PipStop

I spent this morning packing up and at the mall picking things up at the Children's Place which is at Ontario Mills mall - reputed to be the largest one-story mall west of the Mississippi.

On the way to the mall I remarked to my cabbie that it seemed every office building we passed had a "for lease" sign on it. He told me that you can get office space for $2 - 3 per square foot. The economy is struggling here and the friend who I stayed with said that Ontario, Calif., has the third highest rate of foreclosures in the United States.

Reading the paper this morning, though, it's reported that Carl's Jr. will open 100 restaurants in China within the next 8 years. I don't know about you, but that's a jaw-dropper to me.

Onto the expo.

12:33 p.m. - Roaming around the exhibit hall again, it seems that there are new exhibitors. There aren't that many here, but how could I have missed any the past couple of days. Interesting.

12:46 p.m. - Came across the Daniel's Trading booth. I love their philosophy - which is based on realistic expectations. They have some great resources on their web site, which is why I'm semi familiar with them in the first place.

1:04 p.m. - Stopped Marilyn McDonald, marketing director of InterbankFX as she sat down and was about to grab her sandwich. IBFX is flying high, noticeably more since it received a round of funding last year. They are putting a great deal into marketing now and had probably the best looking booth there. I have found it interesting that IBFX has two offices, one in Salt Lake City and one in Beijing.

1:33 p.m. - In a session with Ed Ponsi, the guy from FXEducator. His topic is "Trading Forex Like a Pro." It's a pretty basic session to me, but Ed is a pretty engaging guy and it's a standing room crowd - and some guy has just started to stand in front of me as I sit on the ground.

2:01 p.m. - Ed says you can master the market just like you can master the ocean.

2:02 p.m. - I just remembered something. On Wednesday, which was my first day here, I stopped by the ODL Securities booth and Jason Yu its chief technical strategist said something that sounded a little too odd. He said that Japanese indicators (such as the Ichimoku) are better at applying on the Japanese currency pairs ... Am I totally out to lunch and have I missed that somewhere along the way on my trading journey?!?

2:31 p.m. - Ed Ponsi was leaving his session and there were people all over him asking questions. There were people who actually followed him out of the building asking questions along the way. Quite a site of zealous hanger-on traders.

3:16 p.m. - I'm getting ready to leave the expo, and it has been a whirlwind of talking and networking with solutions providers in the online trading industry. I've also spoken with many traders and overall it's been a great experience. I did drop by a booth and an exhibitor made a confession to me that they were jealous I was able to roam freely without being tied to a booth. I've enjoyed it and will look forward to attending the Forex Trading Show in Las Vegas in September.

I've been having some SERIOUS issues with my laptop since I landed in California and I feel like throwing it over the convention center. It's slow, it's hot, and I can sense that it's on its last legs.

So it's been a little bit of a frenetic morning, and I'm just repairing my email account too which hasn't been retrieving email for about 24 hours.

Now on to the actual Traders Expo.

11:01 a.m. - I've just been flagged down by Reid Dubuque of ODL Securities, and we'll follow-up on Monday to see how we can officially partner with them. For a Forex broker to offer 2 pip spreads on nine major currency pairs and to guarantee that spreads won't widen during volatile market conditions, I think it would provide an attractive option to traders. Of course if you're a cynic, you'll ask what kind of slippage there is ...

11:28 a.m. - In a session titled "How everyone could be making money in Forex," by SolomonFX. The co-founder Robert Sharpe is talking about his story of why he started in this. One disagreement that I have right off is that trading and to be more specific Forex trading ISN'T for everyone. OK, so it's semantics, but replace "everyone" with "you."

11:33 a.m. - Time has been turned over to the CEO ... and he's sharing some stories and analogies, and I think the point he's trying to make is that simple is best.

11:38 a.m. - SolomonFX is trying to differentiate themselves by portraying themselves as teaching simple principles, and to a lesser extent they're painting others as perhaps overly complicated.

11:50 a.m. - CEO turns time over the Jerry, the sales guy, to talk prices, but before he steps down he mentions they have taught over 100 people, to come back on Saturday where students they will share one strategy, and to remember to use fibonacci extensions.

11:53 a.m. - As I listen to Jerry pitch his program, I can't help but think when he says "what sets us apart from others is ..." that everybody says that. And it's funny that all companies will espouse themselves as having THE program for EVERYONE. I firmly believe now that there is no one solution for all traders. Traders are unique creatures and need unique solutions. This is why Trading Post isn't continuing to pursue creating it's own proprietary solutions. We will embrace the best solutions out in the industry and become the ultimate solutions destination for traders. That's as rant-ish as I can get on the blog.

