Road to Early Retirement

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

As another year comes to a close, so my retirement, early or otherwise comes closer. I recently sat down to do something that I hadn't done in quite some time, evaluate my progress towards our earlier retirement.

One of my largest holdings in my IRA was HTE, which was recently acquired, and delisted. Therefore I find myself with 20% of my IRA sitting in cash at the moment. At first I considered investing in a CD, either short or longer term, in order to have some stability. After doing some calculations however, I figured that I still need to be aggressive with this IRA account if I want to reach my retirement goal.

So, I decided to revisit my prior strategy of daily research on some select stocks, and seasonal plays. I am beginning with the daily stocks listed on my Daily Tracking List, and also a group of Natural Gas stocks. The natural gas seasonal play goes from the end of February to the beginning of June. I have begun with 14 stocks from the sector, and will start weeding them down to between 3 and 5. Once I have the list down to 5, I will start screening for a seasonal play for Healthcare Providers which begins early which begins the end of March.

It is hard for me to believe that a year and a half has gone by since I have posted here, but it has. That was a long vacation, but I'm back now, and ready to work! Make sure to visit my Day Trading Research Blog, for research updates.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off topic ~ Sunflowers

2008-07-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to the opening of the first sunflower in my garden. Enjoy.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Seasonal Plays part 2

2008-06-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, June is off to a rocky start for me, but quadruple witching expiry is now behind me, and with the expiration of some poorly held option positions, I finally feel that I have enough of my research time freed up to start looking forward to the seasonal plays that start the end of July, which I outlined briefly in this post.

Because I wanted to pick some stocks to play rather than the index itself, my first "need" was to sort through a lot of stocks to decide which was the right one. I think that part of being a good trader, like any other job is knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and right now my biggest weakness is fundamental analysis. I could try and look at the inner workings of a company, their earnings information, etc. and figure out if they are a company I want to invest in or not, but I would really just be stumbling around in the dark and guessing. So, rather than personally evaluating all of the companies in these sectors to find the stars, I entered their ticker symbols into Navellier's Portfolio Grader and let that do the fundamental analysis for me. You do need a subscription to one of his newsletters to get access to this tool.

So, I started a portfolio for each of my three sectors and then let it run. I sorted the companies by total stock grade. For Biotech and Gold and Silver, I eliminated any company with a grade of C or less. Utilities had so many A companies that I eliminated everything from B or less. Here are the results. You can click on any image on this post to enlarge it.

BIOTECH

GOLD AND SILVER

UTILITIES

While that procedure reduced my list to 19 stocks, I wanted to get down to about half of that for my daily research. I was trying to decide how I was going to do this. One of the things that I have come to feel lately, is that while the Prophet Charts that I have been using since before I started day trading full time gives me some good information, I think there are better charts out there to meet my needs. One of the systems that I have seen used a lot, and seems very powerful is at stockcharts.com. So, I decided today was as good a day as any to start working with it. My initial thought was that I would look at each candlestick chart individually for patterns etc, and try to narrow my list down from there. I went to free charts and started with Sharp Charts. When I scrolled down to add a moving average line to the chart, I saw a link that said Interactive Performance Chart and saw that you could create one 200 day chart that compared the performance of up to 10 symbols! Well, what could be easier than that? So, I created three charts, one for each of my three seasonal sector plays and here are the results. Again, you can click on any image to enlarge it.

BIOTECH

GOLD AND SILVER

UTILITIES

So, using these two elimination processes, I have gone from a list of hundreds of stocks to the following nine stocks that I will be tracking, stocks listed by performance.

Biotech (Season end of July to beginning of March)

1. ILMN

Company Events

Illumina, Inc. engages in the development, manufacture, and marketing of integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. It provides a line of products and services that serve the sequencing, genotyping, and gene expression markets. The company's single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping product consists of Array Matrix, which uses a universal format that allows it to analyze various sets of SNPs, as well as offers Human 1M DNA Analysis BeadChip that combines an unprecedented level of content for both whole-genome and CNV analysis; HumanCNV370-Duo BeadChip, which enables researchers to analyze two samples simultaneously and access novel content for detecting disease-relevant CNV regions; and HumanHap550-Duo BeadChip. The company also provides BeadStation, a system for performing genotyping, which comprises BeadArray Reader, a scanning instrument that uses a laser to read the results of experiments that are captured in its instruments and genotyping and/or gene expression analysis software; and oligos, which are components of the reagent kits for its BeadArray products and are used for assay development. In addition, the company develops and commercializes genetic analysis technologies used for various analyses, including whole genome resequencing, gene expression analysis, and RNA analysis. It has collaborations with Invitrogen Corporation for the manufacture, marketing, and distribution of oligos; and deCODE genetics, ehf. to develop and commercialize diagnostic tests for variants in genes involved in disease related pathways linked to heart attack, type 2 diabetes, and breast cancer. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

2. BMRN

Company Events

BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc. develops and commercializes biopharmaceuticals for serious diseases and medical conditions. The company's product portfolio comprises approved products and multiple investigational product candidates. Its approved products include Naglazyme (galsulfase), a recombinant form of N-acetylgalactosamine 4-sulfatase enzyme used for the treatment of genetic disease called mucopolysaccharidosis VI; Kuvan (sapropterin dihydrochloride), a proprietary synthetic oral form of 6R-BH4, a naturally occurring enzyme co-factor for phenylalanine hydroxylase indicated for patients with Phenylketonuria (PKU); and Aldurazyme (laronidase) that is used for the treatment of mucopolysaccharidosis I caused by the deficiency of a lysosomal enzyme called alpha-L-iduronidase. The company also develops various product candidates for the treatment of genetic diseases, which include PEG-PAL, a preclinical enzyme substitution therapy for the treatment of severe PKU; PEG-PAL for phenylketonurics, which are not BH4-responsive; and BH4 for the treatment of various other indications, including cardiovascular indications. In addition, it conducts preclinical development of various other enzyme product candidates for genetic and other diseases, as well as an immune tolerance platform technology to overcome limitations associated with the delivery of protein-based pharmaceuticals. Further, the company holds rights to receive royalties related to Orapred and Orapred ODT as a result of sublicense of North American rights. BioMarin Pharmaceutical sells its products to specialty pharmacies, hospitals acting as retailers, and pharmaceutical wholesalers in the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union. It has a strategic alliance with Merck Serono S.A.; collaboration with IGAN Biosciences; and joint venture with Genzyme Corporation. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Novato, California.

3. GILD

Company Events

Gilead Sciences, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of therapeutics for the treatment of life-threatening infectious diseases. Its products include Truvada, Viread, Atripla, and Emtriva for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus infection in adults; Hepsera, an oral formulation for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B; AmBisome, amphotericin B liposome injection to treat serious invasive fungal infections; Flolan, an injected medication for the long-term intravenous treatment of primary pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary hypertension; and Vistide, an antiviral medication for the treatment of cytomegalovirus retinitis in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The company also offers Tamiflu, an oral antiviral for the treatment and prevention of influenza A and B; Macugen, an intravitreal injection for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration; Letairis, an endothelin receptor antagonist for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension in patients with WHO Class II or III symptoms; and Cicletanine, which is being evaluated for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Gilead Sciences has operations in North America, Europe, and Australia. The company has research collaborations with Abbott Laboratories, Inc.; Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Inc.; Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Inc.; Genelabs Technologies, Inc.; Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Japan Tobacco, Inc.; Parion Sciences, Inc.; LG Life Sciences, Ltd.; and University of Texas System. It also has commercial collaborations with Astellas Pharma, Inc.; Emory University; F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd.; Pfizer, Inc.; Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd.; OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; GlaxoSmithKline, Inc.; Japan Tobacco, Inc.; and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. The company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Foster City, California.

Gold and Silver (Season end of July to end of September)

1. GG

Company Events

Goldcorp, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of precious metal properties in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and central and South America. It focuses on gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc. The company owns a 100% interest in the Red Lake gold mine located in the District of Kenora in northwestern Ontario, which includes the Red Lake Complex comprising 89 patented claims covering 1,254 hectares, and the Campbell Complex comprising 77 patented mineral claims covering 1,084 hectares. It also owns a 100% interest in the Porcupine gold mine in Canada, a 100% interest in the Musselwhite gold mine in Canada, a 66 2/3% interest in the Marigold gold mine in the United States, a 100% interest in the Wharf gold mine in the United States, a 100% interest in the Eleonore gold project in Quebec, a 40% interest in the South Arturo gold exploration project in the United States, and a 100% interest in the Imperial gold exploration project in the United States. In addition, the company has 100% interests in the Los Filos gold mine, the El Sauzal gold mine, the San Dimas gold-silver mines, the Nukay gold-silver mine, and the Penasquito gold project, which are located in Mexico; a 37.5% interest in the Bajo de la Alumbrera gold-copper mine in Argentina; a 100% interest in the Marlin gold-silver mine in Guatemala; a 100% interest in the San Martin gold mine in Honduras; a 40% interest in the Pueblo Viejo gold development stage project in the Dominican Republic; and a 100% interest in the Cerro Blanco gold project in Guatemala. Goldcorp, Inc. was founded in 1954 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

2. KGC

Company Events

Kinross Gold Corporation engages in mining and processing gold and silver ores with a principal focus on gold, as well as in the exploration for and the acquisition of gold bearing properties in the Americas, the Russian Federation, and internationally. The company owns a 100% interest in the Fort Knox open pit mine, mill, and mineral claims covering approximately 19,682 hectares located to the northeast of the City of Fairbanks, Alaska in the United States; and an 80% interest in the Gil property mineral claims comprising approximately 2,521 hectares located contiguous to the Fort Knox claim block. It also holds a 100% interest in the Paracatu mine, including an open pit mine, process plant, tailings dam area, and related surface infrastructure located to the north of the city of Paracatu, situated in the north western portion of Minas Gerais State, Brazil; and the Maricunga heap leach mine consisting of 5,900 hectares located in the Maricunga District of the Region III of Chile. In addition, the company owns a 75% interest in the Kupol gold and silver project in the northeast region of the Russian Federation and a 49% interest in the Cerro Casale project located in the Maricunga District of the Region III of northern Chile. Kinross Gold Corporation also holds a 50% interest in the Round Mountain gold mine in Nevada and a 100% interest in the Kettle River mine in Washington, the United States; a 50% interest in the Crixas mine situated in Brazil; a 100% interest in the La Coipa mine located in the Atacama Region of northern Chile; and a 90% interest in the Julietta mine in the Russian Federation. As of December 31, 2007, its proven and probable mineral reserves were 46.6 million ounces of gold and 77.0 million ounces of silver. The company was founded in 1972 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

3. AZK

Company Events

Aurizon Mines, Ltd. engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of gold properties in North America. It owns a 100% interest in the Casa Berardi project, a gold-producing mine property comprising of 299 mineral claims and 2 mining leases covering a total of 16,637.17 hectares located in the Abitibi region in the Province of Quebec, Canada. The company also owns interests in 3 claims; and holds options to acquire a 100% interest in 87 claims and an option to acquire a 75% interest in 2 claims in the Joanna gold project covering 2,608 hectares located approximately 20 kilometers east of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. In addition, it has interests in the Kipawa gold uranium project with 1,277 mineral claims covering approximately 75,000 hectares located approximately 100 kilometres south of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Further, Aurizon Mines, Ltd. holds royalty interests in the Beaufor Mine with an area of approximately 92 acres located 16 kilometers east of Val d'Or, Quebec. The company was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

Utilities (Season end of July to beginning of January)

1. EGN

Company Events

Energen Corporation, an energy holding company, engages in the development, acquisition, exploration, and production of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in the United States. It also involves in the purchase, distribution, and sale of natural gas to residential, commercial, and industrial customers, as well as other end-users of natural gas in central and north Alabama. In addition, the company provides gas transportation services for industrial and commercial customers located on its distribution system. As of December 31, 2007, Energen Corporation had proved oil and gas reserves of 1,754 billion cubic feet equivalent in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico and Colorado, the Permian Basin in west Texas, and the Black Warrior Basin in Alabama. The company was founded in 1929 and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.

2. LG

Company Events

The Laclede Group, Inc., a utility holding company, engages in the retail distribution and sale of natural gas in eastern Missouri. As of September 30, 2007, it served approximately 630,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in the City of St. Louis and parts of 10 other counties. The company also involves in underground locating and marking service businesses primarily in the utility and telecommunications sectors, as well as in the non regulated marketing of natural gas and other services to both on-system utility transportation customers and customers outside of its traditional service area. In addition, it operates a pipeline that connects the propane storage and vaporization facilities to third-party propane supply terminal facilities located in Illinois. Further, the company involves in the development of real estate properties and the provision of services for the compression of natural gas to third parties, as well as offers insurance agency services. The Laclede Group was founded in 1857 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

3. NFG

Company Events

National Fuel Gas Company, through its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified energy company. It operates in five segments: Utility, Pipeline and Storage, Exploration and Production, Energy Marketing, and Timber. The Utility segment offers natural gas transportation services to approximately 725,000 customers in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and Jamestown in New York, as well as in Erie and Sharon, Pennsylvania. The Pipeline and Storage segment provides interstate natural gas transportation and storage services for affiliated and nonaffiliated companies through an integrated gas pipeline system extending from southwestern Pennsylvania to the New York-Canadian border at the Niagara River and eastward to Ellisburg and Leidy, Pennsylvania; and 32 underground natural gas storage fields. This segment also transports natural gas for utilities, industrial customers, and power producers in New York through a 157-mile pipeline. The Exploration and Production segment engages in the exploration, development, and purchase of natural gas and oil reserves in California, Appalachian region of the United States, Gulf Coast region of Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama. As of September 30, 2007, this segment had U.S. reserves of 47,586 thousand barrels of oil and 205,389 million cubic feet of natural gas. The Energy Marketing segment markets natural gas to industrial, commercial, public authority, and residential end-users in western and central New York, and northwestern Pennsylvania. The Timber segment markets timber; owns two sawmill operations; and processes timber primarily of hardwoods. The company also develops and operates mid-range independent power production and landfill gas electric generation facilities. National Fuel Gas Company was incorporated in 1902 and is based in Williamsville, New York.

To view the daily research on these 9 companies and make your own seasonal plays, visit my Daily Trading Research Blog.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Three new option positions

2008-06-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

I said I wasn't going to, but I couldn't resist these three small option position pick ups today after Bush's speech. Not because they had a lot to do with his speech, so much as every time I hear his voice on t.v., the market starts tanking, and then recovers some time afterward. It is almost as if it is the short sellers cue to scare the masses out of their positions. I think I will nick name this phenomenon the "chimp dip". Think it will catch on?

TRA 60 calls was my first buy. I bought the stock, and it has performed very well. I have calculated 7 to 10 more points to target from 55, so I decided to grab a couple of calls. I got in fairly reasonably, and am up about 15% as of close.

Click image to enlarge.

Next I grabbed some ENER 85 calls. This one has gone parabolic lately. If you view the chart, the two long white candles prior to this one had a couple of days of consolidation with the lows hitting about half way down the candle, and then starts the next leg up. These calls ended the day even.

Click image to enlarge.

Last position I added was the POT 290 calls. I have been trying to get these for a couple of days, and never was able to get a fill. I chased them a little, and ended the day even, but I left room to average down if the price drops. Looking at the chart, you can see why folks are chasing this one. I chose the 290 calls because they were inexpensive, yet reasonably achievable in the next four weeks due to the target being raised to 300, and the stocks recent performance.

Click image to enlarge.

Other position notes: QQQQ confirms double top if it closes under 47.82. I have a few of the 51 calls and will need to watch this closely.

JRCC and PCX continue to climb. I have a very small JRCC equity position, that I am up 80% in just a little over a month in my IRA. Coal is hot right now, and I don't want to miss out on any more of this opportunity than I have. However, we have a strange few weeks coming up. The fourth of July is half way between now and July option expiration, which means two weeks out of the next four are going to be very unpredictable. So, rather than purchase options that are a bit out of the money as I normally do, I will purchase just one in the money contract, and trade it as if it were an equity. I may have some time value issues, but it shouldn't compare with the profits made if the coal stocks continue on their parabolic path.

Click image to enlarge.

Google continues downward in it's channel, which is expected but rough on my account balance as I hold a few shares in both my IRA and trading account. I will add more as it approaches 543, and keep an eye out for a break down.

V also on watch as it is having difficulty breaking through 85. This may be a bad sign, or it may just be because option expiry is in two days. Either way, the chart is teetering on a breakdown, and I am keeping a close eye on it.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Position Reviews 6/17/08

2008-06-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to review a couple of positions that I am holding, and document the charts for them as of today. Some may have been mentioned in other posts, some haven't.

Picked up some JASO today at 21.28. I liked this chart last night and put a bid in at 20.88, but it took off without me. I didn't want to chase, but did want to get in on the double top trend reversal, so I raised my bid to just over the confirmation line at 21.28. The stock went as high as 22.35, and at some point I stopped watching it to concentrate on other holdings. Looked up and it was below my fill. JASO ended the day down, with an inverted hammer. This could mean that our double top pattern had just pulled back, and is getting ready for it's next leg down. A break below 20 tomorrow would take us out of our upward trading trend.

I flipped TRA calls several times as the symmetrical triangle formed. I was out of the calls once the break out confirmed, but once I realized that I could still make a good profit from the break out trade, I started looking for an in on Friday. Determined not to chase the ask, I did not get a fill Friday, only to find that the price had gapped up on Monday. This is a good indication that the stock is going to move well. I got in on this trade Monday after a little chasing at 51.88. Target is in the range of 62.00 to 65.01, but I will let the stock tell me when it is ready to start heading back down.

HTE and GOT both moving slowly, but trending upward out of their breakouts. Close eye out for a throw back on these. As updated in this post, FWLT also on close watch for a possible trend reversal.

PCU is in a downward trending channel. Need to see a break above 110. I have a very small position. I wont sell red, but may average down if it dips lower.

V: Needs to clear resistance at 87 on this upswing. On watch for a triple top, then look out below!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Chart Trading Ideas

2008-06-16T20:18:00.001-07:00

Jaso: Target 26.58 to 29.88

ABK: Watch for bump and run break out over 2.85.

GOT: Confirmed breakout from descending triangle. Target 3.40.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

HTE confirmed breakout 6/16/08

2008-06-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

It looks like HTE had confirmed a double bottom but then had a throw back, which formed a symmetrical triangle. HTE broke out of the symmetrical triangle today. If you are going to play HTE I suggest avoiding the options, there is not a lot of interest, and the stock pays you a .30 dividend monthly while the pattern unfolds.

Target range 26.97-28.20

Click image to enlarge.

Last year HTE peaked at 29.84 on 7/16.

Click image to enlarge.

HTE is one of the stocks I track daily. Click here for more HTE research.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Chart Education Part 2 ~ Symmetrical Triangle ~ Google

2008-06-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

Symmetrical triangles don't seem to have a lot of sex appeal, but they do seem to be appearing in several of the stocks in my portfolio, so I have decided that this is the next pattern that I will spend some time studying. The information in this post comes from my copy of Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns by Thomas Bulkowski.

