Falkin Investors

This Home is Moved !

2006-03-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.falkininvesting.com/blog

Yes yes, sad to say but I am moving into a new home! The new blog will be at hosted on my server instead of utilizing blogger.com. What should you expect to find? Stock education articles upon articles upon articles. I am also going to include help tools for utilizing investopedia.com's stock simulator. Expect it all to be free and I really hope it can help readers take their stock education to a new level. I should have it done in the next few weeks, so until then I welcome you to read through this blog and enjoy the content. Thank you for your patience and support!

http://www.falkininvesting.com/blog

To the future,

-Blain

A Lesson in Style

2006-01-29T13:04:00.000-05:00

In any sport, you as a player grow into your own personal style of play, and that style as you become better and better becomes your trademark. In the stock market, the same is true, and it is important that you stick to your trademark style regardless of how “good” you really believe you are. I have found that my trademark is based on the technical trading of stocks priced anywhere from $.02 a share to $2.50 a share. Recently though, I let my confidence become bloated with a trade, but my trademark style was no where to be found; a costly mistake.

I was up over 20% for the month of January, and wanted to go out with a bang. Instead of trading my signature style, I decided to go big or go home on a short play (which I have very little live experience in). I made the right call on the stock, and it did fall, but not before running up 5% and forcing me to cover. Not only did I leverage myself on margin to make the trade, but I also gave up all of my gains from January. The mistake was a big one, but an important one because it made me realize that regardless of how “good” I think I am, changing my style with three minutes left in the game isn’t going to help me make the game winning goal.

I was thinking about it at 3 AM (a time when I have a lot of my epiphanies about life) and thought of what I think to be a good analogy. In hockey, players will change skates, change sticks, or even change diets to try to get better. All of these enhancements though are centered on that player’s personal style. Just because they have a new stick, doesn’t mean they are going to skate at the net any differently to shoot. With your personal stock strategy, you will make a lot of adjustments to improve your win percentage, but that win percentage is still centered on your trademark style. Making a total U-turn will only take you in the wrong direction. My realization then is this; don’t let overconfidence take you to change your trademark style when that style is what made you so successful in the first place. It is good to be confident, but remember only to tweak that style, not do a full 180; you’re only going to run into on coming traffic.

Take this lesson to heart; it may save you money down the line when you think your skills are at their peak. I know it personally was a big blow to my portfolio, wiping out my huge run for the month. But, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Now to start driving in the right direction again…

Closing Thought – “Don’t let overconfidence take you to change your trademark style when that style is what made you so successful in the first place. It is good to be confident, but remember only to tweak that style, not do a full 180; you’re only going to run into on coming traffic.”

The busy get busier, but risk comes with reward

2006-01-18T01:13:00.000-05:00

I have been averaging about six hours a day working on the FIO. Our new site at www.falkininvesting.com is just about completed, and we have a lot to look forward to. This whole experience is an adventure, and I must say I am enjoying it quite thoroughly. To know that the busier I get, the more reward there is for my risk is a good feeling; I live for a high risk to reward ratio. The risk comes in dedicating so much time into something I believe in so strongly, when I could be putting it in where else but the stock market.

There is a lot I still have to learn about the World Wide Web, but every day I am creeping closer to a well developed knowledge base. I added a new live chat system for our community forums, and man was that a project. What was supposed to be a simple, “upload these files to your server and then install,” turned into 10 hours of education, agony, and frustration. The outcome though was well worth it, for now our members can connect with one another any time of the day, regardless of where they located in the world.

Speaking of connecting members, I can’t begin to understand how cool of an experience it has been to see members grow and develop. It is an honor to know that your dedication and time has helped to change someone’s life, and what better life to be then someone who supports your same passion? Each day shows a new opportunity to affect someone in some way, and that knowing is something that drives me to succeed. I love the saying that, “the race does not go to the strong or to the swift, but only to the one that endures until the end.” My pace is turtle, but I make sure each step I take is one of appreciation, dedication, motivation, and leadership. Make way, for the turtle is coming through.

Closing Thought - How big is big? What defines big, for big to you could resemble 1,000 followers, but big to the person next to you could resemble 100,000 followers? Makes you wonder if we are predestined to walk the path we are all on…

To the future always,

-Blain

Starting with a real Account

2005-12-19T21:47:00.000-05:00

The money cleared today, I have funds to trade!

Actually, this is not the first time that I have traded with real money, but it is the first time that I will be posting about the trades and my thoughts behind them. I feel that this is part of the beauty of this blog; being able to look at other people's trades, and then being able to see why they did it. Making mistakes is probably the best ( and hardest) way to learn, but being able to learn from someone else's is a close second. Although it is not my goal to loose, I will be completely honest with you on my trades. I am not to proud to admit a mistake, and never want to become that way either.

I am keeping my eye on SUF, and might make it my first short in real life. I have not finished my research on this one, but I will post up if I make any moves with it.

I am excited that I have come this far, and I hope that I will be able to continue learning for years to come.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

A Jump With SIRI

2005-12-14T20:14:00.000-05:00

I first wanted to say that I am happy to have Blain back posting. Although he was never officially gone, it is always wonderful to have his experience and knowledge mixed into this blog.

As we draw closer to the end of the contest, competition tends to heat up a little bit. People are beginning to want to get to a certain rank, and are willing to take a chance to get there. My latest jump is going to be with Sirius Satellite Ratio.

The company has been posting a fair amount of news lately, and today experienced more than double average trading. I am expecting/hoping for a jump up tomorrow. I am buying 7,000 shares tomorrow at the market open, so we will see if my gamble is right. I feel this stock could hit $8.00 by the end of this contest; but as always, time will tell

Good Luck With Everything!

MDZ

MIA no more

2005-12-13T22:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a while since my last post on the Falkin Investing Blog, and I apologize for my absence. The FIO Forums are coming along great now, and we are up to 60 members in just a few weeks. I have also have started teaching the stock market through my own program utilizing my kiss philosophy, which has gone great. As things finally start to “mellow out”, I have found time to reflect and really dig at the truth behind the truth about all sorts of things. I really believe I have found my true passion within the FIO and the stock market, and having them both together is just an amazing thing. I think everything really boils back to the old saying, “if you want anything bad enough in life, you will get it”. It is true, as we all go through our own lives and learn about who we are, we find out a lot about the world, and just about life in general. I have no idea why I never really listened to my parents, but now after making mistakes I have found their words to be pure as gold. Make mistakes, live and learn, and most importantly have fun. If you are not having fun doing what you are doing in life, then you may want to go within and pull out some answers. Take what you want out of this post, as it really is based off a lot of blab, and no real theme. I am happy though to be back in action (for the most part), and I wish everyone the best of fortunes with all of their upcoming ventures.

Closing Thought – “Do you see the dark clouds in the sky, or the sun shining behind them?”

Best Regards,

Review It!

2005-12-09T21:53:00.000-05:00

I sometimes feel that I am stating the obvious when I make these posts. I feel that everyone already knows what I am posting, and this may be true. I do this not so much to educate, but to remind. It doesn't matter if you "know" something if you let your emotions run away. You would be better off not knowing it at all, for then you would at least be making a first time mistake.

What I want to remind you of today is to be careful in what you invest in. This may seem like a given, but I myself have been guilty of this mistake more than once. The problem usually derives from wanting to succeed so bad, that you tend to make dumb mistakes. In other words, you let your emotions carry you away. When I let my emotions do my investing thinking, I made the mistake of not being able to tell the difference between a sales pitch, and sound investment advice.

It is always best to remember that it is OKAY to hold money while there are no good investments available. As a new investor, this may be hard; especially since one can assume that they just don't know enough to be finding the good investments, rather than there being none there.

I am never one to condemn making mistakes, for I strongly feel that this is how we learn. It is very important however, to do your homework. Don't ever jump into an investment just for the fear of loosing it if you wait. There are always more investment opportunities, and they are a lot easier to capitalize on if you haven't lost your confidence and capital on previous un-researched "investments'

Good Luck With Everything!

MDZ

Be a Custodian of Dreams

2005-12-04T22:04:00.000-05:00

I feel that one of the most important things that people can do is inspire one another. I have heard this called, “Being a Custodian of Dreams,” which means to take care of them, and have respect for them. In all reality, many of the dreams that people have don’t seem that achievable to me. That does not matter though, since they are a completely different person, they are going to have different ideas. Having your dreams respected is very important to every age of investor, for some people do not begin to try out their entrepreneurial wings until their forties. Here is an excellent example of what I consider the wrong thing to do. I wrote one of my teachers, who is a business broker, and asked him for advice on owning numerous businesses in the future. Here is his reply…

Mark,
Owning multiple businesses is very time consuming and requires a strong reliance upon in-place management. You are subject to employee theft, uneven quality and service, and winding up with a portfolio of under performing businesses because you don't have adequate time to identify and solve problems. Let's discuss this before/after a class or during a break.

Dave Stradal

Now, why would someone do this? Although I understand that what he is telling me is true, that doesn’t answer my question, and it doesn’t encourage me to achieve my dream. Did I discuss this with him later? No, I don’t want to take advice from someone who thinks that my dream of owning multiple businesses is not likely. I still have a lot of respect for the man, and I still am un-wavered from my dream, but my point is: Never try to discourage someone away from his or her dreams. Not only will it usually upset them, but also there is no real point to do it anyhow. I will end with this thought…

It is impossible to tell where someone is at on their journey to financial freedom, so never underestimate the power of encouragement.

Good Luck With Everything!

MDZ

GOOG and CNTF

2005-11-30T22:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I am pleased to say that the last few days have been going well for me in the contest. I am up to over 9% total gains after starting the week barely over 6%. My few latest trades have been with shorting stocks.

The stock that I have been watching for a while now, and finally got a chance to make some money with is GOOG. This stock never ceases to amaze me. It is highly popular, and therefore has potential for some interesting movements. This is just an assumption, but if I was a new investor, I bet I would consider buying GOOG right now. Reason being that it is very popular right now, and I think that this is making a lot of people jump into this stock and push it up. Remember, this stock was at about $300 a little more than a month ago; right now it is trading at over $400. I am not saying that these types of gains are impossible to hold, I am just saying that the are something that I take notice of. Anyhow, I noticed that this stock was beginning to fall slightly yesterday, and decided to jump in on the action. I shorted 250 at $411.82 and then got out this morning at $407.09. The reason being is I had a sell stop set at $407, and the stock triggered this before falling. I am still watching this one though.

Another stock that I am keeping my eye on right now is CNTF. This stock has made some impressive gains as of late, and I am expecting it to fall sometime here. As always, time will tell. If I do begin to see a reversal, look for a short from me on this one.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

The Falkin Investing Organization

2005-11-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

I am sad to say that I have not even opened my APEX account this week or late last week. I have been so busy working on the FIO site that I put my other passion aside (8 hours yesterday alone)! So, I don’t have any great picks or plays to share today, but I do want to comment on something you may want to take interest in! The FIO, or Falkin Investing Organization, is a non-profit organization that was created to connect traders of all experience levels together. We have members all across the world, and finally our site is taking on new registrations. The Organization hosts free competitions through investopedia.com, exclusive to only members, and some are even cash prize based. As of now there are three different competitions offered: a solo competition, a team competition (now registering), and a never ending competition. The best part is that experience does not matter, and the site is catered to all experience levels. The FIO team is finishing up a brand new 5 step program to teach new people how to trade. Exclusive to only members, part of the program includes having your own personal mentor to guide you along; it is a wonderful opportunity. And, for those who have been involved for quite some time, the forums offer unique discussion rooms specifically designed to discuss picks, plays, and more. As a non-member you are welcome to explore our community, which you can do here. For those who want to jump in and get involved, you can register here. Once you register all of our member sections open up, you are free to utilize our 5 step program, join any contests, and more. Coming soon is a brand new blog for the organization, and we now have a newsletter which you can sign up for by emailing us. Just say, “sign me up!” and I will add you to our list.

Ending here though, I will be getting back into the stock market and will have some good picks or plays to post up later this week. The FIO team competition allows teams to reserve picks and such, so I will definitely be doing some research later! I hope everyone has a great week, back to the forums for me!!

Closing Thought – “A man listens to those who have walked the walk. When you create a new path, a new walk, then all men great and small not only listen, but become inspired.”

Finally, a day with gains

2005-11-28T20:30:00.000-05:00

If you have been paying attention to my progress in the contest, you may have noticed that I have been slumping as of late. Well, I always try to stress the importance of learning in these contests, but learning the hard way is not always fun. Today I turned around and posted a $1,500 gain in my account.

My first trade that I made was with BOT. This stock may sound familiar, since Blain had shorted this one a few weeks ago. Due to the fact that it was a recent IPO, I have been watching this stock closely. I shorted 1,000 shares of this at market open which was $97.55. This stock later hit my sell limit, and I got out with a little over $1000 profit. The other trade I made was shorting 2000 shares of KKD at $5.32. This stock has been having unexplained gains for the last month, I am have been waiting for a reversal. Was today it? We will see; it dropped 5.5% today. I am still holding this one, but will be watching it closely.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Always have something to Sell

2005-11-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

In my experiences with business and business people, I have come to notice a characteristic that is very common in the business world. I hope that passing it along will help some of you in business either now, or later on in you life.

What I am talking about is the idea of "always having something to sell" This is really an off-shoot of "knowing what you want" but it also has its own special characteristics. The following true story helped me see the advantage...

There was a man who sold life insurance. He decided that although he felt becoming wealthy was important, it was not everything. He decided that he would help other people with their problems by acting as a "connector" between them. So, his marketing strategy eventually developed into this. Every day, he would meet with two other people over lunch who were in need of each others services. He would proceed to introduce them, and then sit quietly while they became acquainted and networked. Naturally, since these people had been helped by the life insurance seller, they wanted to repay him. So, if they ever ended up needing life insurance (for themselves or employees) during the lunch conversation, they would turn to him. Over time, he became very well known, very well liked, and very wealthy.

The key to this mans success is that he was not only helping people, but when they wanted to help him, he already had a plan for them to do it. When I think of this story, I look back on all the times that someone has wanted to repay me, but I didn't know what I wanted. It is important to not push the sale on the person, for this will make them feel defensive. But there is nothing wrong with knowing exactly what you want when someone asks, "What can I do to repay you?" Rather than the common response of, "Gee, I don't know?" Say something like, "Well, I just started a lawn care business, know anyone who might be interested?" It never hurts to try, and it never hurts to make a sale when the person is accepting.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Lesson with Orders

2005-11-22T22:29:00.000-05:00

Just as I have talked about in the past, I always try not to make the same mistake twice. I never let it wear on me too heavily when I do, but I also don’t take pride in it. The only thing that I consider worse for myself, is making mistakes that I already know the answer to, and just making a plain dumb move.

