Tag: work

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MRNA News Catalyst

Wow what a morning. $MRNA popped up on a news catalyst that informed us great unwashed that they would be partnering with Merck to develop a cancer vaccine. Yeah, pretty good news.

The stock gapped up in the premarket to $135 from $118. Helluva gap I would say. I would also say that keeping that kind of level would be hard so I decided to go short 100 shares. At the open, it popped up to $141 before slowing dropping back down into the low $130’s. I had to wait 45 minutes for it to come back down after selling 35 more shares as it went up making my average price 134.33. I got out at 132.30 for a two dollar profit on 135 shares ($270).

I KNEW it would come back down as that size of gap isn’t something that can usually be maintained all day. Folks want to take profits and more selling than buying will cause a stock price to go down. I include a screen shot below of the trade.

5M Opening Range chart for MNRA

It should be noted that I, again, didn’t stick with my stop loss. I should have been out around $135.33 with a $100 loss but my convictions kept me from covering my short. It should also be noted that I used ALL my margin so couldn’t short any further on the way up.

Now, my largest criticism in myself is not that I ignored my stop, it’s that I ignored my stop AND missed out on an almost 6$ move up from the open. Had I read the chart correctly and inferred group psychology, I should have KNOWN that people would want to get in on this action at the open and drive the price up.

That first candle at 0930 opened at $135.56, closed at 135.58 and would have been a good candidate for an IMMEDIATE entry at 0935 when the second candle opened. It went up and up and up and I missed it. That would have been the safer trade as well with the 5M Opening Range Breakup setup being one I’ve been using since September.

I need to start reading the opening range better and trying to hold off trading until 5 minutes after the open. This is a discipline problem and I have to make a decision about how important it is. I HAVE been burned in the past by deciding to hold a short longer than I perhaps should have when a stock was in a serious uptrend and I took a loss of $400.

Trading is easy. /sarcasm

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Markets Fall, Money to Be Made

Decent Short action this morning

I’ve attached an image of my trade this morning above. Yes, I only took one and then decided I should not get greedy. There will come a time for that but now is not the time.

$OXY (the stock in the chart above) has been popping at the open then dropping nicely in the first hour before consolidating and then choosing a direction it’s going to move for the rest of the day. Friday October 7, 2022 is a good example of that happening. So I just expected it to do the same thing it has been and shorted the stock.

Shorting a stock can be dangerous and it’s not something to be taken lightly. Here’s a link to Investopedia that has some information on what short selling is if you’d like to read it. You need to be sure about your decision or be ready to take a small loss and cover your position if it goes the other way especially if you’re using a leveraged margin account. Some of my biggest losses since March have been from shorts so I’m very particular about my short setups.

I’m happy with this trade and came out with about $150 USD net after commissions. Slight change of topic….

Last month I mentioned perhaps posting my final results for September and I reversed my decision on that. It was a good month and I’ll just assume you believe me when I say that overall I pulled $2200 USD out of the markets and decided I should pull a little of that out into my bank account. I decided on $1000 CDN ($740 USD on the 4th when I transferred the money or 1/3 of my gains) would be a good start.

  1. It would be a reminder that I want to do this for a living and in order to live, you have to generate income. Moving money from my brokerage account just felt good and reinforced the idea, for me, that I could do this for a living.
  2. It would allow me to keep 2/3 of my gains in the account. I’d like to grow the account to the point I’m above $20k USD for additional leverage possibilities. An account of that size would allow for up to $60k of stock purchase with margin included. At this point, it will probably take a year.
  3. It would allow me to show my wonderful wife that this is a possibility that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

That last one is, far and away, the most important part of the withdrawal process. Sitting her down and talking about wanting to pursue this rather than continue the job search was important.

She is the most important person in my life and will always have a say into my career and what I do with my life. I think she’s already a bit peeved that I’m at home most of the day and really only ‘work’ for a couple of hours in the morning before heading out for my walk later in the day.

