August 2005 Archives

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. As I said in my comment, I hope that Stephen will still provide some free content...

Some quick notes on the Nasdaq chart:

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Obviously today's gonna be all about hurricane Katrina and oil. There are plenty of hurricane related movers on the Briefing.com list below.

On a related note, it looks like we're going to get a taste of Katrina here in Atlanta tonight and/or tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about the power going out so if you don't see any posts here tomorrow you'll know why...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

Hopefully that will give you some good ideas about what to put in your journal. One thing that I found is that just the exercise of keeping the journal updated keeps me on my toes. Whenever I find myself thinking about taking a flyer on a trade that I know I shouldn't, I ask myself how I'm going to explain my entry in my journal. That's usually enough to keep me out of that questionable trade. Another nice thing is tracking the R multiples. You know that if you start seeing R multiples much less than -1.0 that you're really messing up. There's no justifiable reason for letting the stocks fall through your initial stop. It also becomes exceedingly clear how important it is to keep those losses small.

You may also want to check out the StockTickr Trading Journal which "StockTickr Pro gives you access to a trading journal which calculates the expectancy of your trading system, automatically captures charts for your daily chart review (it plots your entry, stop, and exit points for you), and helps you figure out what is working and not working in your own trading."

P.S. If anybody has other ideas about what to put in a journal or knows of a good journal software package please leave a comment.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention that I also have additional sheets in my journal 'workbook' (excel terminology). One page I call 'daily recaps' is just my P&L for the day with whatever comments I feel necessary for that day. The other page is identical except the columns apply to the entire week.

P.P.P.S. I just took a (very) quick look at the archives of Tharp's newsletters and found these articles: " The Art of Journaling, Part One" and The Art of Journaling, Part Two.

Wow, 2 tips in one day! I guess I'm doing something right... The mailwoman just dropped off a nice little package from Amazon. A big thanks to a long-time reader of mine, Keith, (aka MouseFinger) for hooking me up with 3 of my most highly desired CDs from my Amazon wishlist. (I don't think MouseFinger has a site but here's a picture of his impressive trading set-up) You know I had had to play the LTJ Bukem CD first!

Here's the comment I just left on Seeking Alpha's post about financial blogs and potential conflicts of interest.

There are some good points made by the commenters above so I'll keep my comments real brief. I think that anybody who acts upon an investment/trade idea without doing their own analysis, in whatever form, is foolhardy. That goes for ideas gleaned from anonymous sources or even from the esteemed Wall Street Journal. As we've learned over the last several years, not even analysts at 'credible' Wall Street firms can always be trusted.

I've always been wary of talking about individual stocks for fear of being accused of being a pump & dumper. My concern has only grown as my readership has grown. That's despite having a disclaimers all over my site and disclosing positions that I discuss. I also refuse to write about micro-caps and thinly traded stocks for the same reason.

Recently I've been concerned about the way some newer blogs have gone about spamming promoting themselves and about the type of stocks they're writing about. (For example, check out what's going on in the Yahoo message boards .) I fear that some of these bloggers are walking a very fine line and may be headed for trouble. I just hope that when and if that happens that we all don't get tainted along with them.

I'm sitting here listening to the Georgia Governor telling people to stay calm about the rising gas prices but I just came in from a short trip to the store and it's getting hectic out there. I headed to the store at about 4:05 PM today and noticed that the station closest to my house was in the midst of changing their prices. At that time all of the prices started with a '2' and their middle numbers were missing. When I came back about 30 minutes later the prices were 3.09 to 3.29 (pictures of that station below). Also, premium gas at another station I passed on the way to the store jumped 56 cents to 3.56 while I was in the store! Lines were about 10 cars long on my trip to the store and were noticeably longer, even spilling out into the street, on my way back home. Looks like it'll be a fun weekend!

Here are a couple of pics of the station nearest my house. The man in front of the white truck works at the station and was directing traffic.

