Rhody Trader

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My The Secret to Trading Success post on my other blog was apparently of sufficient interest and insight to generate a StumbleUpon citation yesterday. That’s pretty cool. It didn’t send thousands of visitors to the site, just a bit over 100 (edit: more like 600 1000+ now), but still it’s folks who probably wouldn’t have visited in the first place, so that’s a good thing.

That blog is actually on track for new record month. The site as a whole will see more traffic and visitors than any prior month before this week is even over - maybe even by the time today is over!

If I didn’t have actual proof from looking at the stats, I would think that I was imagining things. The Forbes ad network finally seems to be showing ads (on my trading education blog). They said a few tests were going to happen, but it’s been so long in the works with this thing that I’ve gotten a bit jaded waiting. It seems like they are trying out sending ads through the different variations (banners, towers, etc.) seperately. Just saw one through the banner.

I’ve been waiting for them to get their act together to do some final rearrangements to my site format.

One of my little pet peeves in reading other people’s blogs - and I have a long list that I at least scan - is how some folks do little more than just grab stuff from other websites and blogs and such and make those quotes the bulk of their blog posts. What’s the point? If you want to share stuff like that, link to them and provide some value of your own.

Now I’m not saying there isn’t value to be had in quoting things from other places. I’m not trashing bloggers who do that from time to time in a limited fashion. It’s the folks whose primary focus is on posting other people’s work that bug me.

Do these people realize they are actual hurting both themselves and those they are “borrowing” from? Search engines tend to penalize websites for duplicate content.

This actually kind of ties in with a discussion that’s been going on with Barry Ritholtz being one of the leading names in the exchange. Bloggers, especially the higher profile ones, are questioning the value of republishing and repackaging sites. In Barry’s case he was referring to Seeking Alpha, but there are other examples, and was questioning the value of continuing to follow that path and the impact it was having on his “brand”.

For my own part, I see almost all of my trading education blog content getting grabbed by Reuters through BlogBurst. Those postings do not inherently link back to my blog. If I didn’t included related posts and/or other links within the post, I’d get no linkbacks at all, on top of my content being duplicated elsewhere - potentially devaluing it to search engines. I am getting some traffic, though, which is the only thing that keeps me doing this.

I haven’t had time to do a great deal in the last day or so:

Mentioned it in my Amazon.com blog.
Submitted it to http://www.phatinvestor.com

After several hundred hits on Tuesday, traffic predictably dropped of considerably Wednesday. We’ll see where it settles out.

Part of what I’m doing with this new blog of mine is performing a little experiment. During the month of March my Essentials site drew nearly 4,000 visitors and over 12,000 page views. That traffic is something that was slowly built over a couple of years. It most definitely didn’t just appear. I’d like to credit good content to it, but I also know that developing some connections among other bloggers and websites helped to push things along as well. I’m curious to see how quickly I can get RhodyTrader.com up to a comparable level of traffic an readership as Essentials.

This site starts from scratch. I did work to build content over the month of March, but I did nothing to even suggest to the wide world that it exists. Today, April 1st, was the first time I started doing that. I’m going to use every above-board trick I can think of (and any I learn about in the future) to publicize RhodyTrader.com to see how quickly I can ramp things up. As a sort of journal, I’ll be keeping track of everything I do. Maybe my fellow bloggers will find some of it useful - and will make suggestions from their own experience.

Here’s what I’ve done today.

1. Put up a post announcing the new blog on my Essentials site.
2. Emailed my mailing list
3. Added this site to my LInkedIn profile.
4. Added this site to MyBlogLog.
5. Added this site to Technorati
6. Set up Google Analytics (actually, that was last night)
7. Added the RSS to TwitterFeed so it would show up on my Twitter.
8. Turned on the publicity features through FeedBurner.
9. Added the RSS to Facebook.
10. Posted a notice and link on my MySpace blog.

I think that’s enough for today. I’ll do some more stuff tomorrow. Today’s traffic for this blog, according to MyBlogLog, is higher than for Essentials. I’m positive that’s mostly from the mailing I did to my list, though.

This blog was developed (populated, really) on the side during the month of March as a place for me to share my thoughts on trading, investing, the markets, and other related topics. It’s also a place where I can work through some things (mostly analysis) for myself and my own trading. So you can look at it as part conversation and part journal, if you like. As such, I’m sure it will change in lots of ways as I spend more time on it. Be sure to check out my bio and the about page to learn more. 