She doesn’t see the rest of it, of course. The reading, the study, the videos, the simulator work. It does keep me quite busy. I can’t just sit at home and play video games if I plan on getting better at this. It’s a lot of work and my performance in the markets each morning really depends on my knowledge and ability to think on my feet while the markets are open.

I’m going to keep doing this for a least the next 5 months with the expectation that my daily average will increase (currently at $77.88 USD per day but ever climbing) and that I’ll be hitting my long term goal of $350 USD average per day. That would effectively replace the salary I left in March and allow for additional trading opportunities.

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Good Day in the Market

I’m hoping to have more of these and with the profits generated by analysis rather than just luck.

I’ll also give you a link to the Chartlog share here. This was such a great trade and something that really makes me think this is something I could do on a regular basis. Though I’ve had some success in the rest of the month, this was a top day.

This month has been pretty successful but I don’t want to put a whammy on it by boasting too early. I’ll do the same thing I did back in March on the first of October with a short report and analysis of the month.

This has been one of the more interesting things I’ve done over the past few years. It’s definitely one of the hardest and, at times, frustrating. My logical mind wants to bend the markets to my will and define them in static and concrete ways. It can’t be done and I need to call on the other trait of a software developer and think abstractly to assist in defining rules and seeing patterns in the charts.

Anyone that wants to follow in these steps please be warned: this is not easy and it’s not something that comes quickly. I’ve been messing around with the markets since May of 2021 and only now am I starting to feel like I’m semi-competent.

Anyways. 0730 comes early. Time to hit the sack.

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Got Told I Seemed “Happier”

That was irritating. I was on a phone call with a family member and they mentioned how upbeat I seemed. I know I’m happier but to have it acknowledged by someone that was only talking to me on the phone was weird. Backhanded compliment, if you will.

It’s been six months since I had to deal with the problems of a boss who didn’t care, an institution that only acknowledged (or offered assistance) when we were in the news for something cool or won an award and the knowledge that things hadn’t changed in three years and probably wouldn’t for the foreseeable future.

There’s a number of things that proved to me that my job was killing me.

The first is a loss of 35 pounds. This one is easy to attribute to the additional exercise I’m getting with my long walks but might also include the sedentary life of an office worker and easy access to ‘snacks’ on the campus. I’m definitely eating better, and less, than I was when I was in the office. But there’s something else: stress. I used to have a midnight snack and I think it’s because I was being effected by stress. This one is difficult to put my finger on because it’s behavioral and I think when we’re looking at ourselves, it’s the behavioral things that are hard to verify.

Next on the list is my sleep schedule. I’ve always been a night owl, not liking to go to bed before midnight. Not a preference I just wouldn’t be tired enough to get into bed and not stare at the ceiling for an hour before drifting off to dream-land. These days I’m up at 0600 to prepare for the markets and then I’m up all day. I start nodding off at my desk around 2100 and finally surrender to the bed before 2330. This is new behavior for me and I’m enjoying it. I’ve got more to say about the ‘Early to bed, Early to Rise’ topic but I’ll tap it later.

I’m happier; I know that. My life is less complicated than it was and I’m the one responsible for that by making the decision to walk away. I need to make my wife happy, keep myself in decent shape and find myself something interesting to do with my days that will provide me with an income. That last one is a work in progress but I’m working on it.

Is this what happiness looks like?

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My Lime Addiction

No, not the fruit, the scooter company. If you’re in a larger American city (LA, Austin, Dallas, etc) you’ve already seen the bright green electric scooters littering your walkways. Here’s a quick video used as a tutorial to teach new users how to properly park your scooter at the end of a ride.

Hey, can I park it here? No? What about here? Yeah!

Lime started a pilot program in Calgary on the second week of July. The city gave them the latitude to have these devices out on the streets for people to use and to charge same people 30 cents a minute for the opportunity.

So these scooters have pretty good batteries and will last almost a full day but they eventually require recharging. Enter the Juicers!

