stock. My advice for those who love taking crazy risks is to take fewer shares in order to protect their losses. Two good moves that I did participate in were Alcoa (AA) at $40.00 during the pre-noon session and later near the close with Citigroup (C). There was a big seller who showed up at the $23.50 with around 350,000 shares. This allowed for big positions to be taken as the seller tried to chase down the stock to get filled (Good exits were at the $23.37-$23.38 range in front of a 120,000 bid at $23.36).

As for Tomorrow, eyes are going to be on the Retail sales number which is expected to increase by 0.2% and ofcourse earnings from WalMart (WMT) the largest US retailer. The Market is expecting good news from Walmart and we might expect a short rally if numbers look good. This week will continue to be volatile as the market analyzes the upcoming numbers on the economy.

Question and Comments are most welcome. Cheers

-Danial Jameel (www.daytraderlog.com)