My latest example of a “dumb” move is with the 7500 shares or SIRI that I hold in my investopedia account. I had bought this stock as it was climbing; and I usually will do, decided to put a stop in place the next day so I was guaranteed profits on the trade. The next day, like I had expected, the stock rose around 5%, not a huge jump, but a jump nonetheless. I decided to put the stop in place, and move it up if the stock continued to rise. The next day, it reversed and began to fall back down. I was not worried though, since I was guaranteed profits, right? Wrong.

The mistake that I made was this: I accidentally put in a sell limit, rather than a sell stop. What happened here was that my stock would have had to continue to rise in order to make the sale, it didn’t happen though. The stock fell, and since I unintentionally made the simulator only sell at a higher price than the stock was at, I lost. The moral of the story is very obvious, “Pay Attention.” Had I done this in real life, I would have kicked myself. So I ended up loosing $2,000, rather than making about $1,500. Just a “friendly” reminder.

Good Luck With Everything!
Mark Zimmer

UARM, MRVL Closure

2005-11-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

UARM As I stated I would with UARM, I woke up to get on my computer at 9:30 AM to hopefully a higher open. To cover my costs on whole cycle I needed to get out anywhere above $26. The stock opened right around $26, and I decided to hold, after about 15 minutes a high of $26.44 was seen, but the spread was so big and it happened so fast I held again. Eventually, the stock resided in the same trading range from friday, and I got out in a limit order at $25.99. Overall loss - $3 . I am not upset with the overall play, I just missed pulling the trigger in vote of a higher sell price. I wanted to be out before 10AM, and I didn't get out till 10:30ish. Afterwards I went back to sleep to woke up around now when I am writing this, and the stock is at $26.50. Sadly holding until the afternoon was not part of my gameplan.

MRVL I stated I was considering a short on this, and short I did in a client's account late friday. This morning the stock was bouncing around, and in a climax run I sadly covered my short for about a $.11 per share profit. The stock is now down $.75 which would have given me about a $1 per share profit. It is important to note though that my strategy was again to get out before 10 because I was banking on a quick sell off spread. So, overall the trade was not a failure, and my discipline proved strong.

Thought of the trades - You can always look back and see with 20/20 vision, but there is no use dwelling in that site because you cannot change what you have already done. All you can do with the past is learn from it. Simple right? Very wrong, especially with day trading, emotions are your worst enemy. Any day trader regardless of how long in the game will tell you it still becomes hard to make a play when you aren't in the black. "I'll just squeeze a few more pennies out of this one", "I dont need to sell, it is going to come back", etc. My opinion - walk in with a sell point, a buy point, and a overall strategy, walk out looking back knowing you went along with it. If it could have gone better, adjust for next time. Don't dwell, just keep it simple, stupid.

My Simulator Account I did also buy puts on MRVL which I still now hold, I shorted 1,500 shares last friday and along with my 1,000 shares of NVDA these are my only current simulator positions; NVDA is up about $.50 so far today.

Thought of the day –
“To see the opportunity,
Is to realize the opportunity,
And to realize the opportunity,
Is the first step in making the change.”

Regards,

Peer Pressure

2005-11-18T21:51:00.000-05:00

For some reason, peer pressure has always been given a bad rap whenever it was explained to me. A parent, teacher, or some other person of authority would use the example of how kids would start doing drugs because, "everyone else was doing it." They would also use the saying of, "Just because Joey jumps off a cliff, that doesn't mean you should" Peer pressure was always explained as making me wanting to do something bad. They never said, "Since Joey is starting a business, I think you should too."

Since I believe that everyone of us is going to be in position of authority someday, I thought I would pass along a lesson that I learned a while back.

Peer pressure is a MUCH more powerful concept than a boss.

What this means is that even though most of us have either witnessed or performed to screaming boss act, it is really not that effective. Now I imagine that most of us realize this, but I personally never really understood what else to do. This changed when I heard this saying. It goes to show that all I really have to do to get someone to do something, is make them feel out of place by not doing it. Most people want to conform, rather than be rebels. A system that encourages positive peer pressure is like any business; it time and effort to set up, but after that, it almost runs itself.

So the next time you feel like yelling and "showing someone who is boss" remember this little statement. Try to make them feel self-conscious for doing the wrong thing, and you will be on your way to a very effective system.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Great day, gotta love the color green

2005-11-17T16:24:00.000-05:00

Well, a lot to jump about today!

NASDAQ closes up over 32 points – a huge accumulation day, so much for resistance… Next stop is 52 week highs, are you ready?

NVDA up almost 5% to $36.33 – big accumulation day

MRVL up over 2%

AMD up over 1%

What about SIRF (my 4th holding in the contest simulator)? Well I sold out of my position in this one two days ago because of the current volume trends. The loss didn’t affect my portfolio much more than a .05% so nothing too big as I got out before the big distribution day yesterday. Overall, my strategy is working and I am getting closer to $160,000 in portfolio worth every day. I closed the day with over $159,000 in the simulator account, which is equivalent to just over 59% growth in less than two months time.

I also concluded my cycle with GV in my Ameritrade Apex account. I sold out my last 1,500 today yielding about $80 in profits. Any time I walk out with money I am content, but I could have maxed out at over a few hundred in profits. The “mistake” as it could be called came in from sleeping in too late on earnings day. The stock opened up at $1.08 on the release (which was the purpose of the trade), and was quickly sold off for profits. O well, first come first serve; too bad I signed up for the later dinner!

Closing Thought – “The race does not go to the strong or to the swift, but to the one that endures till the end.”

To the future,

Portfolio Updates

2005-11-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

My actions as of late in regards to the market have been pretty sound and conservative. I haven’t done very risky trades, and I have leveraged myself to open for growth but in moderate amounts. With the market playing out as it has been, bullish, I have gained some more ground on my simulator portfolio. My positions of AMD, MRVL, NVDA, and SIRF are either up or about even for me which has taken my portfolio up about another $5,000 to almost $159,000 in total portfolio value. With almost 59% growth, I am still in 1st place overall, leading by a somewhat comfortable spread. I will continue to hold these positions for a good period of time, and any further action will be of course reported right here with my thoughts behind it.

Moving forward to my live portfolio over at Ameritrade Apex, I am pleased to see my newest position, GV, up after reporting strong earnings. The company is in a great performing sector and with penny stocks being so volatile, I took advantage of its spreads to get in at a competitive price ($.87 a share). The stock hit a high of $1.08 yesterday, but it is under some share exchange today bouncing around the mid $.90s. I am unsure of where it will end up here down the road with its odd behavior, but I am confident overall that I will be exiting with some profits.

Regards,

Don't want to do it Again

2005-11-14T20:30:00.001-05:00

One of the the more important things that I try to do in stock trading is really simple. Don't make the same mistake twice. This simple lesson can really save you a lot of time and energy, the only trick is that you have to learn to apply it.

The lesson that I have had the pleasure of learning the hard way is, don't assume that a huge jump up means that the stock will come back down. I made this mistake a while back ( in the falkin II contest) with a stock that jumped up from a 50 moving average of approximatly $12.00, to $21.00 in one day. My assumption was, "this stock is going to fall, no way this can last." I wish I could give you the ticker symbol, but it escapes me. Anyhow, I didn't do much research, shorted 2000 shares and waited for the fall. It didn't happen though. At least not when I needed it to in the contest, and I ended up loosing about 4 k on that trade. I might have been right in the long run, but since I was more speculating for the short term, rather than investing for the long term, I lost.

The stock that caught my eye today is GP, which jumped well past its 50 day moving average. It is up over 35% percent today. My competive spirit tells me to jump on this, but I have decided to wait and see what happens over the next few days. If it show support, I will stay away, but if I start to see a slow drop, then look for a short from me on this one. I will let you know my results come next Monday. I am hoping for a short, but I would rather not loose on this trade than take a gamble. I already learned this lesson.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Referrals

2005-11-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

Due to that fact that there has not been much activity as of late in my investopedia account, I am going to have to focus on the “random thoughts” part of the blog for this post.

The issue I wanted to talk about today has to do with a quote that I heard, and wanted to pass along to all of you. It goes as follows, “A referral is the key that unlocks the door of unfamiliarity.” I heard this quote while attending a BNI meeting on Wednesday here in Grand Rapids. In case some of you have never heard of BNI, it is a fairly exciting concept. Referrals are the backbone of BNI. The way that it works is each chapter allows only one member of each field of business; one plumber, one interior decorator, one dentist, one stock broker, one artist, and so on. Once a week, all of the members of the chapter get together and exchange referrals. For example, if I am a dentist and someone approaches me with a back problem, and asks me if I know anyone that might be able to help; I would refer him or her to my chapter’s chiropractor. The beauty of this is that each member has numerous sales people out there for him or her.

Another rule of BNI is that each member must be there each week, and if they are not able to be, they must send a substitute to hand out their referrals and collect from other members. I personally am not a member, but I was subbing for my uncle. It’s a fun time, and I would encourage anyone interested to find out their local chapter, and see if there is someone who is in need of a sub in the future (most members will be) and go check it out. Helps with public speaking, and you meet a lot of people.

As for the quote, I have found that this is very true. As most of us know, it is not what you know, it is who you know. Referrals are a huge part of every business, but they are especially important to someone trying to get started. They make it much more likely for people to take a “chance” with you, no matter what business you may be in. With this in mind, always greet new people with enthusiasm, for you don’t know who they may know.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

A new era begins

2005-11-10T00:12:00.000-05:00

Fun, excitement, and a lot of time and thought can really describe my actions as of late. No, I didn’t get Starbucks and double my money on a position in the same day, but I did set some stuff in motion that will surely take Falkin Trading contests to the next level. First off, we have a brand new forum for all of our forum dwellers from our old online discussion board. The Portal as we call it has a fresh new look, and you best be book marking its main page, http://forums.r3illc.com/index.php.

Secondly, I have been working very closely with our IT director for our company to put up a brand new website for not only our company, but our trading contests. The site will contain everything from online registration forms to official rules and even a hall of fame. The coolest and most exciting part about everything though I’d say is the automated registration system that I am working on getting completed. With the system, once the contestant fills out the registration form and submits it, he or she will automatically be emailed instructions on how to join the contest. This in turn saves me a ton of time and energy, and makes the contest look sweet as all get out. If that isn’t enough to get your blood pumping, the site will also have a testimonial page so you can go read up on what others have to say about the contest.

It is a complete package that I never thought nor dreamed I’d be creating. Our trading contests house contestants from all over the world, and it is always fun talking to someone online 12 AM your time when it is really 12PM there time. I am very grateful to a lot of close companions that have helped me make this a reality. Without them believing and seeing the same vision as me, none of this would be coming about. I thank God for all of his blessings, and I pray twice a day that I may continue to help people learn and educate themselves on investing. It is a passion that will last until the day I die, and if we can rally 80+ contestants worldwide around one contest now, just imagine what we will be housing a year from now…

Closing Thought –

“A moment cherished is a moment that has not perished,
And every moment seen is a moment you are truly free.”

Regards,

To Date: 7,389 Good Days in a Row

2005-11-07T20:33:00.000-05:00

I wanted to start out this week by talking about something seems to be more closely related to psychology, than the stock market. Even though that from a glance, these two topics appear to be distant, most investors come to realize that they are very closely related. In fact, what I am going to talk about is meant to help everyone though hard times, not just with the market, or investing, but in every aspect of life.

What I want to address is summed up very well in the Tim Allen movie, “For richer, for poorer.” In this movie, Tim Allen is a New York big shot, who due to accounting fraud by his main guy, is hiding from the IRS with a family of Amish. Obviously, this leads to many humorous events. In the movie, while the Amish husband is getting ready for bed, his wife asks him something along the line of, “Was it a good day?” His reply is brilliant, he says, “The Lord only makes good days.” I couldn’t agree more. Let me explain why before you jump to any conclusions.

I understand that not everything goes right, I for one don’t think I have every had a day where everything went as planned. This is not the point though. Whether you choose to believe in God or not, this little statement can be of great help. As an uncle of mine always says, “Attitude is EVERYTHING.”

Always remember, no matter what the situation, you are not a victim. By believing the day was intended to be good no matter what, you instantly put yourself in a positive mindset. So the next time something doesn’t feel like its going right, (which will more than likely be tomorrow) just remember that, “The Lord (change if necessary) only makes good days.” This is not living in denial, it is living with a positive mindset, and that makes all the difference.

Good Luck With Everything
Mark Zimmer

A Play with PRM

2005-11-04T07:39:00.000-05:00

The latest trade that I have made in my investopedia account is I bought 8000 shares of PRM. This trade is much different than past trades with this stock. In past contests, this was one stock that always seemed to "roll" for me. What I mean by "roll" is that when you look at the closing prices over time on a chart, it looks like a wave. This stock in the past always seemed to be a good buy at around $3.90, and a sell at around $4.20. This stock would "roll" between these two prices, and I would usually make profits of $500-$1000 each time. Not huge money in the contest, but a nice little amount for very little research. I would make this trade when I had very little time, but still wanted to do something.

Now when I bought this stock, I bought it at 2.13, a large drop from last time. I am planning to hold on to this one a little longer this time. Today it closed at $2.15; once it hits $2.25, I will put in a sell limit, and move it up each day the stock makes gains. This is what I was doing at the start of the contest with shorting. I would try to have my cover limit right above where the price was, and slowly drop it down as the stock fell. The idea behind this is if the stock made sudden gains, I would not loose. The trick of course is to have your limit high enough to allow for market fluctuations, and this was not always the case. It is also important to have a stock with higher volume, so you can get out when you want. Anyhow, I am now going to try this with PRM, while holding it long. As always, time will tell if I was right.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

New Positions, and a live trade

2005-11-03T15:14:00.000-05:00

I made a few purchases this morning right when that market opened. The Market lately has been on a tear, showing accumulation days three out of the last four days, and is on pace to perhaps yet another one today. I decided to buy big names in some great performing sectors: Bldg-heavy Construction and Elec-Semiconductor Mfg. I picked a 1,000 shares of NVDA, MRVL, and SIRF, then picked up 2,500 AMD early on. These aren’t anything as big as my bet against BOT (which by the way has run up to over $120 a share in two days since I covered the rest of my shorts at $95.85), but still are worth noting.