A symmetrical triangle is formed when the stock moves within a trading channel forming higher lows and lower highs as it progressive, giving a top trend line that is angled down, and a bottom trend line that is angled upward. Unlike some of the other patterns that I have studied, confirmation does not occur when the price paces a certain point. Confirmation occurs when the price touches the trend line at least twice on the top and twice on the bottom. By that criteria GOOG is already in a symmetrical triangle pattern, and we are waiting for the breakout. Also the price must cross the triangle several times, covering the white space.

Volume pattern tends to have a downward slope to it. I've drawn a line on the volume portion of the graph that is sloping downward, but it has only has 8 points actually touching the line. The last few days have volume going over the line. Look for trades with heavy volume on the breakout for maximum reward.

Breakout direction can be in any direction, including horizontal, but 54% of the time it will follow the prevailing price trend, which in the case of Google is upward.

Minimum length for a symmetrical triangle is 3 weeks.

Failures: When the price moves less than 5% and then returns to the triangle and then breaks out in the opposite direction, the move in the new direction is likely to be large. These failures occur just over 1/2 the time. Look for resistance/support (depending on breakout direction) before initiating your trade.

Before pronouncing a chart a symmetrical triangle look to the left. A mirror image may be a diamond top or bottom formation. Another minor high to the left of the triangle could be a head and shoulders formation. Both are more powerful formations, so make sure not to miss them.

On average, this pattern gives a 31% rise or decline, and 1/3 of the time you will get a 45% rise or decline.

As with EEDT, busted symmetrical triangle breakouts actually perform better. If you get a pull back after 5% or less move in one direction or the other, and then the price breaks out in the other direction, you definitely want to play that movement.

To get a conservative target price, subtract the price of the lowest low from the highest high in the formation and then add or subtract that to your breakout price. A higher target can be measured by adding the price at the start of the move leading up to the formation to the lowest low, and then subtract that from the highest high in the formation. Since the former measure is easier, and more likely to be fulfilled, I will use that one.

Symmetrical triangles are good for intraday trading. Buy near the support line, sell near the resistance until break out occurs. Since I like to channel trade, it is helpful to be able to recognize these patterns so I can cut my loses when I end on the wrong side of a trade.

Now, lets get down to the nuts and bolts of this Google chart.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The first step is to identify the pattern. We see that GOOG has a symmetrical triangle confirmed as it has four touches to the top trend line and three touches to the bottom trend line. They are in the formation of lower highs, and higher lows. The price has crossed the pattern completely 4 times, and is on it's 5th leg in the upward direction.

While we can see a breakout in either direction, the overall look of the GOOG chart points to a slightly better chance at the higher break out. Combining the pattern with my resistance levels from Stock Consultant, I will call an upward breakout at 587 on the current pattern. While I am not expecting a downward break, I will be on watch for it below 543. Note that the longer that GOOG stays in this pattern, the closer the two break outs come to each other (since we will continue to make lower highs and higher lows until the break occurs). I watch the chart daily so I will adjust potential breakout watches as necessary.

Our target measure will not change from now until the breakout, so we can calculate it by subtracting our lowest low from our highest high.

602.45-524.77 = 77.68

Using our current breakout watch numbers, we can conclude that an upward break of the pattern at 587 would give us a target of 664.68. A break downward at 543 gives us a target of 465.32.

Concentrating on the more likely break upward, we have some resistance areas we will need to overcome. First is 600. That is a big psychological resistance to get through. It shouldn't be a surprise that 602.45 is the high point of our pattern. Next is our 5% failure number, which happens to correspond with the triple top confirmation point from January. The pattern will bust if we can't push through to 613.00 without a throw back. If it fails here, we will need to keep a close eye to see if it breaks downward. A lot of money could be made on puts if this pattern was to fail. Next we have a psychological resistance at 650 which corresponds to the double top confirmation line at 652.50.

Referring to stock consultant though, the only resistance they show between the breakout at 587 and conservative target of 665 occurs at 640ish. This is good news for our chart.

So, my watch points for an upward breakout are

1. 587
2. 600-605
3. 615-620
4. 640
5. 665

Go Google Go!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

AAPL, another study of EEDT and initial 3RV (three rising valley) study.

2008-06-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

One of the posters on Ihub asked for some input on AAPL recently. When I looked at the chart, I realized that a double top was forming similar to FWLT.

Confirmation: First the price was trending upward before the formation commenced. There are two peaks, with the price difference between them 1.19%, which is within our 0-3% variance. The valley is 10.52% lower than the highest peak, which is within our 10-20% range for the valley size. Most importantly though, per the Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns the pattern is not confirmed as an Eve Eve Double Top (EEDT) until it closes below the confirmation price of 172.00.

On Friday, we did dip below that price of 172, even dipping as low as 165.31 at one point. However our closing came in at 172.37, so by the strictest of definitions this pattern has not yet confirmed. I'm not buying calls at this point, though, as if the market turns down again on Monday we could confirm at that point. Basically, as I see it this one is in for a good sized move from here, we just wont know which way until next week.

Highest peak is 192.24. Using that and our confirmation of 172 we can calculate the target if the formation confirms.

192.24-172.00 = 20.24/2 = 10.12
172-10.12 = 161.88.

Our target of 161.88 is very near the 200 day moving average of 161.05.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

If this stock confirms, one play would be a short sale or put play to the 161.88 target area. There is very mild resistance at 167.70.

If this pattern busts or doesn't confirm a couple of things could happen. Either way, a call would be in order though. If we start moving upward, we will either meet resistance at or go through our peak at 192.24. If we see a white candle forming tomorrow, and can get in between 175 and 180, we could see a return of 6.80% to 9.85% if we have to sell at the 192.24 level. However, on average, busted double tops see a 70% gain on perfect trades, which would put our price target at 292.40! We have 3 areas of resistance to break through, but once we are through 200, there is nothing stopping AAPL from rising.

In fact, if you take a look at the lifetime chart on AAPL on a monthly basis, it has been downright parabolic, and from what little reading I have done on the three rising valley chart, this stock will continue to fly if it can break confirmation of 202.96.

If we do the measurement calculation for AAPL based on the 3RV formation, we get an even higher target price of over 370! Granted it will have taken several years for that formation to confirm, so my assumption is that it would take several years for that target to be reached. All in all though, if we can confirm with a close over 202.96, AAPL would have to look like a great addition to anyone's IRA.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

In Review, week ending June 13, 2008

2008-06-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Friday the 13th was the only bright spot in this dreary week. My trading account has taken a battering, mostly in my portfolio balance, which is down 22.5% from the beginning of June. Realized gains have also slid some, but are still up 7.95% for the month. This is because I did not close out of all of my open option positions by Thursday, and for the most part that was a bad idea. As expected time value has been greatly lost on many of my open option positions, and GS in particular moved the opposite direction that I needed it too. I do not know how many times I will beat my head against this wall, thinking this one time I will do better holding an option over Thursday night into Friday before expiry week. I lose every time, and yet I continue to make the mistake.

Between the battering my account has taken, and what I see as a large number of bad moves on my part these past few weeks has made me decide to step back a little from option trading, and concentrate more on studying the market, and making fewer plays, mostly equities. I am going to be doing an in depth analysis here of my FWLT play for those of you interested in watching along. A couple of other plays that I will be watching this next week are AAPL which so far has failed to confirm it's double top Friday, and TRA which has recently broken high out of a symmetrical triangle.

I've created a list of seasonal plays to start watching. I went through and picked only stocks with A ratings from Navellier's Portfolio Grader. You need a subscription to one of his newsletters to access this. I am currently subscribed to Blue Chip Growth. Like everything else, I use it mostly for ideas and guidelines, but the portfolio grader is a nice bonus. Rather than doing my own due diligence on the hundreds of stocks in a few sectors, I was able to plug my lists into the grader, and sort by rank. This narrowed me down to 22 stocks across the three sectors targeted for seasonal plays starting the end of July. Over the next week I will start evaluating the charts on the stocks. I will be looking for recognizable patterns of course using my Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, but I also want to look at 2 year charts to see each stocks individual performance last year during the sectors "season". Once I've done that, I will start a daily tracking for seasonal plays. My goal is to get that started before the end of June.

I'm going into this week knowing that I will be looking at a blood bath on my stats by the end of the week, as open options expire worthless erasing my current realized gains. Because I will be scaling back my plays at the same time, I am hoping that my portfolios realized gains finds it's bottom for the month, and hopefully my account value found it's bottom this week (was down as much as 32.5% at one point). The good news is that I shouldn't have to withdraw any more cash for living expenses for the rest of the month, and my HTE dividend pays next week. That monthly dividend is always helpful.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Chart Education, Part 1 ~ EEDT (Eve Eve Double Top) Updated 6/18/08

2008-06-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I cracked open my Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns and quickly realized that this is going to be one of the best investments I have made to my career as a day trader. I heard about the book on Mike Anthony's Extreme Stock Charts message board at Ihub.

The book is a very comprehensive analysis of the different chart patterns that can show up in your stock charts. I have been flipping FWLT calls for awhile now, and just before receiving the book I noticed that a double top was starting to form. Because these calls are one of my largest positions I decided after reading through the first chapter to skip ahead and read about double tops. There are several different types of double tops. The one that I am seeing in FWLT is a called an Eve & Eve double top.

*****Identification: First of all, by definition a double top would imply that the price trend leading up to the pattern needs to be upward. 65% of twin peak patterns studded climb away from the pattern rather than dropping below the confirmation line. Tops should look similar. Valley between can vary, normally 10-20% difference. Tops should be similar price, 0-3% variance. Peaks separation generally 2 to 6 weeks apart. Lastly, confirmation must be met to be called a true EEDT pattern.

*****Confirmation: Price must close below the lowest low of the pattern valley.

Once you have confirmed that you have a EEDT you will want to determine your target price to decide how you want to play the pattern. Rule of thumb is to measure the distance between the highest and lowest pps between the peak and valley. Take that number and divide it by two. Subtract that from the confirmation price (lowest price per share of valley) and you have your target. This calculation works 73% of the time in a bull market, and 76% of the time in a bear market.

You can play the downside on this pattern, but playing the upside once the trend changes can also be very profitable. Also, as noted above 65% of twin peaks do not confirm, and price will rise on average 70% when the pattern busts out.

The information above is paraphrased from Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns.

Now, lets evaluate our FWLT chart.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Note: This chart was created during the trading day.

The first thing that you will notice with the chart above is that yes, we have an upward trending stock price leading up to our pattern. Our two peaks are similar in appearance, rounded at the top. The peaks are almost three weeks apart (12 candles, plus 7 weekend and holiday days), so our time frame is correct. The left peak (highest) is at 79.82 and the right peak is at 79.29. that difference of 0.58 is less than 1% difference, which is within our 0-3% variance. The valley low price is 71.36, which becomes our confirmation number. Valley is 10.6% of peak price, which is within the 10-20% norm for peak to valley difference. Today we closed at 70.82 which confirms our pattern.

Since our pattern has confirmed, our next step is to do the calculation that will give us our price target for the down trend.

(79.82-71.36) / 2 = 8.46 / 2 = 4.23
71.36 - 4.23 = 67.13

Based on this calculation 67.13 is our price target. One play would be to purchase some puts tomorrow morning at open. While I will probably do a paper play on this just to get a feel for playing this chart pattern, there are many reasons why I would not make this play. First of all, option expiration is next week, which exasperates time loss on option plays exponentially. Secondly the price difference from confirmation to target is fairly small. The difference is only a little over 5%. Since I try not to purchase options the first 30 minutes that the market is open, chances are that percentage will be greatly diminished before I was able to purchase the option. Finally there are several levels of resistance that FWLT would have to push through in order to achieve that 67.13 price target. On 5/12/08 the price of FWLT gapped up from 69.65. There is a possibility that this decline is just an effort to fill that gap before continuing the upward price trend. Next, the price has closed at support of 70.98 this is a very strong support (variance 1.99) for FWLT. The support level has been tested more than 3 times, with high volume and held. We also have the 50 and 200 day moving averages within that support variance at 69.45 and 68.98 respectively. This is going to be a ripe spot for mutual fund managers to pick this stock up for a run up.

Because of these strong support levels, and the huge upside potential I have decided that my play is to start making equity purchases of FWLT. I made a small purchase at 71.56 today, and may add to that if it dips to the target of 67.13 or below.

Update 6/13/08

"One play would be to purchase some puts tomorrow morning at open. While I will probably do a paper play on this just to get a feel for playing this chart pattern, there are many reasons why I would not make this play."

I did not even make this play on paper. FWLT gapped up from Thursdays close of 70.98 to open at 71.70.

"Because of these strong support levels, and the huge upside potential I have decided that my play is to start making equity purchases of FWLT. I made a small purchase at 71.56 today, and may add to that if it dips to the target of 67.13 or below."

I purchased about 1/2 of the position I was willing to carry on FWLT at 71.56. My target is 85.00. I will need to watch for resistance at 80, to see if FWLT is able to push through, or if a triple top forms. I also need to watch that it doesn't close below our confirmation line at 71.36.

The chart below lays out a few trend and support / resistance lines, which give an idea of where my targets and watch areas are coming from. Our close yesterday came close, but did not quite fill the gap on 5/12 from 69.65. 85 seems like a reasonable target which will net us approximately 18.75% profit on the trade. I may bank some profits at the 80 level though if it has too tough of a time breaking that resistance. Even to 80 we can net a 11.75% return on this trade.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Update 6/14/08

Before I start my analysis of a few other stock charts, I wanted to review a couple different time frames on FWLT. In the first chart, we are looking at a 10 day chart at 10 minute intervals. As you can see FWLT has broken out of it's downward trend.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Looking at FWLT's 2 year chart, you can see a similar double top failure around this same May-June time frame.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Assuming a purchase of around 51.50 when the chart pattern failed to confirm, to the top of the run completed during the first half of July, the stock priced gained 20.3%.

Update 6/16/08

The stock performed pretty much as expected today, making another leg up. We may meet some resistance here at 76.43, and I will be surprised if we touch 80 before option expiration, though it is possible.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Update 6/17/08

The stock closed with a red candle today, but above 75. Volume was low, about 45% of the average volume for the past 6 months. We are still in the upward moving channel, but I will be watching this one close tomorrow. A close under 75 could indicate that this was just a pull back on the double top formation, and there is more down side to be seen on this stock.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Update 6/18/08

The stock closed today with a white spinning top, which signals indecision in the market. I am expecting the stock to stay under $75 through option expiration on Friday. I will hold my current position, but would not suggest buying or shorting this stock at this point, it can still go either way.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

What can you say about this market except...

2008-06-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

YIKES!!!

I'm emotionally back where I was in February when I took a break from day trading, while not quite financially. I've made some great realized gains, but not enough to offset the damage this falling market has done to my portfolio. So, I'm off the day trading for awhile, and back to the slow steady rebuilding of my portfolio value through accumulation of blue chip equities. While I will no longer be spending 8 hours a day watching level 2's, I do have a list of things that I will be doing.

First of all, I will continue to update my Day Trading Research blog. Like I did in February, I wont be watching the daily ebb and flow of my portfolio, but I do keep up with watching the channeling and changes, because I will be swing trading some equities to regain some lost grown.

Next I will be doing some reading. Today my Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns and I am going to start studying that. I have also ordered DeMark on Day Trading Options and Options Trading 101. While I think I have learned quite a bit in the past few months by trial and error, I feel it would behoove me to spend at least part of the time that I would have spent day trading to learn some more about trading options for when the market finds a little more stability.

Third, I will start researching my July Seasonal Plays.

Fourth, I am attending TD Ameritrade webcasts to learn about their new Options 360 trading platform.

Now, about those equity positions I will be swing trading. I will be watching the following stocks for buying opportunities, using the support and resistance levels from Stock Consultatnt to determine the best buy and sell points. Since I will be trading the equities, and do not have to worry about the time decay associated with options trading, I will be trading around a core position, selling a percentage of my holdings when I reach a resistance level, and purchasing more as I approach support. Of the 5 stocks I have listed below, I already hold some PCU and HTE. The stocks are listed alphabetically, and you should be able to click on the chart to enlarge it for easier viewing.

DRYS: Look for entrance near $60.00

FWLT: Look for entrance near $70.00

HTE: Look for entrance near $23.00

PCU: Look for entrance near $100.00

SOLF: Look for entrance near $16.00

I don't have charts saved for them, but POT and GOOG are also always on watch for accumulation opportunity.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Seasonal Plays

2008-06-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

One of the sections of my Stock Traders Almanac regards seasonal sector plays. It is because of this section that I purchased the QQQQ calls in April, and have been trading them successfully ever since.

There are three seasonal index plays listed to start at the end of July. Biotech (BTK) play ends the begining of March and averages a 15.6% return the past 5 years, and 38.3% over the past 10. The Gold and Silver (XAU) play ends the end of September and averages a 20.8% return the past 5 years, and 20% over the past 10. Lastly, utilities (UTY) end the beginning of January and average 13.4$ return the past 5 years, and 20% over the past 10.

If you are not day trading, buying the index fund may work for you, however what I will be doing is finding a few stocks in each sector that I like, and follow them over the next few weeks to look at for day trades. Once I find them, I will start covering them in my Day Trading Research blog.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

In Review, week ending June 6, 2008

2008-06-06T18:25:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, what a week! The market continues to be manic depressive, and the longer that it is the more we come to expect it. While listening to CNBC I heard at one point this week someone refer to the DOW being down over 100 points as a minor correction. It wasn't that long ago that would be a major event! Now the DOW needs to move closer to 300 points for anyone to start batting an eye.

But enough of that, now for my notes for the week.

My research blog has worked out well. I have gotten some good feedback from fellow traders at Ihub, and I am glad to share my work with them. One of the things that I decided was to try and earnings play this week. I had done a few earnings plays and found that the price of the options increased the closer time got to the earnings, a premium seemed to be built in. Running with that idea I made a few plays, and I have to say the results are less than sterling. What I netted from the experience was extra work time in research, distraction from playing positions that I know (the ones I have been watching daily for months) and a loss of 2.1658% assuming that the JTX calls that I am holding expire worthless (I didn't get the end of day out I was looking for, or the earnings I was expecting). While I don't normally like to give up on an idea so soon (I only gave it a week), I have decided that right now is not the time to continue on with that path at this time. I may try it again, but right now the market is too precarious to be adding a new play to my bag of tricks.

My goal has been to close my open option positions by June 12th. I have been holding a lot of red options that I picked up since I came back to day trading full time in April. When I have an open option position, I like to watch the level two of the option side by side with the underlying stock level two. This works out great for trading, but I was having a couple of problems. First of all, only one of my accounts has level two functionality, and with their platform you are limited to 6 level two's open at one time. That meant that I could only basically have full vision of 3 option plays at a time (and I usually have a few more than that going). Another problem that I had is that very often the option level two on Ameritrade would either stop functioning all together, or their would be a difference between what the level two was showing as the option price, and what was showing on other parts of the site. These problems had more than once caused me to make a bad trade just because I wasn't clear of what was happening with my option bid/ask.

