Big Mike who has had very extensive experience with NinjaTrader came to the same conclusion I have: the myriad of problems and hassles surrounding NinjaTrader – all versions: 6.5 beta and 7 alpha – are just not worth the effort and investment of time. Check out his blog post: Big Mike’s Trading Blog: Tired of NinjaTrader?. There are several good reads in his forum about alternatives for anyone trading with a DOM.

One good solution I haven’t seen mentioned is a combination of InteractiveBrokers and ZeroLineTrader. I like this combo for a number of reasons:

1. IB’s TWS is rock solid, excellent stability and the broker itself is one of the more reliable ones (most of the time).

2. IB’s commissions are very reasonable, at $2 they might not be the cheapest around but not that far off for a small retail trader either. For a nice comparison of commissions see HPT’s post here.

3. IB’s universal account means I don’t need to split my account, I can trade stocks and futures in the same place. Including most futures contracts around the world.

4. ZeroLine Trader platform itself has been rock solid with a lot of very nice options for a very reasonable price. There are other alternatives like the cheaper BracketTrader but it’s bare bones, and ButtonTrader which is too complicated and expensive to my taste.

Anyways, this topic of IB TWS+DOM (ZLT or others) probably merits a proper separate post of its own. But the main point is that there are many alternatives and options available that one should spend some time to find what works for them, which is a better approach then trying to force their trading on something that doesn’t work too well.

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Looks like the almighty Goldman Sachs had an iffy bet on volatility this summer.

“Primarily in response to our client needs, our equity derivatives business was short volatility entering the second quarter and posted poor results,” Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said on a conference call with reporters today. The firm didn’t break out the size of the loss or the overall results from the equity derivatives group responsible for the business.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/goldman-sachs-lost-money-betting-volatility-would-drop-in-second-quarter.html

It’s certainly been one of the more interesting summers that I recall. Usually I would get almost no candidates in June-Aug but at the moment I can’t even tell it’s summer based on the action.

Anyways, back to GS, I wouldn’t be too worried for them ;-) whatever they dropped in their derivatives they’re making hand over fist with their evil high frequency trading algos.

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I was thinking about trading strengths, weakness and was going to create a list for myself but found it hard to decide where to start. So I just started with brainstorming all the positive trading skills and traits, personal attributes and characteristics I could think of that successful traders might have. Here’s the list, see if I missed out on anything.

Discipline
Resilience in the face of adversity
Desire to continue and improve
Persistence
Curiosity
Creativity
Networking
Calmness
Courage
Competitiveness
Pattern recognition
Numerical skills
Practical (as opposed to idealistic)
Self confidence

Btw, INO is hosting a webinar and offering free access to MarketClub for 2 weeks, this isn’t one of those offers where you have to pay up front and cancel withing a certain amount of time, this requires no payment
info and cancels automatically in 2 weeks. Sign up here.

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Update: I’ve been using the Ascaso i-Mini 2 coffee grinder for 2 weeks now and I absolutely love it! I’m now on an obsessive quest for the Perfect Coffee. And this relatively inexpensive home grinder has been one of the best investments I’ve made towards a perfect espresso. The consistency of the grind, the ease of filling up the portafilter and gorgeous smell of coffee in the morning (and afternoon, and evening lol) right after grinding. Fantastic.

Had a great weekend in Singapore catching up with all my friends. Now that almost all of them have moved back to Singapore we can meet more often.

Anyways in between the excellent pubs, restaurants, discussions on the meaning of the life the universe and the markets, champagne brunch, cigar bar, back alley roti prata joint, football finals etc. I managed to squeeze in a bit of shopping and picked up this little beauty:

I paid $270 for the I2 Mini Steel version (conical burrs and doserless) which is quite reasonable compared to the US price of $249. In Thailand it costs almost double that.

Had my first shot using it this evening. Marvelous. You can read more about it at the home barista forum which has some good reviews, comparisons and user experiences such as this one.

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So yes I’m still alive. No updates for a while, I know. Not that things are quiet, on the contrary, lots happening, especially since we got back from trekking in Sapa. 2009 was a good year, may 2010 will be at least just as good :-)

Anyways, after trying a couple of times to watch Avatar at the IMAX just to find out all normal timeshows were sold out (who goes to watch a movie at 3am??), we finally managed to watch it yesterday. It’s a good movie, especially the visual effects. Story-wise it’s a mix of Pocahontas / Matrix / Dances with Wolves / Last Samurai, i.e. an outsider white guy falls in love with a local, ‘goes native’ and saves a world from the bad guys with some Jurasic Park elements thrown in too. Maybe it’s the amazing graphics together with the 3D and IMAX huge screen but I didn’t feel the movie was long despite it being over 2 hours. The flying scenes and the forest at night were especially fantastic. Go and watch and see for yourself.

So it’s been ages since I wrote anything here. I’ve been busy ( as usual) with a bunch of projects. I can’t believe how time flies, it’s almost the end of 2009. I’m still trading as usual, plus always looking at adding more strategies, styles, instruments and timeframes.  My usual stocks trading is taking less and less of my time as the whole process became so ingrained as a second nature that I don’t need to spend too much time thinking about it.

So what else is going on? I’m (still): reading a lot, sim trading futures, enjoying life here and traveling and that’s about. it.

Ah yes one interesting tool I’ve added to my permanent opened sites is for goal tracking, it’s called Joe’s Goals. A really nice little web app that allows one to track daily goals. It’s not designed to keep tracks of huge life goals (when will I get to the moon?) but more of the routine stuff like, did I eat a good healthy breakfast today? Did I update my trading journal? Somehow ticking those boxes helps in getting me to do some of those things. There are also reports you can generate to show graphs of trends in meeting your goals. How will my world look without graphs and statistics I cannot imagine :-)

As everyone knows, making money decisions, investing or trading can be a highly emotional experience, especially for those who are not used to it. There’s something about human psyche that ramps up emotions to extreme levels when money is on the line. Looks like Philips has not translated those concepts into a little gadget. It’s tough to know how accurate it’s going to be and how people will end up using it but it might be a useful tool in at least helping to monitor those emotions and becoming more aware of them as well as tracking their impact on decision making.

Emotional investor? Try using the rationalizer

Philips Electronics has teamed up with a prominent Dutch bank to develop a system of warning home traders when they’re about to make a decision to buy or sell stocks while feeling overly emotional. It’s called “The Rationalizer,” and a test model is on display at an innovation summit in Brussels this week.

Who knows, maybe the next step is hooking up a bunch of people to this at the same time and showing aggregate emotional stress levels. That could be a really useful indicator, for a change.