I also made a speculative buy in my live APEX account, buying a few thousand shares of GV, which is also in the heavy construction industry group. I haven’t done much live trading as of late, and this small penny stock is very volatile which is very much to my liking. The bet really comes as earnings are going to be posted next week I believe. My limit order got filled at $.87, and the stock has potential to double that price in only a few trading days. Some of you might remember me speaking of a company called TGC, which I tried to get into around $.22 a share but failed over the summer. Anyway, the stock ran up to over $.90 a share last month, and it just added to my excitement for these kinds of plays.

Trading with real money is a different ball game from trading in the simulators, but there are some similarities. The biggest difference between the two is getting into the stock. as most of the time (depending on what you buy) you can’t just get in or out at the price listed. Market makers and specialists are hard to deal with sometimes, and especially with stocks that only trade a few hundred thousand shares a day, you are in for some fun. The biggest similarity is in placing specialty orders. Just like in the simulator when you place limit orders, stop limits, etc., you do so in a live account. It really is strikingly similar, and once you get the hang of it in your simulator, you will have no problems figuring it out in a live account.

Well, that is all I have for today. I am interested to see where the market closes today, and I am looking forward to watching my new positions. The market is showing its true colors, a truly unpredictable place where the bulls and bears duke it out for a place in the gains column.

Closing Quote – “Learners inherit the earth, while the learned, find themselves beautifully equipped, to deal with a world, that no longer exists.” – N/A

Keep it simple, stupid

2005-11-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

My account now has over 50% growth from when the contest began almost a month ago. I am very pleased with my results over such a short period of time, and I credit my success to KISS; Keep it simple stupid!! I have seen quite a few investors try to tie in tons of different factors, lines, graphs, charts, formulas, etc. into finding a successful trade to make. After over three years of successful trading, I have come to find that as time goes on, my strategy is growing simpler and simpler, not more complex. Though this may be confusing to some people, the main factors I take into consideration when making a trade (in order of importance) are:

The overall Market (NASDAQ and S & P 500 only) – Based on Accumulation and Distribution, I can get a good read on its overall standing.

Where the stock is relative to the 50-day Moving Average – A horribly undervalued indicator in my mind, this line is the key to a lot of my great successes not only in my simulators but also in real life.

Accumulation/Distribution of the stock – If the market is bullish, find a stock under accumulation, if the market is bearish, look for a lot of distribution; simple as that.

News – What is going on within the stock? When will earnings be posted next? Is there anything big that may cause the stock to jump one way or another?

Now, though there are other factors I take into consideration when making a decision on a stock, these are the greatest in my mind. At the age of 15 when I started learning how to trade, I looked through literally tens of thousands of charts. I strived to get an overall feel for how the market works and why stocks would move in the patterns they did. One day I hope to write a book on all of this, but for now this is what I can share.

Putting a cap on this blabbing, strive to keep it simple!! Try new things, experiment with new strategies, but don’t overwhelm yourself with too much. The basic decision making skills you apply in every day living can be applied to the stock market to make huge gains. And, like anything you confront in every day living, there is no failure in trying.

I covered half my short position in BOT, and I will most likely cover the rest by the end of the day. This will put me at most likely just over $150,000 in account worth, and I will go looking for the next play. The market has had two accumulation days the past two days, and it is very much in a strong rally. I wonder if I will be buying or selling short next time around…

To the future,

It Just Doesn't Work

2005-10-31T08:41:00.000-05:00

I wanted to take a step away from the market for post here and talk about something else that I think affects all of us in one way or the other. The issue that I want to address is the lottery. It never ceases to amaze me how many people rely on the lottery as THE way to become rich. This would not really bother me if it were just one idea of many, since the chance is there, but this is usually their only idea. When I ask them if they have any other ideas, they either say "no" or something like, "become a doctor." I am not writing this to down talk these people, for this is never my goal. What I am going to use here is an analogy that I came up with and use to explain why I don't think the lottery will make you rich/financially free.

I have decided that I want to run in an Olympic marathon more than anything else in life. I believe it is my destiny, and without achieving this, I won't ever feel like I gave it my all. Now there are two main routes that I have identified that can get me to my goal. One, I can take part in this program that I walk almost every day. Everyday that I walk, I have the chance to be put in a drawing that will get me to the Olympics, no questions asked. Since I already take part in this program, and it gives me everything I need, this won’t be much harder. I will just have to walk a little bit further everyday. The other option I have is to walk the same amount as I do everyday do provide me with what I need. Then, as soon as I get home, I would go out running. I would run as much as I could, and do this day after day. The only problem with this plan is there is nothing saying that I will get to the Olympics, it just depends on my own determination. The first plan at least gives me the chance, even though I am competing against all of the other walkers in the drawing. I decide to go with plan one. I walk a little more each day to prepare for my marathon, and everyday get entered in the drawing. Occasionally, other people win the drawing and get their chance to run in the Olympics, but I am persistent and keep walking.
Finally, I win! I can’t believe my luck; I am going to the Olympics to run in the marathon. I am feeling good. When the race comes around, I realize one horrible fact, I can’t run that far. I have spent all my time walking to get here, and thus am out of shape for running. All I would have to do is run and finish this race and I would feel complete, but I don’t know how. I am so close but yet so far.

In this analogy, I compare becoming wealthy to running in an Olympic marathon (I do this because everyone has ran at one time or another and thus can relate). I walk (work) everyday to become wealthy. Suddenly, I win the drawing (lottery) and I have a lot of money (get to the Olympics). All I have to do is invest (run) and I am at my goal. The problem is that I have spent all of my time working, and no time learning. I won the lottery, but I didn’t know what to do with my money since I never practiced. So in the end, I returned to where I was. This is why I feel that the lottery is not a good investment idea. Most people who win don’t know what to do, so they end up right where they were before hand. The only difference is they are usually unhappier.

I seem to have better luck explaining this to people when I use this analogy. Feel free to critique it as you wish, and use it as you need.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

BOT takes me to the top

2005-10-28T02:37:00.000-04:00

Being short 1,600 shares of BOT, I am putting my whole contest portfolio on the line. My average cost on the position (I shorted two 800 share blocks) is around $128, which is pretty close to its all time high of $135. The stock was up yesterday but closed towards the low of the day (closed at $127), and I knew today would be a great day. Not only did the stock break past its support point (which was $120 intra-day), it just surged downward setting a low of $113. It closed at $118.40, but though it rallied five points, I am still feeling good right now. The gains today were good enough to take me into first place overall, as I added about $15,000 to my account value. My account value as of the close today is $125,287.50; let the good times roll.

Other side notes:

My shorts on ABP are worth $1.55 per contract; I paid $1.20 for them (this can change quickly though).

The market had a bad day, as the NASDAQ gave up over 36 points, and the S & P had a distribution day.

Closing Thought – “The road to success is always under construction.”

Regards,

CNR, Never a dull moment

2005-10-27T23:16:00.000-04:00

I wanted to start out by saying that the feedback on my last post was appreciated, it is ALWAYS good to receive feedback, so thank you.

I have always enjoyed these contests that we organize/take part in for one main reason, the total lack of emotion when I trade. I feel that this is probably the most important thing that any stock investor can learn, but it is easier said than done. Sure, you can learn to read all the charts, recognize all the signs, but if you still allow your emotions in the way, what is the point? This is probably the main reason I take part in these contests. Although they are a great way to meet people, practice "systems", and just expand your knowledge base, they are also probably one of the best ways to get your emotions in check. I personally am quite competitive in this contest, so I do care how I am doing, but not so much that I allow my emotions to get in the way. I feel that by seeing the changes (good or bad) in my account day in and day out, it will make me a stronger investor, emotionally speaking.

This brings us to the stock that I have decided to buy long, rather than short like I have been doing in the past. While, I am getting a grasp on shorting, but by no means do I consider myself an expert. The reason for this trade is actually pretty simple, CNR is a fun stock to watch. It is quite close to the minimum price that is allowed in the contest of one dollar. CNR usually jumps around between $1.00 and $2.00. Another aspect of this stock that I like its volume, which is usually around 2 mil per day. What this leads to is a stock that you are able to receive great leverage on, and you don't have to tie up that much money in order to see some results. I so far have took a loss on the first day ( down $.10) but I am going to continue to hold. My reasoning behind this goes back to the first paragraph of working on emotional intelligence. This is not an excuse for taking a lose, but a way to force myself to hang on to something that I fell will mostly like jump up near $2 before our contest end the first part of January. Time will tell if I am right.

The main lesson that I am trying to teach here is don't forget to work on emotional intelligence as well as your knowledge base. I don't feel that people are forgetting this, but it is always good to be reminded of the goal that exists, which is learning.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Shorting Like Stocks

2005-10-25T21:44:00.000-04:00

What I have been working on for the majority of this contest is getting a firm understanding on stock shorting. There was a time in the not so distant past that I had no grasp on it at all. In this contest, all of my trades, but my first one (which I made a quick gain a boucing SIRI) have been shorts. One of the things that I have been playing around with is finding a few stocks that are closly related and shorting them all at the same time. The idea behind this is that if there is big news affecting these like stocks, it should affect them relativly in the same mannor

The three stocks that I worked with at the start of the contest were KBH, STV, and TOL. All three of these are building companies and the issue that was really affecting them was the hurricane season that is now coming to an end. All three of these stocks performed very well over the summer months, and when the summer started to end, they started to fall. I admit that this might be a stretch for finding a stock to short, but the idea is to find a gerneral pattern, not something that is going to happen right now. These stocks are now starting to get out of pattern at the moment, so I have covered my position. I still am holding 500 short of STV, but that is all at the moment. I am now working on finding another set, so look forward to a post on a few picks in the near future.

I guess the main lesson here is if you are doing all the work researching one stock, researching a similiar one might not require much more effort.

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Taking Profits. BOT the next BIDU?

2005-10-25T18:45:00.000-04:00

Where do I Begin? It has been a few days since my last post, but I am pretty pumped to have Mark on board. As the blog continues to run, new ideas continue to come in and I am sure some will come to light down the line. We are establishing a team, the Falkin team, which we hope can gain some respect here down the line, haha. The trading contest is a great place to find and help people learn more about the market, and I love every minute of it. It seems that there is an increasing number of contestants climbing into the gains category overall. By my count there are now 22, and there are a lot that are right on the brim.

Getting my contest simulator portfolio updated, I have made only a couple moves since last week. I covered both my big shorts on ARD and NGAS, between the two yielding $5098.98 and $114.28 respectively. I lost $1,458.98 on my WRES put options. Always remember to take into account how much time is left before the option expires. I made the mistake of buying the options with only a week left until expiration. Most contracts go by the month, and will expire after the third Friday of the month. My other two put option plays were bought out till November, so I am still good on those for a while. So, overall, after these three closures I pushed my simulator portfolio up $3,754.28, or about 3.5%.

Stepping into the next play, I took a short break to rethink and find new plays that may be available. Yesterday, I went ahead with my next play, which was to short BOT, the Chicago Board of Trade Holdings Inc. The holding company went public just last week, and has run up every day to a new high close yesterday of $130.50. I shorted 800 shares at $131.26, and today shorted another 800 as the stock fell at $124.40 (the stock closed today at $124.99). The thinking behind this play is simple, as I believe this will be another BIDU. You may recall BIDU, which out of the shoot ran up to over $150 a share (IPO was $27) to fall all the way back down to the low $70s in just a few weeks. As always time tells the story; so far so good.

Stepping away from the simulator and into my live trading account, I still am holding 2,000 shares of NXXI. Just to recap, I bought and just about doubled my money on the company as FDA results for its leading drug came out good and the stock ran up from my purchase price of $.68 to a high in the $1.30s ( I sold out half my position at $.94 and $1.32, and bought a small but nice stake of 2,000 at $1.01; the stock closed today at $.92). I haven’t taken advantage of using the margin in the account I just obtained approval to manage in, as I still feel I am learning the ropes (my APEX account does not have margin approval).

Overall I am content, and I still am continuing to plow as much information in my head as I can. I bought a new book last week by Will O’Neil, “How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short” and it is full of new knowledge. An excellent read so far, and I am surprised at just how packed it is with charts upon charts with live past examples of where to properly sell a stock short. I am going to have to head on over to Starbucks, settle down with a drink, and really get into it. I hope it can help make my writing better and my calls more accurate. That is all for now as it is time to cook myself some dinner. Hope everyone is having a great week.

Closing Thought - "You are only as good as your word. Don't give your word if you aren't going to give yourself."

Regards,

An Introduction of Myself

2005-10-24T19:35:00.000-04:00

I wanted to start out by sending a big thank you to Blain Reinkensmeyer for asking me to take part in this blog. I have known Blain for about 8 months now and over that time I have developed a great respect for him. He is a wonderful teacher, and I am looking forward to working with him.

I am going to use this first post to tell you all about myself. I feel that this is important so that you will understand where I am coming from in future posts. As Blain mentioned, my name is Mark Zimmer. I am 20 years old, and was born and raised in Marne, Michigan, which is just west of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am currently attending Baker College in Muskegon for a degree in Business administration. I am in my second year of studies there.

I have always felt that having to much to do is better than having not enough. So following this motto, I try to stay quite busy out of school as well. I spend the majority of my working time as a builder. I am an independent sub-contractor and mostly do work for about four main building companies. I also run a recycling company called Treecycle. Currently, we only deal with paper (which also includes magazines, cardboard, and phone books) but hope to expand our collection base in the future. I have also just recently started working on flipping a piece of property with a few other investors. This is the first of such deals for me, but am eagerly looking forward to learning. Currently, my main contribution to helping other people learn is working with the stock investing contest that Blain has talked about. I am the head of prize distribution, and also an assistant to Blain in other areas.

In my free time, I enjoy pretty much any activity that involves requires being outside. Some of my favorite activities are backpacking, bow hunting, ice/roller hockey, and tae kwon doe. I am also an avid reader, and enjoy spending time with family and friends.

What I am really hoping to bring to this blog is another view point on some of the issues discussed, as well as some lessons I have learned in my experience. I don't consider myself a worthy opponent to Blain when it comes to stock investing, but feel that I do have experience in areas that he lacks. Hopefully, we can together provide a little more rounded blog. In closing, I look forward to hearing any feedback from you, and hope you enjoy reading. As I usually like to close...

Good Luck With Everything!