A great person I met on Ihub that runs the The Lotto Pick Project was helping me out with level two's now and then when I asked. She was kind enough to lead me to the AlphaTrade trading tools, and I have to say I'm very pleased! I am currently only using the level two and charting functions, but even those are well worth the price of the service. I'm now set up with level twos on one computer, complete with awesome real time graphs and my Command Center for trading open on the other computer.

One of the great things about the graphs at Alpha Trade besides being real time is that you can pull up graphs for options as well as equity ticker symbols. I went for months without having access to option charts. I also recently found that Big Charts has option chart access for free. Anyway, at one point I realized that I was holding way too many option bags to keep an eye on all of them, so I spent a little time one evening and pulled up the chart for each of the options that I was holding, found out what the highest price was that the option had achieved in the past few weeks, and set a GTC (good til cancelled) bid. If something happened to the stock in after hours, I could always change the bid, but if there was some unforeseen spike in the underlying stock while I was paying attention elsewhere, I would fill for what I felt was a fair closing price. This was invaluable for helping me to eliminate some of my positions.

Overall my trading account value is down 8.16% month to date, but that of course includes part of my monthly "salary" which comes out the first week of the month. My trading account has seen realized gains of 7.99% so far this month.

In conclusion, here are a couple of new option links that I found that I will start looking into this week as round trip option trading resources.

Most Active Options

Options you should have bought

Option Chains

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Round Trip Options 6/2/08 to 6/6/08

2008-06-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

I didn't have the opportunity to make too many round trip plays this week. The ones that I did all turned red, though the losses were very small. My concentration has been on closing out my open option positions before next Thursday in preparation for expiration week.

VIP calls .07 loss for 38%
SOLF calls .25 loss for 14%
SOLF puts commission loss, 1%

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Another rough day at the office.

2008-06-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I closed out my first two earnings plays today. Unfortunately they both closed red. I guess it would have been too much to ask that I close green on a new trading strategy the first time I tried it.

I started grabbing GES calls yesterday. I could have gotten priced in better if I had waited until today. The market did a shake down in the after noon, and while stocks did recover some from their lows, it was not quite enough to get the interest going on my calls. Doing these plays I may actually be better off buying calls that are in the money, rather than going with the cheaper out of the money calls. It's hard to tell if my theory is bad, or if today was just an aberration due to the market sell off. I decided against my original plan of selling all of the calls at the end of the day, and kept 1/4 of my positions to hold into earnings, as the stock price was resting on a strong support level, and GES has had a couple of recent earnings surprises.

Well, so far that seems like it was a good idea. GES is up 8% in after hours. Of course that does not mean that it will still be up at market open tomorrow. IPI had blow out earnings recently but went down after earnings on Monday and still hasn't recovered.

The difference though is that GES and retail in general have been fairly beaten down recently, while IPI and fertilizer had already seen big gains before earnings release. We'll see what happens with that tomorrow.

VIP was my second option play. I broke one of my rules buying it though. I put a bid in at open, which filled and then immediately lost 50% value. I was fighting an uphill battle all day, and never recovered. As always I need to remember never to purchase options between 6:30 am and 7:00 am (market open to 10am market time). It bites me in the hiney 90% of the time.

I purchased some JTX calls yesterday. I had an opportunity to sell for 100% gain at one point today and didn't take it. Earnings are pre market on Thursday so I will be selling those before close of market tomorrow. I'll be back here to update this post with how that trade turns out.

My one round trip today was SOLF. It broke through resistance and I bought the calls for a round trip based on the bump in the squeeze rating between Monday and Tuesday. It didn't stay above that resistance long, and ended up plummeting with the rest of the market. I was tempted several times to average down, but had decided not to for a couple of reasons. First of all it was still over a dollar away from the next support level (which was a weak support anyway) and also because I just started tracking this stock. I have not had a lot of success playing the solar sector, despite the huge amounts of money other people seem to make with it. My timing with solars has been horrible, so I decided rather than averaging down, I would just ride the position out to see if I got the bounce I thought we would the last hour of trading. As it happens we did get that bounce, and I sold for a .25 per contract loss. The good part of this story is that because I stuck with my plan, my loss was less than it could have been. Had fear ruled me, I could have sold those options for a .65 per contract loss when the shake down occurred.

My favorite part of today was that I was able to finally add some ENER to my investment account. It's only a small position, as there is a long way down to a support level, but I'm happy to have it. I purchased the stock, as I'm still new to following this stocks fluctuations. I would have to have a really strong signal that the stock is moving in a particular direction before I try to round trip the options.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Daily Research Blog

2008-05-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

I decided to start publishing my daily research. I like the flow of this blog the way it is, and did not want to break it up with the daily scans. In order to maintain the feel of this blog, I have decided to start a second blog devoted strictly my day trading research. If this is something that interests you, feel free to visit Day Trading Research: Daily Research 5/31/08.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

CNN: June could be crazy month for stocks

2008-05-31T15:22:00.001-07:00

The annual revamping of the key Russell indexes at the end of the month could lead to a hectic shuffling of stocks by big investment firms.

May 31, 2008: 11:07 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- "The whole month of June is kind of a magic month."

Citi Investment Research equity strategist Lori Calvasina wasn't referring to weddings, graduations or wildflowers blooming. She was talking about the stock trading that will take place in the next few weeks in anticipation of the annual reconstitution of Russell Investment's indexes.

It may seem like a wonkish matter that few individuals would pay attention to, but the reshuffling of the stocks that make up Russell's indexes, including the widely followed Russell 2000 index of small companies, will have a big impact on stock and mutual fund holdings.

"Your benchmark index is going to change," Calvasina explained. Those changes will affect some $4.4 trillion in assets that Russell says is tied to one of its indexes, which were launched in 1984.

Citi estimates there were 120 funds passively linked to Russell's 26 U.S. indexes as of Dec. 31, holding nearly $535 billion in assets -- nearly five times as much as such funds held in 1999. Morningstar Inc. says there are 20 Russell 2000 index funds alone, among 246 that use the small-cap list as a gauge for their performance.

The managers of all those funds will have to adjust their holdings to follow the new lineup in the indexes. But before that happens, hedge funds and others will try to take advantage of the changes.

"Hedge funds are going to try to game this," Calvasina said. "To a certain extent it's already been happening."

Wall Street analysts have been pumping out notes on a near-daily basis with their educated guesses for which stocks will be added, deleted or moved between indexes.

They are able to come up with fairly accurate lists, because Russell makes its methods for picking the stocks in its index public, unlike, for instance, Standard & Poor's, which uses a committee system to develop its S&P 500 and other indexes.

Here's how it works: At the close of Friday's trading, Russell Investments will take the first step of the reconstitution by taking a "snapshot" of approximately 13,000 stocks traded on U.S. exchanges.

It ranks the companies from largest to smallest, and filters out those that don't meet its criteria, including companies not based in the U.S., stocks that trade below $1 or those that trade over the counter, or on what are called the Pink Sheets, which do not need to meet minimum requirements or file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

After factoring in a few other matters, the largest 4,000 companies are picked to be part of the Russell 3000E Index, which represents approximately 99 percent of the U.S. equity market. All its other indexes are subsets of this master list; for instance, the biggest companies become part of the large-cap Russell 1000, while Nos. 1001 through 3000 make up the Russell 2000.

The Russell 2000, has had a difficult year, falling about 12 percent since 2007's reconstitution. One reason has been the overall weak market performance, especially in financial stocks, which at 20.6 percent make up the single largest sector in the index.

With so many stocks falling, one sure thing is that the market value of the companies that make up the small-cap index will be smaller than last year.

Melissa Roberts, senior vice president of quantitative research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, estimates the market caps of the new stocks in the Russell 2000 will range between $165 million and $2 billion, a dramatic fall from the $261 million to $2.5 billion range last year.

She said that along with market weakness, the big decline reflects a large number of companies that were dropped from the list in the past year due to buyouts and delistings, and some changes Russell made to its methods for including stocks.

Overall, she expects 312 new companies will be added to the small-cap index, including 42 companies dropping down from the large-cap list. Keith Miller at Citi put his estimates at a total of 307 additions, with 40 stocks falling from the 1000 to the 2000.

Because analysts and others can be so specific ahead of the actual reconstitution, the stocks in question could see some hectic trading in the coming weeks before the final lists for 2008 are released June 27.

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/31/markets/bc.na.fin.mkt.us.wallst.ap/index.htm

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic ~ Free Hugs

2008-05-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

This hug's for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

All the Same ~ Sick Puppies

I don't mind where you come from
As long as you come to me
But I don't like illusions I can't see
Them clearly
I don't care, no I wouldn't dare
To fix the twist in you
You've shown me eventually what you'll do
I don't mind
I don't care
As long as you're here

Go ahead and tell me you'll leave again
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's all the same

Hours slide and days go by
Till you decide to come
However long you stay is all that I am
I don't mind, I don't care
As long as you're here

Go ahead and tell me you'll leave again
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's always the same

Go ahead say it
You're leaving
You'll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It's all the same
And I'll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It's all the same

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

May Performance

2008-05-30T17:15:00.001-07:00

On May 16th I made a post which included a mid month recap of my monthly goals. I was easily exceeding most of them, and was looking forward to tying up a few loose ends and having a fairly stress free couple of weeks... Well, if you follow the market at all, you realize that didn't happen!

Below are my final results for May, which take into account commissions and margin interest. As a reminder, I have decided to base my monthly goals on portfolio value.

Account % . . . . . Goal. . . . . % Actual

Trading . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . 5.65%

Investment . . . . . .12% . . .. . . . . 5.18%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8%. . . . . . . . . 5.40%

As you can see, I did not make any of my goals for the month as far as my portfolio balance goes. Of course those results (all gains, just shown in red because they did not meet the set goal) are nothing to sneeze at. They translate to annualized returns of 67.8%, 62.16%, and 64.8% respectively.

While I am not setting realized gain goals, I am also tracking those. For the month of May my realized gains are as follows.

Trading . . . . . . . . 28.85%

Investment . . . . . 11.2%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.72%

I really could not be more thrilled at this point. Those numbers translate to annualized percentages of 346.2%, 134.4% and 20.64%. Obviously I am not going to see these type of gains every month. In fact, I expect June to be really rough. I will probably not take advantage of every trading day with hubby on vacation, and of course I obviously am carrying a lot of unrealized losses over into June. I have a lot of open option positions that I need to close out in the next 9 trading days, and if the market doesn't cooperate, I'm in for a rough ride.

As I have probably mentioned before I have a set group of stocks that I track daily so that I can learn their rhythms for options trading. These include PCU, POT, DRYS, RIMM, FWLT, GS, and GOOG. Another thing that I track during the month is my trades in these stocks. Some of these trades are equity trades and some are option trades, and they have happened across all three of my accounts. Below is a list of the good trades per total trades for the stocks on that list that I traded in May, and whether there was an overall gain or loss in trading that stock. They are ranked best to worst by dollar amount gained/lost.

GOOG 10 for 11

FWLT 9 for 9

DRYS 8 for 11

PCU 2 for 2

GS 2 for 4

POT 0 for 2

These 6 stocks accounted for 69.98% of my realized gains for May.

There are a few key things I have learned over my past 7 months as a day trader that I need to remind myself of.

*First and foremost, close ALL option positions the Thursday before option expiration (for the upcoming month that is June 12th).

*During option expiration week limit any option trades to round trips. The majority of trades during options week should be equity trades.

*FOOLS RUSH IN...do your own due diligence before opening a position. If you don't have time to make a few basic checks before entering a position, then you don't have time to watch it once you make it.

*No Fear, No Greed...the bears are in control, and are ready in willing to shake the fearful out of their positions. Know your support and resistance areas, including type, strength and variance. Hold firm to positions pushed to the limit, but do not be afraid to take the loss once they push through. There is always another trade to be found.

*Research all positions daily for changes. My daily research includes closing price, after hours price and news, chart, short interest, market sentiment, support, resistance and possible break outs.

*Begin each month knowing if there are any days the market is closed. Market holidays should be treated like expiration days, close out all open option positions a week before the holiday, and limit option plays during the week proceeding the holiday to round trips. June does not have any market holidays, however the market closes early July 3rd, and is closed on the 4th. Option expiration is June 20th. This means that all option plays picked up beginning June 23rd need to be closed by Thursday, June 26th.

I have decided to keep my current goals through the end of August for a couple of reasons. First of all, as mentioned above, I am entering June with a lot of unrealized losses on the books, and may not be taking advantage of trading every day. Unless the first half of June is as remarkable as the first half of May was for me, I am going to have a difficult time making these goals in June. Therefore, I want to continue to reach for the sky with these lofty goals through August to determine if I am able to achieve them once I get back in the day trading groove. At the end of August I will evaluate my performance and adjust my goals accordingly for September through December.

Have a great weekend, and Happy Trading!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Round Trip Options May 19 - May 30, 2008

2008-05-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Despite having a lot more option positions than I prefer this month, I was able to round trip a few more options. Here is how they faired.

DRYS PUTS gain .70 for 18%

RCH CALLS loss .20 for 43%

DRYS PUTS gain .80 for 15%

PCU PUTS gain .85 for 44%

GOOG PUTS gain 1.00 for 23%

DRYS calls .50 loss for 10%

Overall I am pleased with the performance of my round trips for the month. June option expiration is Friday June 20th. My husband will also be taking vacation from June 23rd through July 4th. My goal is to close out all of my open option positions by Thursday June 12th in order to avoid the accelerated time decay of options week, as well as allow myself the freedom to trade or not as I please while Hubby is off work.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

DOW down 427 points in two days!

2008-05-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

What a crazy week so far!

I realized on Tuesday the market was going to be weird this week, with the upcoming holiday coming. I can't predict how Friday will go, but it will probably be low volume, and highly manipulated. In the mean time, I'm working on closing out as many option positions as I can before then, and get back to being more strict with the options day trades.

Visit my round trip options board if you are interested in keeping up with my plays as they happen.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Roundtrip Options May 1 - May 16, 2008

2008-05-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I got back to making a few round trip options plays this month. This is how I have fared so far.

DUG calls .60 gain for 65%
PCU calls .70 gain for 10%
FWLT calls .50 gain for 16%
EXM calls .50 gain for 25%

Visit my Roundtrip Options board. We have a few new assistants on board that will help bringing some options trading ideas for quick trades.

I will try to get back into the habit of documenting Round Trip Option plays each week.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Everything happens for a reason...

2008-05-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

I found out today that had I stayed in my full time job (I went part time in Feb '07 to spend more time trading, then quit the part time position in October '07 to trade full time.) I would have been laid off on Monday. Just thinking about all of the things I would have given up had I stayed in that job the additional 14 months before the inevitable lay off gives me a deep appreciation for my position. That first decision in February to go from full time to part time started my destiny into motion. The fact that I started trading at the beginning of a bear market gave me a crash course in how brutal the stock market could be. I've learned that being too cautious is as detrimental as being too greedy. I learned that the market makers will rule you through your greed and fear if you allow them to. No fear, no greed, is so important.

The big story so far this month has been oil, which has sent one of my favorite stocks HTE on a run. Close of day 5/1 HTE traded at 21.83. Close of day today (option expiration) it traded at 25.55. That's a price increase of over 17% in just 12 trading days! Not to mention (yet again) the .30 per month dividend.

The option stars for me so far in May have been V, FWLT, and GG calls. All traded or currently held between 100% and 400% gains. In realized gains V barely edged out FWLT, but FWLT shares I am holding continued to gain while my V options are basically the only red in my trading account. My big losses were POT calls (I should have bought out a month further) and my DRYS puts. That could have been a huge gain if I had bought the calls instead.

Looking at the two year and lifetime charts on POT, I find it hard to believe that I can lose money on call options, but I do. Long term this one is a no brainer though. I have a few swing trade stocks in my IRA that I will convert to POT as I take profits.

LIFETIME

TWO YEAR

I was a little late making my goals for May. As you may know my trading has been limited between February and now based on market conditions and my bathroom remodel. Anyway, about a week ago, I decided to set some goals through the end of the year. I decided to go with a portfolio percentage increase each month, taking into account the money that I need to remove each month from my trading account in order to meet our household obligations. I created a spread sheet that is linked to my "scorecard" where I keep my high level stats for my three accounts. This spreadsheet will automatically adjust the next months goal based on the previous months final balance, so I am set through the end of the year. If I decide my goals are unrealistic, I can easily change the formulas to adjust based on new percentage gains projections.

My goals and current status as of 5/16/08 are
Account % . . . . . Goal. . . . . % Actual

Trading . . . . . . . . 25% . . . . . . . . 29%

Investment . . . . . .12% . . .. . . . . 15%

IRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8%. . . . . . . . . 7%

I will be keeping an eye on GOT this week. It has been consolidating since mid April, has had some insider buying and may get a pump soon with the rest of the retail sector.

At this price, a 50 % gain is reasonable once the stock starts it's upward move.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Hot IPO's

2008-05-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

I am currently invested in three IPO's. The first V I have discussed here before. It has been down a bit this week, with option expiration coming, but staying within the upward bound trading channel. I've heard predictions of 100 before the end of the month. I'm not sure if it will go that high that fast, but we will definitely see 90. I have been collecting V in my IRA, and have gathered a lot of June 100 and 110 calls. I held them through the expiration week, so I've had some time decay, but with the flips I did before this week, I'm still green over all on V trades, and looking to score big in the coming weeks.

The next IPO I am trading is IPI. Intrepid Potash has been channelling between 46 and 52, and I bought a few June 55 calls to make a short term trade. My first target is 100% gain.

The last one is a little risky, but I made an extremely small purchase (less than 100 shares) of CFX. I have it in my investment account. I got in on a dip today at $23.75. I got tired of watching it go up a dollar or more each day without me!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

V for Victory!

2008-04-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

IPO for V happened while I wasn't actively looking for new stocks to trade. The low on the first day was $55.00 and it has been a steady climb ever since. I got in some calls a couple of weeks ago (+VFP June 80 calls) and sold 1/2 of them yesterday to leave my remaining 1/2 free and clear. The stock dipped briefly today, but I was 15 minutes late getting to my computer and missed my in to buy more at my low ball bid. Today the stock touched 80 at close. V is Visa by the way, and a great investment right now I think for these trying times. As the prices of necessities go up (gas and groceries) while companies are laying off employees or telling them that there will be no raises this year, people will be doing more credit spending just to make ends meet.

Trimmed a few GOOG shares today at 560 (about 15%) and looking for an in to put some V in my IRA. I believe that this is going to be a great long term play.

I'm in a few POT calls and some DRYS puts. I think DRYS is toppy here. POT could really go either way, it has some support at 180, but if that drops support levels are 160 and 140...

Shorted some PMCS today, and it ended the day up. I will be watching this one closely tomorrow, it could go either way.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

I'm back!

2008-04-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

If anyone is still popping in here from time to time, just wanted to let you know I am finally back! I've been trading around a core set of Google shares, and as you know last Friday finally gave me the bump back up I've been looking for. This gave my day trading account the boost it needed to be able to make intra day trades again.

