One reason for that is that I am once again going to move my account to a different broker. I just haven’t been able to get used to ThinkorSwim’s interface. Either I’m officially an old dog (I turn 40 on July 28th) or the interface just doesn’t work well with the way I like to trade. So I think I’m gonna jump on the Interactive Brokers bandwagon.

I also have to attend to some family matters. So my focus will be on that for the next several days. I’ll try to get a recap out over the weekend and will do a couple or three more next week. Hopefully posting will resume its normal pace on the 28th or 29th.

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I’m Halfway Back From Vacation…

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Gone Fishing…

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Some of you know about FaveBot.com, which I’ve been building since this summer. FaveBot is a software agent (robot) that continuously searches the web for “stuff” of interest to you. That stuff could be any of the following:

• Local Events
• Blog Posts
• Books (New Releases)
• DVDs (New Releases)
• MP3s / CDs (New Releases)
• News Articles
• Photos
• Podcasts
• Online Videos

FaveBot can track those things for whatever topics you specify. So you could track your favorite sports teams, actors, musicians, hobbies, etc. But I wanted to show how you can use FaveBot to track stock market / finance related content. The advantage FaveBot has over, say, Yahoo Finance, is that it searches so many different media types. For example, there’s a lot of good financial content ‘buired’ in audio and video files that’s not picked up by Yahoo Finance. FaveBot will find that content for you if you choose to track podcasts and/or videos. Ditto for blogs.

To demonstrate FaveBot I set up a user, TraderMike, who’s based in New York. (the location is important for event tracking) There are two main areas of FaveBot. First is the user’s tracking list. That’s the list of topics (keywords) that the user has entered. Second is the “discoveries” list. That is the list of what FaveBot has found to match the user’s tracking list. You can choose to view all discoveries together or just the discoveries for one topic at a time.

Here’s a portion of the tracking list:

The tracking list is basically a control panel. Use the ‘New Tracking’ link to add a topic to be tracked. When you’re logged in you’ll see checkboxes next to each of your topics. You can turn those on & off from this page as well. You’ll also notice that there are numbers in parenthesis after each topic’s name. Clicking that number will take you to the discoveries for that topic. Likewise, clicking the Orange RSS button will give you the RSS feed for that topic.

Feel free to click over to FaveBot and see what it’s discovered for the 20 topics TraderMike is tracking. Here is TraderMike’s tracking list and here’s where you can see all of TraderMike’s discoveries across all his topics (equivalent to clicking the ‘discoveries’ tab when you’re logged in).

If you’d like to set up your own list, just go to the sign up page. Once you’ve got your list set you can have your discoveries sent to you via RSS (e.g. add them to your My Yahoo page) or via email. Please let me know if you have any questions and/or feedback.

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Tracking Financial Info with FaveBot

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My Vacation Pics on Flickr

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After this experience I realize that I really need to be taking disk images and not just backing up my data. So I’ve purchased an HP Media Vault which will help to facilitate those type of backups. If I ever have another hard drive get zapped the restoration will be MUCH easier since I’ll just be able to install the disk image.

Post from: Trader Mike's Blog

Posting Should Return to Normal Tomorrow, Post-Fed

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(I must be crazy talking about Oprah to my 90% male readership…) I think the movie The Secret is about to hit its tipping point. On Thursday Oprah Winfrey’s show will be all about that movie — or more specifically the topic of the movie which is the law of attraction. That law basically states that “whatever you focus on you get more of.” I saw the movie back in August after seeing a mention on another trader’s blog. What was most interesting about it is that it was nothing new. The movie crystallized concepts that I’ve read and heard about over the years.

One thing that really stood out to me was that focusing on a negative doesn’t work. A good example of that is when you see a football team with a big lead go into the dreaded “prevent defense“. Instead of continuing to play to win they start playing not to lose. We all know what typically happens next — the team blows the game. I’ve had similar experiences with trading. I always seem to get into trouble when I try to trade not to lose (scared money…). That causes me to adjust my stops just enough so that they get hit right before the stock reverses. Even though I realized that fact long before watching The Secret (hence my long-standing rule of not touching stops within an hour of setting them) I never thought of it in terms of attracting those stop outs because of my mindset.