Mark Zimmer

Mark Zimmer joins up

2005-10-23T18:03:00.000-04:00

I would like to take this opportunity to say that Mark Zimmer has joined me in writing for this blog. Starting tomorrow, October 23rd, you can look for Mark’s posts. Our disbursement will most likely follow this routine:

Monday – Mark
Tuesday – Me
Wednesday – Mark
Thursday – Me
Friday – Mark
Saturday – Me
Sunday – Guest Writer or off day

I hope you enjoy our new added input and always

To the future,

Exxon falls, and I climb back to the black

2005-10-19T11:05:00.000-04:00

I didn’t get to write yesterday, and I regret it since it was such a good rebound day for my simulator. The oil and gas industry basically got hit hard as major leaders fell sharply. (XOM) Exxon Mobile fell on heavy selling, as well as XLE, the spider tracking the smart select oil group in the S & P, also had a big distribution day. What were the results for me? I made almost all of my money back from Monday, and a little more, pushing my account back to around $104,000 and a strong 3rd place. Why third? I am trailing to Ailun, who shorted XLE big time and is reaping the rewards of it right now, and my buddy Mark Zimmer, who is sitting with about $116,000 in account worth. There are 68 competitors in the contest, 45 of which who are active and have made at least on trade in their portfolios.

So, after yesterday’s sour performance in the market, we come to today which thus far is pretty bad (Oil area speaking here). Oil is down over a point, XLE just hit new lows on the day about three minutes ago, and my bets five bets are all red which means green for me. My $80,000+ bet against ARD is proving huge today, as the stock is down over 7% (down $1.66 right now). My puts on ABP, PQUE, and WRES are also all in the money now which is great. I am almost fully margined out with these trades on my 100k starting portfolio, and I look forward to seeing the downtrend continue for the rest of the day.

Looking down the line Wilma, the next hurricane, is growing in the Pacific and could prove to be a major threat to oil. With this in mind it is important that to keep in touch with news and play my cards right. I think it would be great to see oil back under $60 a barrel. As I went out to Starbucks last night, I saw $2.599 gas which was a lovely site.

I am going to hold all of my positions and sit tight today and see what happens. I will probably post after the close since I did not post yesterday. Later in the week I will do some more searching and see what plays are available for next week. The housing sector may be an area to get into this Christmas season (as in go bearish on) because if the Fed’s do in fact hike up rates, they are doing it partially to slow down the real estate market.
Regards,

A hard day holds a brighter future

2005-10-17T16:43:00.000-04:00

The market had an interesting day today as the NASDAQ just closed up about five and a half points; nothing to jump around over though. Thursday and Friday, though both up days last week (NASDAQ), are not enough to signal a true rally. The volume has declined each up day, and we have yet to see a big accumulation day in October. I am still bearish overall in the market, and I look to see some resistance as the NASDAQ nears its 200-day MA.

With the market looking bleak, my bearish sentiment of the Oil and Gas Us Explorations industry group grows as well. But, looks can be deceiving, and I got hit hard today in my simulator. My biggest bets from last week gapped up early today, turning my account into dirt. My simulator account opened at around $106,000, but now sits at $98,416.95. In total I lost almost $8,000 in value, and it is only Monday. I am still holding all of my five positions from last week (got Puts on three companies, and two companies I am short on), and am hoping tomorrow holds a brighter future.

I want to end today with a couple predictions:

The NASDAQ has shown no signs of rallying, and I predict its bearish trend to continue into November.

The Oil&Gas Us Explorations and Productions Industry Group isn’t going anywhere fast, and I also predict the bearish trends to continue till at least early November.

Google rallied today, closing up $8.55, but did so on lower volume. With Distribution surrounding this stock I am a better against it. Though unpredictable, I don’t see Google above $300 for too long.

I also want to end here making a comment about crediting people’s work. I don’t believe in crediting work without someone proving themselves. There are two reasons I write in this blog every trading day: to help people, and to earn my own keep. As I go forth I will start to come out with more and more of my predictions. I hope that anyone who reads them takes note and credits me based on them. I put all my success from the past years trading live aside, as it is irrelevant to me. What matters to me is what I predict here now today, and how right I am. I hope that people can learn through my successes and failures, and become better traders in the end.

My closing belief - Don’t credit anyone unless credit is deserved. People will talk the talk all day, but walking the walk requires skill. Talking about the finish line is not the same as crossing the finish line.

To the future,

A wild day and a few big bets against the best

2005-10-13T17:56:00.000-04:00

What a wild day it was today in the market. Things only got nuttier as the day went on and I had a riot watching everything unravel. AAPL ended up rallying four and a half points, making me wonder why I didn’t hold my 500 shares from yesterday. The big mover was XLE, a spider that replicates the energy select sector of the S & P 500. It fell hard early on, and ended up closing at $47.66, down about a buck and a quarter. The big thing to note here though is that one of the contestants in our trading contest was betting such a fall, controlling 70,000 shares in puts that have a $45 target price slapped on them. Needless to say the puts ran up almost 50% today, and he is now sitting in 1st place out of 64 contestants.

I did fairly well today overall, selling my one share of Berkshire Hathaway (this is all simulator activity), and making an intra-day play on MWRK for a quick $3k. Most of my trades for next week though are bigger bets against the oil and gas US explorations Industry group. The Industry group is currently number one overall (there are 197), but everything and I mean everything in the sector got hit hard today. I went through every stock at the end of the day looking for anything that was “holding up”, and bet against it. I bought puts on ABP, KUG, QQW, and shorted 3,000 shares of NGAS and 3,500 shares of ARD. Out of 88 stocks in the group, these were some of the last still trading above their 50 Moving Averages (50 MA), and I don’t forsee them there too much longer. All of the leaders got hit extra hard today, and it only seems that the trend will continue. In my case I hope it does, for if I am right I should be able to push my portfolio 5 to 10% higher.

Beyond the bearish calls in the leading industry group, I am still trying to get a grasp on what is going on in the market. October apparently is always a rough time of the year, almost always a sell off month because of a crash in the past. But, even with history playing into the equation, it still seems to be tough to figure out. I think most of the sentiment is being drawn from the Feds expecting to hike rates a possible half point next meeting, since the economy is still growing and needs to be slowed down. But, hiking rates is and has never been liked by the market, and I think we are seeing that right now.

Even though things have been rough, I have loved the game even more. Finally understanding margin and betting against the market, I feel confident in my abilities to make gains in these troublesome times. With my success in the simulators, I sold my Dad on letting me manage part of his portfolio to trade options with. I don’t have margin approval in my APEX account, and after my last disappointing trade this week, I am comfortable sitting in mostly cash. The only stock I hold now is NXXI, which I doubled my portfolio on a while ago after its leading drug obtained FDA approval (I bought it at $.69 and sold at $.95 and $1.32).

Time will tell where I end up here in this market, but I still say let the good times roll. With the ability to make money when the market is going up and down, I feel ready for anything. I am sitting in 3rd place in our trading contest, still trying to catch my partner Mark and now Ailun for the lead. The whole environment is just awesome, and the forums have been getting more and more exciting every day. I leave for a camping trip tomorrow morning, so I won’t be posting again till Sunday or Monday. Let the bearish trends continue tomorrow and next week.

To the future,

ACMR is over, but I think I am in love with margin

2005-10-12T11:26:00.000-04:00

As I start today I want to make a comment on change. Change can be a great thing in your life if you are willing to accept it, go with it, and try. When the door of opportunity opens a crack, I don’t just peer through and try to guess what is around the corner, I hit that door so hard that is swings and breaks off the hinges. Jumping at opportunities is something I love to do, and the risk is rarely on my mind.

With that being said, I woke up this morning hoping for something good to happen in ACMR, because even though it’s only a few hundred bucks loss capped, it's still a loss. The stock opened up down, of course, and it seems that I just can’t win with it. My stop loss is at $15.90, and whether it be an act of the stock gods teasing me or something I am just not aware of, the stock hit $15.90 on the dot marking the current low of the day. Now basically accepting my $274 loss, I checked my order status to find out the order is still good, and I am still in my full position. What the heck? I am all dressed in black ready to close the coffin and here I am still in the position?

The only explanation I found is that the stock hit $15.90, and bounced quickly (could market makers have been trying to pick up my shares, hmm…), which is what it did. Two minutes after the hit the stock was up over $16, which is definitely fowl play in my mind. Now watching it here an hour and some odd minutes later, it is sitting in a range of $15.96 - $16, the only problem is that at $16 there is a ton of resistance.

Stepping away from ACMR though, I made some other calls today in my simulators that I should note. I shorted RNWK, which ran up some 30% yesterday, BRCM, which had a heavy distribution day yesterday, bought 500 AAPL, which fell heavily in after hours because IPOD sales weren’t as expected, and had Oct. puts on NDAQ, which was horribly extended over the 50-day moving average. I am green all over the place, RNWK is down 1.57%, BRCM down 1.48%, AAPL is up over a point where I got in, good for $500+ (10:58 AM update: BRCM hits new lows, I’m finally out for a $274 loss), and my NDAQ puts are up 50% as the stock is down 3.45% right now.

So though I lost on ACMR, It feels good to be up in my simulator. I am working on shorting and options before I go for the glory and add margin to my APEX account. I never really imagined myself trading options and shorting in real life at 19, but what the hell, the only person holding me back is myself. I have found that my trading goes far out beyond the money aspect, yes it feels good doing a $500 pop in one day, hell I’ve done five digit runs in a single day, but the symbolism resembles life in many ways. Winning and losing are all based on your attitude; some of my greatest losses have been my greatest wins, and visa-versa.

Well the day is still young, and I feel upbeat as I get to watch a few of these stocks play out. I am looking at AAPL coming close to breaking $50 a share and standing its ground, but NDAQ is has showed some intra-day strength climbing to $29.51 (it has a high of $30.38 on the day). I am leading the way in close competition with my buddy Mark in one of our group simulators, but in our main contest I am still in 2nd to who else but Mr. Mark Zimmer, who has a demanding lead. O man, NDAQ takes a 15 second free fall from that $29.41 to now $28.91, $28.80…$28.70… $28.40… got to love those options…

Regards,

ACMR makes it an interesting week

2005-10-11T14:24:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning just before 9:30 so I could make a play at the market open on ACMR. I spent a good hour and a half looking at charts last night looking for a quick point play. What I liked about ACMR was purely technical. The market has been getting hit pretty hard and the stock has taken a hit as well, falling pretty far. But, the big factor here was the volume on these falling days, and to my surprise I saw only one distribution day last week on October 6th. I also like the spread there is away from the 50-day moving average. Companies will sometimes take a quick movement upwards to close that gap.

Either way, I found the chart to best fit what I was looking for and at the open I put a limit in for 250 shares at $16.90. Early on the stock took a quick upswing, and I only could get in 32 shares or some small increment at my price. This isn’t any good for me because as the stock climbed above $17 I didn’t want to cancel the rest of my order, that would be $10.99 down the drain, so I let it sit (looking back now I should have set the order to “all or none, AON” because that way I either get my whole order filled or it doesn’t fill at all). I went back to sleep (this whole process took maybe 10 minutes), and awoke at around noon to the stock all the way down at $16.60.

Now I went to sleep thinking maybe it’ll run to $18 and I’ll make $10 off the deal, but finding it down (my remaining order got filled at $16.90) wasn’t anything exciting. The question then becomes what will it do on the day, and where is the intra-day support? The intra-day support seems to be at $16.60, which as I type this (2:12pm) just got broken. A distribution day seems to be at hand, and I am puzzled to say the least. I am going to put a stop loss at $15.90, which if it hits then I will accept a loss of about $274 after costs. Watching the buying behavior though I am still bullish on the stock, and I still feel I got a 50-50 shot for the stock to climb to $18 by the end of the week (so in three trading days).

Watching and waiting is now the game, but in the end it is just another day of fun for me. I bought some October 30 puts on NDAQ for almost nothing, betting a $1,000 that the stock is over extended and will retract naturally. This trade was done in my simulator, as I have not added margin approval to my Ameritrade Apex account yet. Oil is on the rise again, hopefully this doesn’t weigh on the even market we have so far today.
Regards,

Stepping back in

2005-10-10T12:34:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten about this blog, putting it to rest after the business needed cash to stay afloat. I found that patent attorneys are great people and can be very useful legally, but man are they a pricey bunch. I am bringing back the blog now to be a place where I can type my daily thoughts on the market, talk of any plays I have in mind, and create a better image for myself.

Image is a very important part of the market, for why should we take someone's advice when they have not walked the walk? I think the concept of earning respect in the stock market is a microcosm of life itself. It is good to be back, and I feel good about the future.

Regards,

Changes and a new path

2005-05-27T12:50:00.000-04:00

As you have seen there hasn't been a post in the 10k portfolio for about a week now, I want to apoligize for this inconsistency. As time has carried on and I went and saw my parents for my birthday I have come to realize a few things. My path is changing in the sense that I can no longer apply the same amount of time to doing this passion, trading. My brother and I are working hard to apply some of our ideas and make them a reality. My time committment is turning towards planning financially for the months ahead. A good chunk of the 10k Portfolio is going to be deposited into our business account to pay for upcoming expenses. I apoligize for this news but know that my abilities to share and help will still definately be intact. I still love answering all emails that come my way and love reading them. I will post more about what exactly is going on as soon as I know more. All trading through the 10k portfolio is going to be suspended though for now. If you have any questions or concerns just post up a comment or send me over an email. Thanks to everyone who has posted, sent me an email, talked to me, etc. and just have helped to make this a helpful and useful blog. As I look around and talk to most of you guys I can see how far you all have come and can't wait till I see you guys trading with your own money. Look for a post next week,

To the future,

The weekend

2005-05-20T11:39:00.000-04:00

The stock has been hovering around $.22 - $.24 and I want to get in at $.22. With the volume so dry lately is definately a waiting game to get in but hopefully something will come around soon. To go and just place an order for 40,000+ shares would get me in maybe 1,000 at $.23 and the rest at $.24 I'd guess (with orders showing as of 11:42 AM). I have a limit order to buy 45,000 shares at $.22 that has not be filled yet. This weekend I will most likely not post, and early next week I will be out of town. I get back Wednesday so at the latest check for a post Thursday. I apoligize for the lack of activity in the blog this week and hopefully I will relay a position to you next week. Have a great weekend and always

To the future,

TGC, putting the 10k portfolio to work

2005-05-18T21:51:00.000-04:00

I apoligize for my lack of posts as of late for there really hasn't been much to post about in regards to me taking a new position. While GM bonds are getting turned to junk, oil prices are falling below $48, and Dell is on a tear, Tengasco Inc is sitting at $.21 a share and doing well, nothing. As an exploration company of oil and natural gas in Tennessee and Kansas, Tengasco Inc is tiny in size with a market cap as of today of $10 million. The company jumped out at me as I was going through my penny stock list (obtained from the search I commented on Sunday) because of its current insider attention. SC Fundamental Value Fund, L.P. has been buying this stock every chance it can get accumulating over one million shares since April 12th. The company has 48.8 million shares, with SC Fundamental Value Fund, L.P. owning over four million. What I am going to do now is simple copy paste a post I made in an investor message board:

"What I also see in their buying behavior which I didn't go into detail on yesterday was the "value buying" I had suggested. By looking at the intra-day charts and the days they bought their shares it can be seen that they didn't buy the shares outright. They simply took shares off of people selling their positions. Now, what does this mean? Well, thinking about it, they are value buying becuase they aren't driving the stock price up to get in. They are quitely taking a position without the stock price moving very much either way. The question I then ask myself is when and why? They basically are now out of debt which I honestly cannot confirm with stats. But, according to what I do have (yahoo finance) they had debt of 3.18 million until the recent sale of the land in Kansas, http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050309/95879_1.html.I am going to quote part of the third paragraph to promote some thought,

'The net proceeds of the sale were applied to reduce the principal outstanding on the Company's promissory note dated May 18, 2004 bearing interest at 12% per annum and payable to Dolphin Offshore Partners, L.P. ("Dolphin") from the original amount of $2.5 million to $150,000 as of March 4, 2005. Dolphin is the largest holder of the Company's common stock and Peter E. Salas, controlling person of Dolphin, is a Director of the Company.'

