Book review, brief July in reveiw

Nora Peterson wrote a book called "Retire Rich with your self directed IRA". IT talks a lot about real estate investing using an IRA. The basics of the book suggests that one can open a trust account, have the trust holder invest your money in things other than what is traditionally available. I do not think that the real estate thing is for me, she seems to advocate working hard to buy foreclosed properties, buy options, and other things that I do not want to do. However, the book does open a new world for retirement account investors.

My newest broker supports futures trading through just such trusts. Unlike others that I have talked to, they allow you to invest the entire account. No 3 day wait to trade again either. I will want mad success before I do this, but it might be in my future. It takes a couple months to set up so get started early.

July was mixed but essentially even. I have not done the math. I made few trades, got chased out of VMW, now regretting it. I covered my VMW call and sold a September 80 call, looks like stock will be called away. I will consider adding options writing on other accounts in light of the nice short term returns I am seeing.

I had company here and was not trading for a week. But I sat down at the computer and had a horrible day trying to take some fast profits. My nice and respectable gains went out so fast and then some. But with better discipline I have recovered and am now up 5% again after my best day ever. Things I have noticed with futures and myself: I do well in the am and give back gains as day goes on causing frustration and larger mistakes, I need to better understand intraday risk levels and position sizing, I do well trading my own premises ignoring others, it feels so much better going into a weekend with gains.

There is a lot more work to do in many areas before doing this full time.