By my stock traders Almanac, April is the month to buy the tech and health care sectors. July is supposed to be when they peak. I am currently holding shares of Google (GOOG) and Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB) in these two sectors. Both were purchased in February, so I actually got in a little early, but I'm seeing some small gains in both already.

As I type, Google has managed to hold it's 530 support this morning, and is tickling that 540 number again. If it can break through 540 the next resistance looks like it should be at 570....and there went 540.

I've also been trading around a core group of ESLR shares. It looks like it is attempting to form and inverted head and shoulders pattern, which could see it back up at it's 19.00 a share high. I'm currently averaged in at 9.00 on that stock.

The big story from my watch list has been POT though, with about 50% gain since February. Unfortunately I am not in. No resistance, hit a 52 week high today. Will it continue it's run, or correct? I'm not sure enough one way or the other to get in today.

It feels good to be getting my feet wet again, but I suspect I will be wading in to this market cautiously.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic: Bathroom Remodel Completed.

2008-03-27T08:06:00.001-07:00

Before:

Some pictures of the finished project.

Panoramic tour:

A few Detail Closeups

This entire ordeal was pretty stressful for me, but I think it ended up really fabulous. The bathroom is much more functional now than it was before, and I like the look a lot. Hope you enjoyed this off topic month as much as I did, now back to trading!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic Creighton Galleries

2008-02-29T20:52:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite artists, and a good friend has recently opened an online gallery. If you are looking to purchase an original painting, or just enjoy art, please take a look at

Creighton Galleries

I am lucky enough to have this one hanging in my home.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel Part 2

2008-02-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

The last post was getting a little long, so I decided to start a second part. It looks like the remodel should be done sometime next week.

Paint and cabinetry happened today.

So, a little about this custom cabinet.

Here it is in place, except for the shelves. Now that i see the cabinets, it is obvious that the door he chose is perfect.

The only thing different than what I wanted was that the upper shelves on the two sides of the cabinet do not have doors. I can always add them later though if I decide.

This next picture shows one of my requested features. Since we will have a pedestal sink, I wanted a shelf that pulled out to serve as a faux counter top for us to use when we get ready. A plug was added just above this pull out shelf inside the cabinet so that we could have our toothbrushes charging inside there.

I'm totally loving that red wall!

The middle cabinet has a long cupboard, and is a bit deeper than the two side cabinets. It will be used for storing paper products at the bottom, and hanging our bathrobes out of sight. Once the shelves are in place, the ones on the right side will house rolled up towels. The shower door will open towards the cabinet so that we can just open it, reach over and grab a towel.
Both the right and left cabinets have pull out hampers as seen in this picture. Once the entire bathroom is in, I may decide to switch one of them out for a garbage can. I like the idea of having that hidden away instead of sitting out in the open.
From the sounds of it, there will not be any more work done before Monday. I'm thrilled with the way things are shaping up!

March 9, 2008

The project is closing in on completion. Here is a panoramic tour of where we are at today.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel

2008-02-13T16:37:00.001-08:00

I have been needing to do work on my bathroom since we moved into this house 10 years ago. It has been on the list of home improvements, but there was always something more important. Well, a couple of months ago the linoleum began to split where the water damage was on the floor near the toilet, so I decided we couldn't wait anymore. We found someone that we liked and trusted to do a fairly major remodel for us, for under $20,000.

Here is the one picture that I have where you can kind of see the before.

As you can see the door swings in, and what you see is the sink with the dated tile and medicine cabinet. That will be replaced by a custom built floor to ceiling cabinet. The windows will be blocked by the cabinet, but left where they are. It will include shelves, drawers, two built in hampers, and a long closet for hanging our bathrobes.

The wall the door opens to was empty, and where we had our hamper. door is going to be reversed to swing into the hallway instead, and a pedestal sink put on that wall. on the right side you may see a glimpse of our shower curtain. The tub was removed, and will be replaced with a long shower and bench. That will involve moving the current drain, and building a couple of walls and installing a shower door.

To the right of the door opening was the toilet. It was against the wall so that when you sat on it, your legs extended in front of the door opening. The toilet will be making a quarter turn to face the new cabinetry.

Within just a few hours this morning, the demo was complete. Here is the wall where the sink was. They will be adding insulation that wasn't currently in the exterior wall.

This picture shows the floor damage by the toilet. Luckily the joists do not need to be replaced. You can also see in this picture the area where the new super sized shower will go.

The door is going to be replaced, so they pulled that down. That is my biggest challenge now. You may be able to see the hole near the plumbing for the toilet, which gives access to the smaller members of my family to the crawl space under the house. Georgie has already made his way down there. Luckily he comes when I call him. I'm trying to keep the cats outside until Hubby comes home, and we can figure out a way to keep the cats out of the bathroom, or at least from going under the house. I'm waiting for a call from the contractor so we can go fixture shopping. As you can see the floor is pretty wet, so I'm not sure if we can just cover the wholes. They may need the wood to dry out. It seems that would be easier than trying to block the doorway.

Anyway, I will come back and update this post from time to time if any of you are interested in seeing the progress.

2/15/2008

Well, Mr. Handsome but short plumber is back today. They sent a little camera down my mainline. There is a major breach near the house, and several small offsets down the line. At the end was a huge chunk of drywall that the construction workers had let fall down the opening to the toilet. That was what had caught on the tree roots and near the house, and the snaking yesterday just shoved it down further.

They are going to push the drywall down to the air vent, and then break it up. We chose to make the $850 spot repair, rather than the $3500 complete mainline replacement. There are some offset points, but it took them over 60 years of settling to offset the little bit that they did. We wont be here another 60 years, and it would be way to much of a financial burden to take another $3500 on top of the current remodel costs. We can always go back and do the mainline after we recouparate from paying for the remodel.

I went shopping for fixtures the yesterday, and found some great oil rubbed bronze ones that I love. Unfortunately we are having to switch to a single water turn on in the shower, rather than the separate for hot and cold that we had prior. Apparently you cannot have that type of faucet anymore, even if you are currently plumbed for it.

The nefarious tree root.

The shower head

We aren't going to have a tub, so we are only getting the shower head and the water turner oner thingamajigy.

The sink faucet

The laying of the new pipe.

Puppy love featuring the lovely Clementine.

And done!

February 21, 2008 update

Well, it's been awhile, and a lot has happened. For fun I had some emergency dental surgery on Monday, just to keep things interesting. Anyway, it's actually starting to look like a room again.

Here is the shower enclosure.

Here is the exterior wall where the cabinet will go. Bye bye windows.

And here is the wall the sink will be on, with the outlet and light fixture wired.

2/22/2008
Well, today they were only here a few hours. I was working, and it was raining, so I had the dogs in the office with me to keep them out of the contractors way. They have liked everyone but this one guy that came today. Sasha keeps growling at him, so I keep her a little closer to me when he is here. Anyway, they said that the company hadn't given them a trash bag and they didn't want to drop stuff all over my floor can they borrow one. I get up to get it and see that they have put NO paper down, and have mud and drywall dust tracked all over my floor! I said, No paper today? And told them what a mess it was to clean up after them when there was paper, let alone without it. Well, they borrowed my mop and cleaned it up after at least, but what the hell? This subcontracting company doesn't give their employees paper or garbage bags to work with?

Anyway...They hung my door today, and did the second pass on mudding the drywall.

Hubby isn't happy with the door. I didn't get a choice, the contractor picked it based on the rest of the bathroom decorations. I like it though. If we have a party, we can tell guests the bathroom is the white door down the hall, so they don't accidentally end up in one of our bedrooms. I think it's very pretty.

The door on the left side is what all the rest of the interior doors in our house look like.

They applied the second coat of joint compound on the wall seams, but only covered the nails once. As you can probably see here though, they put it on pretty thick. I'm going to be checking it tomorrow to make sure that it didn't shrink too much. If they does, I will call them on it.

In this shot you can see my shower bench. If I had anything to do different at this point, I would have had them put a light in the shower. I thought it would have been against code, but I guess there are lights that they can do that with. We may add one later if we need it, I'm afraid it will be too dark back there.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

1/28/2008 - 2/1/2008 Round Trip Options

2008-02-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

Another volatile week, and today was a rough day. Gonna keep this short and sweet.

1/28
GOOG puts loss 1.50
GOOG puts gain .50
GOOG puts gain 3.30
GOOG puts gain 2.20

1/29
GOOG calls loss .30
FSLR calls gain 1.00

1/30
GOOG puts gain 2.10
GOOG puts gain 1.00
GOOG puts loss .20
GOOG puts gain .70
GOOG puts gain .50

1/31
GOOG puts loss 1.30
GOOG puts loss 8.20
POT calls gain .35
PCU calls gain .10
POT calls gain .60
PCU calls gain .50

2/1
GOOG puts loss .3
PCU calls gain .05
GOOG puts loss .80

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

I'm glad to say January 2008 is behind me.

2008-01-31T21:22:00.000-08:00

What a wild ride. Well, I did not make any of my goals for this month. I did make a few of my daily goals, where I quit trading early because I had already made $500.00 profits in trades. I believe that this was a mistake. All that this accomplished was that on days that I was timing the market well, I quit trading. Days when I was not timing the market well, I traded all day. I can not find any logical way to say that makes sense. The whole point of making this work is running what is working right.

So, as for my realized gains, I ended up making about 1/3 of my first goal. I could look at this as a failure in many ways, when I look back on my January goals. However, this performance is a huge improvement over my performance in November and December. Actually looking back over the past few months, I am seeing a marked improvement. In November, I had realized losses of a large amount, we will call it X. In December my losses were 1/3 of X, and in January I realized a small gain. I'm really glad that I keep that monthly tracking scorecard. It shows a definite upward trend in realized results as I move my way up the learning curve. Having a tangible goal to strive for has helped me improve my performance, despite the fact that I haven't yet successfully achieved one.

That being said, I am going to keep a similar goal structure for February.

Goal 1: Realized gains = monthly withdrawal.

I have a set amount of money that I need to withdraw from my trading account each month for my share of the household contributions. Goal one is to achieve realized gains equal to that amount.

Goal 2: Realized gains = monthly withdrawal plus 10% of account balance as of Jan. 31.

If Goal 2 is achieved, a percentage of realized gains will be contributed to my IRA.

Goal 3: Realized gains = $500.00 per trading day.

There are 20 trading days in February. February 18th the market is closed. This is my most challenging goal. If I am successful, I will make 10,000 in one month.

2/1 - 500.00
2/4 - 2/8 - 2500.00
2/11 - 2/15 - 2500.00 [option expiration]
2/19 - 2/22 - 2000.00 (Market closed the 18th)
2/25 - 2/29 2500.00

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Gold

2008-01-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

Heard on CNBC that 30% of the world's gold is consumed by the women of India, and they aren't buying at these prices. They are investing their money in diamonds, and the markets are watching.

Gonna add ABX to my watchlist.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Crossroads

2008-01-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

I feel to a certain extent that I am at a crossroads right now. The world market crash on 1/22 ends up being precipitated by a rogue trader that circumvented the bank he works for trading checks. Some of the damage done to me personally was permanent, though partly my own fault.

I went into the weekend holding out of the money GOOG calls, that I could have sold that Friday for a small net gain of .10 or .20. Instead, I started the week with 90% loss on those calls. I ended up with some liquidity issues due to the decrease in my portfolio value, and ended up selling a few shares of MVO that I had bought for the dividend at a loss, just so I would have enough money to trade. I didn't do it right away, the first couple of days I waited to see what would happen, but soon enough it became evident that taking a small hit on those few shares (about 15% of my MVO holding) gave me enough working capital to begin recouping my losses.

The prior week I had quit trading early 3 times. I still believe that eliminating fear and greed in this uncertain market is key to getting ahead in this market, however after last week I'm not convinced that my approach is going to work.

The problem with options trading is that it all occurs during trading hours, while the stock trading can occur during off hours. Therefore, a stop loss on a stock will trigger as the market falls, however in my case, since the stock fell in off hours, the option bid ask gapped down before option trading began, therefore the stop loss on my options did not trigger. I rode it down farther than I had to, definitely, I could have taken a 35% loss, at one point that first day. However, since I had already broken my round trip rule, and the options were good for another few weeks, I decided to ride it out.

In the mean time, I have made a few dollars on the puts since I'm watching the stock anyway. My issue now is, as a trader, what is the right thing for me to do?

By limiting the amount of money that I am making in a day, I felt at first that I was limiting my chances of giving back what I gained. That may be true, however in this volatile market, I see that there are ways beyond my control for me to lose money that is exposed, without it being my fault. Losing electricity, watchlist and level two's not updating properly, rogue traders in Paris all can take a bite out of me when I'm not looking. So, now I am at this crossroads. Part of me feels that I need to continue to put those limits on my trading, however the other part of me tells me that by doing that, I am not taking full advantage of the days that I am trading well. Because, lets face it, that is what my style of trading comes down to. If I am jumping on and off stocks well, that means they are moving in the direction that I am expecting them to move, and I am executing my trades profitably. Since I don't know if I will be able to do that tomorrow, shouldn't I keep trading throughout the day?

It's difficult to know which is best. Part of the quiting work early has to do with lifestyle as well though. Every day that I can quit early, is a day that I can put those hours to use elsewhere in my life. At this point, however, I am starting to feel that I need to continue trading on the days that I am making good trades. I'm not going to make a decision yet. I'm going to play next week by ear.

Starting out next week I have some POT calls that are free and clear (I sold half the position last week for a 140% gain) and the notorious GOOGLE calls. I have 3 weeks to find an out the contracts. GOOGLE announces their earnings on January 31 (this Thursday). This could be a huge gain for me, or a huge loss. My plan is to get rid of at least 2/3 of my position for a gain before the announcement. Hard to know what will happen in this bear market. Wish me luck!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

1/22/2008 - 1/25/2008 Round Trip Options

2008-01-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

Most of you have probably heard about the world market crash and high volatility that occurred during this week.

Despite two of my rules, no more google options, and only round trip option trades, I ended up with a bunch of google calls over the weekend, and by the time market opened on Tuesday they had lost about 90% of their value. This in addition to the lower pricing of the dividend paying stocks in my account put in a position of low liquidity. I spent most of the week just watching the market. I did purchase some POT calls which also ended up not being a round trip. The only round trip option trades I made this week were on Friday.

1/25
Goog Puts gain 1.00
GS Puts gain 1.00
Goog puts lose .80
Goog puts gain .10
Goog Puts gain .90

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

1/14/2008 - 1/18/2008 Round Trip Options

2008-01-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

Since this was option expiration week, I was supposed to avoid trading options as much as possible, but I did make a couple of round trips, as well as buying some Goog calls, which I am still holding, so they will not be listed on my round trip trades. I will discuss these more in another post.

1/15
GS Puts gain .15
FSLR calls gain .60

1/16
FSLR puts gain 1.70

Quit working early three days this week due to making daily trading goal.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Notes for week ending 1/11/08

2008-01-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

Well, overall I was happy with my performance this past week. I was able to close down trading before 10:30 am once this week, and by 8:30 am twice! I made some changes to the list of blue chips that I track daily for option trading. I decided to remove GOOG from my list. I still believe that GOOG is going to be key to my future trading. Once you get that stocks rhythm down, it makes huge intraday swings, and should be a money maker. However, I had to reconcile recognizing its potential with the reality of my ability to trade it. My last 6 GOOG trades have been loses, and that's wrong way enough times that I removed it from my list.

I saw a posting of a 1 year RIG chart, and saw an easy channel to follow over the past year. I have added that to my list.

Last, I decided to switch the solar that I watch. I was not attached to the stock, I never really found it's rhythm, and many times when the other sector stocks would take off, SPWR would move sideways. I decided to replace it with FSLR. It has bigger intraday moves, since the price is higher. I haven't traded it yet, and probably wont until at least after option expiration next Friday, unless the trade appears to me completely zipless.

Technical issues abound for me this week. Ameritrade is in the process of changing their system for updating option prices. 4 days this week I was not getting option price updates. Thank goodness for my friends on the Options Wonderland board at IHub. I would post a message asking for current buy / ask on my particular option, and was getting responses within just a few minutes. I don't talk about it much, but I really couldn't be doing this without the support of so very many people. There are the people in my life that know me that support me, my friends, my family, but there is this whole extended network of friends in cyberspace that help and support me as well.

Anyway, this made me realize that if this is going to be my business, I am going to have to come up with a back up plan for getting real time option prices. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment on this post. Currently, I am considering opening a second account with optionshouse.

Next week is option expiration. The Friday of January option expiration week is historically down with big losses 8 of the last 9 years. I may try to find a put play for that day, if I am still trading at the end of the week.

My goal for the week is $2500, which again is a $500 gain per day average. Any day that I make trades over $500, I quit trading for the day. I quit trading for the week after I have made a $2500 gain.

The bears have a pretty strong hold on the market right now. This does not just mean that the market is going down, it means that the market is highly unpredictable, and there is a lot of sideways movement. The downward movements come swiftly, crashing 150-200 points in a matter of what, a half hour? Just a glance at this chart shows at least 3 time in the last 10 days that there has been a crash in that range, closer inspection may find more.

You can see the market whipsawing all over the place in that graph. Playing this market in my style right now, is akin to trying to jump on a moving train that you can see the direction of, but don't know where it turns around at. First, you have to make sure you don't hurt yourself trying to jump on (overpay for an option). Then you have to make sure you jump back off before it reverses.

In fact, here is a copy of a post I made on Ihub regarding what daytrading options means to me in more explicit terms.

I have a spread sheet that I fill out each night. I like to option trade blue chips. I have a list of stocks from various sectors that I follow, that have a history of making good size intraday moves. I pick stocks from different sectors, current list is

DRYS
PCU
POT
RIMM
FSLR (just replaced SPWR)
FWLT
GS
RIG (just added)

On my spread sheet each night I put the last price of the day, the $ up or down, two levels of support (from stock consultant)and two levels of resistance. I look for stocks that are near one of these levels, and those are the ones that I pay particular close attention to each day. Stock consultant is nice, because they have the channel drawn there for you, so you can also see at a glance where in the trading channel the stock ended the day. Also, by watching a few stocks every day, you will find your own rhythm. PCU was trading between 100 to 110 for quite a while fairly predictably. It broke out of that channel, and now seems to be trading from 95 to 100, but it hasn't quite been in that channel long enough for me to feel I can count on it.

Next I check for new news on the stock, and sometimes if I am not totally wiped out for the day, I'll pull up a candlestick chart on each one, and see if I can see any patterns developing (I'm new to candlestick charting, so I'm not great at this).

This will usually give me a few general ideas to watch for the next day. I will pick out some calls or puts, and add them to my watch list under the stock. One of my rules is not to trade options before 10am market time (7am here in Cali). Option prices tend to be inflated the first half hour of the day.

So, now it is past 10am, the market is either up or down, and the stocks I'm watching are either moving or they aren't. Once I notice a stock start to move, if it is moving away from a support or resistance, I buy the appropriate put or call. I immediately set a target sell, which can always be changed. I then watch the stock. If it bounces off a resistance point a couple of times, and I am in the green, I will sell all or some of my contracts.

