Moomin Valley

By this afternoon I felt comfortable enough with the IB software and with the market to do my first real futures trade - selling a NASDAQ 10...

I spent some time last night getting used to the IB system and making paper trades in NASDAQ 100, 10 year bond, and Australian Dollar future...

Bought 13 Australian Dollar contracts @ 0.7675. IB gives you $1M in imaginary play money and the underlying value of an Australian Dollar fu...

Paying money overseas gets easier and easier as credit card payments get more widespread internationally. But sometimes you need to pay in f...

a good trading day. I closed out the MSFT trade for a profit which was the only good thing that happened. HCBK was downgraded by Merrill Lyn...

In my existing accounts I bought some Microsoft shares this morning in anticipation of this evening's earnings release. I remain long QQ...

After faxing a copy of my driver's license to IB yesterday my IB account is finally operational. All I've done so far is log in, loo...

I just did the online retirement preparedness quiz . Like most such questionaires it didn't ask the big question about inheritance. Do p...

NetWorthIQ have a new release . The new version splits out non-owner occupied real estate. I think that is a great improvement. They also ha...

At this point there doesn't look like any way I am going to meet my original goal of getting to $370,000 by the end of this year. So I a...

Eric Falkenstein, a hedge fund manager in Minneapolis with a PhD in economics, has written a fascinating paper (warning: grad-level economi...

A Zillow for renters: Rentometer . Very cool. Oh and both my apartment and my girlfriend's are very good deals, not surprisingly :)

An interesting article in the NY Times today discusses the implications that now a minority of US households consist of married couples wit...

Again the model was stopped out today. I lost a lot of money. The majority of my profits from this experimental trading period have been los...

The old model won today as NDX ended up a couple of points and even the new "averaged stochastic" rose. But really the market didn...

I noticed today that the standard slow(5,3) stochastic began to decline today while my preferred full(5,5,3) stochastic increased steeply. T...

Million Dollar Countdown asked for some advice on introductory books on technical analysis. There are only two technical analysis books I h...

I finally got around to submitting an application for an account with Interactive Brokers . Security checks are now running before I can act...

Has anyone else noticed that Zillow hasn't updated any house prices for the last three weeks (since 9/15/06)? What's up over there?...

I upgraded to the new Beta Blogger, so that I could get faster publishing and add labels to my posts. I have long wanted to be able to categ...

If this count is correct then there could be some more upside left. But the Full(5,5,3) stoch can only rise at most to 64 tomorrow. If the i...

Investment Performance Investment return in US Dollars was -0.77% vs. a 1.19% gain in the MSCI World Index, which I use as my overall benchm...

The model stopped out. If this level holds then the model will reverse to the long stance again. The fluctuations in the last couple of week...

Yes there was a new intraday all time high (ATH) and a new closing ATH on the Dow. NDX was up a bit on the day but totally within model expe...

Not a good month, but not a terrible one either. The model gained 6.23% compared to an NDX gain of 4.71% but my trading accounts lost 3.94%....

On Tuesday the S&P 500 made a strong advance and went beyond the upper trend line of a bearish wedge that bears have been following and...

As I begin to realize that maybe I can realize my dream of financial independence much faster than I ever thought possible, I am beginning t...

Mayne Pharma is to be acquired by Hospira . It has been in a trading halt for a couple of days pending a transaction. Yesterday most comment...

Croesus Mining's administrators have provided an update on the state of negotiations to either sell Croesus' assets or recapitalize...

It ain't pretty: The chart shows the running total of profits from short term trades so far this year. As you can see I got a nice profi...

This scenario has now played out. The model is switching to short at the close today. The S&P 500 index has now had 3 weeks of sell sig...

I am reading the two books on taxes for traders that I ordered . Green's book is not as well written, but his strategies are simpler an...

Why do I keep trying to trade against the model? It doesn't make sense. I don't understand why I am doing it. But for some reason it...

Yup. The model is still long but probably Friday will turn out to be the last day of the uptrend in the stochastic. The stochastic can still...

Fin_Indie asked for me discuss how I reconcile being an economics professor and an active trader. I assume he is thinking about the efficie...

The model has now been long for a day and I am again aligned with the model and up on the month a little. This feels better. The uptrend sho...

A beautiful day here today - trying to appreciate it a little in between the things I have to do. The market has been making me nervous too ...

Yes, I am feeling very confused by the market today, even though so far I guess it is playing out the chart I posted in my last post. Just i...

For the first time today I estimated a model with weekly data. Again, I was stunned by the results - the high correlation between the foreca...

