Thoughts

Futures stuff not going so great. I was getting into poor habits and counter trend stuff that was killing me. I am going to keep that account open but I need to rethink how I go about it. Get back to my original plan of learning the various markets to take advantage of them in the future.

Market looks sideways to down to me based upon trading ranges and moving averages.

When I reflect back on trades that could have been life changing they were always leading stocks that should have been held for a long time. I am going to try and do that more, how many times have I said this? Perhaps futures foray was good to get me to focus longer term. Intraday stuff really winds me up!

Stay on the leaders!

TMI update: I can tell that the area from which I derive information continues to get smaller and smaller, mostly charts.

I've subscribed to The Economist to try and better educate myself on the world social/political scene.

update

As things stand now, overall I remain down 1% YTD

Market state

I find myself a bit baffled with what is the real state of the market right now. I am hesitant to put long term money to work as I think the long term trend is still bearish or at least neutral. Different source suggest we have had a 50/200 day bullish cross recently though the way I have some of my charts set up I do not see this. I am not willing to jump on the bandwagon here. What might change my mind would be clear strength to the upside AND then a subsequent pullback.

There have been a number of good performing stocks. I see a few ETFs that are worth considering. But the bulk of my market time is thinking long term while I learn futures platform and I will likely conserve capital. If I miss some bull, so what.

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.