My goal is to make at least $500 a day. With the intraday mood swings in this volatile market, I prefer to take a .20 to .50 gain within an hour, than hope I get a couple of bucks by the end of the day. I never worry about money I left on the table, there is always more to find tomorrow. Therefore, I make the best quick trade that I think I can. I don't limit the trade to $500, but if it ends up over that mark, I quit for the day. If it is under that mark, I keep watching, and look for another trade. This last week, I quit trading before the market closed 3 times.

I really need to close this post out, but here are a couple of more things that I picked up this week. First of all, you actually can watch level two activity on options themselves. I haven't been watching the depth on the bid ask. I think th is is going to give me a huge advantage, and help me to stop chasing asks when I do my buys. Secondly, I am going to add CNBC to my background noise next week. The last couple of months I have been involved in learning the mechanics of trading options, setting up tracking systems, and in general trying to learn my business. While trading, my attention is focused as much as possible just on that. Distractions were costly from time to time. This week, however, while I was going back to refresh my trading platform home page to see if there was any news, and then checking out at Ihub, I realized that in this news driven market it, real time news is just as important to me as real time quotes. Starting Monday morning, I am going to have CNBC going in the background while I'm trading.

Making these simple realizations is very grounding for me, and makes me start to understand how far it is that I have to go.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

1/7/2008 -1/11/2008 Round Trip Options

2008-01-13T19:53:00.000-08:00

This week I was able to execute trades netting over $500.00 three times before the market closed, and shut down shop early for the day. I was surprised (but not much) at how difficult it was to actually stop working. However, in this volatile market right now, there is too much risk of making a bad trade, and turning around and giving back the gains of the day, because the market decides to switch directions in mid stride.

Anyway, I would be extremely pleased if I was able to maintain this type of training record. Probably half of my trades that helped me make those goals where equity trades. I trade less options the closer that we get to option expiration. However, this post is a list of the round trip options that I made, so only those will be listed here. Enough of this talk though, here is the down low...

1/7/2008
-----------
RIMM calls +.40

1/8/2008
-----------
RIG calls - .10

1/10/2008
-----------
GOOG put -.80
FWLT calls +.70

1/11/2008
------------
GS calls +.50

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Notes for week ending 1/4/08

2008-01-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I did not meet my level 3 goal for this week, which is ok. I'm focusing here on realized gains and losses, and not focusing on my portfolio gains. HTE has made a monster move this week, and since I am very heavy in it at bargain prices, I have seen a huge jump in not only my trading portfolio but also my IRA which I don't discuss here too often. I finally got it funded on December 19th, and in a couple of weeks I have seen it swell by 7.5% in just these couple of weeks. I was very lucky to get in near the 52 week low on that one, and I scooped up a whole lot of shares below 20.00. I can't wait for that first dividend to hit on the 15th!

A friend of mine mentioned his visit to the New York stock exchange again this week, and asked me if I have ever been. I have only been to NY once, for what amounted to a little more than a day, and the stock exchange was not on that whirlwind tour. Ever since then I've been dying to go back for a longer visit, so his comment has triggered a goal/reward for me. I have noted my account balance as of yesterday, and have decided that once I double that amount, I will plan a trip to New York for myself as a reward / vacation, and put visiting the stock exchange on my list of things to do while I'm there.

So, while I'm not pleased with the markets start for 2008, I am pretty pleased with my performance. I'm starting to find the balance between patience and speed that is necessary to making round trip options successful.

Have a great weekend, and thanks for popping in.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

12/31/2007-1/04/2008 Round Trip Options

2008-01-04T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here's how my round trip options played out this week. Unfortunately it took me until the end of the week to get my rhythm down, but I finally did! I have to add that those Goog calls should have been green on the third. I had more than one opportunity to sell them green and missed it. Hindsight.

12/31/07
POT puts -.40

1/2/08
GS calls -.60
PCU calls +.80

1/3/08
GOOG calls -.80

1/4/08
RIMM calls +.55 (averaged)
PCU calls +.30

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

January 2008 Goals and Rules

2008-01-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Well, I spent last night setting some goals and rules down for January. I could talk about how 2007 went for me, but lets just say that I made a very large initial investment in becoming a day trader the last two months of 2007, and leave it at that. The good news is that I am slowly seeing some of that ROI.

Anyway, lets start with the Goals for January. I have set three levels of goals for January. We'll see how it works out, and go from there.

Goal 1: Realized gains = monthly withdrawal.

I have a set amount of money that I need to withdraw from my trading account each month for my share of the household contributions. Goal one is to achieve realized gains equal to that amount. Since I purchased a large amount of HTE stock during the latest dip, 1/2 of that goal is covered through my monthly HTE dividend, so this is very attainable.

Goal 2: Realized gains = monthly withdrawal plus 10% of account balance as of Dec. 31.

This goal is a little more challenging, but I feel it is attainable if I stick to the rules I will outline further down this post.

Goal 3: Realized gains = $500.00 per trading day.

There are 21 trading days in January. January 1 and 21 the market is closed. This is my most challenging goal. I have had days that I have made much more than this trading options, and of course days when I've lost this much or more... For this goal, I break it down into weeks.

1/2-1/4 - 1500.00
1/7-1/11 - 2500.00
1/14 - 1/18 2500.00
1/22-1/25 2000.00 (Market closed the 18th)
1/28-1/31 2000.00 (31st is a Thursday)

Since this is already a very aggressive goal, I have decided that once I meet a weeks goal, I will take the rest of the week off. Each week will be looked at independent of the preceding weeks of the month. In other words, If I do not make my goal of $1500.00 this week, that does not mean I have to make up the difference next week. If I make $2,500 by say Wednesday the following week, I still take the rest of the week off.

Now for the rules...

1. No option purchases before 7 am.
2. Close out all January option plays by Thursday, 1/10/08.
3. Limit the number of option plays made on expiration week (1/11-1/18)
4. Any week that goal three is realized, stop trading for the rest of the week.
5. Update spreadsheets daily.
6. Update blog weekly at a minimum.
7. Transfer 10% of realized gains over 1500 to my IRA account.

Dow was down 220 points today. Oil over $100.00 per barrel for the first time in history. My Stock Traders Almanac says tomorrow should be a bull day. I hope so!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Bullish picks for next week

2007-12-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

Anything on this list came from a screener on bullish chart patterns with over 1,000,000 volume, and then was cross referenced to Navellier's stock grading system, and he denotes it as an A.

DO: Harami Bullish (same pattern AGU had when I sent out that e-mail, the JAN 150 calls are around $3.00 right now, and the 155's are under $2.00)

ELON: 3 white soldiers (the JAN 25 calls are less than $1.00)

TBSI: Reversing long downward trend (JAN 40 calls around $1.00)

ADM: 3 days at 52 week High (the 50 calls are around .50, the 45 calls are less than 3.00 and in the money.)

SDTH: New highs plus High earnings growth (no options available)

The following stocks showed up on a screener called Bull Bull Bull, which wasn't specific as to what it was screening, other than "strong stocks exhibiting strength). Some good stocks show up on it though.

AMSC
CYBS
DE
HES* (showed up on my screener last week too)
MOS
POT
SOLF
TSL
ZOLT

So, here are a few notes from my portfolio grader analysis.

ADM and SDTH have the best cash flow.

TBSI had the best overall scores, only 2 areas were not an A. Unfortunately they also had the worst cash flow.

I will definitely be playing DO calls next week. ELON calls are cheap so I may throw in a few of those too I haven't decided.

As for the rest, I'm going to spend some more time this weekend, and pick one or two to add to my IRA.

FRO has a great dividend (12%) and is also on my watch list for IRA.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

12/24/2007-12/28/2007 Round Trip Options

2007-12-29T22:49:00.001-08:00

I was planning on taking Christmas week off, but couldn't resist popping in a couple of times to make some trades.

12/24/07
AGU calls gain 1.05

12/27/07
RIMM puts gain .45
SOLF puts lose .70

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

12/17/07 - 12/21/07 Roundtrip Option Plays

2007-12-29T22:27:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a great holiday. We had an eventful one. Thought I would take some time to catch up on my bookkeeping today, including a few missing tracking posts on this blog.

12/21/07 was option expiration, so I did more equity trades than option trades this week, but for what it's worth, here they are.

12/17/07
RIMM puts gain 1.00
PCU calls loss .50
GOOG call loss 1.40
GOOG call loss .60

12/18/07
GOOG puts loss 1.00
GOOG calls loss .50
RIMM calls gain .50
GS puts gain 1.00

12/19/2007
FWLT calls loss .20
MS loss .20

I finally got smart after the 19th and stopped playing options the rest of the week. As you can see I had more losing than winning trades this week, further demonstrating that not playing options on expiration week is a good idea.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

12-10-07 to 12-14-07 Round Trip Option Plays

2007-12-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

This post is a summary of the round trip option plays that I made this week. While it does not include all trades I made this week, I am throwing in option plays that I held over one night. While these are technically not round trips, I am going to include them in this first posting anyway, since I am still getting the hang of doing these round trip option trades.

By date

12/10/07
*GOOG puts gain 2.59

12/11/07
POT puts gain .35

12/12/07
POT calls gain 1.00 (held overnight)
POT calls gain .70

12/13/07
GOOG puts gain .50
GOOG calls gain .20
RIMM calls gain .30 (held overnight)

12/14 (Friday before option expiry, time decay killed my gains on these two).
PCU puts gain .20
RIMM puts gain .30

OK, after posting all these in one place I see that I have made gains on all of my round trips. I think part of this is because I have been holding some of my bad plays over before this week, instead of taking the loss the day I bought. I want to be up front that I am transitioning to this type of trading right now, and I do not expect to have only gains on every trade I make every week.

*Note: Since Google options are much more expensive than the other options I play, their target is higher. Also, this is the first week I have traded GOOG options, so I made a few rookie mistakes on the trades I made on the 13th. Most notably, GOOG options go in 10 increments, instead of 5, so they resist differently.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Round Trip Options

2007-12-15T10:37:00.001-08:00

Well, after a couple of months of trial and error, I am finding that I have the most success with round trip option plays. What this means is that I pick an option play (or two) and execute the buy and the sell both within that trading day. This is definitely not a strategy to try if you are working a full time day job, since it is based on following the momentum of a moving stock, and jumping on and off within the swing.

My mantra has been no fear, no greed in order to get myself to an even playing field on the market. The problem with that combination, is that I am limiting my upside, and not my downside. By not selling within the same day if the stock is not moving the way I thought it would, I end up holding bad option plays, sometimes for weeks and losing an incredible amount of time value.

Another thing to note is that time decay seems to speed up starting the Friday before option expiry, and can be felt even within the day. This holds true for options out a month as well, as I found out yesterday when I played some January puts on a couple of round trips.

My current way of handling my round trips is that I find an in on an option by watching the corresponding stocks level twos. Once my order is filled I immediately put in a sell order for 1.00 gain. I continue to watch the stock, and if I feel for some reason that target is not achievable within the time frame of one day, then I will lower that target appropriately.

My current problem seems to be with minimizing my downside. I put in an alert to sound if the bid on my option reaches a point that is 1.00 less than what I asked, and make the necessary strategic adjustments. This is a kind of feel thing, however, since the market can turn on a dime these days.

Anyway, I started my own board on IHub to see if I can find other people that do this type of trading to share ideas with here.

Roundtrip Options

I have decided to post my weekly round trip results here on the blog, and link the message box to the post for that week for anyone that is interested in following my progress. I have decided to use the dollar gain per share per contract on the posts. I do not always buy the same number of contracts, or spend the same dollar amount in total, so using percentages on their own could be deceiving I think.

Good fortune!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Merry December Everyone!

2007-12-13T15:37:00.000-08:00

Did that sound forced? If it did it is because it is.

December is historically a difficult month for me. I tend to either fall ill or injure myself. This time it was an injury.

Anyway, I have been trading every day, and learning a lot. I have a few bad trades to clean out of my account the best that I can the next week, and then I'm taking some time off trading until the beginning of the year to spend with hubby and do the Christmas thing with some family and friends.

I have a lot of information that I need to document soon on what I have learned this past month, but I'm not going to attempt that on these pain killers!

Have a wonderful Holiday season, and I should be back to more regular updates after the New Year.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Dow slips another 237 points

2007-11-26T13:41:00.000-08:00

The DOW closed today at 12743.44. Since April 4, 2008, it has only dipped this low on one day in August, the 16th to be exact.

While I am not one to panic, holding firm in the face of adversity sure isn't working for me. I have a fist full of calls that I purchased in November, that are losing time value as we speak as I keep waiting for the graceful out that never comes. As my portfolio diminishes in size, I have to seriously consider taking some losses, and not having any regrets when the market bounces back. I've limited my day trading to one trade a day, and have found myself on the wrong side of every trade I have made since last Wednesday. I have several stocks that I watch, I try to determine which direction they are moving, and jump on and off before they reverse. Unfortunately I have picked the wrong stock each day to trade, which is only exacerbating the losses that I am feeling from the calls I am holding, and adding to my feelings of frustration.

Today was RIMM calls. I had a several opportunities to get out with a small gain or loss, before the end of day plummet. Despite my original plan to sell at whatever I could get at the end of the day, I have seen the market rebound from these big losses each of the past three Tuesdays, so I am holding this one overnight, and going to look for a reasonable out before the 10:30 dip.

Wish me luck my friends, I'm going to need a fistful of it if I am going to survive the December option month. The bear is coming at me, whether I want to believe it or not.

Note: Learned today from Navelliers blog that Mutual Fund tax year ends on October 31, so fund managers have already done their year end tax sales. This is a perfect time for them to be scooping up the blue chip bargains.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

DOW closes below 13K for the first time since August

2007-11-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

The market continues it's downward spiral, and my account continues to follow suit. I've lost all hope of recovering to even by the end of the month, and at this point will be happy to not bust out. I ended today back at the level I was last Monday. The best that I can hope for at this point, is a modest rebound similar to what occurred last Tuesday.

My big surprise for today was HTE's break down to under $23.00. I really thought it had hit bottom. My 401K cash out still has not occurred, which is a mixed blessing at this point. Since the market is down, so is my account, so cashing out now will give me less cash to fund my Rollover IRA with, however with the market hitting new lows, there are also some excellent buying opportunities, such as HTE.

PCU tested 101 a couple of times today, to finish just above at 102. It did reach the lowest levels it has seen since mid August, however, so it's hard to tell if the ride down is finished. IF it breaks through 101, the next support level is 95.

High volatility on low trading is blamed somewhat on Thanksgiving. Each day shows me how much I still have to learn. I really felt that this would be an up week coming off of options expiration. In fact, I purchased a bucket full of what I thought were cheap calls last week, to find find them crushed today. Lesson learned again there.

All I can say is that if I can survive this next few weeks, this costly education may pay off. I just hope I have a "chip and a chair" when this volatile DOW finally settles down.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Is there a place for empathy in the stock market?

2007-11-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

So, I am checking on the after hours news regarding my stocks and options. Copper is up due to an earthquake in Chile. My initial reaction? Great! Those PCU options that expire on Saturday may be worth something after all! Since I own the stock and some December calls as well, this is a big score from me, in a month where my portfolio has taken a beating, great news!

And then I read further.

"A powerful earthquake hit mineral-rich northern Chile on Wednesday, killing at least two people, injuring more than 100 and halting output at some of the world's largest copper mines."

and

Authorities said an 88-year-old woman was killed when a wall fell on top of her in Tocopilla. A 54-year-old woman also died in the small city, although the cause of death was not immediately clear.
Alway

Buildings crumble, people are trapped in the rubble, people injured, people dead, there homes and belongings in a shambles. From their misery, their pain, their bad fortune, I will make money.

I love everything about my new job as a day trader, everything but this.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Update on HTE

2007-11-13T23:40:00.001-08:00

HTE may have bottomed out at 23.00. I almost doubled my HTE holding today at $23.50. I am averaged in at 23.22. The stock closed today at 23.48. At this price point it pays a 20.18% dividend. It doesn't get much simpler than this if you are looking for an income producing investment.

And frankly, while it sometimes takes a while for HTE to bounce back, it always does, because people can't resist that dividend, and it is guaranteed until February. If you dig a little deeper, and learn what a trust is about, and review their past dividend dispersement, if you are like me, you will see this as a guaranteed top end income producer, every month, until 2011, at the soonest! If you don't grab this one someone else will, and the price will go up. The funny part is even if it goes to $30.00 a share, it is still paying a 10% dividend! Where else are you going to get that?

In fact, I am so confident that this stock is going to move upward in price, that I purchased the February 30 calls for .25 apiece today to compliment the extra shares I bought. Check out their website.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

It's only a loss if you sell it

2007-11-13T23:12:00.000-08:00

Strong stocks will come back, and POT did just that. Pot made a maneuver similar to this one last August when the market turned downward. I have every confidence that this one will revisit that $125 range.

Like I said yesterday, there was no conceivable reason other than panic and profit taking that people sold this stock Monday. Anyway, by close of day on Monday my contracts were worth about .40 apiece. I have made a deadline to sell these options by close of the market on Thursday. In order to maximize the amount of the investment that I can recoup, I decided to sell the calls in 6 lots. Two lots each day Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. At any time that I can get between $6.00 and $7.05 a contract before end of trading Thursday, I will close out my position. I will use market daily trends to chose the proper time to sell. The first lot of the day will sell the third time I get a bounce off an option resistance level. That happened around $2.50 today, and I got my sell in for $2.30. As the end of the day approached, I had a bounce off $2.60, and sold it when it hit the second time. The last trade of the day was $2.00.

While these sales still netted me a loss from my average in on these calls, I was still pleased with the amount of money I recouped from my closing price on Monday. You have no idea how glad I was that I didn't panic. So, 1/3 of my POT 115 calls have been liquidated, and I have 2/3 more to try and optimize over the next couple of days.

My new rule is that all options for the current month are cashed on the Friday prior to option expiry week. If I want to play options week, I'll play with the following months options. It's less nerve wracking!

I gained back about 30% of yesterdays loss today. My portfolio is still down 28.8% for the month. It will be a challenge to get back into the black before the end of November, and plan and prepare a holiday meal for my in laws on Thanksgiving! Wish me luck!

Good Fortune.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

My first month of option trading is almost over.

2007-11-12T21:00:00.000-08:00

Option trading is definitely not for the faint of heart, or the fumbled of fingers. That slip on POT last week has all but crippled me today. While the DOW only dropped 55 points, POT fell 16 points on no news. In fact they just released their third quarter results last week, and they were sterling.

Every where I look though, high dollar stocks are taking big losses. Of course like I said, it's only a loss if you sell it...Except with options.

My intent was to go into the last week of options without holding any, as I knew this would be a volatile week, and I am so new to this. But with my POT options down fourteen percent, I figured I would wait until Monday. It might be an up day after all, with the market selling off so sharply Friday afternoon.