12:24 p.m. - I've been corralled to go into a "live trading" session that's being put on by Online Trading Academy. Gimmicky to be sure, or more than gimmicky, it garners attention. We'll see how it goes.

1:09 p.m. - Wow. That was a lot of fun. I know that OTA likes to let people know that they will teach them AND allow them to trade their money. It's a pretty cool feeling to do so. I have NEVER traded a single stock and we had to trade stocks. In the room there were 24 laptops and I can say that after a few pointers from the instructor Merlin I shorted two stocks and went long on one. Total, I actually made OTA a nickel. So I'm a positive stock trader now! I like OTA's philosophy, and Merlin was straight up, just as any instructor should be. Trading isn't easy and it isn't for everybody.

1:44 p.m. - I spoke with Jeremy Nosek of OTA and it's great to share the same philosophy. OTA has some great resources on its website and we will get much of it on the Trading Post website as part of a future resources section.

4:33 p.m. - I waded into the exhibit hall and stopped at a variety of booths - mostly Forex brokers such as Saxo Bank, FXCM, Citibank, and FXDD, as well as the NFA, Blocks (charts software), Elliotician, and an oil and gas company.

4:45 p.m. - I will elaborate on this in my wrap-up on the weekend, but after stopping by the NFA booth, I was told that most likely by the end of the year it will become official that all Introducing Brokers be required to be licensed by the NFA. This will clear out ALOT of the riff-raff that is out there. Also, I just learned that FXCM is now offering 1K accounts and will actually give you $25 to open one up. To me it defeats the purpose of trading. Like I've always been told, "Sam, if you put in a minimum investment, expect a minimum return." I've used this term a number of times but this is gimmicky.

5:44 p.m. - I visited with Chestnut Energy Partners which is offering opportunities to invest in drilling and offers a separate fund - it's very interesting. After some heavy discussion and questioning it's something I'll revisit personally later on.

6:59 p.m. - I'm in the Marriott across the street from the convention center to attend a presentation put on by an extremely intriguing company called Elliottician - which offers a rather stunning trading software program. More on this later - my battery is dying again!

11:32 p.m. - It's been a long day. I just got in after chatting with almost the entire Elliottician team, including its founder Richard. Great group with seemingly a great product. And talk about working remotely ... the team is spread out in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. Afterwards I grabbed a burger with Willie who is the president of a local Los Angeles Forex traders group, and it was great getting to know him and hear of his experiences. I will definitely be in touch with him in the future. Now it's time to do some work, then get some sleep before my last day here.

As I sit here at the LA Traders Expo I've figured that the best way to get my thought out would be to keep a running commentary of thoughts I have throughout the the few days I'm here. So if you're subscribed to the RSS feed just bookmark the link to the original post and keep refreshing.

I got here at 9 a.m. this morning and it was pretty desolate. I thought there would be places to sit and chat with traders, but there are very few seats out in the open, and it seems if you want to sit down that you have to be in one of the session rooms.

One thing that I heard a trader sharing his disappointment in was the fact that the exhibit hall isn't open through the day today (it opens tonight), and there were only a few free sessions running. He left and said he'd come back tomorrow when "everything gets started."

Looking at the schedule, I can't disagree at all. The expo runs Wednesday through Saturday, but the meat and potatoes is really Thursday and Friday.

10:15 a.m. - Walked into a session "Opportunities in Stock Index Spreads / Trading Relative Strength with Tom Sosnoff.

10:34 a.m. - Tom speaks really quickly and I'm sure 90% of the gathered group here (about 100 people) are totally lost and just laugh when he appears to say something funny. Tom Sosnoff, incidentally is the co-founder of thinkorswim Group Inc.

11 a.m. - The session ends and I've taken up residence in the back on an elevated platform where I can plug my laptop and cell phone in and work at a small table.

11:12 a.m. - People think I'm some sort of authoritative figure since I'm sitting a feet higher.

11:55 a.m. It's been great to talk to everybody that I have had the opportunity to already. I had a handful of conversations.

12:07 p.m. - Tom Sosnoff is going through a live trading session now, and I've officially been KICKED off my platform.

12:26 p.m. - There is some execution happening using the thinkorswim platform, and the room here is filling up - I'm guessing there are probably 300 folks in here now. As Tom says "It's hard to trade - you can't just pick a stock to trade in the morning and expect to make money." Amen. Then he continues, "We're trying to get you a little more accomplished in using the products."

