Trader Mike

I can sum up today with one word — UGH!!! Comcast did it to me again. I spent the first 90 minutes of the session trying to get my cable modem to stay connected. I’m starting to feel like this is a vast conspiracy. The last time I had connectivity issues was a day with a nice trend just like today. The difference was I only missed one entry that day, today I missed everything. If only I could get DSL at my house… At least somebody had a great day today — congrats Ugly.

So the charts are below. It was clearly a great day for the bulls and I …

This was the day of the sympathy plays for me as I caught some nice moves in GameStop Corp. (GME) and Infosys Technologies (INFY). Each of those stocks was up in sympathy with another stock that reported good earnings today / last night, Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (CTSH), respectively. That’s a switch for me because I usually try to focus on the actual stocks that had the news. I’ll have to change my typical modus operandi and track the sympathy plays. I finished the day with just over 6R (4%) of gains and those two accounted for 7.15R.

Despite the good day I’m frustrated because …

Once again I come into my office and see blinking lights on my cable modem. This is really getting old! My connection had been extremely reliable for a long stretch, so long that I decided to dump my land line (and my backup ISP).

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The other day I mentioned that I was having trouble with my internet connection. It seems like I’ve had the same problems with my cable modem every summer for the last 5 years. I’ve been convinced that heat was a factor somewhere along the line. I’ve tried aiming a fan at my modem and blasting the A/C. (My office is the hottest room in the house, and nearly impossible to cool without turning the entire house into an icebox.) Each of the last 2 summers I’ve had my cable company (originally Comcast, then AT&T, now Comcast again) come out for a service visit. Both times they did something outside of the house, like changing a splitter, or the connector on the end of a cable. Those efforts typically have boosted my signal strength enough to make the disconnects much less frequent. During each of those visits, they also ‘upgraded’ me to the latest & greatest modem.