I’ve signed up as a ‘Juicer’, a contracted employee of Lime that is tasked with gathering, charging and ‘serving’ a number of Lime scooters each day. I was provided with a couple of chargers to use in my activities and will charge an empty scooter to full in about six hours. Then I find a location out on the street to serve, or drop off, the scooter. For that sequence of activities (harvest, charge, serve) i receive a payment of $5.25 CDN for each scooter charged.

Why? Why am I doing this? What is the possible reasoning behind someone who is doing fine financially wanting to run around being a ‘Juicer’? In the rain, tonight, I asked myself that question a couple of times.

It’s tough to explain but people who actually know me will probably understand: it’s about the quest rewards! I’ve always been a big fan of Role Playing Games (RPGs) going all the way back to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Sitting around a table, rolling dice that are desperately trying to kill me and killing the (dragon, kobold colony, Orc infestation) before receiving a reward for all my hard work. +5 Vorpal Sword!

I like the small work/small reward of the ‘Gig’ economy. I like that I can make an extra $10.50 per night doing about 30 minutes (max!) combined of work. Pays for my morning coffee addiction!

The other question I get asked all the time is how much electricity am I paying for to charge these scooters? I asked one of the electronic engineers in my lab for a suggestion as to how much electricity is consumed and his suggestion was about 8 cents per scooter per night. I haven’t gotten my first full electricity bill to confirm this yet but I don’t have any reason to think it’s much more than that.

I’m going to continue doing this until they take the scooters off the road in November. I might still be interested in continuing in the spring but who knows? As long as I continue to get that mini-rush of quest complete, I’ll probably continue the activity indefinitely. I’ll update if that changes.

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Photo Dump Before the Cruise

  • This is for me. Sly needs SPF 3000.
  • Teeny, Tiny little coffee cups. Or stupid, clumsy ogre hands.
  • I get coffee!
  • The Zaal's Run on Dunkin'
  • Sly on the beach, Zaal in the water.
  • Sly more interested in beer instead of sexy Zaal
  • It's a pier!
  • Tasty Cone. This place is now dubbed Tasty Cone.
  • Zaal working, Sly documenting for leverage... erm I mean posterity.
  • Tale as old as time.
  • "When is he getting off that fucking computer?"
  • Look! It's the ocean!
  • Alcoholic Slurpees.
  • Alcoholic Slurpees!?!?!
  • Whimsy.
  • Drink it up!
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Got a business problem? College students can solve it. – Macleans.ca

Article about a project we did a few summers ago and how we use student interns to solve business problems.

I’m always perplexed seeing my name included in an article about the work we do. I know we do good work and solving problems that might not find traction elsewhere is really cool but it’s not until someone external says, ‘Hey, this was really neat and I’d like to know more about it!’, that I actually feel a sense of accomplishment. So having an article published about it is almost surreal. If you’re interested, read the MacLean’s article here.

With our change in vector to more IoT and sensor networks based projects, it would seem I should get used to it. Innovation space has never been more exciting.

We haven’t moved into our new lab yet but we’re already getting queries about potential projects and that is very exciting.

Source: https://www.macleans.ca/education/college/got-a-business-problem-college-students-can-solve-it/ “Got a business problem? College students can solve it. – Macleans.ca”

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Precision Cattle Ranching Project Video

I’ve been working at SAIT since 2005, in one capacity or another. I’m quite proud of that fact as the school is one of the better employers I’ve had in my life.

Since March of 2013, I’ve been working with the Applied Research and Innovation Services Department at SAIT. During that time I’ve had many roles: embedded programmer, project coordinator and now Research Associate, which is basically the manager for the Centre for Innovative IT Solutions. It’s been a great experience for me and I continue to get more opportunities as time goes by.

The video below is the first time I’ve been asked to present myself for an audio and visual presentation that we’ve published for the world on Youtube. Another good experience.

I thought I’d put the video here for posterity as I continue to inch away from Facebook as a social media platform. I have yet to generate enough courage to release myself fully but I see that in the future.