12:42 p.m. - As Tom spouts out his tips, he says "Many of you come to a of these events and you're experienced - event goers. By now you should have raised your level of trading success. The challenge to you is that it's not acceptable to no longer be making money. The challenge is to raise your level." I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details of his tips - I type fast, but not that fast.

12:49 p.m. - thinkorfswim.com has a great resource of stock and options trading resources. I think moving forward it'd be great to house some of that information on the Trading Post website.

12:51 p.m. - Tom is talking about trading futures and knowing the different nuances of doing so that makes it difficult. I also think about the terminology that is involved in trading futures and it is worlds apart (the difficulty in terminology) from the Forex market - or maybe I'm just biased.

1:08 p.m. - This comment was made to me earlier, but Tom really does speak in a matter-of-fact manner, and really brings the conversation to the traders. Sure he speaks fast, but if you can keep up, you don't need a PhD to understand him. With thinkorswim, he makes a note of saying the technology supports the education there.

1:12 p.m. - According to Tom if you're successful in trading and spend 1% of what you make on transaction fees, you're luck. If you spend 25% you're trading too much. The sweet spot is 3 - 12 % maybe up to 20%, which would indicate you had a good year.

1:14 p.m. - Lunch time.

1:31 p.m. - Lunch will have to wait a few minutes. I've just ducked into an "Intro to Technical Analysis" session held by TradeStation Securities. It's rather boring (aka, wondering how relevant this is to anybody - especially when it's "Intro" to this particular subject) and the guy is relying too much on his Powerpoint presentation. Also, a bar chart on a black background show up horribly on the big screen. This should really be entitled, "Intro to the TradeStation platform."

1:37 p.m. - Officially having some Internet issues (as I shake my head). Now it's time to walk out of here for lunch.

2:33 p.m. - Walked a few blocks to In-N-Out Burger - overrated by far, but I always have to have one when in California. It is 103 F out today - blazing to be sure, but I got back into the convention center and I was barely sweating. That's what they call dry heat.

3:02 p.m. - I wander around talking to a few folks as I look for a session that is going on. There is one that is just finishing. Tom Sosnoff is just finishing another session - that guy is a machine!

3:28 p.m. - Just talked to John Conolly from the CME Group. They've partnered up with a variety of different groups here at the Trading Expo - thinkorswim is just one of them. I asked about the possibility that we could adapt some resources from their website on ours. Obviously Trading Post is an unknown quantity to him and the CME is a well known organization, so we'll have to provide compelling reason to have their information on our website moving forward.

4:01 p.m. - In the algorithmic trading trading session with Phil Jacobson from Robotrader.

4:14 p.m. - I finally have my Internet back up and running. Took long enough.

4:27 p.m. - This is a very vanilla presentation of walking through what automated trading is about. This can be a 5 minute overview and he should just show us what Robotrader does. Now he's talking about what Robotrader's capabilities are - just show us. Show us what makes Robotrader so great. The following quote is indicative of what I've been hearing for the past half hour ... "The best markets to trade are highly liquid markets."

4:50 p.m. - I've noticed quite a number of women here at the Trading Expo. Not to say that Trading is a men's thing by any means, and it's still (by eye-balling it) about 75% men, but it's nice to see some more balance as opposed to other events that I've been to.

5:03 p.m. - It's the Q&A session of this now and one woman just left mentioning what a "wonderful" presentation that was to someone. Just by looking at her eyes and body language I've translated that to mean, "Wow, I think I have really found what can be the money tree that I can shake cash out of." Disappointment will set in for her sooner or later. Phil was asked what the expected return for this would be, but he mentioned that he could not disclose that. Then someone asked a follow-up question and Phil mentioned that the systems could expect at least a 70% return.

5:08 p.m. - Oh and the cost for Robotrader is $30,000 annually, or $2500 a month. Then Phil mentions that pricing will change in the next 30 - 60 days. I think he needed to say that to retain the interest of more than 2 or 3 people.

5:14 p.m. - I'm going to be headed to the exhibit hall which just opened to be further subjected to marketing materials and paraphernalia (I was about to say propaganda). We've all been bombarded with a bunch of stuff from a bunch of companies, but the exhibit hall is going to be like walking into the lion's den.

7:14 p.m. - I'm out of the exhibit hall, since it closed at 7 p.m. and had some great conversations with potential Trading Post partners. Off the top of my head I had some brief conversations with ODL Securities, MF Global, Global Futures and Exchange Trading Inc., and I subscribed to the New York Times, too. One thing that would have been unheard of even last year - the price for a NYT subscription is the same for deliveries in Canada as it is in the USA.

