Dr Stanley's book "The Millionaire Next door" claims that most American millionaires are plain old folks who just have accumulated assets by investing in the market or their businesses with the funds they managed to save. The old live well within your means plan. Sounds like folks like you and me.

The people who the Democrat's say are the "true" Americans are the ones who are consumer driven and spend more than they make by using credit for consumer goods and mortgages on houses they really can't afford, have children that can't afford to raise, shelter, educate and medicate, and have spending habits that their incomes can't support.

Somewhere maybe in Civics class in 5th grade I heard that taxes were necessary to pay for the governmental goods and services that the people have decided should be provided by governments and not businesses because governments could do it cheaper and more efficiently,

When did the US constitution get amended and change the powers to "tax and spend" to the power to control the economy and redistribute wealth? I think I missed that vote.

I really appreciate all the wonderful comments and suggestions you've given me and hope we all have become better investors from our open exchange of ideas.

Let's all meet here again for Strategy Lab Open 3. I look forward to the renewed competition.

Jim Van Meerten

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But look at those economies. FXI (China), INP (India) and ILF (Latin America) are all down. We have to realize that although these economies are consuming they may not be profitable.

Maybe it might be a time to shift your investing from the companies that should be making a profit to the commodities and producers of those commodities.

Look at mining companies and the underling commodities themselves for near term opportunities

I've gotten a lot of questions about this and I hope that makes it clearer.

Recently, Elan began coming up on my screeners with a 96% buy on BarCharts. The stock began trading above it's 20, 50 & 100 day moving averages which are part of my required litmus test. When Ken Kam started mentioning the stock I knew I had to look deeper into it. Every place I look there are positive stories, when that happens I start to worry.

As boomers approach their 70's they start to worry about quality of life. They see drugs are controlling a lot of the causes for premature death: Weight, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure and Cholesterol. Many of their older relatives and parents are living longer but sliding into a dark hole of forgetfulness and death called Alzheimer's. They are really afraid of this disease more than any other.

Elan's trial of Bapineuzumab - nicknamed Bappy may offer protection and cure. Good trial results are all over the news. You may find boomers taking it just because.

Here's my caution: I'd buy the stock on it's technicals alone but it really has a story being covered by the news and a product that may have one of the largest markets in history. Why the caution?

I've seen press releases before about new wonder drugs. Sometimes later phase trials don't pan out or someone else comes along with an cheaper, more effective drug just when you're about to come to market. I worry that Elan may not be able to dominate market share when this drug goes into production.

Buy the stock and ride it on up but PLEASE, PLEASE protect yourself with a trailing stop loss in case the drug gets blind sided by later trial results or competition.

Right before I press the submit button on any buy and sell I run a short term custom chart. I use a 5 minute frequency chart which tells me how the stock tracked for the last day and a half. I set the parameters for 1 - BarChart OHLC, 2 - Moving Average 20,50,100 period, 3 - Up/Down Day Chart and 4 -Trend Spotter (tm).

Please just try it on any stock you are thinking of adding or deleting and tell me what you think. I think you'll be surprised how many times you change your mind, Let me know if you find the toll valuable.

Look at almost any Mergers and Acquisitions in the past few years and you will see unusual price and volume movement in the two weeks prior to the M&A announcement.

What do we see today? Fact #1 - Many banks and financial services companies are selling at 50% of their last year's high. Fact #2 - The Euro is now at least at 50% higher than the dollar. Fact #3 - Both Warren Buffet and many of the Sovereign funds are visiting Europe, awash with cash, and both like bargains.

Does that make for the "Perfect Storm"? US banks for sale at 50 cents on the dollar. Euros make the dollar worth only 60 cents. Warren Buffet and the Sovereign funds are awash in cash and looking for bargainsin Europe. Why not go to Europe and fund the take over of US banks on sale?

Who would be a likely target? Forget Citigroup, Bank of America and Wachovia. It's not that they are too large. It's that the people who could acquire them already have a banking presence in the US and the 10% rule comes into play if you add any of those bank deposits to the big three. Where does that leave us?

For that I go back to BarChart and get a list of the Money Center banks and look at the prices and volumes. When I look at the historical volumes, most banks are trading at 30- 50 % but I notice that Key Group (KEY) is trading at 108% of its historical volume. Key Bank's price has traded lower almost every week for the last 6 months, but something strange happened on June 13th. The price stopped declining and stays at a steady support level of $12 per share.

Lastly, check the news. There was insider buying activity below $12. Seems insiders don't want the stock any lower.

If a non-US bank wanted in the US market, Warren Buffet or the Sovereign funds could fund the acquisition for a piece of the action. My money is on Key Bank to be acquired in a "hostile" takeover at a great premium.

The perfect storm is just over the horizon!