Peter Salas (or Dolphin I am assuming) owns 16,412,452 shares as of last year March (Yahoo finance major holders). Though that is a year ago I state this to promote a belief that the company is not driving itself into the ground. It is getting rid of debt now to promote what I believe would be some type of new financing or new move to grow the company. And, since then, the 2nd largest shareholder, SC Fund. Value Fund has been buying shares every chance they get without inflating the price. Furthermore, if you go back to March (2 months ago) you will have noticed that the third largest shareholder Neil Koffler (2,445,160 as of 24-Mar-05; "Major Holders" yahoo finance) bought almost 400,000 shares in three consecutive days OPEN MARKET:

24-Mar-05 KOFFLER, NEIL H.Member 200,000 Purchase at $0.2767 per share. $55,340
23-Mar-05 KOFFLER, NEIL H.Member 95,000 Purchase at $0.2757 per share. $26,191
22-Mar-05 KOFFLER, NEIL H.Member 85,000 Purchase at $0.2785 per share. $23,672

With the sale of property in March and this consistant value buying of SC Fund Value I have enough information to speculate on some sort of move in the future. How big of a move and what kind of move? I am not sure, but with the looks of it if this company could get a big financing deal or be attractive to get bought out you could see a nice price jump. Any other ideas? The question I asked earlier and still ponder is when? How soon would something like this happen? Since I found the company on Sunday I have been trying to take a position without letting the Market Makers kill me on price but have had no luck. The last few days the stock hasn't traded more than 12,000 shares I believe it is. Anyway, I put a limit order for 45,000 shares at $.22 today and so if you see some volume tomorrow it may be me just a heads up. I am going to try and dig for more on everything but if anyone can bring any new thoughts or info to the table that would be great. Hopefully the insiders know something we don't; have a great night."

This should basically cover my thinking behind the company and what I think could potentially happen. I will post up my position if I do in fact get in tomorrow sometime. This is by far the riskiest trade I have done with the 10k portfolio and hopefully will not be the last trade of the 10k portfolio. With a 45,000 share postion each penny the stock moves will be $450 in our out of my pocket; I am sure you can see how the risk/reward works here. Speculation can be the death of you or if you are good at a great way to make alot of cash. Personally, I feel that putting $10,000 on the line for something like this is worth every penny of it, and time will tell how profitable it really is. There will be some sort of rememberance out of this one I can gaurantee you, so sit back and enjoy the show.

To the future,

Penny Stocks, the playground for the nuts

2005-05-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

I am sure everyone has heard of penny stocks, or companies that are trading under $1 a share. Everyone has heard about success stories, great tales of investors making millions off these. After all, the more they go up, the more you make right? Well, what people may not know is that penny stocks are the riskiest type of trade you can do on the market today. Day trading is one thing, messing around with companies that are worth pennies is another. Furthermore, you can take it even one step further by putting your whole account on line. The most risk, the most reward, right? Well, this week I am going to attempt to pull of a big trade, which will make my account or could potentially put the 10k portfolio out of business for a while.

To give a perspective of how volatile these bad boys really are, I will try and give some examples of what I have seen and been through. The biggest run up I have ever been a part of was a 623% move in literally three days. Sadly, I did not run it for its whole move, but I did get 100% returns out of part of it. In one day I ran a stock for a 20% move, that one was sold out during food and cultures class in high school. I have ran a stock up to a 70% gain to see it come down in less than two weeks to a 20% loss; those are no fun. The worst I have ever been a part of was a 80% gain down to about about a 60% loss. You can loose your rear or be having a nice dinner celebrating a victory within a few days or even a few hours; but that's all part of the game with penny stocks.

What makes these stocks so price volatile? Well, first off there is no institutional or mutual fund ownership. Usually you will not see too much instituional representation until a stock passes $5 a share, but every stock is different. You also hold more shares for your money, so instead of buying maybe a few hundred or maybe a thousand you are buying now 10s of thousands. If someone decides to buy or sell big; it can usually move the stock. What is the strategy for buying these types of stocks? There are a few important things to look at and watch for:

1. Companies getting heavily shorted
2. Companies going under
3. Companies with very low avg daily volume.

What I am going to be looking for are companies that are:

1. Possibly undervalued
2. Trading as much as volume per day as possible
3. As big as possible (usually massive companies can hit quick downturns, and also quick upturns).
4. Are in a favorable technical pattern

Any advantage I can possibly have when taking a position I want, EOM. I am going to do searches for stocks under $1 a share avergaging at least 100,000 shares a day (which may not be enough) and that are in well performing industry groups. The market still isn't predictable or favorable right now which really isn't a positive but what can you do. When it comes to finding companies with "Great earnings growth, sales, etc" you can basically go try to find a needle in a haystack, because you probably won't find any. News is a huge factor that can swing one of these puppies one way or another, so I will also be looking for any speculative news coming out that could be big. I am going to try to stay away from companies that are indefinately going under for that's the last thing I want, is to loose everything. I have traded pretty low priced stocks before in the 10k portfolio, but this trade is going to set a new record (hopefully a memorable one, haha).

I will post later on what I find and my thinking behind the company. Check for some options later on. Have a great afternoon,

Wednesday's Lesson, Intra-Day Buying

2005-05-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

When you have a stock picked out and you want to get it during the day to get the best price, what time should you buy? The fact of the matter is is that it depends on what type of trade you really are doing. The ones I have been performing have been reliant on every penny for every penny is a good portion of money. Furthermore, I have been doing volatile trades where things can quickly change. If I am buying for a 2 year hold, do you think I care about where I get in as critically as a day hold? After the ARDI mix up I realized that I had made a basic mistake that I knew I shouldn't have; don't buy in the early morning hours, especially with a downtrending stock. The type of trade ARDI was was like trying to catch a falling knife. Image someone holding a knife in the air, you put ur hand out and without moving it upwards or downwards u try to catch the knife as it falls. Well, think about it, if you miss the knife then the knife hits the floor, if you catch the knife by the handle then you are ok, but what if you try to catch it and cut yourself on the blade? Same thing with trying to catch stocks that are on a downswing; you have to catch it perfectly. If I think a stock has bottomed out at $5 a share, I buy in, but the stock then runs all the way down to $3, well did I catch that knife? What if I buy in that same stock at $5, but it then trails down to $4.80, well then I caught it but I am bleeding, should I just let go? In the end, unless you catch it perfectly at the handle you are always in a tough call situation. ARDI I caught it at what I thought was the handle, in fact I was literally maybe a centimeter off, I started to bleed (maybe $.02 or so) then let go. ARDI had a support level of $2.50 which is where I sold out; that day its low was $2.47. Now the stock is at $2.77 which is what I originally predicted. Since I didn't know how far down it was going to go, I decided to let go and heal my wound.

I hope you can apply this way of thinking to your own trading one day or in your next trade because it is important. So many people (including myself) will think, "Hey, this bad boy has bottomed out, it is so cheap it is bound to go up." ERRR, wrong. You NEVER KNOW what a stock will actually do. Between news, trading sharks, and Money Makers, it is always a gambling game, remember that. I only lost about $100 letting go, but I have lost 10s of thousands by holding on for too long. THE MENTALITY OF "IT WILL COME BACK IT WILL COME BACK" will EAT YOU UP if you don't control it. I can't stress this enough, just stay disciplined!! There are many more opportunities out there; the game will always be around. I have played this game many times and have learned great timing. Either way my timing can still be off. If you catch them right there can be big rewards waiting for you; that is the risk you take. In my eyes, I live to take those kind of risks because that is what I love, the challenge of catching it just right. ARDI was almost caught perfectly but I was off but a few centimeters and now I get to watch it run up (at least Thursday and now today). I can either stare at it and think, "I am stupid I am stupid" or go "Where was my timing wrong..." What sounds more time beneficial to you?

So, this is exactly what I spent the past day doing, just looking and staring not only at the chart but at the intra-day buying trends of that day. I realized that my mistake came when I bought too early in the morning. The best time (which i eventually remembered from a past lesson) to buy (this is just my belief for catching a falling knife and only a falling knife) is towards the end of the day. 9 out of 10 times the "bounce" day or days start right in the morning with an upward trend. If you can (by looking at a chart and buying behavior) get in at the end of a previous day at a steal price, then if the next day it opens up to a quick upward trend, well then you know you are ok, but if not, and it is even the bit questionable, get out with discipline. ARDI closed around its low to open up the next day up and now as I type it is claiming new intra-day highs (sad for me, good for a great lesson). So, now I am going to apply this to our next trade, and believe me, we are going right back to catch one of these knives. My account still isn't tradable; hopefully I will be able to do something Monday or the latest Tuesday. I will prepare this weekend for the next round, so check for a post sometime Saturday or Sunday.

Have a great weekend,

Discipline, Experience, and Trusting your gut

2005-05-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

Shortly after I got into my position in ARDI this morning I opened up DailyGraphs (my chart service) to check out its chart again. There is a saying that goes something like, "Trust your gut" and what I saw was something that could not be ignored. I have looked at 10s of thousands of charts in my short 3 year run trading and this is a pattern that I do not like at all. Look closely at the graph below and you will see the ARDI in a daily chart. Every Vertical line represents a seperate day and if the line is red that means it was a down day and if the line is blue that means it was an even or up day. Now, what is CRITICAL in this pattern over the last 3 days (since the gap down last Thursday which is denoted by the gap in lines) is how it looks like the edge of a cliff. If you can imagine running to the edge of a cliff, slidding on ur feet, then stopping right at the edge off balance; this is what the pattern is. The volume (which is the vertical lines below the price) has decreased every day. The stock has lost its volatility upwards because of this pattern and is in a heavily bearish position. What happens 9 out of 10 times is that the stock leans too far over and falls to new lows.

ARDI Bad Setup Source: DailyGraphs.com

The edge price was $2.50 which in an intra-day is the price that gets the most support before collapsing (today it had about 15,000 shares of support). I ended up getting out at $2.50 and after everything the trade costed me $102.40. My account balance now is $10,073.28 but I feel much better. This in my eyes is a loss for the records because I should have looked at the chart closer than I did. I am lucky to have gotten in at a competitive price because this mistake would have costed me much more. I will not be able to trade my account till probably Friday now or Monday depending on how long it takes for my orders to process. Check for a post later on tonight or tomorrow putting ARDI in a conclusion summary. Have a great afternoon,

To the future,

ARDI early morning special?

2005-05-11T10:08:00.000-04:00

ARDI opened to a buy at $2.57 and bounced around the $2.55 range shortly after. For the next 20 minutes the stock just sat with little resistance either way (about 400 to 800 shares). With my 4,000 shares order this would not be a possible buy in. For me to buy in would cause the stock price to jump and I would have lost on the deal. So, I decided to wait around for a good opportunity to get in. I was waiting for someone to sell a few thousand share order so that I could quickly get in at the lower ask. Look below and you will see what I did. At 9:54 someone dropped about 5,000 shares which brought the ask to $2.52. Since I already had my order ready I quickly responded and bought in at the new ask. Can you see where my 4,000 shares got in under 3 seperate orders?

ARDI order on the fly

As of now $2.52 is the best Ask price on the market for ARDI (meaning there hasn't been a lower Ask yet) so I definately shopped well. Also, for comparisons sake, if I would have bought my 4,000 shares at the open at $2.57 (considering I got in) versus the $2.52 where I got in would have cost me $200 more. But, because I can see the intra-day patterns and waited patiently not only did I get a great price but I also saved myself $200.

So, now I stand with my 4,000 shares of ARDI waiting for a few buyers to get the price in a comfort zone, haha. Something else to note this morning, AXYX which I got out of the past two days at $1.24 and $1.23 is currently at $1.14 (down 6.56%). Earnings came out late yesterday and I am guessing it is reacting to them today.

Have a great morning,

ARDI, the next play

2005-05-10T23:31:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I went to work shortly after posting this afternoon on the AXYX completion to stumble upon ARDI (At Road Inc). I found it through one of my old "gapping down" searches that I had done through Dailygraphs.com sometime last week. For memories sake the search finds companies that meet the following criteria:

- Current Price between $0 and $30 a share
- Current 50-day Average volume 100,000 shares +
- Current Price % Below 50-day Moving Average 30%+ (meaning the stock is trading 30% or more below its 50-day Moving Average)

The stock closed today at $2.54 (it was at $3.42 literally last Thursday) and it today claimed new 52 week lows. The stock got hammered last week as earnings got posted and the company "didn't meet analyst expectations". The stock also got downgraded by three different firms which didn't help the cause either. (Note that these facts and all the information going forward is literally all from yahoo finance).

Why does this kind of company catch my eye? Well, in my opinion I think it overreacted to the news. Two of the three analysts simply downgraded the stock down to "hold" from "buy" which is understandable, and one of them put a $3.50 target price on it from $6. The financial loss was mostly due to the fact that the company had bought out Vidus Limited. Revenues rose to $20 million from $17.9 million while revenue was expected to be $20.6 million. As well, the company's cent per share loss was greater than the $.01 per share loss expected by analysts.