8:03 p.m. - It's been a long day, and I've left. I will be posting additional thoughts and points about this session and others in a consolidated post on Saturday. I'll be back tomorrow morning with more expo commentary.

Just a short note that traders from far and wide are converging tomorrow in Ontario, Calif. for the the Los Angeles Traders Expo.

I've been pretty excited about this for quite a while now - to meet and network with solutions providers in the industry as well as with traders who are seeking solutions.

I landed in Ontario earlier today and it's nice because I am staying with some friends who live in the area.

I will keep regular blog updates of the goings on at the Traders Expo, and if you have have any questions or would like me to seek anyone in particular out, please let me know!

Just some random thoughts to end a LONG day.

-----

++ Everyone is wondering where the euro is going. Everyone's got their opinions. What's yours?

++ Do you know the difference between investing and trading? Is there even a difference?

++ Ouch. So as I wrote last week, Lehman Brothers has been eating carpet, and early today it was reported that it posted a $2.8 billion loss for the fiscal second quarter. Then its CEO Richard Fuld Jr. gets on a conference call with investors and takes responsibility for the "disappointing" results. Then, we see the stock that had been so battered last week, rise more than 6% in mid-afternoon trading. Is there something wrong with this picture? It isn't just me is it?!?

++ Ahh .. The sweet smell of a hedge fund manager on the run from authorities. That isn't my question on Samuel Israel III, it's how his personal fortune can can from less than $1 million to several hundred million. That's a pretty wide divide hombre.

++ Leonard Lin gives us a peek into his investment portfolio and we can see his asset allocation. For as much as he receives flak in the community comments that follow, one thing to be sure of is, Leonard is willing - one of the very few who are - to put himself out there.

++ I've never looked at trading like a game, and loathe trading "games" that are out there, but Stock News Game is really interesting.

++ Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's days are numbered with scathing opinions mounding up.

I hope all dads out there have enjoyed a great Father's Day today. It's just before midnight on the West Coast of Canada, and it always seems the time that I have a few minutes to saddle up and blog.

I'll be attending the Traders Expo in Southern California this week, and it's been amazing how many emails I've received from the event promoters on behalf of presenters this past week - 11 since last Sunday.

The subject line is always "LA Traders Expo Offers" and the headlines have included:

- Pristine Sponsors the LA Traders Expo
- Optioneer Trading featured at teh 2008 ...
- New Data Products - Visit NASDAQ OMX ...
- PEAK inside a new powerful trading ...
- Commodities are EXPLODING!!! ...

And on and on. Too many emails. Haven't they heard of consolidation? I don't necessarily care that they send them, I just won't read any of them. I figure I'll be there anyway and I'll probably make my rounds to visit all these folks anyway.

OK, so my thoughts don't range too far outside my family and things like going to the park with my kids, grocery shopping, being with friends, gardening, cleaning and rearranging things in the house (which I'm sure is a perpetual thing for most normal folk with kids), BBQing, and generally enjoying the summer (even thought it has been cool and rainy here so far).

I guess it's no surprise that not too many blog on the weekends, but of all the news feeds I receive I kept on seeing one common theme, and had one common thought. Poor Jerry Yang. Not only was the co-founder and current CEO of Yahoo under the microscope, but with the official rejection of Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo coming through this past week, many are looking at him with scathing remarks as a buffoon.

Everyone is an armchair CEO, and we can all in hindsight make perfect decisions. We can also make great decisions if we don't have to be in the grind of the situation.

Through whatever difficulties I have been through with Trading Post, I have always been told by friends and acquaintances who are in business themselves that there are issues wherever you go - that doesn't change. It's how you approach them and resolve them that does matter.

I for one figure we'll see what happens. I never thought that a Microhoo company would necessarily be that harmonized anyway.

It's been a long week. A lot has been accomplished, and I've talked to many people. But it's been long. Fortunately it's the weekend and I can spend some needed time with my family.

-----

++ The yen closed off at a 4-year low against the dollar.

++ A Bull Commodities market? Quash the speculators say some US policy makers.

++ Could the rouble really become an IMF reserve currency, thereby elevating the Russian economy into one of the top 5 in the world?

++ Catch some economic thoughts from an interview with George Soros.

++ Watch a recent Support and Resistance webinar by a man who seems way too busy for his own good, Rob Booker.

-----

++ Finally, are you obsessive about checking your email? If you are, you're wasting your time. I've personally set my Outlook to check email every hour instead of every 5 minutes.