Anyway, there are tons of applications of the law of attraction in all facets of life. I highly recommend watching the movie and/or the Oprah show on Thursday. Here’s some stuff to give you a better idea of what to expect:

Update: Here’s the video of Oprah’s Show about the The Secret. The panel consists of Rhonda Byrne, Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, James Arthur Ray, Lisa Nichols and Jack Canfield:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

The promo from Larry King’s first show on “The Secret”:

I happened to catch that episode of Larry King live back in October while flipping through channels in a hotel room. (Something I never do at home thanks to TiVo.) The show got such a good response that Larry did a second Law of Attraction show:

(Update: Google video has the Larry King shows archived — Larry King Live: Beyond Positive Thinking)

It seems that about half of the movie is available on YouTube but you can stream the whole thing from the official website for about $5. I streamed it to my laptop and even over WiFi and the quality was excellent. I recommend going that route for the first viewing.

Steve Pavlina has a review of The Secret and a good post about the Law of Attraction. And here are 100 quotes from The Secret.

Post from: Trader Mike's Blog

“The Secret” (Law of Attraction) on Oprah

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I’m going to spend the day doing one of my least favorite things, moving this site to a new web host. My host’s ongoing disaster has forced me to bite the bullet and upgrade to a dedicated server. Hopefully that will alleviate the issues of getting the site to load in the morning when my traffic is heaviest.

With any luck I’ll get everything set up today and have a watchlist up in the morning. Good luck/skill if you’re trading today.

Post from: Trader Mike's Blog

Hopefully I’ll Be Back Tomorrow

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Keep up the good work. Great Blog! One suggestion: can you setup your links to open in another window? Kirk does this and it works very well to prevent getting lost. Thanks!

People ask me about that from time to time. While some people like their links to open in new windows, I’m defintely in the opposite camp. I’d much rather leave it up to the reader to decide how the links load. Folks with modern browsers (that means just about everything except for Internet Explorer) will likely want to open the links in new tabs. I find it interesting that Mike feels that opening links in new windows would keep people from getting lost. Take my previous post for example, which, I think, prompted Mike’s email. There are 16 links in that post. Is it really better (simpler) to open 16 different windows? I’ll use my tabs any day.

Many people consider setting links to open in new windows is poor web design. Here’s a quote from an article about the top 10 mistakes in Web Design:

9. Opening New Browser Windows

Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer’s carpet. Don’t pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management).

Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user’s machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don’t notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.

Links that don’t behave as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser’s “open in new window” command — assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior.

And here’s another article that frowns creating links which open in new windows. A snippet:

Here are the top 5 reasons why you should beware of opening links in a new window:

1. Unless you warn them, Web users are likely to expect the new page to load in the current window. Unexpected surprises can be fun, but not when you’re browsing the Web.
2. The act of opening a new browser window resets the back button in that window. The back button is the second most used navigation function (after hyperlinks, source: useit.com), so resetting it is a big no-no.
3. To open a new browser window can disorient very novice Web users and the visually impaired. They might not realise that a new window has opened and might struggle to switch between windows.
4. Opening a new browser window disrespects the desires of your users. If they want a new window, they’ll ask for one. Don’t force a new window upon users unless there’s a very good reason to do so.
5. New browser windows can make an already cluttered taskbar even more difficult to use. We’ve all spent ages hunting through the taskbar in search of the window we want. Don’t make this process even harder by increasing the number of windows the user has open.

To each his own but if you’re using Internet Explorer and want to open links in new windows just hold down the SHIFT key while you click on links.

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Why My Links Don’t Open in New Windows

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I’m heading up to New York tomorrow to meet with Howard to discuss WallStrip. If you’d like to get together with us for some drinks we’ll be at the W hotel in Union Square. Just shoot me an email and we’ll work out the details…

Update: We’re going to meet Thursday at 6 PM at the W Hotel. I heard a rumor that Ugly and Michael Panzner will be stopping by as well.

On another note, I think it’s time we had another Atlanta meeting. Any ATLiens interested?

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New York City MeetUp

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Post from: Trader Mike's Blog

Jury Duty…

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