Chairman MaoXian

had an interesting link to a Richard Russell comment. Russell was lamenting the disappearance of the old line newletter publishers, other than himself. He's pretty much got it right--the Internet and proliferation of "free" data and opinion. Russell's an interesting character--I subscribed to him for a while. He is a good writer, but for me, in the end, it was just more of the same "the sky is falling, the dollar is going to hell, gold is the only real money, the trade deficit will kill us, the US is the new Rome, Bush is an idiot" stuff that you can get for free (or at least cheaper) in a lot of other places on the net (like the Mishedlo board at the Fool). Some of that stuff may be true, but in all honesty I thought he was just regurgitating a lot of the groupthink from the New York Times, LA Times, Financial Times, etc, that he makes no secret of reading and liking. So while he's made some great calls over the years, in an ironic way he's kind of an exception to his observation--he's still around, even though you can basically get elsewhere for free what he offers for 300 bucks a year or whatever.

Random Roger

Once again, a nice little tidbit from Random Roger, a blogging money manager. I always find something from him that you don't hear elsewhere, and that's valuable, both on the net and in the investing world. There's a lot of people repeating the same stuff, but Roger has given me both different ideas (like his thoughts on money managing philosopy) and specific ideas (the covered call funds) that I haven't seen elsewhere.
New's Year Hat Tip, Roger.

Conserving

that wasting asset, time. Anything that saves time is worthwhile, so check out newsreaders and RSS feeds, if you haven't already. A good intro is here.

End of year

Time to combine end of year tax manuevers with good works by contributing to tsunami relief. A number of options are here.

Habit

will be another focus for me in 2005. Much of what we do everyday is habit. Once established, its just as easy to have beneficial habits, as deleterious ones.

I resolve to examine my daily behavior for habits, and to work on replacing the deleterious ones, with more beneficial ones.
(Like blogging every day.)

Resolutions continued

Next resolution is to blog at least once a day, no matter how short or trivial . . .

Losses

should be cut quickly, and ruthlessly. This has been a building block of my trading plan. I've done a good job of cutting losses early and quickly--except when I haven't. A couple large losses in 2004 have seriously affected my results.

In 2005, stop losses will be set before every trade, and adhered to ruthlessly. No exceptions.

Ironic

that the previous post was entitled "Time", since one of my resolutions involves time, the only truly wasting and utterly non-replenishable asset. Every day, we use time we can never get back. I look back at the year and see time that I did nothing productive, nothing educational, and nothing even enjoyable with.

It's irrational to expect that no time will be wasted, but I resolve to "waste" less time this coming year, and use more of this wasting asset to produce, to learn, to better myself, and simply to enjoy. I'll try to make a habit of asking myself--is this the best use I could make of this time?

Time

to think about what's gone right and wrong in the year past, and set plans for the year to come.
That'll be the theme for today--New Year's Resolutions.

Google

GOOG is still strong, breaking thru a downtrend line. Obviously, I've been wrong on my puts. Still time for that to change, of course, but in the short term, I've been wrong. Based on a simple inspection of the chart, and on plotting price by volume, I think there is a lot of support in the 165-170 area. Above that, I wouldn't fight it. Below that, its look out below.

Xmas week . . .

. . . and many people have other things to do. I'm finding it hard to say much of anything even marginally worthwhile, unlike Random Roger, TraderMike, MaoXian, et al. I thought Roger's post about not having the exact same personal portfolio as his client's was thought-provoking.

thoughts

Gold has support at its old high of 433--but it arguably has resistance, based on the chart of GLD, at the bottom of the gap at 440.

USD has resistance at its old low of 84.5--I'm thinking we may see a rally to that area.

Random thoughts on a Friday. . .

google still drifts--it will be interesting again at about 163-165--that's not only the top of the gap, its a fibonacci retracement of 61.8% (or 38.2%, depending on your point of view)

Gold bullion has been down the past couple days more than gold shares--which leads me to wonder (this is somewhat of a leap): is the new gold ETF (GLD, in case you've been in a cave) making gold more volatile?

Insurance stocks like AOC, MMC, AFL that have been "spitzered" lately all gapped up this AM, only to drop back, but then mostly move upward again. I'm not smart enough to know what, if anything, this means.

My biggest winner lately has been NFI, which I bought, almost sold a couple of times, but have managed to sit tight for a nice gain so far. Which makes me think of the Jesse Livermore line, to the effect of, it was never my thinking that made me money, its was my sitting there (in a stock on an uptrend, obviously)

Google . . .

just keeps tracing out a series of lower highs, and generally drifting lower, even as the Nasdaq moves higher. Perhaps Trader Wizard's thesis about the avalanche of GOOG shares being released from lockup is starting to play out. I hope so, since I have GOOG puts . . .

Naz reversal

Well, the reversal in the COMPQ came a little after 10 Eastern, confirming the wisdom of Trader Mike's rule. We're down below the open, not quite to yesterday's close but almost.

note to self . . .

Futures have been rockin since Intel announcement. Remember what TraderMike said, wait till after the 10 AM EST high, and buy above it.
I lost enough money yesterday, I don't want to get suckered in a reversal today.
Also noted, the dollar, gold, and oil are basically flat.

trades

My trades are smellin', but I'm still gellin'.

Caught up on reading Jonathan Hoenig--I always get good insights from him, as well as picks you won't get anywhere else.

SIRI

Chairman MaoXian has a beautiful chart of the coil, ascending triangle, range contraction, whatever you want to call it in SIRI. I guess a pop out of this is coming, just don't know which way and when!

Xie Xie nin, Mao xian sheng!

Gold ETF hurting gold shares?

Random Roger makes the intriguing suggestion that since the introduction of the Gold bullion ETF GLD, money has moved out of gold mining shares, and into GLD. Presumably, those who couldn't/wouldn't buy bullion, were buying miners, but now can/will buy bullion in the form of GLD. Something to keep an eye on.

hothothot--notnotnot

Yesterday I posted my "hothothot" list . Interestingly, on a day when the indices are flying, and most of what I own is up, and the market haiku reflects a lot of upside enthusiasm, almost nothing on the hothothot momo list has broken out--only WEB . Go figure.

Today's market haiku

Santa rally comes
Ev'rybody wants to buy
No one wants to sell