HSBC’s shares rose as much as 5 percent as first-half pretax profits of $11.5 billion were up 3 percent on a year ago, beating the $10.9 billion average in a Reuters poll.
The London-based bank said it had cut 5,000 jobs after restructuring operations in Latin America, the United States, Britain, France and the Middle East and that it would cut another 25,000 between now and the end of 2013.

Unbelievable.

The replacement cost profit compares with a loss of $17.0bn in the same quarter of 2010, when the company took a big charge relating to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the first quarter of 2011, BP made a profit of $5.5bn.

I think it’s safe to say that business is good for BP.

I received an email from one of our Trading Class members this evening and after receiving permission to share it, I hope it shows that being disciplined is more important than anything else in trading.

Hey Abdel,

I wanted to reach out to you since I’m following your trading strategy and I feel that you may have been at this place that I’m in now.

Im finally starting to tame my fear. I have been on hot streak lately and everything is going well. I got a sell short trigger on the NQ (Nasdaq) on friday late in the day when everything was rallying into the weekend.

When my alert when off, I asked myself “should I trade now so late in the day”? Wow its late on friday and this is not a good time to put in an order considering that we are rallying into the close. So I stepped back and evaluated the situation, if it was any other day would I take it?  Yes! So whats holding me back?

The answer was fear of losing. My streak and my capital. But I said if the signal is there you take it! So I did. I said if fear is was holding me back and low behold the trade was a success. I didnt let other things get in my way – mainly myself of fear of losing. I know that you talk a lot about psychology of trading and that has helped me greatly.

I’m still a novice trader learning the market, so I’m no position to preach to others, but you have and I think that you do a great job of detailing that to us. So im just giving back in hopes that you can inform other novice traders such as myselfof fear..and how not to let it get it to your trading.

Thanks again,
Manny

You can view the original email here.

A trade that was executed in our Online Trading Classroom. Some traders played with with the August Options in which they saw their Options go from $9.60 to about $31.00 off the Google earnings. In this case by playing the more aggressive Options that expired today (July 15, 2011), the risk was higher, but the pay was bigger.

Whats’s great about what we do, and what’s so good about using Fibonacci in our trading is that it is predicable – rather than lagging. We knew what OTM (Out of The Money) Options to buy – both on the call side, and on the put side (hedge).

The trade consisted of us buying the Google $570 Calls and the $520 Puts. Our analysis showed that if Google were to move significantly (which we expected due to earnings) it would have a 70% chance of attaining of one of those levels. Although, we lost money on the Put side (because moved up) we made significantly more on the upside. This is a trade setup we’ve been working very hard on and this is probably the best result yet.

In this image, you will see how the trader bought 10 contracts for the $570 calls that cost him about $1.90 each. You will then see what the position closed out for the next day at market up.

Anyways, here is the result from one of our traders in the room. He says it was his best trade ever.

Stay tuned for how we play Apple next week.

“Weaknesses in DoD’s financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds it received for reconstruction activities in Iraq,” the SIGIR report said.