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good entry charlotte. words of wisdom. kudos. stay the course. i recall looking over cvx a year or two ago and it looked really good, one of the best poised of the major integrated oils. your profile says you like to invest in dividends. hey does anyone know any good websites with dividend screens/databases where one can easily find which companies are going xdiv today, tomorrow, this week etc.?? MSN has a decent 'earnings caledndar' but no 'dividend calendar'. i want to try buying and selling everyday just for the dividends. Someone please let me know if you know of a site like this.

btw this entry is being done via a 'quick-post' entry i'd set up through movable type. it's kinda nice for commenting on an article. you just right-click on whatever article you have onscreen, choose 'quickpost', then type your entry in the pop-up. (typed into the entry body field, not the extended body field)

p.s. charlotte i vate you a '2', though prob more like a 1 and a half :/ :)

Enable those comments people.

Tried a penny stock today, and lo and behold the 5%max commish takes precedence. SLO needs to ban this.

Also tested the OTCBB with Vtss today and it bought - thought OTC trades werent supposed to be enabled. Maybe i remember wrong, or maybe its just the pink-sheets are'nt enabled, i don't remember and i don't feel like digging for that information right now.

Russ previously informed daytrading is allowed, but difficult. (and expensive - my inclusion).

Why do you invest? Good question indeed, Eileen. Makes me think. I guess personally i dont worry too much about preservation, since i don't have dependants. And i'm not looking to attract a mate based upon 'net worth', heaven forbid. Ideally i'd like to earn 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 hundred etc. percent returns every year. i want to quickly compound thousands into millions, so that i can facillitate the many business ideas i have, without resorting to loans, or VC, or partnerships or anything like that. I've more or less got complete business models in my head for everything from cellular, to restaurant, to optical, to sports, to auto-industry, etc... . Some of what you might call 'disruptive' innovation/competition. I guess i am more prone to 'gambling' at times. Something i am well aware of. However i am always attached to and somewhat fighting my conservative upbringing/principles in order to 'make it happen'. As i've posted earlier, i think er hope that eventually i'll be able to take the plunge on some successful Leaps. There must be some sort of expected return for, say e.g., a 1 year call-leap on a/an average say 30% underlying move in a year on say an average 20PE stock. Like something in the 'multiples'. I think, er hope, that i can do that. My experiece has shown me that 'value' and/or bottom picking-investing can accomplish this. The SLO lab has/is confirming for me that on a short(er) term, 5-6month term, that momentum 'investing' has more success, as it seems that the vast majority of all slo ports are going up simply because the market is going up, and those going up the most are going up with the most momentum. 'timing' and 'worth' are very esoteric things, and i guess quantum economics disallows any precise certainty of a stocks value. oy vey, where am i going with this, please ignore me... i digress...

uhh, well, this SLO is teasing and tempting me to become a momemtum player, seeing the sucess everyone else is having. I too, have a sort of 'split personality' a.k.a toroandbruin. In real life port i've had a conundrum. As i've said in my marketocracy bio, i havent really shown much in the way of gains in my meager portfolio since i started more actively investing a coupla years ago. However, a pattern has developed. i typically work these 3-4 week temp jobs, then i get a few weeks off, and so it goes throughout the year. Whenver i'm not working, i 'trade' and bring my portfolio up. Conversely, whenever i work, my portfolio goes down, either because i parked dough into value stocks that may trend down for a little while, or because i put something into a growth/momentum stock which falls-back/pulls-back, etc., and most commonly because i live a hectic life and would accidently stay in trading postions that required careful watch. So in essence work has become very difficult for me, because i always feel like i'm sitting there all day for scratch, and losing even more than i'm making during the day. It sucks to work all day for a hundred bucks and come home to find your portfolio has gone down 300, knowing you could have stayed home and made 300 instead, or a net diffence of 600, plus the time 'wasted' at work, for the man. I find it hard not to rationalize that the market goes up or down on average one or two percent a day, or that certain stocks that one follows goes up or down 1/2/3 percent a day. And that with just a coupla quick trades one can beat the 'ideal' 5-10% annual gain that exceeds most of humanities/nature's growth rates. Anyhow, i did this SLO to try to better understand 'midterm' investing, as i call it, so that i can better align my short-term trading and long-term investor tendencies. However, i'm learning more from all the players than i am from myself, as my port has been predominantly random. So thank you all for your interesting blogs.

Two myths i'd like to point out: myth #1 - investing with emotion is bad. It has often been precisely when i have felt a sense of emotion, such as confidence, resentment, desire or someting like that, more generally what i would call 'being pissed off', that i notice i have made gains. Sometimes when my port feels stagnant i get 'pissed off' and make wholesale changes, ignoring transaction costs, and for the better. sometimes when i am tempted to sell and i Know or get 'pissed off' that the rest of the market doesnt recognize something too then i'll hold out a little longer and eventually get my gain. Yes there have been several times when i've bought 'quickly', such as for an earnings announcement, and gotten burned 10%, but that's not so much due to 'emotion' as to simple gambling on announcements, a practice i now more or less eschew.

myth #2 well i guess this really isnt a myth per se. but what i'm trying to say is that so much about what this slo is, and why im learing from it is, is that just like in the experts-msn-slo lab, choosing an 'investment style' and then 'sticking to it' is _________/?????/ hard?/not always the right decision? Sorry, i just lost how to word what it was i was trying to say. In other words, the experts pick a style and stick to it, so that we the readers can learn along with them; slo lab players here too for the most part have stuck with their investment philosphies as well, and we all learn from it. However, i personally am beginning to notice a parallel between my slo port and my real life port. In real life, i often get enthused by so many good stocks, good stories, good valuations, so that my port balloons from one or two or three to up to 10 postions, and for 'good' (not) reasons too - because i see sucess coming elsewhere, because i want to be a part of that story, because i want to contribute and support those companies, because overall, i and we all sense the optimism in general that comes with being a part of our worlds corporate life and the forces that help to change our world. I of course pick good stocks when i do this, and truth is, most stocks will go up over time, this is 'life' after all, not the dark ages, or an enduring black plague encompanying us, however when my port does balloon my gains become stagnant, as i've simply stretched myself too thin, increased my transaction costs, and allowed my stocks to cancel themselves out on a daily basis. I havent been to over 3 or 4 or 5 positions in real life for like over a year and i dont intend to again, at least not unless i can eventually work up to a self-supporting (livable/income-producing) size. My slo-port here is sill predominantely a random selection (not quite random) of initial stocks, and were it real life i would have certainly by now been tempted to turn the whole thing over. Sometimes in the past i've looked at my real port of 10 or so contrasting do-nothing postions and then spur of the moment sold them all out, and started out fresh with 1 or 2 particular picks. It's ok to change things up, at least for non-dependant/non-depended/non-retired/etc.etc. profiles.

Hey does anyone know what the average 'turnover rate' is for an average mutual fund? Sorry for the long post, guess i need to get a life... :) Peace.

This is the 'extended' entry. as;ldkfjla;skjfd;lakjs

Comments: View Comments |  Monday October 1, 2007