Dan on January 12th, 2006
I believe that I have finally reached the end of the adjustment period. Yesterday was the first day I made it through without feeling excessively tired at any point. Today has been about the same. I’ve been loosely following polyphasic sleep now for 3 weeks. It has been enough time to conclude that it is a very real alternative to wasting your life with normal sleep.
I feel that the nights I slept 8 hours helped my body adjust and refresh itself. I will be using at least one monophasic sleep night a month and I suggest that others on this schedule should try it as well. It doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on the polyphasic cycles.
So what does the future hold? I plan on staying with polyphasic sleep for as long as possible. Since I will be attending school in a few weeks I may have to change it up a bit to accommodate classes. I think I may have to do two nights a week with 4.5h core and 2 day naps. If I do have to follow such a schedule I will track my progress. I think that it will work quite well and shouldn’t disrupt normal 6 cycle days.
Dan on January 8th, 2006
A few people have requested that I discuss investing so that’s what I’ll do here, starting with more specific long term goals.
Goal #7: 5 Year Financial Goal. In five years the vast majority of my income comes from a combination of rental properties, forex, and stocks/options investments.
Here’s a breakdown of each:
1. Real Estate
Real estate is the cornerstone to the majority of riches in this country. Property value here in Rochester is expected to grow 5% a year, but that doesn’t matter much to me. Why? Because cash flow is king. Rental property is where the money is. When you receive a check every month for doing very little work you know you have it made. You could even hire people to do any required work for you! I can go on and on about how great real estate is due to leverage, cash flow, appreciation, tax depreciation, etc but there are plenty of resources out there for that. I’ll post some reviews of my favorite real estate books soon.
I’ve been researching real estate investing for years now and my book smarts on the topic are top notch. I even bought a rental property a few years ago. The problem is that I never finished the necessary work on the house to rent it so it has been sitting vacant. My goal is to have it rentable a month before the end of the spring college semester, thus giving me time to get some students in there before they leave for summer.
2. Forex
I’ve been researching the forex (foreign exchange) market since September now and I think my learning has plateaued. The only thing I haven’t researched enough is the impact of fundamentals since they have a much smaller overall impact than on the stock market. I decided when I started learning about forex that I wanted a 100% technical system. Right now the two I like the most are the Super Woodie’s CCI indicator and a MA crossover strategy. Both require significant attention to the markets that I haven’t been able to give to properly test the systems. I need to develop some alarms that will alert me to trade signals. I feel that forex is a great place to make (or lose) money quickly due to high volatility and high leverage. My live account is now funded with $200 so hopefully I’ll have time this week to start doing some active trading with real money.
3. Stocks/Options
The stock market is an obvious place to turn for investing. My problem with it is the misconception that earning 10-20% per year is excellent. It’s horrible! Why would I want to earn only 10% a year on something as risky as stocks when I can buy real estate that will earn me the same amount in cash flow alone? In my opinion correctly analyzing individual stocks and then using the proper instruments can net you far far far better returns then that. To give you an idea what I mean, Google (GOOG) options held for less than one day this week (Thursday to Friday) could have earned you a return of 130%, Yahoo (YHOO) 100%, and Apple (AAPL), IBM, and others earning 50%+. That’s more in one day than most mutual funds earn in 6 years!
The problem is that mutual funds are not allowed to use the tools that are offered to individual investors, such as margin, short sales, and leveraged options yet their performance is what everyone looks at as a benchmark. My strategy isn’t set in stone yet but I am currently researching news, stock splits, CANSLIM, and other trading methods. Options will play a large part in whatever system I decide to use.
This week provided a great example to why you should have your money in different markets. The Fed implied that they will stop raising interest rates for the time being. This caused opposite results in the forex and stock markets. The dollar dropped in value about 365 pips vs the Euro in less than 2 days. With 100:1 leverage that means an investment in the Euro would have returned 365% (or a margin call on long dollar positions)! The stock market loved the news and grew this week producing some excellent results. Real estate investors are also happy since stopping rate increases means better mortgage rates.
