June 2004 Archives

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding:

Be sure to check out this week's Carnival of the Capitalists which is being hosted by Martin 'Egoist' Lindeskog over in Sweden.

In response to my moving averages post Martin asked for my take on Michael Covel's trend-following method. Well I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with Covel's work, but that will change very soon. (The obvious answer, without even reading Covel's book, is that any trend-following method is cool with me!)

Peter Caputa is hosting next week's Carnival, so if you're interested send your entries to him. If you're wondering why you'd want to join in, Peter broke that down last week. More info is available at the Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Over the weekend Duru and I were talking about how many wild spikes there were in the final minutes of trading on Friday. Like I suspected on Friday, that was a result of the Russell 2000 re-balancing. Some charts are so bad that I didn't even know whether the data was legit. Alan Farley has written a good article about what happened Friday.

On a different note, if you're still using Internet Explorer, you should know that "US CERT (the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team), is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." Don't say I didn't warn you! (Hat tip to my Brother, Tony)

Today's gap up and subsequent sell-off made what called a 'Gap and Crap', a.k.a. 'Gap and Trap'. (Funny that StockCharts.com's annotation tool turned 'crap' into '----'. Pretty slick of them.) It sucked in over-zealous buyers at the open and trapped them in losing positions. As some of you know, I have my #1 rule taped to my monitor just for days like this. I really didn't trust this gap because of the 'news' it was based upon, the fact that we had two bearish candlesticks the last two days, the fact that we gapped over the upper Bollinger Band, and finally because we still have the Fed meeting to look forward to.

I'm still holding all of my shorts, but I'll be real motivated to cover tomorrow.

Well that gap up wasn't as bad as it looked. Two of my shorts, SNDK and TARO, are actually down for the day. RHAT is real close to my stop, which I moved up to my max permissible loss of 5%. I actually added another short, SLAB, because it had such a weak opening. We'll see what happens.

I'm certainly caught worse than flat-footed this morning. Not only am I holding 3 shorts and no longs into this gap up, but I only have one long on my watch list versus 12 shorts. The good news is that the shorts probably won't trigger... which, again, is why I only take positions after they start moving in my anticipated direction.

I suspect that the gap up will fade but that's just a gut feeling. I can only predict the past with 100% accuracy.

Oh, and I don't plan on adding any more swing trades until after the Fed decision on Wednesday...

Currently holding:

I have an inside joke between me, myself and I about what can go 'wrong' over the weekend if I'm short. One of the answer to that is that peace is declared. Well that certainly didn't happen, but the market is set to have a big gap up due to the earlier than expected Iraq handover. I don't think this gap is anything to get too excited over though. The gap will take us right to the area that was resistance on Thursday and Friday, and there's still the Federal Reserve interest rate decision on Wednesday. Given the gap, I won't be pushing down my stops on my shorts like I said on Friday, I'll just leave them where they were.

Andy Dunn was nice enough to send me a copy of his new book, Great Companies, Great Charts, to review. In the book Andy explains the trading system he developed after his portfolio took a beating during the recent bear market. His system, which has some similarities to CANSLIM, is very simple -- buy great (fundamentally sound) companies with great (technically sound) charts.

Andy uses online stock screening tools to find his potential investments. He walks the user through the process of setting up their the screens at various sites. One of the things I always like to see in books about the market is a discussion of money management, and this book does not disappoint in that area. A good portion of the book focuses on trade entry and exit techniques, position sizing and risk management.

Andy's system is yet another example of how simple investing can be. I have to admit that initially I was taken aback at small size of the book. But after reading it I realized that it didn't need to be lengthy -- the system is just that simple. I won't say that I agree with every aspect of Andy's system, because there are a couple of things that I would tweak. But that's the whole point of investing -- you have to do what makes you comfortable. And Andy even says in the book the book that whether or not you agree with his methodology the important thing is to have a well thought out plan and follow it. Anyone thinking about creating an investing program should take a look at this book.

I would go into more detail about the book but I don't think that's necessary because Andy has posted portions of it on his weblog and/or you can browse it at iUniverse.. Enjoy.

Here's today's list, for what it's worth. I won't even set my alerts until after the Fed decision this afternoon... and maybe not at all.

Currently holding:

So much for that holding through the Fed plan. I got stopped out of some positions early on today and hung in to the last two positions for the rest of the day. With the market hanging tough and the Fed looming I decided to just get out (back to the original plan) of those positions as well. I'll be on the sidelines until at least 30 minutes after the decision.

Once again there are only shorts on the list. Most of these have bounced near their middle Bollinger Band and started making bearish candlesticks (shooting stars, bearish engulfing, doji, spinning tops) in that area.

I may change my mind about holding positions through the Fed decision tomorrow. If I can get a bit more of a profit cushion I may just roll my stops down to lock in small gains and see what happens. Many of these shorts have too much potential for me to bail on them prematurely, so I'll try to stick it out.

Currently holding: