Dan on January 17th, 2007
One trading strategy I wholeheartedly believe in is CANSLIM. I’m not going to go into details about the method, you can read about it at the link provided and all over the web. It’s a fundamentals based strategy that relies on great earnings and great companies. When I was researching CANSLIM months ago I stumbled onto Pitbull Investor. I used their free trial with demo trading and had decent results, somewhere around 5% in one month. I finally ordered the system a few weeks ago. It’s basicly a simplified version of CANSLIM with the addition of the cup and handle chart pattern. Every week their automated system publishes a list of stocks that fit their guidelines. The past few weeks have created very small lists and none of the companies jumped out at me. Then this weekend the new list was longer. I found two stocks that interested me, WIT and MEOH. Both are fundamentally great companies but WIT is in a cup and handle chart pattern. They were also scheduled to release earnings today. I used the rest of my cash account to buy WIT yesterday at $16.96. Today they beat the predicted EPS of $0.10 by $0.02, pushing the stock up over 4% to $17.84 as of right now. I’ll be holding this stock until it reaches the target of $20.62, it goes sideways, or I find a new stock that I feel has better potential.
Dan on January 16th, 2007
It took a while but I’m finally back in the market. After selling my house I decided to put aside $5,000 to open a new brokerage account. While OptionsXpress has a LOT of great features their fees are a bit high. I’m keeping $1,000 with them as a backup account and for the tools they provide (free L1 streaming quotes, calculators, market scanners, etc). I put the $5,000 in a ChoiceTrade account. I haven’t decided if I’m going to stay with them yet but I’ve begun trading. Their website is bare bones and they don’t allow anything beyond basic options trades (no spreads, etc). Their fees are very low though, only $5 for stock trades (unlimited shares including penny stocks) and $0.75 per options contract ($6 minimum).
Anyway, back to the trading. I opened a long position of AMZN at $37.50 on Thursday and sold one $40 February call (ZQNBH). Online retailers had an excellent Christmas season with Amazon announcing that this season was their best ever. Despite the announcement there hasn’t been a lot of interest in AMZN. I believe that interest will increase as we approach their earnings release at the beginning of February. The implied volatility (IV) is quite a bit higher than historical volatility (HV), meaning that options are currently selling at a premium. If AMZN reaches $40 I earn about 10%. On the downside the stock has to decline about 3.4% before I start losing money thanks to the option. I plan on closing my positions by option expiration (2/14/07). As of now AMZN is up over $1 so everything is looking good.
Dan on January 9th, 2007
Sorry about the downtime everyone! Due to issues with Amex the bill didn’t get paid like it was supposed to and the site went down while I was 350 miles away visiting my parents without access to the proper card to pay it. That’s also one of the reasons why I haven’t had any updates in a while. Now that it’s back I’ll be posting more regular updates. I have a bunch of images to add to the gallery as well.
Dan on January 7th, 2007
I’ve been keeping a journal of my dreams since December 16th. The goal is to have better recolection of my dreams and increase the frequency of lucid dreaming. Prior to logging my dreams I would remember a few a week. I almost never had a lucid dream, and the few that I do remember were only partially lucid. I realized I was dreaming but didn’t choose to take control. Typically the characters in my dream would do whatever I wanted but I wouldn’t try something outside the realm of the current dream. Whenever I wake up and remember a dream I write it down, along with the time I went to bed and the time I woke up.
Within a few days I started remembering more of my dreams and the memories were more vivid. Now, almost a month later, I always remember at least one dream when I wake up or something about it. Sometimes I remember two or three dreams from that night. Sometimes I’ll remember the dream I was having when I woke up and then later in the day something will trigger my memory and I’ll remember another dream I had that night. For the most part the dreams themselves haven’t seemed to change. The only problem I’ve had is that my handwriting seems to get 10x worse right after I wake up and the journal can be tough to read at times.
I had one partially lucid dream on Christmas eve. I was the main character in a video game with GTA type style. I was following the plot for a while but then realized it was a game (dream) and could do whatever I wanted with no consequences. I started going wherever and doing whatever I wanted. I was still constricted to the realm of the game and the laws of physics. I hope to have a fully lucid dream at some point.
If you want to remember your dreams more vividly and more frequently I strongly recommend a dream journal. Going back and reading what you dreamt about earlier in the week can be fun as well. I find that I often remember what I wrote about when I reread it.