Dan on January 6th, 2006
On Tuesday I went gym shopping. There are 4 within a few miles of my apt. Two are YMCAs, one is a World Gym, and the other is Midtown Athletic Club. I decided to look into all of them and pick which one was best for me at this time.
The YMCA downtown is quite large so the smaller one was out. I’ve heard pretty good things about this Y location so I checked the prices. Promo signup fee of $37.50 and $54.50 a month. Not too bad. I didn’t take a tour of the Y.
Next I went to World Gym. I took a tour and got a 1 week trial membership. I was told fees were $150 signup, $60 per month. It was physically smaller than the Y but included 4 free personal trainer sessions and some other perks. No swimming pool or indoor track but I don’t need those anyway. I did like the fact that World is open 24h a day from Monday morning to Friday night. That flexability works well with polyphasic sleep.
I then moved to Midtown, widely know in Rochester to be the most swank athletic club. I’ve been there once before for a meeting and let me tell you, the place is really really nice. You don’t get much more upscale than it. Every piece of cardio equipment has an LCD tv, the locker rooms look like they’re from a private country club, there are a bunch of indoor tennis and squash courts. The other nice thing about Midtown is that everyone with money goes there so it’s a great place to network. That’s a stronger drawing point for me than the equipment. The problem: $150 signup and a whopping $104 per month. Almost double the cost of the Y!
I decided to try my week pass to World before deciding on anything. I had my first personal trainer session on Wednesday and I was instantly impressed. My trainer noticed my poor back posture and started working on it with me right away. I never thought it was something I could improve but now I believe it’s going to change. We did a baseline skinfold measurement: 11.9% body fat. Much lower than I expected! Looks like hitting my targets won’t be hard at all. We decided that bulking up first and losing the extra fat later would work best, so my body fat percentage goals may change.
Prior to leaving my first session I scheduled my second for today. After a warmup jog we did some more work with my back and then some chest work. On the way out I happend to ask if they had a student discount. $60 signup, $49 a month! I was instantly sold.
So now that I found my gym I can work on my physique. I’m going to start working out 3-5 times a week. As I get more into it I’ll be going 6 days a week. I have plenty of time for it thanks to polyphasic sleep.
Speaking of polyphasic sleep, how has the exercise effected it? I haven’t noticed a change whatsoever. I’m hoping that it may actually help since I think I’m going to exercise in the 2-6am time period which is usually the hardest time to stay awake. Working out should solve that problem.
Dan on January 2nd, 2006
Happy New Years everyone! Have you set your goals for 2006? How about 2011? If the answer was no to either of these you need to set them today. How can you achieve anything without knowing what you want to achieve?
Even if it’s a simple goal like my #2 (post a blog entry a day) it will help motivate you. You’ll then think about other goals to set and what you can accomplish.
Dan on December 29th, 2005
I received cash from most of my relatives as Christmas gifts. I decided to use all of the money, plus some of my own, to open a real Forex trading account. I will be starting with a whopping $200. If the account is up after a month of trading I’ll start adding more on a regular basis.
My Oanda demo account had a very interesting day today. I started with two gains totalling around $400 (0.4% gain), then followed that with a $2000 loss (2%). I finally ended the day up almost $500 (0.5% gain). As I refine my BoxOptions strategy I find it easier and easier to make money with them. Taking advantage of the lagging volatility factor in BoxOptions pricing shifts probability in my favor. I hope to contine to hone this method over the next few months. If I continue to make reasonable gains I may write an ebook or seek out other investors in family and friends. That may be jumping the gun but it’s always good to plan ahead.
My North Finance demo account dropped a bit more today. I had two losing trades. I started trading this account in the afternoon, after the majority of the day’s movement had taken place. A lesson learned.
As always, graphs of my demo accounts (and soon my live account) can be found at http://www.thedanexperiment.com/forex-trading/.
