Trade-Ideas In Your Town: Chicago

Here in Chicago it's a double-header in the windy city.

Tomorrow is the TD AMERITRADE event followed on its heels with an optionsXpress event over the weekend.

If you are in the area, dear reader, leave a comment and let's meet up. We take these offers seriously. I met a reader of the blog in NYC and answered many questions about the use of Trade-Ideas as an input into the quant fund he manages. Good stuff.

TD AMERITRADE Event

The TD AMERITRADE event will showcase our new trading automation application we make available for TD AMERITRADE customers. You can create a strategy, backtest and determine probabilities for its success in the market right now, and then automate the strategy based on the next alert that comes through. It is easy to use tools that are institutional-caliber tools in their innovation and levels the playing field that many, larger market participants have enjoyed in the past (some of which are now using Trade-Ideas for this reason!)

Here are the details to learn more of our partnership with TD AMERITRADE: http://www.trade-ideas.com/TDAmeritrade/TD_AMERITRADE_and_Trade_Ideas.html

optionsXpress Event

The optionsXpress event will showcase the same automation tools but with execution through optionsXpress lightening fast execution engine. Plus it's in the company of some great partner companies like Tom Busby and the DTI folks (the Fed Day event that DTI organized and that optionisXpress sponsored was a great event - thank you for the speaking opportunity!) More details on the follow-up from that event in a future post.

Here are the details to learn more of our partnership with optionsXpress:
http://www.optionsxpress.com/trade-ideas/index.aspx

Have a great rest of the week!

Learn How to Trade the Breaking News on Fed Day

As a result of recently adding new filters and alerts to Trade-Ideas, I learned new tricks on helping others get their ideas from their head and into Trade-Ideas much more easily.

Turns out the good folks at DTI and Tom Busby are providing a platform from which to discuss how we are using the new alerts and others during their very popular Fed Day Live TradeRoom sessions tomorrow, April 30 beginning at 8:15 AM CST. I have the honor of speaking at 12:00 PM CST - just an hour before the time that the Fed is expected to make its announcement at 1:15 PM CST (2:15 PM EST). My topic will therefore be:

Trading the Breaking News with Trade-Ideas

If you are new to Trade-Ideas or an old hand in need of a fresh pointer or two, please register for this free event by clicking on this link:

Reserve Your Place - Register (free education with David Aferiat and Tom Busby!)

I hope to see you there!

Related Articles:

Does Your Trading Plan Benefit from Continuing Education?

ToolTip: Spank Father Time While Improving Your Trades

Add seconds to the Time column display on your Trade-Ideas Alert window

Take a look at Figures 1 and 2 below:

Figure 1 on top (or on the left) shows the standard display of time in TI PRO. Figure 2 (on the bottom (or on the right) shows the display with seconds added. How did we do it?

To display the time in seconds on your Trade-Ideas Alert window please add the following line to the bottom of the local.ini file (be sure to save file).

TimeFormatList=hh:nn:ss M/d/yyyy|hh:nn:ss

You can find that file in the same directory as the TI Pro exe file. By default, it will install in the following directory:

C:\Program Files\Trade-Ideas\Trade-Ideas Alerts

This will display the time in seconds; it will be followed by the date if there is room in the cell. You will need to restart TI Pro for this to take effect.

Now if reversing time were only this easy . . .

Trade-Ideas in Your Town: NYC!

Fresh from the west coast, it's off to the east coast. NYC.

It will be a busy week with travel, meetings, and the TD AMERITRADE ApexLIVE event taking place at the Marriott Marquis on Tuesday (tomorrow).

I've already met with the folks at Minyanville and Knight Capital Group. I'll have more to say about the innovative ways that each of these groups are preparing to use Trade-Ideas - and how you can learn from them how to use the tool with more clarity, better results.

If you are in NY, dear reader, and would like to meet up, please let me know in the comments.

The TD AMERITRADE event will showcase our new trading automation application we make available for TD AMERITRADE customers. You can create a strategy, backtest and determine probabilities for its success in the market right now, and then automate the strategy based on the next alert that comes through. It is easy to use tools that are institutional-caliber tools in their innovation and levels the playing field that many, larger market participants have enjoyed in the past (some of which are now using Trade-Ideas for this reason!)

Here are the details to learn more of our partnership with TD AMERITRADE: http://www.trade-ideas.com/TDAmeritrade/TD_AMERITRADE_and_Trade_Ideas.html

Trade-Ideas in Your Town: San Francisco

Time to saddle up and fly west to San Francisco to meet with the development team of a very large online broker - I can say no more.

Flying a MD-80? Why yes, I am, but it's with Delta - wish I knew how to play those odds in The OddsMaker.

Outside of these meetings I'll be visiting some institutional clients but we plan to stay close to Menlo.

If you'd like a little one-on-one assistance with Trade-Ideas or learn how we keep the ship afloat, please let me know via the comments section or at info@trade-ideas.com

Subject: Menlo RoadTrip

If there is a good response we'll set up a convenient time for everyone to meet. If it's just one or two that are interested we'll still meet or at the least schedule a phone call during my visit.

1 Stock's Collapse Reveals a Pattern Others Might Follow

As many of our subscribers confirm - our technology works - really well. Here's an example that features option filters recently added and Bear Stearns. I think this example is more relevant as we prepare to absorb one of the last of the giants in the financial sector that's been exposed to the sub-prime mortgage disaster: Citibank (its earnings are scheduled for release on April 18th).

Let's review the timeline that was the BSC collapse - as summarized by our friends at FierceFinance:

• Wednesday, March 12 – ALSO NOTED: Rumors about Bear Stearns liquidity heat up
• Friday, March 14 – What’s up with Bear Stearns?
• Monday, March 17 – Update: Bear Stearns finally falls
• Tuesday, March 18 – JP Morgan bets big on Bear Stearns

I recall CNBC's Fast Money talker, Jon Najarian, talking about put option contracts valuing BSC at $20 - shocking at the time when BSC was trading in the $60s. That was crazy talk! Or was it?

A Startling Case of Foreshadowing

..

Source: Trade-Ideas data

Take a look at the raw data Trade-Ideas' servers were recording during this fateful week for BSC - pay notice to the 'Prev Put Volume' column:

From Monday, March 10th to Tuesday, March 11th (a whole day before the rumors started flying), Trade-Ideas picked up a 5-fold increase!!!

I don't care about who knew what before the official news - if this is a pattern that can alert me to future massive sell-offs before they happen, then I'm simply letting Trade-Ideas be my eyes on the market - looking for previously unseen patterns and bringing them to my attention for action.

Specifically: Can a higher than usual spike in put-option volume lead to a significant drop-off in price? How large must the unusual volume be? How long is the optimal time to hold a possible short position?

I plan on putting together a strategy that answers these questions for us and watch as we approach the Citibank earnings release. Until I post that strategy, here are the raw ingredients I will be using to build it: http://www.trade-ideas.com/Help.html#wsf_MinPCAV

Related Article:

Option Traders Will Love These New Filters in Trade-Ideas - http://marketmovers.blogspot.com/2008/02/option-traders-will-love-these-new.html

So Long Everyone, It Was Fun

Sorry, no time for explanations. The best I can do is this video.

If we’re not back again this time tomorrow, carry on.