P.S. The news is now saying that people are reporting 4 and 5 dollar prices throughout the metro area.

Update @ 5:33 - The news just showed a station with a price of $5.57 and the station across the street was in the process of modifying their price from $5 something

Upodate 2: Terry also has a post about what's going on in Georgia today, including the Governor's sanctions against price gougers.

It's simply amazing that a company could put out such a misleading press release in this day & age. CAFE finally made a statement about their release from July 12 that sent the stock soaring:

Host America Corp. said Wednesday that while it believed there was an oral understanding between itself and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. that Host would begin surveying 10 Wal-Mart stores for the installation of its LightMasterPlus system, there is not, and never has been, a formal, written agreement with the retailer concerning the proposed survey nor is there any agreement for the installation of the light system. The survey was the subject of a July 12 press release that was followed by a significant increase in trading volume in Host's shares and stock price over the next ten days, the company noted. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently began a formal probe of the company and certain of its officers, directors and others and initiated a suspension in the trading of Host's securities. Host said Chief Executive and President Geoffrey Ramsey has been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the completion of an investigation by a special committee convened by the company. Ramsey has also resigned as chairman of the board. Chief Financial Officer David Murphy has been named acting CEO and president

I feel bad for the people who have been trapped in CAFE for all these weeks. I guess they'll have some consoloation from the fact that the stock is set to start trading again tomorrow.

Seeking Alpha has a couple of important posts about blogs and conflicts of interest that I encourage all of you to read. In the first post David, the author, asks:

• With (often anonymous) blogs, how do I know what I'm reading is accurate?
• How do I know that the author isn't trying to "pump and dump" a stock?
• How do I know the author has disclosed any position in the stock being written about?

The second post gives an example of potential issues with one blog in particular and also has a rebuttal from the author of that blog.

I have many thoughts on this topic and I'll post them here as well as in Seeking Alpha's comments later today.

Well it's Wednesday so we've got oil inventory data being released at 10:30. Seems like every week there's more & more drama around these reports. So you know I won't even be thinking of initiating any positions until 10:45 or so.

Speaking of oil, Duru forwarded ths WSJ article to me -- Rising Oil and Gas Prices Add to Energy Pressure On Broader Economy. He highlighted a key (and scary) portion (Duru's comments are in italics):

This is my first time REALLY absorbing the scope and magnitude of the potentially imminent crisis from this Hurricane. This stuff is deep. And Lord help us if we get yet one more shock to the energy complex. Here is a quote from this excellent article that tripped me out:

"Typically, car tanks are about one-quarter full. If buyers start keeping car tanks three-quarters full, the added demand would quickly drain the entire system of gas supplies. Dan Pickering, president of Houston-based Pickering Energy Partners, says: "What you don't have in the system is the ability to run every car full of gas. If you get a hoarding mentality among the consumers, then it tightens the system even further. Fear of shortage begets the shortage. It becomes a vicious circle."

If the U.S. auto fleet of 220 million vehicles went up to three-quarters of a tank -- or, say, 10 gallons more -- it would be an additional 2.2 billion gallons of demand. Gasoline inventories were 195 million barrels on Aug. 19, and diesel an additional 77 million barrels, according to the latest government data, or a total of 8.19 billion gallons and 3.23 billion gallons, respectively."

Alternative energy plays are sounding better & better with each passing day! I think I need to start doing some research. About a year ago I saw a chart of the U.S.'s daily oil consumption compared to other countries in the world and I was flabbergasted at how much higher we were than everybody else. I think the tipping point is near...

And now back to the stuff that really matters, charts not opinions. :-) I'll be back in an hour or so to post the gappers...

Potential swing trades:

Longs - None

Shorts - None

Potential day trades:

Stephen Vita dropped a bomb today as he revealed some new features for his site. He also said that access to the site will cost $23.95/month. That brought out a slew of comments from Stephen's readers, mostly against the new fee. It