So I got up nice and early, made my coffee, read my message boards, some news articles, and e-mailed a bit with my dad. 9:30 am eastern came, and my eyes were peeled, watching my POT and PCU level II's. I watched the Dow head up, and POT plummet, for what reason I still don't know, testing 110. You can't even sell options until 9:45 eastern. Those 15 minutes were some of the most helpless I have ever felt. There I sat, watching the investment I had inadvertently doubled up on, plummet before I could do anything about it.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have taken first hit and sold when I came on, because as the day progressed, while the DOW slowly rose, POT kept getting battered. When it tested 110 the second time, I decided to buy the puts, as there was no support for another 10 points. I found an out where I made a 74 ROI on that investment. Some sold after mine for .20 higher, but then the stock headed back up, and the options back down. I was ready for at least a bit of a rally. Nothing. As the day neared end, I was able to pick up some 100 puts on the cheap. By the end of the day the stock was down over 16 points. I have been checking in all night, looking for any sign of why POT got hit so hard. I looked at my portfolio, and realized my blue chips were getting battered. NOV, PCU, MDR, and some I didn't own anymore, FWLT, DRYS, RIMM. Heck, even GOOG was down 35 points!

So, what will tomorrow bring? Well, I see no reason for POT to have dropped 16 points, but there is also nothing holding it up at the 100 level. POT may see 90 before the week is over. If it does, I'm ready for it. However, a part of me can't help but see the game. You scare people out of their trades on Monday, dropping the price 16 in one day, and then you have 4 days to make that 16 back. Well, it could happen. At this point, the worse thing that could happen to me, is that POT languishes in this 100-105 area for the next 4 days. That being said, the worse case scenario is that I loose the money I invested on that downside, which would bring my losses to 27% instead of 25. Worth the risk when you are looking at no support for another 12 points. While you can't really judge how a day is going to go based on after hours, there were a lot of sales of POT in the 100-101 dollar range, so the mild resistance at 101 has already been test, technically.

Or I could lose it all by Friday. I'll keep you posted. I am playing the downside as well, on this one, to try and minimize my losses. My portfolio took a dramatic hit today. With last weeks losses my portfolio is at the lowest level I have seen since opening this account in February. I am down 37.5% so far in the month of March. So much for making that 10% gain this month! The good news is, that some of that is in stock I still own, so the money is recoverable eventually. Stocks, took a beating across the board. The harsh part was the options. 25% of this months options expire on Friday. I have 4 days to recoup as much of that as I can, lick my wounds, and come out punching in December.

I'm slowly purchasing a contract here and there of these battered stocks, to try and catch a Christmas bounce.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Will the DOW test 12K?

2007-11-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

That is what the Rainman predicts...

The road ahead is grim, but of course it is not forever. The market is correcting, and there is a couple ways to deal with it. One is to bail out of everything, and then reinvest once the market reverses again. Of course, that sell off leads to further panic and more sell off. The other way is to invest in solid companies, and hold on to them, knowing that they will come back in the long run. That has been my way of handling this, and they do always come back, and usually more than make up for their losses.

So, will Monday begin the buy back process, or will it be another down day? With options coming up on Friday, anything can happen. While I am enjoying my new found option trading, I am more heavily invested in calls than I expected to be going into this last week before option expiration. I will be planted at my computer Monday morning looking for some graceful outs, and hoping not to lose too much money.

My biggest guffaw where my POT calls. I was certain that it had strong resistance at 120. Comedy of errors, and next thing you know an order that I thought I had canceled, had actually been filled. Now I have two sets of POT calls that I have to find a way to unload. Sometimes I do too much thinking with my keyboard...

On a brighter note, my CROX calls that I had written off are starting to see some renewed life, so I may be able to recoup some of that. Navellier is still considering CROX a strong buy, how much it will rebound by Friday is up in the air though.

MVO has probably been my most stable investment through all of this. It's approaching it's one year in existence, and people may be starting to see it's potential as a steady income investment. Read more about my opinion of MVO here.

Well, I have a lot of research to get done before the market opens, so I'll leave you with this thought. It's not really a loss, unless you sell it. Good Fortune.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Spotlight on HTE

2007-11-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

HTE:

I've mentioned this one before. Harvest Energy Trust is a Canadian Trust. The Alberta tax initiative passed, so the dividend for this stock lowered from about .38 Canadian a share to .30. (Dividend is paid monthly). What's funny is, that with the weakening dollar, I actually get .32 US for this, while I was getting .36 US before. When this came out last night the stock was at $28.00. At that price, the dividend yield was still 12%!

Well, some people panicked today, between that news and the DOW going down, and the stock plummeted to $25.70. That makes the dividend yield on this over 15%!!

Is it at the low? I am not sure, option week is next week, so the market will still be volatile. I am guessing you will be able to purchase this somewhere between $22 and $25 sometime in the next week.

With that dividend yield, the price wont last long. I'm snatching some up with my IRA money, if that check ever gets here.

Anyway, always do your due diligence, but when the dust settles, and the market heads back up, (which it always does eventually) this one will be back in the $27 to $30 dollar range, plus you will be getting an estimated dividend of $3.60 per year.

Here is a link to their dividend history.

Good Fortune!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

I thought I learned to lay golden eggs

2007-11-08T23:42:00.001-08:00

But figured out today that I had just eaten some glitter.

At one point the DOW was down more 200 points today, but it made a comeback from three to four pm. That rally at the end of the day did more emotional damage to me than the 200 point drop did. Option trading isn't for sissys!

Anyway, it was just what the doctor ordered. My portfolio took a nice little hit which knocked my feet firmly back on the ground. So far my portfolio is down 6.87% for the month, so if I want to make my dream goal of 10% a month, I'm going to have to do some pretty smooth moves to make that happen. I'll keep you posted!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

DOW down 360 points!!!

2007-11-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

Are you panicked? I'm not. Are you stupid? Valid question that will become clear within a few months, I think.

Anyway, first of all, DOW had gained over 150 points yesterday, and like I posted, yesterday was huge for me. The dow did take back some of my gains, but not all of them. How does the DOW drop more than twice as much but my loses don't?

Option trading. I made another sweet trade today, this time it was a day trade on NILE that netted me a 20% ROI.

I think the DOW will go up tomorrow, as traders bought beaten down stocks at the end of the day at bargain prices, and push them back up tomorrow to make their profits.

The other reason that I am not panicking is because I am not selling my core investment holdings at this time. I have some dividend payers, and some blue chips (some are both) for steady growth and income on this portfolio. I know that they will regain ground, and then some when the market recovers. How you may ask? Because they did when this happened in the spring, and again in the summer. In the mean time, if I can execute one or two option plays a day successfully, that 10% return per month is well within my grasp.

Someone pinch me, surely I'm dreaming.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

HTE

2007-11-06T21:35:00.001-08:00

HTE has been a big winner for me, as I've said before. Both with it's dividend, and with it's growth. The next quarters worth of monthly dividends should be announced along with the November quarterly financial reports. I am showing a date of November 8th for that announcement on Ameritrade, but not finding the confirmation on their website.

Anyway, if you have been watching for an in on this one, watching close this week and next would be a good idea. I'm looking for an out, not because I don't believe in this stock, but because it has increased in value enough since I bought it that selling it at around the $31.00 level is the same as collecting the next several years dividends in advance.

While I probably wont be looking to add it back to this portfolio, it is definitely on my watch list for my IRA (the check hasn't arrived yet, grrrr.)

You can see that I added a couple of short term calls to my portfolio, CROX and PCU. I added CROX, because my girl Lizzy at IHUB likes it, and so does my favorite stock guru, Louis Navellier. The PCU, because I have been watching this stock and learned so many lessons from it, I decided to test and see what I had really learned.

We will talk about the CROX calls another day (or not, hehe). PCU on the other hand, bang - zoom! I was so in tune with PCU today, that my dad was on e-mail with me watching the level 2's to keep me honest. (Thanks Dad!) I kept telling him what was going to happen for the next 15 to 30 minute interval, and if it happened what would happen for the next hour. I think we were both in shock with how eerily my predictions came through. I'm staying as grounded as I can, but it's times like this that it's hard not to believe I can't fly. *wink*

Anyway, at one point I decided to sell half my PCU contracts for double what I paid, so my remaining contracts are free and clear. PCU went up over $2.00 a share in the after hours. If tomorrow is an up day, (this stock likes it when the DOW is on the rise) I am going to estimate that this stock goes up another $3.00-5.00 a share sometime between open and close tomorrow. That's if the DOW goes up...it will be interesting to see.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Ana Crisan - Off Topic

2007-11-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

Ana is a 20 year old artist in Toronto. Ana is homeless. This is her story.

Ana's flickr album: There are 241 pages in this album. They are all worth a look. The first few pages may are of the Zombie Walk 2007. New subject matter starts on page 8.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anacrisan/

She has a lot of great animal and people photos. Here is one of my favorites.

I like a lot of her self portraits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anacrisan/page199/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anacrisan/126031867/

This is her blogspot, if you made it this far, I'm assuming she has moved you.

http://spiritedaway420.blogspot.com/

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

October Review Part 2

2007-11-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

As I said in part one, I was very pleased with my October results. Here are a few of the things that I learned in October.

1. Have a structured investment plan, with percentages of money allocated for different goals / risk levels. I could be wrong, but I believe that at my level, having my money in one account maximizes my buying power. However, since I have multiple needs that need to be met, I needed an investment plan allocating percentages of money to both investing and trading.

2. It is ok to use margin responsibly. The amount of money I paid this month in interest was a tiny fraction of what I made by utilizing it instead of selling stocks at the wrong time.

3. Do not sell investment stocks as they move up.

4. Your percent gain on a trade is expected to be much less than on an investment, therefore your percent acceptable loss needs to be less. At my level, I'm looking to make about 3 to 5% on a trade. When I started trading I was allowing for about a 10% loss like I do on my investments. This was a huge faux pas. The loss tolerance needs to be commiserate with my target gain.

5. I personally, at my currently level of ability, am able to watch 3 stock level two charts for trading. I currently am trying to watch the charts for 7 stocks. This may be doable some time in the future, but not today.

6. Learn a few stocks rhythms, and trade them. I'm currently only trading upswings, but once you get good at that you can trade the same stock in both directions.

7. Do not invest or trade stocks that you have lost money in before, just because you like the stock.

8. When trading, find the trade channel. Buy low, sell high within the channel.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Happy Halloween! October Review, Part I

2007-10-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

Well, my blog here is one month old, and I have now been trading full time for about 3 weeks. In part one of this review, I am just going to lay out some October stats. In part two which I will put together this weekend, I will write up a more comprehensive review of what worked, and what I learned.

One thing that I learned today, and worked well for me, is when dealing with the short term, momentum trades, if you get in late, you need to get out early.

On October 1 the DOW opened at 13895.71. On October 31 the DOW closed at 13930.01. That's a gain of 34.30 points, or .25%.

While I wont be disclosing the dollar amounts of my portfolio, I will say that my portfolio had a total gain of 10.25% for the month of October. I do take money out for household expenses this month, so my net portfolio gain was 7.10%. I must say that I am extremely pleased with these results. I set myself a "dreamer" goal of a 10% portfolio increase each month, which translates to an amazing 120% annualized. That's buy a house on the coast and retire kind of cash, if it could be maintained. In reality, I would be doing fine to make 10% or so a year after expenses. What that works to for this first year, is a 30% annualized return, or 2.5% increase per month total. I know that every month is not going to be an up month. I know that I will have months when things look bleak, but I have to say, when I can beat the DOW by 10% when I am just starting out, you have to know that it gives me a great deal of confidence that my goals are attainable.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Short Term Plays

2007-10-31T00:02:00.000-07:00

Well, they are coming at me fast and furious, and I'm not really taking any of my own advice. One of the things that I did decide, however, is that I am no longer going to be including them in my portfolio on the blog. I will just limit that to my long term hold items. I need to save time where I can, I'd like to be able keep up with everything working 50 hours a week, but as my absence for a couple of trading days shows, it's not happening with everything I'm trying to do right now, so I need to trim some redundancies. I will from now on only add a ticker to my portfolio if I have bought it as a long term investment, or held it for more than a week if it was initially considered a short term.

I have mixed emotions about how my short term trading is currently going. I don't seem to have my timing down, and I'm trying to watch too many at once, which means that I am not decreasing the number of stocks in my portfolio, which has been a goal for a few weeks now.

Another goal is to get up at 5 am, and it's midnight now. I am going to run through and update my portfolio on here, and then check out for the night.

Fed comes out with the interest rate announcements tomorrow, I'm hoping that it will end the day on a positive note. I have several short term positions sitting on the brink of their upside targets. While I've been holding them longer than I had planned, I only have a couple that I think will end up being losers. Time will tell!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

FLML ~ My favorite mistake

2007-10-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

FLML is my favorite mistake, for the day anyway. This day trading is not for the timid or weak of spirit that is for sure.

As you can see by the chart below, I bought in around mid day (when I thought price would be good) at 11.17. It proceeded to head south, and then kept bouncing up to just under my price, and then go down again all afternoon. Disheartened that my timing was so poor, I stupidly put a sell order in for just a bit over my price at 11.23. Since there was at resistance at 11.25, I figured I would get a sell in before it bounced down again, in case I missed it.

Well, it worked in one way, that I did make 6 cents a share. The only problem is that had I not had that sell in I wouldn't have even see it hit 11.23 as it blew past it on it on the way up to the 12.75 area. I missed out on an additional 1.50 per share profit at least, on the sell side, and 40 to 50 cents on the buy side as well, had I been more patient.

So, the rainmans advice to me (thanks goingin60) was

"the mkt trades best 8am-10:30 then 3 pm to 4 pm-
itll be in my book-
Rainman 101 for daytraders"

You can see that had I purchased this stock anytime between 8 and 10:30 and sold anytime on the way down off of 12.75 I would have maximized the profit and made much more than 6 cents on this trade, making it worth the round trip I took.

So, if I am going to learn to play these momentum stocks, I think that I need to make a few adjustments to my strategy.

First, I need to get up at 5 am instead of 6. I am not getting up and running quick enough to get in on the ground floor of these momentum moves. Next, I need to choose one stock to follow the momentum of for the day, and try to get in before 10:30 (7:30 my time). Third, watch throughout the day, but I need to assume the sell point is going to happen either the between 3 and 4 that day, or the next morning. Lastly, do not make the buy and sell on the same day unless there is a doubt that it will hold up for sale in the am.

Now, for the 4 short term trades I am still holding, and at a loss.

EGHT: Went up 5 cents in after hours, so it is down 2% since I purchased it at 1.48. It has to break resistance at 1.52. Earnings are being released on November 1, next Thursday, after market close at 4:30. I feel at this point I may as well commit another week to this stock to see what earnings release gets me. I'm a little nervous with the after hours release time. However, if this makes any kind of run past resistance at 1.52, I will

GNVC: Up 4 cents in after hours to 2.50, down 6% since my investment. This one is posing a difficulty for me to exit. While it has been trending mostly downward, it is staying above the support at the 50 day moving average. I don't even care about losing some money on this one at this point. I just want to minimize the loss the best I can. In fact, now that I have typed that out, I realize that the loss I would take at 2.50 is acceptable to me at this point, so I have put a sell order in for that amount. If it clears, I have one less stock to track, if it goes higher, oh well. I have no signs pointing to any upward momentum on this stock. Part of me would like to put the sell price at 2.55, as it has been at or above that price the past few days, however the more practical side of me says I don't want to lose the opportunity to get this one out of my portfolio over 5 cents.

NCST: Currently my biggest headache. No action, no news, the chart looks horrible. I am down 16% on this one as it stands at $2.31, and I have no support again until 2.16. I've got resistance at 2.50 and 2.63, and I have to get up to 2.75 just to break even on this one. To add insult to injury, this is the largest of my 4 short term investments that I have had longer than I anticipated, and I have no idea how to divest myself of it. Interestingly, 75% of the shares of this company are held by insiders or 5% owners.

TVIN is my last. It is down 25% since I bought it, and the chart doesn't look too hot. Earnings release are out on Nov. 8th, so 2 weeks from now. It's late, and I need to go to get up early, so I'll look at this more tomorrow.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

PCU

2007-10-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

By the way, I was able to get back in on PCU. Cost me about 4.50 a share more than I got for the covered calls, but I'm already up 6.95% since yesterday. If you haven't looked at the chart on this one yet, look now. This stock has increased 159% in price alone this year, and on top of that it pays a $1.60 a share dividend quarterly. While the shows an occasional price dip from time to time, that's just a buying opportunity, it shows no evidence of slowing down.

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for PCU/

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

ISV

2007-10-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

Still having trouble resisting the short term plays, even though I am sitting on a 3 that are down right now (EGHT, GNVC, NCST). Got in on a few shares of ISV for fun at $1.28.

By the way, got into MDR at 43.90, and am up almost 5% already in just a little over 24 hours. Can't beat that. I still think this is a safe play up to about $50.00.

&amp;lt;a href="http://finance.yahoo.com"&amp;gt;Yahoo! Finance&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MDR"&amp;gt;Quote for MDR&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

McDermott International Inc ~ MDR

2007-10-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

So, I had written 3 covered call options that expired on Friday. PCU got exercised, the other two did not. The exercise of PCU, left a big hole in my 30% allocation for blue chip growth. While I do need to cut back in other areas, I feel that I need to keep the blue chip growth allocation portion of my portfolio maxed, in order to get the most bang for my money, so I have spent this evening reviewing some options, and decided to invest in MDR.

Click here to review a business summary outlined by Yahoo. I just got home from spending the weekend with family in the Bay Area, so I am going to quickly lay out my reasons for choosing this stock, and then get to my review of my sell list, which wasn't done after close on Friday.

First of all, Friday was the 20th anniversary DATE of the crash of 1987 (the 20th anniversary DAY however falls on Monday). The fearful converted to cash in case history decided to repeat itself. Then this came out,

13:50 Morgan Stanley says crude oil "likely to come down sharply"; has "overshot fundamentals" - Bloomberg.

and across the board, Oil stocks started dropping, some in the double digit percentage points. I'm seeing that keeping your head while other's panic is a key component to this game. I'm seeing this as a huge buying opportunity in the oil industry, so I decided to look for a new blue chip in that realm to invest in. I could have increased my position in NOV, but decided against it, as it is already a good size portion of my overall portfolio.

Technically, the chart for MDR looked good. It has had two splits in the past 2 years, one on 9/11/07, and another on 6/1/06. The 10 day displaced moving average has been above the 50 day since 8/10/07. I calculated the return this year, using Fridays closing number which had taken a $5.00 a share hit from the previous day, and found that even with that 8.42% loss in one day, the stock price had increased in value by an amazing 148% in one year! Digging a little further, I found that the stock had doubled in price between the months of May and October. That's 100% ROI in 5 months, which would be 240% annualized.

Now, MDR has announced that it will have an earnings call on November 8th, 9am eastern time. There is always some risk in purchasing a stock before earnings but here are a few points that I have found that I feel limit that risk.

Positive surprises equate into higher stock prices. MDR has had positive surprises on 11 out of their last 13 announced earnings, and has exceeded earning estimates for the third quarter in all 3 of the past 3 years. Back to the chart, the 50 day low is 54.09, and I see support around 54.00. With those two things in mind, and my willingness to risk up to 10% of my investment, I have decided that a buy price below $59.49 is acceptable for this investment. Since I am very unsure of how the market will react tomorrow (where there be more panic, or will the sharks be snapping up all the bargains they can once they realize the sky didn't fall), I am going to low ball my bid at about $54.25. That is down a bit from both the Friday close of $54.35 and the after hours price of 54.77, but above my support support number. I wont be disappointed if I don't get in at this price, but I am going to bottom fish for it a little bit before I chase it up.