Right now the site is pretty simple and straightforward. You won’t find too many bells and whistles. No flashy add-on things. I’m sure over time it will become more colorful and visually appealing. I have a tendency to fiddle with things overtime, so you can count on some changes. I won’t necessarily call them all improvements just yet, though.

To that end, if you have any thoughts on things you would like to see here - ways I can make things better - definitely leave a comment and let me know. Otherwise, happy reading!

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed if you like what you see.

This blog is driven by WordPress. I’ve been using that platform for my blogging and generally for content management on some of my other site for a while now and have found it extremely useful all along. My only gripe is that they have a tendency to upgrade very frequently, but that’s the nature of an open source type of package.

Over the weekend, WordPress 2.5 was released. Tonight I upgraded this blog, since it’s still small and any problems would have been relatively minor. The idea was that if things went smoothly I would do my Essentials site later in the week. There definitely were no problems. Quite the opposite. I’m loving the upgraded platform. It both looks and works better.

If you’re running a WordPress blog, I definitely encourage you to do the upgrade for your site.

Today actually ended up being pretty straightforward and easy, at least until the end of the session.

Trading started off in the upper 1330s as the chart below indicates. The nearby reference points were 1340/41, a combination of a point of control and level above which prices were rejected back on March 5th. Down at 1324 was the topping area from March 13th.

As you can see from A period, the market traded up through 1341, which presented a great sell opportunity. It then failed quickly, but didn’t immediately run lower. It spent a bit of time consolidating through E period, then finally gave way in F & G. From there the market fell steadily, going through 1324 level without a blink. You could tell that was likely in the way E/F/G was doing lower highs and lows. Had there been a bit more back and forth and less outright weakness, it might have been different.

Then came the break of 1318, which was significant in that it put the market into Tuesday’s value zone - a flat one it was likely to run all the way through down to near 1300. The hard part was sticking with that move as there was a big bounce in L period. An ideal play would have been to sell the return back into the area below 1318 once more.

Depending on your timeframe, you may consider this a slow build or a rapid launch, or something in between. My plan is to use the month of March to flesh out this blog such that as of April 1st it will be fully formed (though probably still a work in progress if my history is any guide on this sort of thing). Between now and then I need to:

• Create a favorite post listing
• Add in advertising areas
• Set up a link for the main graphic to the home page
• Format the single post pages
• Incorporate some RI/Trading fixed graphics in places (?)
• Develop a weekly podcast
• Add the disclaimer
• Put up Feedburner chicklet
• Add EOTC feed

Come April I will start developing public awareness of the site by:

• Sending a mailing to my list
• Comment on other blogs using this site
• Add it to my profile pages on T2W, etc.
• Add to BlogBurst
• Add Google tracking
• Add to BlogLines
• Post on Amazon, EOTC, MySpace, CampusStocks
• Do TrackBacks to other bloggers
• Add to TwitterFeed

I’m sure there will be other things as well.

One of the subscribers to the equity market service I write for sent me an email this morning. In case you can’t tell, he’s a big fan.

Good Morning John,

Too many times in life people just don’t let others know how much they appreciate other people’s skills. Unfortunately, this is particularly true of Australian culture. However, as I do not conform to Australian culture too well, I just wanted to let you know how much I am learning from your analysis and recommendations. I’ve read books, gone to seminars, watched and traded the markets. However, I found that the best way to learn is to watch the experts. I’ve watched the FX guys for a couple of years and so I know what they do - Support and Resistance, Trend, Counter Trend - pretty standard stuff. If only there was a _*reliable* _way of trading the FX markets without having a 24 hr desk.

And for this reason (not having a 24 hour desk - I’ll leave that for later) that I decided to come over to the S&P futures. And I am so glad I have. I’ve found your analysis to be the best I’ve seen. For all the education I’ve undertaken, nothing has prepared me for actually trading the market. So I take my hat off to you and acknowledge that you are the master and I the humble student.

The only downside is that I am not in the same room to ask naive questions.

May the force be with you and on we go to Payrolls.

Regards,

Peter

Stop! I’m blushing.