So where does this leave us? Well the company has no debt which is a big plus, and it is trading around 400,000 shares a day (makes it easier for me to get in and out). The volume also shows a sign of bottoming out since it has gotten lower since Friday. It's Enterprise value is 28.73 Million versus a market cap of 139.31 Million. The possible down side is that the company has a short % of 6.48% as of April 8th. This number has increased since March as well but what I am hoping is that whoever was shorting basically predicted the downfall since on April 8th the stock closed at $3.85; it is down 34% since then.

My goal is to take a 3,000 to 4,000 share position (basically my whole portfolio) early tomorrow at any price because I think that it will go on an upswing. My target price is $3 a share which is where the stock opened up at on Friday morning when it gapped down on the news ($3 was the high of that day). This is most likely going to be a resistance point technically speaking for the stock (just a guess, I can't really back that with any facts to be honest). If the stock moves to $3 a share this would give me about a 20% move which would be a big gain for the 10k portfolio. The time span I am looking for on this is by the end of next week (or 8 trading days). To protect my downside I am going to watch the stock as closely as I can to hopefully catch any downsings early on. I may put a stop loss on the position but as long as I am at my computer I should be (should be, haha) for the most part ok. The reason I will not immediately put a stop loss is that I do not want to risk getting taken out of my position on a 2 minutes downswing (remember the AXYX close call?). So with that being said, this is the play and we will see what happens tomorrow. Have a great night,

AXYX closure and New Account Balance

2005-05-10T16:06:00.000-04:00

I got out of the rest of my 2,900 AXYX shares today at $1.23 which was a great closure to a trade that started last Monday. I rode it for an 8.8% gain (on part of my original shares). This is a big accomplishment for 7 trading days as my other pick also churned out 12%+ last week in 4 days. My total cost to do the whole cycle through AXYX was about $55 (2 orders to get in and 3 seperate orders getting out). I am excited to put another win in the column and up my record to 2 wins and 1 loss.

After all costs my account balance went from $9,759.63 to $10,175.68 which is a $416.05 gain; the biggest on the 10k portfolio as of yet. The 10k Portfolio now stands with 1.76% growth compared to the S & P 500 which has a .003% (Since Day 1 which was April 25th). I am very content and pleased with the results as of thus far. Now though it is back to the drawing board to draw up the next trade which I should hopefully have ready for tomorrow. I will probably post late tonight what I have come up with. If you have any questions about the AXYX play, the trades that made it up, or anything else feel free to email me. I will definately be at my computer for a few hours tonight, haha. Enjoy this beautiful day,

To the future,

AXYX Update

2005-05-09T21:21:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I get back today to find AXYX with a $1.24 high on the day sitting at a price around $1.22. I also found out that I had only 5,000 shares left because 3,000 had been sold out (rememeber the Limit order I placed) on Friday at $1.19 (the stock closed at $1.16 that day, I gotta steal at that price). So, not only was I happy that part of my position had been sold out at a great price, but I was also happy about my decision to make the order expire at the end of after-hours trading. At about 2:30 PM today I put in another Limit order at the high ($1.24) just to see if I could get lucky and get some shares sold out. Sure enough, though the stock closed at $1.22, I got 1,100 more sold at $1.24 in after hours (the best price in after hours ; ) ). Before I move on I want to re-cap that I sold out 3,000 shares at $1.19 on Friday banking a profit of about $120 and 1,100 shares today banking a profit of about $100 (excluding commissions); My position left is 2,900 shares.

What I am going to relay now is probably the most important part of this whole trade because selling is ALWAYS the hardest part. If you remember when I got into the stock originally I stated that my target price was $1.20. The play was to get a rise because of new investor interest due to the CFO speaking. Now, what I am trying to relay is that though AXYX is beyond my target price and is showing signs of upward potential strength we cannot forget the original goal. As tempting as it is to just sit with my position or even buy more to "get one more penny out of it" or "to watch it run" or whatever your mind tells you in my opinion is to always walk away. In the end my goals have been met and I have made my money, why should I put that at risk? For me to hold AXYX would mean that I would be setting a new target price and be going for a different play, did I do my research other possibilities? Did I look to see if any other stocks were in a better position for this kind of trade?

There is a story about a person who set a trap for chickens. He could only close it once and his original goal was to catch 3 chickens. So one came, then two, then three, then 4 and 5. He now had reached his goal and could have shut the door and walked away with more. But no, he decided to see if he could "get just one more" and waited. Not only did he get one more, but he got a 6th, then a 7th, 8th, all the way up to 12. Now he was way beyond his original goal and was loving the payout, after all he had 4 times as many as he originally planned for! So, instead of closing the door he decided that on the 13th chicken he would call it a day. But, one left, then 2, then 3. EMOTIONS GOT INVOLVED, "They will come back" "I'll wait for one more then get out" "I can't loose". Soon 4, 5 ,6,7 were gone and eventually he lost all of the chickens. What started as a simple accomplished goal became a miracle then a huge blunder. What is the moral of the story? YOU CAN NEVER GET EMOTIONS INVOLVED, STAY DISCIPLINED!! In the stock market it is SO EASY to say "I will wait for another 10 cent rise" or "It is going to go up more I know it". You cannot veer off your original path that you chose to stick to. In the case of AXYX, I would not be surprised if it runs to $1.30+; as well I will not be surprised if it runs down to $1.10. So, instead of playing the emotional game I am going to take my profits and walk away without any regrets. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT DISCIPLINE TO HAVE.

Tomorrow my goal is to get out of the rest of my 3,900 share position of AXYX and go back to the drawing board. I am going to walk away and find the next big play without my mind or emotions getting involved. Like I said earlier, selling is the hardest part; don't make the same mistakes I have for all it takes is one big one for you to loose it all. Look for a post or two tomorrow, have a great night, and always

To the future,

AXYX and the Weekend

2005-05-06T10:58:00.000-04:00

AXYX is in my opinion under small accumulation. Every day this week it has taken a slow move upwards. The stock has recieved support at the higher teens and every day right before the close there is a small burst of buying. Right now as I watch it is hovering around the $1.18 $1.19 range. Since I am leaving for Chicago early this afternoon I decided to put a Limit order in at $1.19 for all of my 7,000 shares. What this means if you recall is that I am Asking for 7,000 shares to be sold at $1.19. So if the Ask reaches $1.19 the way I will get out is by people buying shares and the MMs giving them mine. For me to just click "sell" and sell my shares at $1.19 would mean the Bid price would have to be $1.19. Furthermore, with 7,000 shares it would be difficult to drop unless the stock is under a run. I made the order "GTC + Ext" which means the order is good till the close today and for the after hours. This allows my shares to actually be purchased in the after hours. I am guessing I will get part of my order if not all of it filled by the end of the day. If not, then my order expires and I then am still holding whatever shares I have left.

I will be coming back Monday late morning early afternoon. Upon my arrival I am hopefully going to come back to either my position sold or part of my position sold and a favorable price Monday to get out of the rest. The CFO presentation was Wednesday and by Monday any of the accumulation from the actual presentation would be in my opinion done. I am going to spend the rest of Monday afternoon and night just researching and rummaging around for the next play. Check for a post then otherwise have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all of those Moms out there.

AXYX, GTI Update

2005-05-04T22:57:00.000-04:00

Based on price alone since Friday it seems that GTI was actually the better call. From the close on Friday of $3.81 the stock has taken a short term run up to a close today of $4.26, a 12% move. Now, tomorrow is the day the company posts earnings (expected to be negative) so we will see if there are any adjustments to the price. If you remember when I was giving the play behind GTI, I stated that sometimes stocks will take runs regardless of the expected earnings. Well, GTI is as of now doing just that.

Though I do not own any GTI and have a 7,000 share position in AXYX, I am still happy. The stock closed today at $1.18 which puts me up about 2.5%, or $210 after costs. So, I am not upset because in the end making money is the ultimate goal, but we will see what happens tomorrow. I am also very excited to see both of my picks producing returns, and being a new strategy I was trying out, one stock with 12% in 4 days and another with 2.5% 4 days isn't anything bad. You can never look at a stock trade as, "I knew I should have boughten that other stock" just because you could have made more money. Any trade that puts money in your pocket is always a great trade, EOM.

Moving forward though, my goal with AXYX is to get out tomorrow or friday at a price over $1.20. Why a $1.20+ target price? Well, this would put my total account value back in the green and it would mean that I would sell out with gains of $350+. There was a small end-of-the-day push so hopefully this is some foreshadowing. We will see what happens tomorrow, but so far so good. Have a great night,

To the future,

The position is taken, but with a very close call

2005-05-02T16:24:00.000-04:00

Alright, I did some good patient trading today and it ended up banking out. The chart you see below is of AXYX in 5 minute increments throughout the day. As you can see the stock hovered in the $1.14 - $1.16 range most of the day. I put limit orders in (read the original post below) and decided to be patient. If my shares hit they hit, if not, well then I react accordingly. I got in 5,000 shares at $1.15, then put another 2,000 in at $1.14 just to see if I could steal some more. Surprisingly, I got all of my shares in and in the end accumulated a 7,000 share position (see the 2nd picture for the two seperate orders broken down).

Why is this so beneficial that I played it slow and got in where I did? Well, let's look at the other way I could have played it. For the first 5,000 shares it was either buy them or try and get them off of someone selling. So, for me to buy them at the time would have gotten me in at $1.16 which first off is $50 more than where I got them at. I then would have boughten my 2,000 more later on at $1.15 (because the ask went down to this point) instead of waiting to get in at $1.14 which is another $20. Because I was patient and did not jump the gun, not only did I make an extra $70, but my cost per share is now lower, and I am already up $90 on my position instead of just $20 ($50 + $20 + $20 vs just $20) with the stock priced at the close of $1.16.

So the close call now came later on and this is the theme of the day. We all know that "insurance" (aka stop losses) can be great, but what if they are activitated when you don't want them to be? Remember the first stock I traded? Well, this is a same case scenario, almost. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, sometimes a stock will take an intra-day drive (can you see the quick fall in the picture below?) and if you place your stop order to close to the actual price you can loss alot of money. I will explain in more detail. After I got my 7,000 shares I put a market stop loss at $1.10 which means that if at any time the price hits $1.10 my shares will automatically get put on the market and sold as fast as possible. Well looking at the intra-day you can see that the price dipped down to $1.11, just a penny away from my market stop loss and within a few minutes was all the way back up to $1.15. The close call is this, if that price would have hit $1.10 then my 7,000 shares would have been sold immediately, putting me at a loss of over $350 (7,000 times $.05 + my order costs). This is why putting stop losses can actually be your worst enemy if placed incorrectly and must be thought out as well. I used $1.10 because it is the 52-week low price and a big support level, thinking back now I should have placed it at $1.09 which would get me out if that support level was broken. But, in the end, I lucked out and still have a great position. I have since cancelled my order and have decided to take the all-day shift of watching the stock tomorrow and the days following to sell out if need-be; I will judge on the fly.

Now that step 1 and 2 are complete (finding the play, then taking an actual position), I can breath a bit and wait to see what happens. Will the CFO speaking at the convention Wednesday really cause a price-spike? We do not know as of now but once the next few days unfold we will have our answer. Make sure to double-read and take the finer points of today's lesson, because every action you take for granted as non-important can actually cost you your wallet. Have a great night,

AXYX Intra-day chart in 5 minute increments. Notice the quick dip down to $1.11 back up to $1.15.

2005-05-02T16:23:00.000-04:00

My Orders Today

AXYX Limit Order

2005-05-02T11:14:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I decided that with the given circumstances, AXYX was the best risk/reward play. But how do I get in at a good price? The stock really hasn't been trading much volume for the last while (probably around 150,000 a day) even though it's 50 day average volume is just over 1 million. So, what I did is I placed a Limit order this morning for 5,000 shares at the strike price of $1.15. What this means is if you recall a limit order is only hit if I get the price I want meaning unless someone is selling their shares for $1.15, I am not gonna get in. Now, at the moment there is about 18,000 shares at $1.15 as well and believe me, I am last in line to get my order processed. On the day the biggest order I have seen has been around 10,000 so I have some praying to do. If I get lucky I'll get in at $1.15 by the end of the day (I set my order to expire at the end of the day if it doesn't get processed). A $1.15 5,000 block price is in my mind a steal for the current circumstances and if you think about it compared to buying the same 5,000 shares at $1.16 (considering I can even get in at $1.16) I am actually getting an extra $50 (5,000 x $.01). So, I am gonna let me order sit, watch the stock, and see if we can get some sort of intra-day bearish trend. I will post up either at the end of the day or if I get in during the day to relay the news. Remember that the CFO is speaking on Wed at the convention so if there is a quick price spike it will come either tomorrow before the convention, Wednesday after he speaks, or Thursday. If nothing happens (which it may not) by getting in at $1.15 we should be able to get out without much downside (HOPEFULLY). Once we get in I am going to put a tight stop loss on the shares just to be safe (remember last trade?). Enjoy the afternoon,

To the future,

Have a great weekend

2005-04-30T12:22:00.000-04:00

I will be running around and such this weekend and things are a bit easier now that I already know the trade I am going to go for next week. I still am not sure what stock I am going to go with but GTI was down again yesterday on high volume and I think that it may have bottomed out (for at least next week). AXYX did not do too much yesterday and was basically even closing up $.01. I will post again either tomorrow or Monday; I am planning to take my position early next week if not Monday.

Have a great weekend,

Tying News into a trade

2005-04-28T23:51:00.000-04:00

What my next short term trade is going to be based on is a combination of upcoming news, company stats, and current trends. I am going to attempt to use an upcoming news release to my advantage. Getting right to the good stuff, the research, what I am looking for this time around are stocks that have just gapped down and are trading well below their 200-day moving averages. As well, these stocks are trading near or at there 52 week lows and also have some type of news coming out next week.