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for MDR/

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Portfolio review continued.

2007-10-18T19:54:00.001-07:00

Well, I managed to only purchase one new stock today, and sold off 3 (VM, LTUS, and GHDX). Didn't make my goal of just selling, but at least the net of the transactions was in the correct direction.

I did a little soul searching last night after I got locked out of here, and made a more concrete plan on my portfolio asset allocations.

35% Growth/Income: Current allocation in line, includes T, HTE, MVO, and UNWPX. I wont be adding to these positions, other than dividend reinvestments. I am looking to sell HTE in the $30-$34 dollar range. If I get that opportunity, I will find a replacement for it at that time.

30% Blue Chip Growth: Current allocations in line, PCU, NOV, RCI , MIR and NRG. I will most likely lose PCU and MIR due to the covered calls that I have out against them (a mistake I wont make again). I will replace those with some new picks from Navelliers Blue Chip Growth, newsletter, due out on October 22nd.

10% Zip Code Changers: These are my buy and hold pipe dreams, which are actually under allocated at this point, but I will not be filling them in, until I get the last category reigned in. Currently holding LBWR, ZMRAF, and SYBR.

25% Value / Short Term Trades: Here is my real weakness. The ideas in this category have been coming at me fast and furious, and I have been like a kid in a candy store, completely without any impulse control. I likie, gimme, has been my mantra the past few weeks. My focus is on trimming this area. I reviewed ASTM, CSCA, EGHT, GAI, AND GNVC in my post last night (though part of the GNVC research got lost), so on those 5 I will be brief.

ASTM: News out regarding some stem cell research. I expect the gap to fill and then some. For fun I have a 1.39 sell order out there, which would give me a 25% return on a 3 day trade. Not sure if it will click that high though, as there may be some resistance around 1.27 and 1.32.

CSCA: Pulled back slightly on no news. I assume it's just a little profit taking before the 20 year anniversary. I still like this stock.

EGHT: Chart looks good, and up again in after hours to 1.52. This one just feels like it wants to take off.

GAI: This stock is still not exciting me. Down on volume, so it may be being manipulated. 65% shares held by insiders. Looking for a graceful exit.

GNVC: Up in after hours, no news, chart looks good. I like the technical on this since I don't see any real resistance until 4, other than perhaps a bit at 3.25.

NOEC: This one has been testing my resolve, since I posted about the swing trades I was planning on this post. It is going lower on low volume, and has inside shareholders at 59%. I have an 8.70 sell in, and while I don't know when it will hit that number again, I have little doubt at this point that it will. I do see some resistance at 7.50 that I have to contend with though.

PRX: Looking for an out. The chart looks terrible. This was a buy based on insider trades and a press release. Hasn't been a good move so far.

TGB: I like this stock so much, that I bought it again even though I have already lost money on it once this year. It reached new highs, and I jumped on, to immediately watch the price dwindle. It's a copper play, and I like metals. This one continues to haunt me. Looking for a graceful exit.

TRMA: My feelings haven't changed much on this one since the last time I posted on it. I'm looking for a sale on the downside of whatever happens between $38 and $43. I am hitting some resistance at $35.40 I need to break through now.

YHGG: This was a kid in a candy store buy. Looking for an out.

NCST: My short term buy for today. Chart looks good, and up in after hours. Support around $2.16 while my 10% loss is at $2.48. Fifteen day low at 2.16. I feel like I bought this one too high, chasing it.

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for ASTM

So, my lessons for myself today begin with no more trigger buys off the short term board. At the minimum, I want to know what my 15 day low and support levels are, then I want to put in my buy price so that my 10% loss lands around those levels. I think this strategy will help me in many ways. First of all, it will make me pause and see if it is really prudent to add another stock to my portfolio. Second, when the stock is added, I wont have to decide where to stop, since I will have made that choice by my purchase price. Thirdly, I think that being a more technically choosy about picking a buy price than just looking at the current level two quotes, I will not be getting into as many stocks, which is part of what I need...to limit this kid in the candy store reaction I am having to the multitude of earning opportunities that present themselves to me each day.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Wednesday already

2007-10-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

This week has really gotten away from me. I've definitely started off on the wrong foot as far as documenting what is happening during my trading day, and what I'm finding out during my nightly recaps. In fact, last night I did not do my nightly review of my portfolio, most specifically those on my sell list, and it did end up with me missing the fact that a sell order had expired, and I missed my chance to get out of NOEC at a slight gain. Now, I have a really tough decision to make on that one, but we'll get to that in due time.

This post may end up being a little long winded, but I want to go through and document each item on my sell list tonight, instead of just highlighting a couple. Since is growing each day, instead of getting culled back to around 10 stocks like I had planned, I need to really sit down and go through why I am holding each of these stocks with a fine tooth comb. For simplicity, I am going through them in alphabetical order.

ASTM: Source: Short Term Traders board goingin60 (this board requires a paid membership).
Short term traders board has become my new favorite message board, and part of the reason that I am having trouble whittling down my portfolio. There are some great ideas posted on that board throughout the trading day.

Anyway, saw this one thrown out there this morning. I saw that it had gapped down, and decided to take advantage of the possible gap fill. AT 1.12 a share, it seemed that downside could be kept to a minimum.

Tonight I find that the reason the price had gapped down was due to this news article.

Aastrom Direct Offering to Raise $13.5M

My initial reaction is that that is a good thing, and I would expect a gap fill now that the offering has closed. However, being new to the intricacies of how this type of thing effects future stock pricing, this will be a good one for me to watch closely. Did this offering dilute the shares enough that it doesn't easily bounce back? It's times like these that I realize I am just a little baby on this investment learning curve.

CSCA: Source, another IHUB board member, Bobwins. I really like this guys thorough approach to his due diligence. I get more than just ideas from him, I feel like I am really learning something about the things that I need to be looking for in a stock, when I read his posts.

Anyway, I have nothing but great things to say about CSCA. It's up 13.88% since I my purchase on 10/5/07 (12 days ago) at 10.85. It is up a China play, which is why I have it on my sell list (which is basically the list I keep for stocks I need to watch closely). Still no new news since September 6th. Other than that, lots of new highs, and a gap up with a nice finish today. The chart speaks for itself.

EGHT: Source goingin60, yes, I trusted the rainman on this one.

I saw it approaching the resistance at 1.52, with leaps up in the past few days, and decided to go for it. While it closed at 1.48, the same price I had bought it for in the morning, it has reached 1.54 in after hours. There is an earnings call on November 1, which is scheduled for 4:30pm EST. I am curious if calls like that after market close generally are going to be giving bad news, while earlier day calls give good news? That would be an interesting statistic to track!

Anyway, gonna keep an eye on this one, but with the solid support I am seeing around 1.25 for this stock, it just really doesn't seem to have much of a downside at the price I got in at.

Financially, they are showing increases each quarter over the past year in both total revenue and gross profit.

Then we see multiple insiders purchasing stock in August, just before the release in September of

Santa Clara-based 8x8 (NASDAQ:EGHT - News ) said its platform "will be the only brand presented and promoted to the roughly 12,000 subscribers who will be left without VoIP phone service after the company winds down its VoIP operations over the next three months."

I really can't think of anything more to add about this company. All the stars on this one seem to be aligned. I will watch it daily, and let it run. I'll sell it on the downhill side.

GAI: Another from the Short Term Trader board, and a friend, John. The chart is pulling back some, but on low volume. I've done my minimum digging around yahoo, and I'm not finding anything terribly compelling about holding on to this stock, other than the fact that 65% of it's shares are held by insiders. It's support is lower than I am comfortable with ($2.57), so I will be seriously reconsidering this position if it dips below 4.45 (10% loss on my investment).

GHDX: Source is vague on this one. It was a long term medical play I picked up from somewhere. The candle chart looks like it may be in for a downturn, including the 10 day moving average moving below the 50.

However it is supposed to be a long term play, and it has a few good points I may investigate further when I don't have so many stocks on my plate to look at. I will evaluate my position on this one if it breeches support at $19.00 (my cost was $19.25).

GNVC: Yet another gem from goingin60

Got in at 2.67. It closed at $2.82 and is up to 2.87 in after hours!

Well, I just spent the last 1/2 hour trying to unlock my computer. Apparently there is a limit to how heavily it will allow me to tax it. I know I had finished a write up on this stock, and started one on LTUS.

Well, folks, here it will have to end, as it is now after 1am, and I have to be up in less than 5 hours for stock market open. The fact that I am going to bed with 8 stocks unresearched alone should be proof that I am holding more stocks right now than I can realistically handle.

Here is hoping that I am successful tomorrow in gracefully exiting some of my lagging positions and resist the temptation of opening new ones. In fact, I will comit to myself right now that I will not even investigate a new stock pick until I have completed posting all of my findings on my sell list review.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Stock Trader's Almanac

2007-10-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

My Stock Trader's Almanac 2008 arrived today. A great way to start my first day as a full time trader. Yes, that's right, after being on vacation for a week, and comparing the results to the results that I was achieving working on my portfolio part time, I called my boss yesterday and quit my part time job. An added bonus is that I will get to roll over my 401K into an IRA and be able to have more control over that part of our retirement package, than choosing between a handful of mutual funds.

Anyway, the Stock Trader's Almanac 2008 has a lot of great features, and I think that it is a good an investment for anyone wanting to make a real go of investing. One of the things that it stresses is that you will have more investment success if you write things down. Going back to my original post regarding the purpose of this blog, I can see that I am on the right track if I want to be successful in this endeavor. The second key to me being on the right track, is that it denotes November through January as the best three month span, right in line with me taking the dive to do this full time.

Some features of the 2008 Almanac that I am digging right now are

*2008 year at a glance
This shows you days the market is closed, option expiration dates and major holidays. Also includes the 2009 year at a glance towards the back of the Almanac.

*One page for each trading week, broken down by day.
What a great feature! You can incorporate your appointment calendar into the Almanac, making it more likely that you are looking at it on a daily basis. This part of the almanac also includes holidays, market profitability numbers, option expiration days, and icons that show days that have been 60% bearish or bullish on average during the past 21 years. Interspersed between all of this are Monthly statistics, and references to check other parts of the almanac such as Investor Seasonalities.

*Directory of trading patterns
This is the main reason I bought this book, was for the directory of trading patterns. Some of the patterns go back as far as 1900. Others not quite as far based upon data available, or a noticeable shift in patterns has occurred due to changes in the investment community (for example 401K availability increases)

*Strategy Planning and Record Section
Some really good spread sheets and checklists in this section. I am sure that I will be incorporating some of these into my tracking.

Whether you are new to investing, or a seasoned investor, Stock Trader's Almanac 2008 combines in one place the tools you need to track and improve your game.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Canadian Energy Trusts

2007-10-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

Kiplinger ran an interesting article a week ago regarding Soaring Oil Trust Yields. Over 15% of my portfolio is in Harvest Energy Trust, who put out this latest press release. So, my dividends coming on October and November 15th are set in stone, but this is the first time in quite some time that HTE did not announce a quarters worth of dividends at one time.

I have known that I would possibly need to exit these positions some time in 2010, due to the Tax Fairness Plan, but the recent news of the Alberta tax increase from 25% to 30% has made me take pause. While I am not ready to abandon the consistent income and growth that I have achieved since my purchase of HTE, it has definitely led me to rethink my sell point.

Up until recently, last month, I was not reinvesting my dividends back into HTE. Best case scenario as I see it, the tax increase in Alberta of 5% translates to a dividend decrease of 5% to unit holders of HTE. Using that best case scenario, and my cost basis for the units that I currently hold, selling the units for $30.00 per share would net me the same amount as collecting dividends for the next 2 years. If I can squeeze $34.00 a share, that would be the same as collecting those dividends over a period of 3 years (putting us right before the January 1, 2010 Tax Fairness Plan kickoff).

HTE is on an upward swing. It has a 52 week high of 33.97. If it continues it's upward trend, I will sell at the best point I can find in that 30-34 dollar range.

&amp;lt;a href="http://finance.yahoo.com"&amp;gt;Yahoo! Finance&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=HTE/"&amp;gt;Quote for HTE/&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

Noteworthy events for my portfolio

2007-10-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

While the dow dropped today, my portfolio increased by 1.42% today. That's over 500% annualized, if that type of increase was sustainable all year long.

Anyway, I wanted to document a few stand out events that are occurring for some of my stocks.

Starting with TRMA, this stock finally broke through the resistance it has been feeling at $34.00 today, to end the day at $34.30. This is the break through that I have been waiting for. While there has already been a bit of a pull back in after hours trading, I am staying optimistic that this is the beginning of the run up to the low 40 range for this stock. I have revised my support level on this stock to 31.85, and see minor resistance at 37 and 39, but then nothing holding it down until it hits around $43. Even with the sell off the other day, a decent portion of my portfolio is riding on this stock.

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for TRMA/
CSCA first caught my eye on IHUB and so far is not disappointing. Since 10/3 it has made new highs each every day except for Monday, though it did match the previous days high. While it tends to close quite a bit lower each day than the high, it is still moving up at a consistent rate that I am quite pleased with.

For sheer volatility, NOEC is unmatched in my portfolio. Intra day swings have been crazy!

10/1 5.83 - 6.98 O 6.10 C 6.64
10/2 6.26 - 6.90 O 6.57 C 6.26
10/3 6.50 - 8.81 O 6.60 C 7.945
10/4 7.83 - 9.60 O 8.50 C 8.50
10/5 7.49 - 8.80 O 8.71 - 7.65
10/8 7.25 - 8.19 O 7.88 C 7.84
10/9 7.31 - 8.19 O 7.31 C 8.19
10/10 7.56 - 8.74 O 7.57-8.20

Yahoo! Finance
Quote for NOEC/
Since the beginning of October, it has been at or below 7.50 6 times, and at or above 8.70 four times. While risky, this shows me an opportunity to make some money based on this intra day volatility. I have put in a sell order for my shares at 8.70. Once it sells, I will place a buy order for 7.50 and try and ride the price up again. That is a 16 percent gain each time I can capitalize on that price move. I'll keep you posted on how that works out.

Well, that was a lot of good news, now for the bad news that should be good news...PCU.

The number of mistakes I have made since I first saw this stock are astronomical. I talked about some of them in another post. My most recent mistake was to sell Covered calls against the PCU stocks that I had owned.

You see, historically, October is the worst month in the stock market. I had accumulated some shares of PCU since my last blunder sell of it, at an average price of 105.72 per share. Since October is historically a bad month for the market, I decided to sell covered calls against PCU to make a few extra bucks. I sold the 120 October calls for $2.40. PCU is now at 135.46 per share, and the calls I sold for $2.40 would cost me $16.00 to buy back. This is a very hard lesson learned, and while I will make money when those options are exercised on October 20th, unless something crazy happens in the next few days, I will be selling those shares for much less than they are worth.

As I said the last time I posted about PCU, the chart shows no signs of slowing down.

Special note to PCU: On my honor, if I ever have the opportunity to own you again, I promise to treat you right!

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

China Plays

2007-10-07T23:00:00.001-07:00

I picked up a couple of China plays on Friday. Both of them were from IHUB. CSCA applied for NASDAQ, and shareholders are currently voting on the acquisition of a profitable Chinese company. NOEC was the second China play I bought on Friday. Refer to my Wish List post for more information why I decided to pick this one up.

I reduced my position of TRMA by 40%. I was able to get 33.60 for it, which was very near the high for the day of 33.64. TRMA hasn't been that high in over a month. I don't like selling a position when it is on an upward swing and TRMA is moving up right now. It's made about 10% price increase in the past week. I did feel that I had too much of my money tied up in it for too long though. This is the third time I have owned TRMA in the past couple of years. It has a nice little wave that I like to ride occasionally to make a few dollars. It has pretty strong support in the 29-30 area (green arrows on the 2 year chart below), and will peak somewhere between 38 and 42 (pink arrows) before it heads south again.

I purchased it this time around when it was on an upswing (blue arrow around Sept 7th) thinking I would make a quick turn around. Unfortunately, I put my order in at night, went to bed, and spent the past month watching it test support and my resolve. I refused to sell it at a loss, because I knew it would eventually head up again, but when I got the opportunity to sell a portion of it at a profit, I took it. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see how high it goes. This is one of those stocks that I will use the way of the turtle method to find my sell point. I will be looking to sell it once it starts moving down off it's peak. I will expect to start watching it very closely once it hits 38, to see how high it goes before it turns around.

Anyway between that and my MVO post, I believe I am caught up on documenting my busy trading day on Friday.

Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment.

MVO

2007-10-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

What a day! The employment data was well received, and my portfolio balance increased by 4.3% today (6.92% ROI month to date). I made several trades, swapping out some positions, and increasing others. My most notable new addition was RIMM, which gapped up today. Sometimes a stocks price will fall after a gap up, but this is a Navellier pick, and I am confident that even if it does dip, it will continue to increase in value.

The stock that I really want to talk about today is MVO. In my opinion, MVO is a good addition as an income investment. Since I need to generate some income from this portfolio for living expenses, I keep a percentage of income investments. HTE has been my number one income producing position. I began purchasing shares in February of this year, and have had 30.9% ROI (45.6% annualized). I enrolled HTE into the DRIP program this week, up until now I had not been reinvesting dividends.

HTE is a Canadian Energy Trust. Trusts avoid paying taxes by distributing a minimum of 90% of their proceeds to shareholders. There is a possibility however, that this tax exemption could end around 2009, 2010. There is also the possibility that the tax exemption is grandfathered in for companies like HTE, but not allowed for newer trusts. Here is a link to HTE's website.

Anyway, that brings us to MVO. MVO is an U.S. oil trust. MVO went public in January of this year. So far distributions since going public have been

12-Jul-07 $ 0.657 Dividend
12-Apr-07 $ 0.533 Dividend
13-Feb-07 $ 1.012 Dividend

Today, MVO announced a 3rd quarter dividend of $.65383330 per unit to shareholders of record on 10/15/07, payable 10/25/07.

Despite this announcement units of this trust actually decreased in price, on news of lower oil futures. I used that as an opportunity to double my position in MVO.

Anyone telling me that they had a little money to invest this month in a stock over a long term (a few years or more) I would recommend this to. First, based on my my postive experience with HTE. Secondly, because it has the same benefits as the Canadian Trusts, without the uncertainty of the tax situation. Thirdly, having gone public just this year, I feel like it is a good opportunity to get in near the ground floor. My understanding of oil companies is that the make money, or they make a lot of money, and in this case, those proceeds are being distributed to unit holders. By investing a set amount each month, you will be purchasing more shares when price is low, and less shares when the price is high, creating a dollar cost averaging. At the current price, this stock has a 10.77% dividend yield.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of it is so new, this stock does not qualify at Ameritrade for the automatic dividend reinvestment, so I would need to do this on my own. That could be prohibitive at a place like Ameritrade, if I did not have a number of free trades that I can make each year. Sharebuilder does not currently provide for the purchase of MVO. I made a request for it today, and will keep you posted as to whether or not they add it.