Just ordered a couple of books about tax for traders. The Tax Guide for Traders by Robert Green and The New Traders Tax Solution by Ted Te...

August was another good month. Net worth increased by $14,000 to $330k, investment return was 3.61%, and total investment income $11380. Ex...

Another month has gone by trading "the model". I have further improved my trading rules and produced a decent performance for bot...

This rally is looking pretty dead here . Based on the prices earlier this morning my model would have switched to long, and I got close to p...

My indicators derived from the stochastic were in exactly the same pattern as they are now twice in 2005. Once in mid to late February and o...

Bulls and bears both seem confused at this point. One bear calls for a week of sideways action. This morning the Federal Reserve did a mass...

Seems this weekend there is stuff everywhere on the bursting housing bubble. Too much to post! One of the best is this powerpoint slide show...

It might seem like all I've been doing lately is trading. But I also have been adjusting my long-term investment positions. I am cutting...

At this point it is looking like there will be a buy to cover signal generated at next Tuesday's close. This is about as accurate as wea...

How many of these traits and habits do you have? I think I have several, though I'm not a very good networker. That's my weakest po...

Cool tool for estimating the probability of a recession. The tool is based on an academic paper by a Federal Reserve economist.

John Mauldin's latest mid-week newsletter is an interesting exploration of the performance of formal quantitative systems that systemat...

There are actively managed mutual funds and then there are " freestyle managers ". A subclass of hedge funds use systematic tradin...

I got another short term sell signal at the close today. It is possible that this is the beginning of the big decline into Fall that I have...

I just came across Ian Gordon's website , which has some interesting charts of the Kondratief cycle . He plots the actual stock index (r...

I am looking for a rally starting either intraday or at the close on Monday on US and most world stock indices. The rally should last a bit ...

Recently I have been reading a lot on the theory of trading and hedge funds and musing about what trends in investment strategies mean for t...

Today's star is Challenger Infrastructure Fund . I bought into this fund which invests in infrastructure primarily in Britain soon after...

This morning's rally hit my model's stop loss which is set 1.25% from the previous close. I ignored it, which turned out to not be a...

This one a lot better than the last for me.... The day after the last one is when I started running "the model". I am currently sh...

Well I don't believe in retirement as usually construed, but thought this was a good article as he seems to be saying the same thing. O...

Today the market rallied initially on an unemployment report and then ended the day lower. The model got stopped out because the NDX rose mo...

An amusing article about a hedge fund conference . One guy wants to start a hedge fund and has never traded anything! Even if my trading mod...

Net worth increased by $13059 to $316,244. This is still about two thousand below the May high but a nice recovery. My retirement accounts h...

The stock futures are off this morning and in recent days the Bank of Japan continues to try to reduce its money supply - a move that has p...

Today the market fell a little, but pretty much went sideways all day. The pop up in the NASDAQ 100 index in the morning extended its tradin...

Everyone trades to some degree, even when they buy or sell a passively indexed investment. Some traders lose from trading and some gain. Fin...

The model is saying to be short on Monday. I have shorted QQQQ before the end of the day ($37.01). Could be early (the price already went to...

More evidence that in Gross' opinion the recent bear market in bonds is over.

One downside of these high interest online savings accounts that I didn't know about till today. Received a letter from HSBC telling me ...

Like PF blogs financial disclosures by public officials are always fascinating.

Just completed a balance transfer, paying off about $8500 on my Amazon credit card using a balance transfer from my HSBC credit card. The ba...

I have been a member of Silicon Investor for 8 years but only just discovered a site called Elite Trader today. Read an interesting discuss...

No not a special deal on shampoo :) Everywhere you look across the stockmarkets there are head and shoulders formations or closely related ...

The model has now lost money for 5 days in a row :( This is the longest losing streak so far in the simulation I did for this year. On avera...

Since I have been using the model the NASDAQ 100 Index is down 7%, the model is up 3%, and my account is at... zero. Actually, this is not s...

A glimmer of hope of getting something back from the Croesus debacle . Trading was rough today as I was still short when the market rose in...

I went long and lost money and then went short and lost money... Of course if I followed my model and rules precisely I would have stayed sh...

On Tuesday, Japan reversed the change in money supply to reduce money supply relative to last Thursday and plans a further reduction on Wedn...

The financial mass media does not discuss this major driver of the stock market very much if at all. More specialized sources are only recen...

At mid-month things are looking a lot better than at the end of last month. Since the disastrous 29 June FOMC Day I have recouped my trading...