How I found companies with news was through my good friend yahoo finance, http://finance.yahoo.com. After I did my search to find the companies that were trading basically in the dumps I went on a technical search to find certain patterns I was familiar with. What I was looking for were stocks there were either very close to their 50-day moving averages or far below their 50-day moving averages. Naturally, stocks have a tendency to retract or climb towards their 50-days, eventually. If I saw a stock that looked interesting, I would type its ticker into yahoo finance and go hunting. I would look at the following information:

1. Headlines - Was there anything coming next week? Did any news just come out this week?
2. Insider Transactions - Were there alot of higher ranking officers buying this stock or selling this stock recently?
3. Insider Roster - Based on what I found from who was doing what, I would give myself an opinion on how big I thought it was. For instance, if the Director was excercising options worth 200 shares valued at maybe a few grand well then I could care less.
4. Message Board - Yahoo finance offers message boards where people can post whatever information they want. These boards RARELY have anything useful. Read through some of these and you will find that there are some VERY incompetent people on here. I do not advise taking any information from these. What I used them for is to see if I could find the one or two people who actually new something and could relay some dates of upcoming events. This basically just gives me a feel for what speculative news (good or bad) may be coming up. Again, I highly highly recommend staying away from these boards, or if you want to read them TRUST NO ONE at all. REGARDLESS of who they may be, majority of the time they are bashers or someone trying to sell or pump the stock, PERIOD.
5. Key Statistics - What is the short % on the stock? Has this number increased or decreased relative to last month? These numbers just give me a little insight as to what may be a bullish or bearish trend. I am sure you have seen me speak of these indicators before but I will relay again that if 25% of the float is being shorted, it may mean someone knows more than we do. It is something to just take into consideration.
What is the debt on the company? How much cash do they have? If a company has a ton of cash and no debt it gives me a quick signal that the company will at least not be in any trouble for a little while. If a company has alot to offer but a crap load of debt and no cash, it most likely means you may be in for a interesting ride because you do not know if the company is secure short term or not.
What is the Current Ratio and Enterprise Value? The Current Ratio basically relays the debt and cash in one number. This number tells me how capable the company basically is in taking care of short term obligations. Higher the number the better. Enterprise value in a very basic sense can give me an idea if the company is possibly undervalued. What I am looking for is an Enterprise value that is less than the market Cap of the stock. This number is compromised by adding debt to the market cap and subtracting cash and cash equivalents. So in theory, if someone were to buy the company at its current price, this is (inna sense) is what they would be paying for it.

Now that I have explained what I was looking for in regards to finding a short term speculative stock, can you see how these factors tie in? You have inna sense a company that for the most part isn't getting bet against (shorting), a company that has some sort of news coming out soon (Headlines), a company that is stable for the most part (Current ratio, cash, debt,), a company that is possibly undervalued (Enterprise value, stock trading below the 200-day), a company that may have a short term play ahead (price relative to the 50-day MA), and a company that possibly has some insider knowledge (possible insider buying or selling). So, after about an hour of looking around at possible picks I came accross two main prospects: AXYX and GTI. ALL of the numbers I am going to use are from Yahoo finance, just a reminder, and are based off Thursday's closing price). I will go over my analysis of each company and what the company may do for me next week (quick overview):

AXYX - Axonyx Inc - CFO presenting at conference next Wednesday, (-) Enterprise Value (if a company has a negative enterprise value it means that technically the company is free for the most part because after buying all of the stock, the cash you would get back for it would cover what you paid for it), price nearing 50-day, no real intra-day bearish trends (stock price has been inna basic consistant range for a while), short % = 5% as well numbers have not grown much since prior month, high current ratio (lots of cash, barely any debt = can pay short term obligations), and no major insider transactions since January (something to think about though, look at this and you'll notice that insiders were selling heavily about a month before the massive collapse, hmmm... a clue maybe? Did someone know something we didn't? Something to think about.).

GTI - Graftech International ltd - Earnings get posted next Thursday, Huge Enterprise Value ($1.03 Billion vs Mkt. Cap of 381.50 Million, do you think these guys have more cash or debt?), Price trending too far away from 50-day which means possible natural retraction, consistant bearish trend with multiple dsitribution days, Short % = 7.19% but has dropped substantially since last month (6.80 M vs. 8.94 M), low current ratio (but every industry has different avergaes), and lots of share acquisitions (non open market) by all main officers, etc. (but this has been happening for literally years, and since they are not open market purchases, this probably means nothing to us at all; basically they are being given shares by the company).

So, now that I have gone over the two prospects, which do you think is a better choice? I am not going to post my pick between the two until I buy one or the other. I will most likely buy my shares either tomorrow or early next week. What we are going for here is (with AXYX) to see a natural little run from the CFO speaking, or (with GTI) to see some sort of price rise regardless of the earnings (since they will most likely be bad; companies do this often, it is actually really weird but you will see price rises before earnings are posted even when they are expected to be bad). We also tie in with GTI that with its price being far away from its 50-day that it may retract naturally.

Well, that is all for tonight, I apoligize if it is overwhleming but just take in the core concepts behind what I am looking at. Try to tie in all the little pieces of the puzzle together. You can post your pick or any pick for that matter in the comments section of this post if you want. I am not sure what I am going to do yet; hopefully I make my decision pretty soon here. If you have any questions on this I will be available all weekend so email me or post up. Have a great night,

To the future,

Thursday, the re-coop day

2005-04-28T13:04:00.000-04:00

Today I have decided to let things to just be and not do any trading. I have a meeting this afternoon and not all of my account is able to be traded at this time because of Ameritrade's processing. Later on tonight I am going to search a good number of companies and get something in line for hopefully tomorrow. I will go over my whole research process I used and explain more about what I am looking for next time around. I am also going to post more information on my affiliate program I am going to be starting up here soon as well. O, I also created the blog for the R3I, LLC sponsored summer stock contest. Check it out here, http://richdad2.blogspot.com/.

To the future,

PS - Thanks to everyone who has posted up comments so far or has emailed me in regards to the blog. I love reading the comments, love keeping in touch with you guys, and love the input.

My Account value after CNR

2005-04-27T15:51:00.000-04:00

As you can see the CNR trade put about a 2.5% dent in my portfolio. Every trade is a new lesson, a new triumph, or a new lesson and triumph. Today was a $290.10 reminder that insurance is always nice to have, to always minimize the potential downside, to never assume anything, and to never let emotions in the game. As a whole we are now better prepared for the next run-around and I am excited to see what is next around the corner. I have always been told that is isn't about getting to the top that is the best, but more so the ride. You can never be let down by a bad trade in the stock market because it's a given fact; you will loose. It's time for another win in the summer series.

My Account after CNR

CNR, the costly mistakes and lessons learned

2005-04-27T14:34:00.000-04:00

After picking up my 3,600 shares I was feeling pretty confident in my decision. Over 500,000 shares of support was at $.84 and I got in at $.85 and $.86. The first big mistake I made was deciding to go eat breakfast, bad choice. I came back about a half hour later to find out about 800,000 shares had traded in another short term downswing and not only had the support fallen, but the price had fallen as well. When daytrading you will learn some important tricks that will help you become successful; your time is one of them. Regardless of how confident you are in a stock you should always have yourself covered. I did not put a stop loss on my shares and to be honest it didn't even cross my mind until right now while writing this post; Bad decision. The stock was then at about $.81, $.82 and I had to react. My reaction? I decided to let it play out since its intra-day low was $.81 and I figured that $.81 would be it's final bottom.

I left again to come back to my computer freezing and my internet running slow, not cool at all. After finally re-installing my graphics card drivers and getting up and running I found out that $.81 was not gonna be the bottom point on the day. Another very important lesson that I had forgotten, NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING. In the market, ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN (EOM). Once you loose grip on a stock you are daytrading that you do not have insurance on it is very easy to get emotions involved. Remember to always stay disciplined; this is where I finally decided to let go. I decided it would be best to just take the hit and walk away with a few lessons to relay. I no longer had any foregoing perception on the company and my battle plan had been put to shame. I sold out my 3,600 shares at $.78 for about a $280 loss (w/o including transaction fees).

There are a few different ways you can look at something like this. You can either think that I did not have ENOUGH patience with it and should have held on longer thinking it could have gone up or that I actually made the right move to get out. In the end, my main downfall was my insurance; I was not covered. Looking back now at this trade I should have put a stop loss in at $.83. This would mean that if the stock traded at that price at any time I would automatically get sold out, minimizing my loss. Why $.83? Well, when I got in my "call" was that the stock had bottomed out and would go up on an upswing. The support was the 500,000+ shares at the Bid of $.84. By me putting a stop loss at $.83 I am basically saying in my mind, "Hey, if this stock can't support itself at $.84, I can't bank on any support further down the rabbit hole".

With that being said I hope anyone reading this takes some good lessons out of it and always has insurance on their trades. Personally, this goes horribly against what I have always done, but when day trading and in these market conditions especially, you HAVE to minize your losses. Right now I am 1 and 1. I got one win and one loss on my 10k portfolio record, and since I didn't minimize my loss, I am now in the hole. A few lessons re-visited but I am back on my feet. It is time to go back to work and find the next play.

To the future,

CNR, the Playhouse

2005-04-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I scanned through about 400 different stock charts off of my Dailygraphs program looking for "bounce situations". I did not care about anything in regards to the company itself at this point and I was just looking for possible places to make a few pennies on my last $3,150 I could trade (for some reason Ameritrade won't let you trade cash from a last trade until it is full processed or something). I ended up with about 30 stocks which I narrowed down to 10 then finally narrowed down to 2: ALTI and CNR. ALTI was in a big down trend and I was not interested to play it today but more so in the next few days (if Ameritrade will even let me). CNR was also in a long term downtrend but more interestingly sitting right on its 200-day moving average. Support point? I was not sure so I decided to track it and try and get a steal on some shares this morning.

I stated that to let you know what interestingly enough happened this morning which is not only a rare situation to actually see with your own eyes but also quite fun for 9:30 AM. I am going to try my best to explain this but take note that I can 1. see every trade processed, what price it was processed at, and time. 2. I can see how many shares are for the most part available at each price (at the Bid and Ask). 3. I can see who traded what (the institution or house, the Exchange, and if it was by some random joe like me then it would state "Nasdaq" or "Nasdaq NM" next to it.

So where does this leave me? In a good spot perched off a distant clliff ready to swoop in for an easy kill, and that is what I did (hopefully). The stock closed at $1.00 even yesterday and in the morning hours of trade (this is the pre-market from 8:00 - 9:30) there was ALOT of volume. CNR averages about 2.4 million shares a day and before the stock even opened at 9:30 the price was at in the low $.90s ( which is why you would see a gap down today or on any stock for that matter on a chart) on well over 1 million shares. But who was selling all of these shares? Everyone? No, just 1 Exchange represented almost all if not all of the volume. Then, the stock opens, kinda sits for a few minutes, then major downtrend starts. We are talking 10s of thousands of shares just being sold heavily on one Exchange, AMEX.

To make a long story short, AMEX drives the stock price down to $.86, $.85. The bid eventually hits $.84 and what do I see? over 500,000 ready to be bought at $.84 by guess who, AMEX. What does this tell me? This tells me that AMEX is now done selling and wants to get back in at a steal price. So, I swoop in and snag as many shares as my $3,100 left in my account will let me buy and end up getting 2,000 at $.85 and 1,600 at $.86 (both bought at 10:11:09 AM). Now, hopefully AMEX is done and doesn't pull a fast one on us and we see $.84 as the bottom for this trend. Every penny the stock goes either way is $36 (for the most part) out or into my pocket. Only time will tell, but either way it's just another morning in a daytraders world. Now, to get some breakfast...

My Account value after ARBA

2005-04-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

As you can see I made about $50 off of ARBA. Though this could have been more successful in trading you can never get frustrated with mistakes, you have to keep going. The lessons you learn daily in this game are endless, and the time you spend thinking about "How it could have been different" is the time you waste figuring out the next big trade. I Hope everyone learned from this; see the post below for how I made my mistake/success today.

My Portfolio Value after the ARBA mistake/success

ARBA, A lesson re-learned

2005-04-26T10:51:00.000-04:00

Now, for those of you who keep in check with this blog you will know that I had boughten 1,000 shares of ARBA at a steal price of $6.839. My order got processed yesterday afternoon at around 3:10 PM. Today, the company came out with 2 seperate news releases that posted positive for the company. Though the affects were delayed the stock ended up pushing to new highs within the day. The stock now sits with an ask of $6.98 and a bid of $6.97. The lesson I am going to make my day based on is order types. I placed an Limit order today at $6.88 to cover myself in case the stock went downwards. But the mistake I made was just that, the stock didn't go downwards but upwards and my order got triggered.

Not realizing it till about 10 minutes ago I figured out that I had in fact placed the wrong type of order. I am in fact somehwat dissapointed now but also content. My 1,000 shares were picked up by an Institution and I got $6.911 for them. Minus the costs to conduct the trades I profited about $50 off of my work. The cruddy part is is that my mistake of placing the wrong order type costed me $60 more accordinging to the current bid price. Now, I am sure it is probably confusing as to why my order got processed and why I am dissapointed but I will quote Ameritrade's help center to explain some of the basic order types:

"Types of Orders

After you have decided whether you plan to buy or sell a stock, the typical order ticket will give you a few more choices. You can choose between a market order, a limit order, a stop order, a stop limit order, and a trailing stop order. Each of these choices has its own implications as seen below.

A market order is an instruction to buy or sell a stock at the best market price available at the moment. For example, you may want to buy 100 shares of XYZ stock. If the current market for XYZ is 50 bid and 50 1/8 ask, you may or may not get the stock at 50 1/8. Market orders will definitely be filled, but you cannot be sure of the price. Prices will vary with current conditions, and these conditions are not always reflected on your computer screen. The actual price at which your order is filled may be better or worse than you expected.

A limit order lets you place a price restriction on your transaction. You indicate that you are only willing to buy or sell a stock at a certain price or better. Your order is not filled unless the stock trades at that level. Placing a limit order, however, is not a guarantee that your trade will be executed at your limit price. It does, however, eliminate the risk that your order will be filled at a price worse than you expected.

For example, if you want to buy XYZ stock at $50 a share once again, and the market price is 50 bid and 50 1/8 offer, your order cannot be filled immediately. If somebody comes to sell the stock at $50, then your order will be filled if it is next in line for execution. If more buyers enter the pit and drive up the stock price, your order will not be filled.

A stop order is an order to buy or sell a stock at the market price once the price reaches or passes through a specified point, called the "stop price." This type of order is generally used by people who own a stock and want to make sure they sell out if the stock price starts to drop. The stop price placed on a sell stop order must be below the current bid price of the security.
Stop orders in volatile issues will not guarantee an execution at or near the stop price. Once triggered, they are competing with other incoming market orders.

Stop orders can be placed for buy orders as well. The stop price specified for a buy order must be above the current asking price.

A stop limit order performs like a stop order with one major exception. Once the order is activated (by the stock trading at or "through" the stop price), it does not become a market order. Instead, it becomes a limit order with a limit price equal to the former stop price.
For example, you place a stop limit order to sell stock with a stop price of $45 a share. As with the stop order, once the stock trades at $45, your order is triggered. However, the broker cannot sell it below $45 a share no matter what happens. The advantage of this order is that you set a minimum price at which your order can be filled. The disadvantage is that your order may not be filled in certain fast market conditions. In this case, if the stock keeps moving down, you will keep losing money.