The chart for MVO looked really good, up until the futures news today. I am expecting this to be only a minor set back, and predict the stock price to rise this next week once people start hearing about the upcoming dividend distribution.

Wish List Update

2007-10-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

Well, tomorrow is the day that the employment data comes out, so I am waiting heart in throat to see what happens, and how the market reacts.

A lot of great ideas flew my way today, some I added to my watch list, and some I placed small orders for, as they were just too good for me to resist.

First thing this morning, I bought AFG Dec 30 calls for $1.10 apiece. I have been watching this one for a few weeks since I noticed some heavy insider trading. The stock was showing some resistance at $30.00, and has closed at $30.01. By purchasing call options, I was able to limit the amount of cash I was commiting to the trade, while still giving my self the opportunity to ride this up. The next level of resistance is at $35.00.

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I added NOEC to my watch list yesterday. It continues to hit new highs, with large price swings during throughout the day. It has some support at 6.55, so I have put in an order there. I'm a bit leary about these China stocks, but a lot of the right people have been discussing this one. Louis Navellier whose advice has netted me a 7% roi in the past 10 weeks rates this a buy. That's more than 35% annually. 59% of the shares are owned by insiders or 5% owners. I've got my low ball bid in, and will keep an eye on this one. The chart shows no upward resistance, so it could go ballistic, or it could crash and burn.

Update 10/5/07: I did decrease one of my positions and get in on this one today at $7.70 on some light profit taking.
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Checking the insider trades for yesterday, I found PRX. I like pharmaceuticals, they have some risk to them, so they are exciting. Here is a partial excerpt from Yahoo Financials on PRX.

BUSINESS SUMMARY
Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets generic drugs and branded pharmaceuticals for specialty markets in the United States. The company offers generic prescription drugs comprising approximately 180 products representing various dosage strengths for approximately 80 separate drugs. Its principal generic drug products include fluticasone, amoxicillin, cabergoline, tramadol HCl and acetaminophen, quinapril, fluoxetine, ibuprofen Rx, lovastatin, megestrol oral suspension, cefprozil, paroxetine, mercatopurine, glyburide and metformin HCl, metformin ER, ranitidine, and tizanidine.

The chart on PRX is awful. It gapped down on September 27th. On October 3rd 4 officers and 3 directors purchased a total of 94,300 shares. That's a lot of insiders committing a lot of money to their company. I've got this one on my watch list, and will be monitoring it. I'm looking for a gap fill here. There is not a lot of chatter on the IHUB board about this one, and Navalier rates it a sell. My account is too extended to even buy options on something this risky.

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CMGI got added to my stock list today because the CFO and the President of sales and marketing have purchased 150,000 shares between the two of them. They are planning a 10-1 reverse split in a month. Again this one gapped down. I would like to see it back up above 1.60, as it has no resistance again until about 2.40.

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Well, as you can see I have more ideas than money. It's hard to not jump on every "great stock" I stumble across, but watching them here will help.

Always do your own due diligence before investing, and Good Fortune!

AFG

2007-10-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

There may not be anything sexy about insurance, but the CEO of American Financial Group seems very fond of his company. He bought 6 million dollars worth of this stock for his family's trust on Friday, to add to the 250, 000 shares he had already purchased in September. Additional big blocks of shares had been purchased in July and August.

AFG insider trades

25% of this company is owned by insiders and 5% share holders. To me this all points to good things for this stock. Technically, the 10 day moving average crossed up over the 50 day moving average during September. I see a little resistance at $30.00, I would like to see it cross that mark.

Because I am still trying to sell off some of some stock, I can't purchase any now, but it is definitely on my wish list list, and I will be watching it closely.

As always, do your own due diligence before purchasing any stock.

AYSI

2007-10-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Alloy Steele International Inc. is an over the counter stock that I would consider a risky investment. Current price is 55 cents a share. I purchased this one yesterday at 61 cents, so I am down a little bit today, but I'm not concerned. It's down on low volume, after trending up on a couple of incredibly high volume days. Also, since prior resistance was at 55 cents, 55 is now a support level. A good lesson in patience for me here though, my initial reaction was to put in a bid at 55 cents, but I thought, what's a few pennies, and placed a bid that was between the current bid ask range instead. I could have saved myself a few dollars.

ASYI is a tip I got from my father, based on some information from the ihub board (see the link below).

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=23370777

I'm mostly a trend and technical trader, but the financials on this stock look good, from my limited eye.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AYSI.OB

A little bit about ASYI.

Alloy Steel International, Inc., together with its subsidiary, Alloy Steel Australia (Int.) Pty Ltd., engages in the manufacture and distribution of Arcoplate, a wear-resistant alloy overlay wear plate, primarily in Australia. It offers fused-alloy steel plates for installation and use in structures and machinery that suffer wear and hang-up problems. The company's customer base primarily includes companies involved in the mining and dredging industries. Alloy Steel International is also developing the 3-D Pipefitting Cladder process for depositing a profiled layer of wear resistant alloy onto interior surfaces of pipefittings, which are used in various industries. The company also distributes its products in the United States, South America, India, Indonesia, Singapore, South Africa, Japan, China, Canada, and Malaysia. Alloy Steel International was incorporated in 2000 and is based in Malaga, Australia.

Another reason that this stock makes sense with my portfolio is that I have a good chunk of my money invested in the mining industry. If I am betting on them, it's not a huge leap to bet on the people that provide equipment for them.

I would say that this is not an investment for the faint of heart, and remember to always do your own due diligence before investing.

PWAV

2007-10-02T21:07:00.001-07:00

The market has been in an incredible uptrend, and I find myself in the position of holding too many stocks, 15 of them as of last night. I know that I need to get out of at least 5 of these positions. For a part time investor as myself, 10 seems to be a pretty fair number positions to keep track of. Some of my positions I consider low maintenance at the moment, but last night, between starting this blog I created a spread sheet of a few of the positions that I would like to get out of as gracefully as possible. Here is a a view of it, with the exact costs blacked out protect my privacy. (Right clicking the chart gives you the option of opening it in a new window).

Anyway, there are several possible points at which it may be a good idea to sell a stock. The first one I have listed is 10% loss. This is the point where you have lost 10% of your initial investment. You can use whatever number you are comfortable with. Sometimes I will allow a stock to dip lower, if it makes sense to, but I use the 10% as a rough guide that I am comfortable with. Here is some interesting information that I picked up at a class that I took. The information below tells you, based on a set amount of money, if you lose a certain percentage of one investment, the get even point of your next investment.

% loss of initial trade % gain needed on next trade
10........................................... 11
20........................................... 25
30........................................... 43
40........................................... 67
50........................................... 100
60........................................... 150
70........................................... 233
80........................................... 400
90........................................... 900

So, if you have 1000 dollars to invest, and you lose 10% that leaves you $900 for your next trade. You will have to make 11% on that trade to return to break even. As you can see by the chart above, the get even point becomes exponentially more difficult to achieve as your loss percent of the first trade increases.

The next column I have for a sell point lists the 15 day low. The idea behind this comes from the "Turtle Strategy"*. A successful futures trading strategy that was kept under wraps, until one of the "turtles" divulged the secret. This is a trend investment method, where you buy a stock when it is at a 20 day high, and sell it when it is at a 10 day low. Once this secret broke out many people were using it, so soon the market movers were forcing stocks to 10 day lows to buy stock at a bargain. Picking a random day close to that range is one way to avoid being sucked into that cycle, and still get out of a stock when it is on it's down trend. I am currently using 15 days, in hopes of avoiding selling too soon based on normal market fluctuations. This number of days fluctuates for me, but the principal is the same.

The third sell point I am looking at is the stocks support. This is the point on the graph that it appears the stock is able to stay above. In the case of PWAV (I will post the chart further down) I have a horizontal support line, but that is not always the case.

Because I am working part time, and I have so many stocks to watch at once, I then went into my Ameritrade account and set up e-mail alerts for each of the stocks on the list based on one or more of those 3 criteria. This way, whether I am at home or work, I will receive an e-mail when one of these three stocks cross that threshold.

If you have my spreadsheet open, you will see that PWAV has a 10% loss at $6.03, a 15 day low of $5.97 and support at $6.00. As you can see, all signs are pointing to me selling this stock if its price gets any closer to the $6.00 mark, so I made that my trigger. Sure enough, the e-mail came for me at work that the line had been crossed. I made the decision to sell the stock, I put in a market order, and got out at 5.992.

Let's look at the PWAV chart for the past year. Right click on the chart again if you would like a better view.

I will apologize now for my abhorrent paint skills. The green arrow shows you where I purchased this particular stock, on May 4th. This happened to be one of the first stocks that I found after learning about the Turtle system. I used Ameritrade's stock streamer to give me a list of stocks under 10 dollars a share that were in an upward trending mode. I liked what I saw on this stocks chart. It had just reached the highest high in several months, and the Displaced 10 day moving average had crossed up over the Displaced 50 day moving average. It was well above that line, and had been for a few weeks by the time I purchased it. It had a good run upward, peaking at $7.64 on August 8th. The purple horizontal line is what I considered support when I was looking at the chart last night. Had I reviewed this chart earlier, I would have placed support a little higher, probably around 6.25.

The stock gapped down on September 19th based on this article.

SANTA ANA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Powerwave Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:PWAV - News) today announced that it has priced its previously announced private placement of $130 million aggregate principal amount of convertible subordinated notes due 2027. In addition, the initial purchaser of the notes exercised its option to purchase an additional $20 million principal amount of the notes.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070919/20070919005371.html?.v=1

When a stock gaps down like that, I don't like to jump on the band wagon. I like to wait a few days, and see how it plays out. Sometimes it is just people panicking, sometimes it continues downward. Since the gap down, the stock went under the support line twice, and third time is often the charm. It may go up, but based on the way the chart looks now, and my need to get out of several of my current positions, I used this opportunity to sell PWAV today. This is not a stock that I plan to revisit anytime in the future.

One of the things that I have noticed over the past month or so of watching my stocks during this volatile market, is that the stocks seem to trade lower between 11 and 1 Eastern time. Below is todays chart of PWAV for an example.

I didn't consider this when I put in my market order to sell PWAV, since I was at work.

As you can see by the chart, I sold PWAV at the lowest part of the day. While the dollar amount difference between selling then and a couple hours later is miniscule for this trade, (about 11 cents a share in this case) for higher priced stocks, that difference can be much more substantial, so it is worth noting here for my future reference.

Once I had my moment, I went out to Amazon, and put my order in for the Stock Trader's Almanac 2008. This book gives you historical information on market trends.

"The Stock Trader's Almanac is a practical investment tool that has helped traders and investors forecast market trends with accuracy and confidence for over 40 years. Organized in an easy-to-access calendar format, the 2008 Edition contains historical price information on the stock market, provides monthly and daily reminders, and alerts users to seasonal opportunities and dangers. For its wealth of information and authority of its sources, the Stock Trader's Almanac stands alone as the guide to intelligent investing.

All in all, even though I lost money on this trade, I would still call it successful. I am not unhappy at the point I got into the stock, and I believe that I gave it a good chance to show what it could do. The system I used to trade this stock is meant to maximize gains, and minimizes losses. All in all, I believe that objective was achieved, and a few inexpensive lessons were learned.

* To learn more about the Turtles, here is a link to Russel Sands website.

Way of the Turtle by Curtis Faith

Margin - It's such a scary word.

2007-10-02T00:14:00.002-07:00

I have been investing online for as many years as I have had access to the internet. Due to budgeting and time constraints I was limited to *DRIP types of investments, where I would pick a stock, and then invest a particular dollar amount at the same time each month resulting in dollar cost averaging of my stocks. What I found was that with my limited knowledge of reading charts and financial reports, I was able to pick stocks that were winners a high percentage of the time. Up until February of this year, I had never dealt with the question of what price to buy a stock, it was purchased when the plan decided to purchase it. I didn't decide when to sell the stock. If I sold it, it was because I needed the money, or in one case only, the stock turned out to be such a dog that I unloaded it.

So, when we made this decision in February that I would spend time managing my portfolio, I knew I had a lot to learn. I needed to learn more about reading graphs and financials, and if I was going to meet my goal of realized gains each month of **X dollars, I had a lot of learning to do.

I'm not afraid to admit, just the utterance of the word 'margin' scared me. I had visions of the elusive 'margin call' coming, where men in black came to my door and said I had to make a choice, either my husband lost a pinkie, or I signed over the deed to my house. When I began this journey, my account was not even approved for margin trading.

What did that mean? That meant that each month when it came time to transfer X number of dollars from my account, I had to make sure that I had the cash available, and felt that I needed to make realized gains for that month to cover my financial needs. Only this way did I think I would be "successful".

What I found was that that mindset put me in the position of selling stocks that were down, knowing that they would rebound, or taking gains way before I should have. A classic example of this faux pas was the mistake that I made with PCU. I first purchased this stock in March for 65.25 a share. 6 days later I was able to sell the stock for 69.45 a share. With a trade I had made earlier that same month, I had met my goal of **X realized gains for that month. I beamed with pride at my ingenuity and accuracy in stock picking. Today not only was the high for PCU 129.37 a share, but between the time I sold the stock, and the today, I would have received two dividend payments of 1.20 a share. Holding on to that stock today (which by the way is still not showing that it will be slowing down any time soon) would have increased my portfolio value by 6 times **X in 7 months, for just one stock.

It took a little while for all of this to sink in, but eventually I realized that while I was doing well at minimizing my risk, I was not doing the second step of the equation, and maximizing my reward. Due to making decisions based on an incorrect goal, and fear of the unknown, I greatly reduced the amount of money that I could have made in 2007.

A good philosophy that I read somewhere, is to never allow the interest that you are paying per month on your margin exceed your dividend income. I like this as a guide for now, and feel that by utilizing some margin, to purchase stock or pay household expenses rather than selling a stock too early to be able to boast a realized gain, is a better strategy for what I am attempting to accomplish, which is to provide the X dollars that I am not collecting in a paycheck anymore for household expenses without depleting (and hopefully increasing) the balance in the portfolio account.

The stock mentioned in this post may not be suitable for all investors. As always, do your own due diligence before investing in any stock.

*DRIP refers to Dividend Re-Investment Plan: For more information

http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/dividendsdrips1/a/aa040904_5.htm

**X refers to the amount of money each month I need to withdraw from the portfolio account in order to cover household expenses that were previously covered by my salary.

The Beginning

2007-10-01T23:15:00.001-07:00

Goal setting.

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.

Denis Watley

It always has to start there. You have to know what you want, and formulate a plan to try and achieve it.

My husband and I have been on track to meeting our goal of retiring at age 55. A fairly recent event that I wont detail here gave us some unexpected investment capital. Together we decided that I would reduce my work week at my current employer to 25 hours a week from 40, and I allocate the remainder of my work week to the management of our portfolio. My initial goal was to make enough money to replace the income that I make punching a clock, with investment income.

During the past 8 months I have made some mistakes, and had some triumphs. Obviously I am a planner. In addition, I am an organization nut. I have spread sheets for the hard facts of my progress organized. Monthly spreadsheets show my dividend income, and realized gains for each month. A summary worksheet shows the balances and cash flow of this portfolio account. I subscribed to two newsletters, and have a spreadsheet for each that tracks my gains and losses for stocks purchased based on their recommendations.

Up to this point what I haven't been able to do is find an acceptable format for logging my "soft" facts. What was the date, source and current price of that stock that I added to my watch list? Why didn't I purchase it instead of just adding it to the list? Was the price too high? Was the chart bouncing around the support line? When did I first notice the stock, and what price was it at? Who or what was the source of the pick? In other words, what criteria must this stock meet in order for me to purchase it?

While my monthly spreadsheets show that September was the most successful month I have had so far investing, what it doesn't say is why. What did I do different? What did I do well, and what could have been improved?

So, if you have made it this far through my initial blog post, you can see that part of the reason for starting this blog is to have a single place to organize my thoughts in regards to my portfolio for easy reference. There is more though. Some friends have showed some interest in what I am doing, and how I do it, so I thought this was a good way to document what is going on in my portfolio, and my mind.

In case it is not abundantly clear, I am not a professional, and posts made regarding specific stocks are not recommendations. Some of the stocks I will be discussing are high risk, and not suitable for all investors. Before investing in any stock, do your own due diligence.

Road to Early Retirement

Happy New Year!

Off topic ~ Sunflowers

Seasonal Plays part 2

Three new option positions

Position Reviews 6/17/08

Chart Trading Ideas

HTE confirmed breakout 6/16/08

Chart Education Part 2 ~ Symmetrical Triangle ~ Google

AAPL, another study of EEDT and initial 3RV (three rising valley) study.

In Review, week ending June 13, 2008

Chart Education, Part 1 ~ EEDT (Eve Eve Double Top) ***Updated 6/18/08***

What can you say about this market except...

Seasonal Plays

In Review, week ending June 6, 2008

Round Trip Options 6/2/08 to 6/6/08

Another rough day at the office.

Daily Research Blog

CNN: June could be crazy month for stocks

Off Topic ~ Free Hugs

May Performance

Round Trip Options May 19 - May 30, 2008

DOW down 427 points in two days!

Roundtrip Options May 1 - May 16, 2008

Everything happens for a reason...

Hot IPO's

V for Victory!

I'm back!

Off Topic: Bathroom Remodel Completed.

Off Topic Creighton Galleries

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel Part 2

Off Topic Bathroom Remodel

1/28/2008 - 2/1/2008 Round Trip Options

I'm glad to say January 2008 is behind me.

Gold

Crossroads

1/22/2008 - 1/25/2008 Round Trip Options

1/14/2008 - 1/18/2008 Round Trip Options

Notes for week ending 1/11/08

1/7/2008 -1/11/2008 Round Trip Options

Notes for week ending 1/4/08

12/31/2007-1/04/2008 Round Trip Options

January 2008 Goals and Rules

Bullish picks for next week

12/24/2007-12/28/2007 Round Trip Options

12/17/07 - 12/21/07 Roundtrip Option Plays

12-10-07 to 12-14-07 Round Trip Option Plays

Round Trip Options

Merry December Everyone!

Dow slips another 237 points

DOW closes below 13K for the first time since August

Is there a place for empathy in the stock market?

Update on HTE

It's only a loss if you sell it

My first month of option trading is almost over.

Will the DOW test 12K?

Spotlight on HTE

I thought I learned to lay golden eggs

DOW down 360 points!!!

HTE

Ana Crisan - Off Topic

October Review Part 2

Happy Halloween! October Review, Part I

Short Term Plays

FLML ~ My favorite mistake

PCU

ISV

McDermott International Inc ~ MDR

Portfolio review continued.

Wednesday already

Stock Trader's Almanac

Canadian Energy Trusts

Noteworthy events for my portfolio

China Plays

MVO

Wish List Update

AFG

AYSI

PWAV

Margin - It's such a scary word.

Chart Education, Part 1 ~ EEDT (Eve Eve Double Top) Updated 6/18/08