Are you through yet, or are you thirsty for more?

I realize I’m using a funny movie quote for this one, but it might be appropriate.
I got the idea to trade this one (still using imaginary currency) from an email announcement from Investmenthouse.com, one of my free stock newsletters I subscribed to. Great people at investmenthouse! Give them a try!
Here’s what I imagine myself doing

Symbol Company Name Trade date Shares Price Trade Comission Total
CACB Cascade BankCorp 10/16/2006 60 $36.60 $2,196.00 $20.00 $2,216.00

Add to that the $7633.58 from the cash side of the equation and now my imaginary net worth of this project is $9849.58.
So what if I lost $150.42 on my last couple of trades. It’s Monday, damn it! We’ve got to get out there and play the game!
I’ll get back to you in a little over 72 hours.
Per SEC regulations.
Yours,

Dumping GEO, PCU; Looking for next subject

The title basically says it all. If I actually held 50 shares of GEO I would have dumped them all by now. Which is weird, because the stock appears to be recovering from its slide. Down from $45.17 when I first "purchased" it last week to $43.10 when I "sold" it. My MSExcel looks like this:

Symbol GEO
Company Name GEO Group
Trade date 9/18/2006
Shares Buy 50
Price $45.17
Trade $2,258.50
Comission $20.00
Total spent $2,303.67
Trade date 09/25/06
Price $43.10
Shares Sell 50
Trade $2,155.00
Comission $20.00
Total $2,135.00
profit(loss) -$168.67
Which brings us to the whole point of this excersize. Not only is it important
to record and therefore brag about, your stock market gains, but you also must include your market losses in a manner that makes you look stupid and nerdy at the same time!
This is simply a part of the game. Now, does anyone have any tips on playing the horses, throwing dice at crap tables, or playing blackjack?
Oh well. The good news is that my other pick PCU is actually climbing in price today.
PCU is the symbol for SOUTHERN COPPER CORP., a wonderful business that actually does something for its money like mining copper. Here is a link from their story in FORTUNE magazine: http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/15/news/companies/southern_copper.fortune/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
I only hold 25 shares of this little workhorse which I will "sell" today for a loss of $51.25 as I don't really trust it to hold onto its value very much longer.
My MSExcel worksheet says I still have $9,780.08 still to play with and I am considering putting $4500.00 of it into another company just to see how much more of this I can take. I just haven't decided yet on another move to make.
Stay tuned if you dare...

Today I do nothing

No, seriously! The market took a slip and fall today as it almost always does on Friday and if you freak out and sell just because of it you are a fool.
I am not buying anything now today (though some "bounce-bargains" may clearly exist) because I am not interested in cutting loose of any of my cash reserves. So today I will just let it all sit and take on some projects that have been eluding completion so far.
Have a great weekend and I will catch back up with you l8r.

Start Anywhere

Start Anywhere
When I first began this adventure with the Virtual Stock Exchange (VSE) I was looking for a way to practice and hone my trading abilities.
I found it to be a rather rewarding experience as I saw how quickly and rather effortlessly I could watch my picks turn into winners. As I said in previous entries here, I was able to watch my 1 million dollar nest egg grow into 5 million and then later 7 to 10 million dollars!
Unfortunately I was not as successful the next time out starting with only (only!) $100,000.00. I actually ended up losing about 20%, ending up with about $80,000.00.
Another guy jumped onto my game and actually succeeded me in position, winning first place over the one legged man in the ass-kicking competition behind him.
What happened?
I guess you could say I blinked. I didn’t stick to my guns and use only companies undergoing stock splits. In fact, at one point I actually tried to bet on against a company that was going through a reverse stock split by shorting the stock. That move didn’t turn out to be my most intelligent choice. The price of the shares promptly went through the roof as investors ran out to grab as many shares as they could get their hands on! Won’t ever do that again!
It also turned out that not every company going through a stock split rose in price either.
I think I may have learned something from that experience; quite a few “somethings”, in fact.
For instance, stock-split companies are not always winners. There are many factors that affect how an issue will rise in price. Many times an issue will have already have had a healthy run up in price and by the time the company announces a stock split investors may already be taking profits by selling the inflated shares. This is why it is always a good idea to find these little jewels before they get to that point.
One good barometer for predicting a stock’s behavior is the moving averages of the stock’s price. CBS Marketwatch likes to list the 50-day and 18-day on a line graph against a “mountain” graph of the price per share.
If you don’t know what a moving average is, click here for a quick recap:
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/052201.asp
The idea here is to pick companies that going through stock splits whose 18 day MA’s are moving higher than their 50 day MA’s. This may not be a total lock on successful trades, but it may allow for a more predictable performance pattern overall.
So now comes the reason for the title of this missive; my choices for a $5,000.00 trade.
And the winners are:
GEO
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=GEO&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=m10,m50&a=&c=

Trading at $45.17/share. I would pick up 50 shares. Spending $20.00 on commissions (highway robbery brokerage, inc.)
Trade Total:$2,303.67


PCU
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=PCU&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=m20,m50&a=&c=

Trading at $91.41/share. I would pick up 25 shares. Spending $20.00 on commissions (highway robbery brokerage, inc.)
Trade Total: $2,327.00

Leaving a little over $5,000.00 in the “Cash” side in case something goes horribly wrong causing the stock market to go totally shithouse, allowing my carefully constructed house of cards to tumble
Which brings us to the fun legal stuff:
DISCLAIMER:
The above is offered for entertainment purposes only! IT IS NOTINTENDED AS INVESTMENT ADVICE! SO DON’T ASK FOR ANY!
Frank Austad will be held harmless for any and all statements made in this document.
That means this:
If you follow my lead and run out and spend your hard earned money on ANYTHING I POST HERE and you lose all of your money including your house and your shirt, IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT! DON’T BE A DUMBASS!
Stockmarket trading involves a great deal of risk and you may lose all of your money on your trades no matter how carefully you plan them. “Paper trading” does not guarantee success in market trades.
Now, hang up on your team of attorneys, apologizing to their secretary first, and go to the next blog!
SO THERE!