A trailing stop order is similar to a stop order, but instead of a stop price, a stop parameter is used, creating a moving or trailing activation price. The stop parameter can be entered in points or by percentage.

For example, you own 200 shares with a cost basis of $10. The stock is now trading at $15. You want to protect yourself against a drop in the stock. Instead of a stop order at $13, you place a trailing stop with a stop parameter of 2 points. The activation price is calculated by taking the current price and subtracting the stop parameter. For this example, the initial activation price is $13. If the stock never goes higher than $15, the order will activate when the stock hits $13. If the stock goes to $16, the activation price becomes $14. Please note: For sell trailing stops the activation price only moves upward, and for buy trailing stops the activation price only moves downward.

Source:
Ameritrade Education Center
http://www.ameritrade.com/educationv2/ameritrade_framed.html"

Can you see my mistake and can you see the order that I should have placed? I hope that you now have a better understanding for the options you have once you own a stock and how you have to be very careful with what order you actually place. ARBA is now over unless I can get a competitive price again which may or may not happen. The mistakes you make in the real game are the ones that stick with you the longest; learn from my mistakes ;) !! I wish everyone a good morning (to those of you who may still be getting up) and look for my new possible picks later on today.

To the future,

ARBA opens with news, but how big?

2005-04-26T09:38:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning, fired up my comp, and checked out ARBA to see that news had been released this morning, http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050426/265453.html?.v=1. Apparently, Ariba "today announced the availability of Ariba Supplier Connectivity at the Ariba LIVE 2005 Orlando conference. The subscription-based offering extends the benefits of the 120,000 suppliers enabled on the Ariba® Suppler Network(TM) to a large community of enterprise buyers and their suppliers currently using non-Ariba spend management systems." I mean that is pretty good news in my eyes and the stock opened at $6.91 which is a $.02 cent spread over yesetrday's close.

So now what though, is the stock flying up? Well no, and that is what interests me so far today, for some reason (which I would probably find out from digging further) I have reason to believe this was already known. I believe this conference already occured and news had already been release on other key topics. We have to remember that the original reason this stock had a bad day on Friday was because of the earnings release Thursday after the close.

So what are we going to do, well I am going to keep watching it closely. It actually downtrended (we are talking a 6 minute trend) down to $6.86 but now is hovering around the low $6.90s. We could see the price push past $7 with the current circumstances which would be great. What I am going to watch for very closely today is if I see more buying or more selling. Well, yeah Blain, duh. But this doesn't mean just in general, it more so means within trends. If there are bigger buyers buying bigger lots of shares vs smaller buyers taking profits then that is bullish. As well, where are the intra-day resistance points? Well I can tell you that from the time I started this paragraph not even 3 minutes ago ARBA took a run up to $6.95 and has met resistance here ( about 12,000 shares worth). So if it can break past this resistance point then you will most likely see a run past $7. All of these tiny points come into play because with our position, every penny is $10 more dollars in our pocket or out of our pocket.

To the future,

ARBA, the good, the bad, and the ugly

2005-04-25T22:23:00.000-04:00

Alright, it is now "later" and I have re-looked at my picks, well one of them at least. As you probably already know from reading early I went out onna limb and picked up 1,000 shares of ARBA today around 3:10 PM. The buy was a clutch purchase for the intra-day patterns it was showing throughout the day and I got a steal on the price. The good news is that the stock closed at $6.89, about $.05 higher than where I bought it, showing about $50 in gains to my portfolio. The stock had met all my pre-limb quick observations based onna technical and original search looks. But, I had overlooked some fine details that I shouldn't have and I will relay the bad and the ugly that this stock may reflect in the upcoming day or few days.

1. Upon looking again at the company statistics I noticed the company has had a reverse split in the last year, not a good sign. Though this isn't too big for my short term play it still reflects a company that is in some long term trouble. To add to it the company is trading below the price after the reverse split and has tested its 52 week low; a bearish sign.
2. The company has a short % of 10.26% (this is as of March 8, 05). This isn't necessarily bad because the stock has run up recently (most likely a pump and dump) but the stock did show an increase to the short # of over a million. What will make this factor bad or not is the April figures which will actually be availble through Nasdaq on Wednesday. If the number has increased again up from March 8th to April 8th that could mean bad news; another bearish sign.
3. I went digging after I had bought the stock to find out why it had run up and ran down so fast(the extra volatility in the past week). Apparently, the company ran up pre-earnings then posted bad earnings. The company also got downgraded by CIBC Wrld Mkts and RBC Capital Mkts on Friday. This basically puts the PPS (Price Per Share) most likely back to or lower than the price it was at before the (in my opinion artificial) run up.
4. I overlooked the fact that the company (from a technical reading) has been opening on gap ups and downs. There has been four days inna row with the stock opening up on a gap one way or the other. Yes, this can be good, but with a company that is already not in so sound financial shape this could be bad news and doesn't allow me to limit my losses if a quick gap down occurs at 9:30 AM tomorrow.

Now, taking all of this in some lessons and can be drawn and changes have to be made accordingly. The stock did show accumulation throughout the day today reacting from the big downward move from Friday. This is bullish and what we are looking for is to ride the quick bounce the stock will take, hopefully. The stock closed strong and some big block shares were purchased in the closing seconds which is good (big relative to the intra-day patterns, these blocks were about 14,000 shares each; two total). What I am going to look for tomorrow is a natural reaction to the downtrend and a nice "strong" day. With the intra-day patterns shown and the closing volume I have reason to believe we could see a price over $7 tomorrow. My 1st target price is $7, my second target price is $7.20, and my third target price is $7.50. If the stock sits tomorrow I will most likely walk away without any worries on my shoulder and go back to the drawing board. I am in a good position holding a small amount of shares and it should be easy to sneak my order in if need be. One final technical fact was that the volume was lower than the avg (50-day average) which you usually do not see the day after a heavy drop. So tomorrow morning I hope to see some early birds give the price a nice jump and a nice open, otherwise it will be close watching for Ariba Inc. Have a great night.

To the future,

ARBA trade on intra-day chart

2005-04-25T15:22:00.000-04:00

This is the trade once I placed it today. What I saw was an intra-day downtrend in the stock that had been re-occuring throughout the day. The low on the day was $6.81 and the high was $7.09. I knew that catching the stock during one of these downtrends would get me in at the most competitive price for my 1,000 shares. We will see what happens tomorrow but look for a post later on tonight on my thinking and the strategy for this position taken today.

The Trade seen on my intra-day real time screen

2005-04-25T15:20:00.000-04:00

My ARBA 1,000 Share Purchase

The Beginning 10k Portfolio account Balance

2005-04-25T15:18:00.000-04:00

This is a picture I took today of my Account so everyone could see my current status. As you can see I have $10,000 in the account and it is ready for trading! Also, you can see that I do not have marginable funds as seen by the "non-marginable funds" listed. If I had margin approval this number would be different.

My Account Balance reflecting "The 10k Portfolio"

The Research Process this Week

2005-04-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

Before I get into what stocks I am looking at this week it is important to understand what I am going for with the current market conditions. The market is basically horribly unstable and it is very hard right now to predict where the heck it really is going. As a result, I am not going to be in any stock for too long. The strategy I am going for is finding stocks that are in normal patterns (technical research) and that I can make quick moves with (a day - a few days most likely).

To find what I am looking for, I first ran a custom screen this morning based on the following criteria:

- Industry Group Relative Strength Rating = A
- Accumulation/Distribution Rating = A or B
- Current Price = $0 to $35 a share
- Current 50-day Average Volume = 100,000+
- Debt% (Latest Fiscal Year Reported) = 0

With the market in its current state I only found 17 companies that met these criteria: AGNT, ANR, ARBA, ASR, BEBE, CBK, CHCI, CHIC, FINL, FORD (not the motor company), HITK, HNR, KOOL, LACOE, NAK, PRGO, and WTSLA. My reasoning behind searching for these types of companies is as of follows:

1. I am looking for companies that are in a strong performing industry group because doing short term trades these stocks are more likely to go up because as a whole group they are performing great even in this crappy market.
2. Accumulation Distribution is important in being an A or B. This means that the company has been getting accumulated by Institutions over the last 13 weeks. For the short term, we have a btter shot of getting a quic run if the stock is already under accumulation vs. being under distribution.
3. With a current price of $0 to $35 a share it makes it more attractive for me. I personally like having more of a single stock in my portfolio (share wise) and with only $10,000 we aren't going to be buying alot anyways. I included penny stocks just because they are typically alot more volatile and in my opinion fun. You will see me trading them most of the time in this portfolio because of this reason. I want to grow this money as fat as I can, and with higher risk you get higher rewards.
4. Having an average 50-day Volume of 100,000 shares + a day means that the stock is getting traded for the most part. If a stock is only trading 100 shares a day what good does that do me? Usually I will use a number around 400,000+ but with this market it is harder to find good picks.
5. Having no debt in my eyes is important for any company. I personally use this just for my own sake and I have noticed that companies with no debt tend to perform better than those with debt. Don't get me wrong here, there are some VERY successful companies with tons of debt, Berkshire Hathaway anyone? But, for me this is something that I just prefer, and with the current market though, I may be changing this up later on if I can't find anything.

So now that I got my 17 prospect companies, I go in and pull up a chart on each one looking at the overall current trends. This is the major technical analysis part of my research and I apoligize but I cannot display any charts here. I use a program that I pay for, www.dailygraphs.com and if you want to see these charts you can use www.bigcharts.com if you'd like. What I am looking for here are companies that:

1. Are not breaking out/posting new highs - WHAT? Why not? Well, learning in the crash of 2002 I realized that in an unstable market (no the currnet market is not like the 2002 crash) any company that is generally posting new highs or "breaking out" as it is called of bases is not in my opinion gauranteed gains. Usually when the market is in a bearish trend these stocks will quickly fall back into their bases or collapse.
2. Shows a bullish trend - With my program I can go into the intra-day charts and see in 5 minute increments how the stock has traded. This is a part of my analysis that I have developed on my own and as a result I can't tell you exactly how I judge a stock based on this. But, what you are looking for is a sign of short term strength (since we are only gonna be in for a few days).
3. Shows higher volatility - I am looking for stocks that can make 5% plus moves in a matter of a few days. Again my philosiphy of more risk, more reward applies heavily here and I do not go into a stock to get 1 or 2% out of it. I go into a position looking for 5% plus in the shortest period of time. Though this applies to my downside, watching my stock very closely is critical. My research is one important aspect of my work but my abilities to judge a company on the fly during the day is also very important. If I see a downward trend evolving or any other intra-day bullish signs I will adjust accordingly.
3. Has a pattern that I am familiar with - I am looking for companies in patterns that I have seen before (I have looked at 10s of thousands of charts in my short 3 years so far). If I see something I like, I'll write it down for further examination later on. Generally I can make a short term call on where the stock may be going.
4. Where the stock is relative to its 50 and 200 day Moving Averages - This is important because these two lines can be support points or also resistance points depending on where the stock currently is. I will make a judgement call based on the stock if I like where it is according to its 50 and 200 day MA.
5. Other - I look at the graph over time and look at weekly and possibly monthly patterns. I basically just see how the stock has performed to certain circumstances in the past and give it a judgement call rating. There are alot of little details that I compromise in my head as I go over a chart and I apoligize that I cannot relay them to you; it is just my thing.

So, after looking at all the charts I have written down the ones that I like and that I want to look at even further: ARBA, CHIC, HNR, KOOL, NAK, WTSLA. These companies have passed my technical judgement and now I use yahoo finance to look at the comapny statistics, http://finance.yahoo.com. Some of the things I now will look at are:

1. Insider Transactions - Has the company been getting bought by insiders? If so, who has been buying it. Just because I Director has been buying a few times doesn't mean much. But, if the CEO, CFO, Director, and other key management has been accumulating shares recently, well than that could be a bullish sign. But what you do not know is if these insiders are buying the for short or long hold. This is a judgement call I make because even if the company is under insider attention doesn't mean that it will gaurantee me my 2 - 3 day run I am looking for.
2. Splits, Dividends - This is important only because it can relay inna nutshull a company's strength (in a very basic sense). If the company has split 3 for 2 a year ago then that tells me that the company is growing (again, this isn't considered these stats are not considered very gihly but it is something that I will look at). If the company has reverse split in the last 3 years than that is not good in my eyes at all. A reverse split is usually a long term teller that the company is going down the tubes. Also if a company is paying dividends it means the company has access cash sitting around which and could be a sign of strength.
3. Shares Short/Short % - This is HUGE in my eyes. The short term status of a company can usually be told by its short % or the percentage of its overall float that is being shorted. I have done alot of personal research on this and I am actually weighing this highly in my short term module I am developing. If a company has a short % of lets say 20%, well then you can probably bet that someone knows something you don't. I will make a judgement call accordingly on this stat because if the company's short % has decreased the last month well that tells me that the shorters have started to cover and that could be a short term bullish sign.
4. Other - I will glance over all the other stats on this page like cash, price/book value, enterprise value, etc. For the most part these are not important for the type of trade I am going to do but they still will weigh in my mind when judging a stock.

So, now we have looked at these companies key stats and I have narrowed down my field again: ARBA, CHIC, and NAK. Now that I have my 3 companies I take a break from my research and I will look them over again later on. It is important that I refresh my mind because I will rejudge them since I forget alot of my main points I have supported already in my mind. Usually I will pick up on something I missed. Later on tonight is also when I go digging. Digging is basically reading all the public news you can on a company to give yourself any sort of edge. I will try to find out if there is any news that could be released soon, if anything big has happened, etc. This is very important because with volatile stocks any little release can potentially affect the price greatly. As well, I will go in and figure out how much I want to buy, where I want to buy in, my overall strategy behind it for the next few days, when I will sell out, etc. The true game begins once I hit the buy button and take a real position.

With that being said these three companies are my main prospects as of today, Monday April 25th, 2005. I will go over these again tonight multiple times and most likely revise my search (based on the debt%) and look for more prospects. Check for a post sometime tonight on my final decision and if I find one or two I am confident in then I will react accordingly tomorrow.

To the future,

Welcome

2005-04-19T01:11:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my blog. I am preparing my portfolio this week and my Account will be up and running next Monday April 25th, 2005. Until then I am free to answer any questions regarding my blog, my work, or stocks in general. If you have any questions please feel free to email me: Jawz142@yahoo.com (also in my profile). Have a great week and always

To the future,