????????

Sorry I haven't posted in like 2 days I'm trying to figure out the direction of the market.

Do you guys think I should go in next week fully invested?

I'm up about 30% if I can get 20% fully invested next week I would have 50%+ in one month (the first month!)

How bout a market neutral portfolio?


By the way feel free to ask any question no matter the length or the randomness I will usually respond within that day.

Rss Hugger Review

rssHugger.com
The deep RSS orange of the site coupled with a dark grey makes this site visually appealing. The cutsie factor aside, the logo does the site justice. The only thing that struck me as odd — no RSS icon anywhere on their main page. Not sure why the rssHugger site wouldn’t have an RSS icon, but I’ll leave that to the graphical gods to determine a punishment.

rssHugger Site Dump January 20th 2008
Above the fold, we can clearly read the intent of the blog. The site informs us we can either do a review of rssHugger or pay a $20 fee to have a page on their site for ten years. I would much rather do a review than pay $20. Times are tight. I need all the money I can get to stock up on gunpowder.

rssHugger intends to bring bloggers and readers closer together. Oh, I’ll just lay it out there from their site. Here’s their blurb:

rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader. rssHugger aims to help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in. These subjects include: internet marketing, making money online, charity, sports, gambling, and many more. If the visitors find a blog that they had not previously heard about, they can easily add it to their RSS readers or bookmark it.

So it apparently works like this: you submit your RSS feed to their site, they enter you into a category, and finally they list your most current blog titles under your feed name on their site. Sure this build backlinks for your site, but will this really benefit your site that much? They could at least use the MSN Safari thumbnail creator to pull in an image of your site.

The rssHugger site comes to you from the creators of wordHugger, a seemingly pointless buy a word for $60 page. The wordHugger site seems to offer you one word that you monopolize on their site (or phrase) like “make money online” or “memory foam“. The two sites seem to mirror each other, except rssHugger costs less and offers a free way to enter. Overall, I think both sites have more flash than bang.

Conclusion
I’ve asked non-bloggers what RSS feeds they read. The most common answer? What’s an RSS feed? The biggest hurdle for rssHugger seems to be attracting readers aside from bloggers. As soon as RSS feeds become like radio stations, then the internet will be jumping with sites like this. For now, it seems the site will be pandering to the same crowd, with a few perks. Not too much to get excited over just yet. In their defense, they may be adding more functionality in the coming months. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

http://www.rsshugger.com/images/logo.png

...

Alfred Edward Housman was a pre-eminent poet of his time, and his contemporaries regarded him as one of the best. His work combined the themes of time, death, adultery and war, and surrounded them in a melancholy tone. Housman’s life was littered with dilemmas and tribulations, and his best collection of literature was made during these predicaments. His writing’s still influence and inspire the lives of many till this day.
Housman was born in 1859 near Fockbury, Worcestershire, England.
Housman was the first-born of 7 children, all of which looked at Housman as their role model. Alfred’s father was a tax collector and his mother was a housewife. Alfred loved his father but not nearly enough as his mother. Alfred shared a close relationship with his mother up until her death. The death of his mother was the cause of great disquietude which lead to his depression, which stamps all of his works. Housman attended the acclaimed Bromsgrove School and despite the early contention in his life me maintained a healthy academic resume. Bromsgrove is where Housman discovered his consummate skill at writing poetry. Housman won several poetry awards while attending Bromsgrove. Housman gained acceptance into St. John’s college, Oxford. At Oxford Housman accelerated far above the other students in his graduating class, and was poised to graduate at the top of his class. While at Oxford Housman’s outcast status became apparent he was isolated from the other students, not willing to interact in any social activities. Housman only had 2 friends, his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman also experienced sexual feeling for other males, especially his roommate Moses. Finally Housman confronted his roommate Moses Jackson and expressed his true feelings for him. Housman told Moses he had sexual feeling toward him, but Housman was quickly rejected when Moses told Housman he was heterosexual. This led Housman to fail his final exams, and leave Oxford with no degree. This was Housman’s first interaction with rejection and he didn’t respond too well. Mosses still remained Housman’s friend even with his homosexual feelings. Housman went and became a teacher for a short period of time, then gained the strength to obtain a degree from Oxford. Housman accomplished his goal and Moses offered Housman a job at a patient office and they still remained roommates. It was at the patient office that Housman grew found of the Latin language and spent extra time studying, and altering Latin works. His mastery of the language grew so expansive, he began correcting works and writing for Latin journals. The writing Housman submitted to these journals became so popular, that scholars became increasingly interested in Housman and finally offered him a professorship of Latin at University College London and he accepted the position. It was around this time when Moses married and moved to India, leaving Housman behind. Housman was in a somber mood, and grew into a depression which isolated him further from society. He was in this mood because he felt as if he would never experience love. This was the reason Housman started writing in his notebooks, in his notebooks Housman wrote poems which would compose the praised A Shropshire Lad, which was a collection of 63 poems that Housman wrote. The poems took the despairing tone that most of his futures works would also take, they were filled with the themes of young death, lost love, time and war. He grew inspiration for A shropshire Lad from William Shakespeare’s collection of songs and Heinrich Heine, a German Romantic poet, but surprisingly left a Latin influence out. Shropshire was a country that Housman had never visited while writing the collection of poems but thought it was the perfect image for the style of poems that composed A Shropshire Lad. The poems in A Shrophire Lad matched the themes presented in all of Housmans works. The theme of war was covered with “Far I hear the Bugle Blow” which was about the apprehension a soldier faces when called into battle. Housman addressed the apprehension rather bluntly as seen in 4th stanza lines 13-16 “Therefore, though the best is bad, Stand and do the best, my lad; Stand and fight and see your slain, And take the bullet in your brain.” The theme was also addressed with “The Street Sounds to The Soldiers Tread”, which was also the apprehension a solider faced before battle. The theme of time is presented with the poem “When I was One and Twenty”, which was about a recollection to a past memory, in which a man gave Housman the advice to never give your heart to someone. The poem “Bring in this time less grave to throw” also covered the theme of time. The keynote of lost love is the most apparent in A Shropshire Lad, and can be seen with the poem “This time of year a twelvemonth past”. Which encompassed the story of a man who is recalling what he was doing 12 month ago, which was enjoying the time with his love, who he lost to another man. The themes of youth and dying were covered with Housman’s most prominent poem “To An Athlete Dying Young”. Which was about the story of a young runner that died after winning the town race and breaking the record. Housman never found a publisher for the collection of poems, so he made the decision to publish them himself. His students and contemporaries were amazed at the quantity of poems. Although rather blunt Housman’s works were regarded highly by soldiers and were used as inspiration and a way to cope with the harsh reality of war. It was during the Second Boer War, which was a war the British Empire fought against the independent Boer republics when A Shropshire Lad gained great popularity. It was not only soldiers who were reading Housman’s publications but musicians and scholars were also studying his works. His poems were used as by many composers during his day. After publishing A Shropshire Lad Housman was offered the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge and he gladly accepted the position. Housman was to remain here for the rest of his career. Housman still wrote poems but didn’t publish them until 1922 when he heard his long-time friend Moses Jackson was dying. He titled the collection “Last Poems”. The poems were titled “Last Poems”, because Housman felt that they would be the last poems he would live to publish, and they were. Housman died in 1936 and his brother Laurence later published the rest of his poems titled “More Poems”. Although Housmans life was filled with controversy it never inhibited Housman it only was used as inspiration and a reason to continue. Housman although dead is still regarded highly in today’s standards.

