Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Volatility

I was doing well trading this morning and was up about $400 and then for some dumb reason tried to trade again this afternoon. Things went crazy when American Home Mortgage imploded and I lost About $1000. Bad day to end a bad month of trading. I don't have the final figure yet but it's probably going to be the second worst in the last 13 in both dollar and percent terms and ends a run of 6 profitable months. The only consolation is that it was worse even a few days ago and I did manage to claw some back. These latest losses also were at least when I was trying to trade according to the model more or less. The less is because I really shouldn't try to position myself according to the model in a new position till near or after the close of trading as the model has only been tested based on placing trades at the close (and overnight trades).

Investment returns for the month will also be negative. That's not surprising as the stock market has gone down. And, therefore, net worth is down too.

Some good news today, is that Snork Maiden got her Australian visa approved. It has been such a pleasure working with Australian immigration compared to dealing with US immigration. No lawyers required. Everything can be done online. There are online updates on the state of your application etc. Last night though we got a message that the visa was approved but would be granted on September 25th. We are flying to Australia on the 13th and arriving there on the 15th. So we e-mailed the person who had e-mailed us to inform us of the approval. It probably helped that Snork Maiden's employer had checked with immigration earlier that this entry date would be OK and we attached that e-mail. The same day the message came back that the visa would be valid from the 11th instead. This is just another planet from the experience of people applying for US visas. On the other hand, Australia is extremely tough on illegal immigrants of which there are not many.

3 comments:

Adventures In Money Making said...

i tried to talk my wife into moving to AU but no dice so far. :(

I guess one of the main issues is that everyone thinks there aren't enough jobs there.

mOOm said...

Depends what field you are in. Australia has a very limited indigenous high tech industry. Most "tech jobs" are in implementation for foreign firms. In other sectors there is a shortage of labor across the economy.

Paul Phillip said...

As for AHM. I was about to do business with regional loan broker who had no clue that his company was going into bankruptcy until it hit .77 cents. I asked him if he owned stock and said no. I was pretty surprised not owning stock in the company he worked for long period of time. My sister was told all these home stocks would go down the drain and even me with BZR and $100 stock now in the teens. it's amazing what can happen in a year. talk about profits on PUTs if you know your economics!