Time for an even cooler change...

On July 1, 2006 MarketWatch discontinued its support of the original (start with 1 million v. dollars) Virtual Stock Exchange. In its place is the game I was playing. $100,000.00 for a limited time. I did not do too well that time I started with $100,000.00 and ended with about $90,000.00.
So I am looking to start something new.
You see I don’t have a million dollars to play with. I don’t even have a hundred thousand. I am in the process of doing a little “virtual investing” while I am waiting for that cash to come.
What I am going to do now is a little take on the “virtual millionaire” game and “paper trade” $10,000.00 under the rules the SEC has put (like a vise grip) on today’s smaller investor.
1.) No day trading of stocks or options for now. SEC rules state that you must have $25K or more to take day rides on the market. Your broker will freeze your account for 90 days or more if you try that. They will, however, allow you to sell your stuff once every 72 hours. So comes the next rule…
2.) Plan to sell your issues in 4 days if you must. I am not a buy and hold guy. I want to make money at this not just brag about the stocks I own but can’t sell because they aren’t making anything.
3.) Pay the broker. Using this simulation, I will use E-Trades $14.00 per trade commission. Their smaller rates only apply to “Power Traders” and other wealthy individuals.
4.) Take 20 percent off yearly for taxes (no tax protection for traders) and give yourself 3.5% per year for your Cash side.
Wish me luck with this one. After I am done messing around, I expect to be trading with real money soon.
If you are out there thanks for reading. And on a personal note: yes, John, somebody does care about this type of stuff.
I do.

How to make a million dollars (so far...)

How to make a million dollars in the stock market!
Notice how I didn’t say “How I made…”
OK! I’ll cut to the chase: I am still only trading in the “Virtual Stock Exchange” (VSE), but I am doing something different! Around the start of the year I got involved in a new “game”. I am still maintaining my 5.9 million dollar portfolio, but I have also gotten involved with a “beta” version of that game where I am only trading $100,000.00 and I have 62 days to prove my skills on it.
I am also collecting “hot stock tips” from both The Stockster.com http://www.thestockster.com and Rocketstockpicks.com http://www.rocketstockpicks.com.
BTW I will happily give you and your stock picking service mention here if you are
1.) A genuine article – as little BS as possible with a record of good results for your subscribers, and 2.) Free of charge or you at least offer a service for little or no money charged up front.
That’s how things are right now.

Final thoughts for 2005

Final thoughts for year 2005
A while back I had posted a link to this site on another blog site. I will not get into which site it was. I am just using them as an illustration to prove a point. They discontinued my account because they believed that I was trying to sell a product. I am not and was not selling anything, per se, but I was and do post advertisement banners at the top of my posts. Yes, I am trying to make money at this thing using Google’s “adsense” service. I haven’t made any cash from it yet, as I don’t think that I have been blessed with any visitors that have found any of the ads hanging above this site interesting enough to click on and get involved with. If you do respond in that manner write me and let me know about what you think of the links that the banner ads lead you to. It might be possible for us to tailor the ad content of this site!
If I were selling a “method book” to you, and trust me I am not, it would probably last only a few pages - like less than ten, more of a religious tract than an investment tome. What I have been doing with my involvement with “the virtual millionaire” project in connection with the Virtual Stock Exchange, could be summarized into this:

1. Track stock split companies using Investment House’s free (very important word) email stock split alert service.


2. From time to time experiment with “hot tips” from other news services, but don’t expend a lot of your portfolio in them as you may find them crapping out before your eyes. If that is the way it turns out, don't feel bad; that has happened to me many times already.
   


3. Sell about half of your issues when your investments double and try not to hang onto losers for too long either.

I don’t think that I could load this into an ebook that I would try goading you into buying by loading your email box with sales pitches. Sorry, that just isn’t me.
What I would actually like to do first is to actually make some real money (though it really was kind of fun to watch one million imaginary dollars balloon up to its current level of 7.2 million) trading stocks perhaps to the point of leaving my currently screwed up life of drifting from one electronic job to another to making trading the stock market for a living.
If I could make that happen, then yes, you would begin to start hearing about a brand new book detailing the process of my adventures and how you could apply the methods of my success to your life.
I have shared email with people who are doing something like this. They all tell me it might be possible, BUT caution should be the watchword, as things may not turn out exactly you think they might.
It is here that I need to end for now.
Have a happy holiday season. I am not really a Christian, but I do hope that whatever your faith or disposition is you do find some joy and reason to hold onto hope.
By that statement I would not pretend to know what is going on in your life. I am not implying that you are a loser or that you are losing hope. I just want to say that some people have not had too nice of a time dealing with the day to day necessities that you and I take for granted on a regular basis.
One of the great things about this season is that it often brings out the ability of people to see their peers from their perspective (their “shoes”) and attempt to respond in kind.
In plain English, if you know of a neighbor who needs some help, give a little thought as to how best to respond.
Here are some links to some sites that might help:
The American Red Cross - www.redcross.org
copy this and paste it into your window. Blogger doesn't trust me with html code!
The Salvation Army –
Your Neighborhood food bank

Until next year: PEACE!