Ridiculous Trading Day! Week 2 udapte 1

Today was a wild ride for my portfolio today. I basically had all shorts, the market finished up (AZO finished up over 1% and I still gained 20%) ,and I hit my goal in one day! I came home (2:45pm et) and opened up the trading desk and to my surprise 5 out of the 6 picks were all stopped out at the +20% mark (or so I thought some of them actually got filled in at lower percentages). But I saw an unbelievable trade when I opened my account summary, GPI was bought at 9:31 @ 1.48 and 2 minutes later at 9:33 was sold @ 2.25 for a 52% profit in to minutes (options are so powerful). I immediately sold off my losing position WMT, because at the time I thought I had enough to cover the 20% goal, but I came up 5 percentage points short. My portfolio total was up +15% in one day I love when that happens (believe or not it happens alot with my style of trading). Since I only traded about $6000 this week instead of the full $12,000 the portfolio dollar-wise is up to about $13,000 so a 30% gain this month. Most of my positions were exited before 11:00am . I know as a reader you'd like to see more picks so I wont rest I will come up with more picks.

AZO 20%
ASCA 15%
TUP 17%
WMT -30%
ADI 25%
GPI 52%
total %15

Look @ the trade times.



I was very surprised at the fact that the market finished up after a day like friday, good sign for bulls.

Trades for Week 2

Overview:
With the Employment report showing unemployment rising higher than expected and job creation slowing, thoughts of recession are floating around. No important economic reports come out next week so fears of recession should be the "status quo" when traders think about the economy.

So with that report, I have selected Group 1 Automotive (GPI) (Auto Dealership) since consumers will think less of getting a new car (as seen with the auto sales report) and adding unnecessary touches to their vehicle Autozone Inc (AZO) (Auto Parts Store). Vacations will get thought about less, Ameristar Casino Inc (ASCA) (Resorts and Casinos) and less money at the store, Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT) (Discount Variety Stores).

I threw in Analog Devices Inc (ADI) (Semiconductor Broad-line) and Tupperware Brands Corporation (TUP) (Packaging and Containers).

I have 6 positions and I tried to keep each one around $1000, they all have sell stops that trigger when the position is up 20% in value. I tried to put in some credit spreads but when I analyzed them they weren't as profitable as outright buying puts. Sorry about having all the picks bearish but I couldn't find any stock that I would like to buy besides an ultrashort etf.

So my positions read:



+4 AZO Jan 08 110 Put (AZOMB)
+15 ASCA Jan 08 25 Put (UWTME)
+13 WMT Jan 08 45 Put (WMTMI)
+13 TUP Jan 08 30 Put (TUPMF)
+8 GPI Jan 08 22.5 Put (GPIMX)

AZO





ASCA




ADI


WMT






TUP



GPI