A Look At Summer
Don’t you hate it when you spend 10+ minutes typing something and accidently delete it all? That’s what just happened to me. I had a pretty long entry written out and tried to hit Ctrl+T to open a new browsing tab. Instead I hit Ctrl+R and reloaded the page. I lost the entire entry. Now I have to retype it. Grrrr…
Anyway, this summer is looking like it could be the best ever. My first month of trading went extremely well. I have very few obligations which means I’ll be able to do what I want: relax, workout, trade, and drive. I’ve settled into what I believe will be my daily summer routine. Go to bed around 12:30, wake up in the 6:30-7:30 range. Make breakfast then eat it will checking out market futures and overnight news releases. At this point I plan on working out once I join another gym. Then I’ll come back, shower, eat my second meal, and review how the market is doing. If I feel the need to trade I will. If not I’ll have the day to do whatever I want.
I’m researching some trading strategies that will give me plenty of free time. Instead of being glued to my computer or a TV I’ll be able to watch the general market movement daily and still make a nice return. I’m waiting for some money transfers to go through so that I can open another brokerage account. This time it will be with TradeStation. Trade station’s fees are SIGNIFICANTLY less than my current broker, optionsXpress. For example: If I sell a single covered call the total fees including buying and selling the stock would be $3 with TradeStation and $45 with optionsXpress. That can make a big impact with covered calls and other small transactions. Also, optionsXpress has a $25,000 requirement to trade futures. TradeStation does not have this requirement. I’m not planning on trading futures right now but it’s something I may do in the future (pun not intended). I’m still keeping my optionsXpress account for autotrading with the First Class Advisory service. The FCA strategist has been offering this service for over a year and a half now and has never had a losing trade. His overall results from 8/2004 are well over 100%. He also issues a daily newsletter detailing his options about the market. If you’re interested in the service contact me. The price on his site is about 3 times as much as I can get you signed up for.
I’m developing my summer workout routine. I plan on hitting the gym 6 days a week. My actual workout is still being developed but it’s going to involve focusing on a different muscle group each day of the week. On Saturday I plan on hitting the rowing machine for 15-20 minutes (increasing as time goes by). The first thing I want to do is reduce my body fat. I’m in the 13-15% range right now and have some love handles showing. Once I bring that down I’ll begin bulking again. I’d like to gain at least another 5 lbs of muscle. I also plan on biking and hiking a lot this summer.
One thing I haven’t been focusing enough on is my eating habits. I’ve been straying from my meal plan quite frequently. Not only is it setting me back in my plans of losing some more fat but it’s setting my wallet back too. I think the problem is that my meals don’t vary enough. I have been having frequent cravings for sugar. I’m going to be adding more fruit to my diet in the hopes that it will reduce or eliminate the cravings. I also started getting sugar free mints. Those help quite a bit but not enough.
The autox racing season started a few weeks ago. Taking a year off hurt me. My driving skills have declined significantly! I’ve lost the little smoothness I had and my overall ability has seemed to suffer. Add to that my lack of experience racing a turbo car and the results are sloppy, slow runs. I’m slowly improving but I’m not expecting to place this year. I have a driver’s school at Watkins Glen race track next month. I’m hoping to improve my smoothness and figure out how to drive a turbo car. While significantly different than an autox, a driver’s school on a real track helps every aspect of driving. I learned so much from the one I did in 2004.
Now that I have the time I’m hoping to increase the frequency of my updates. Hopefully I’ll get it back to daily posts soon!
on May 24, 2006 at 4:12 pm
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Hey Dan… since you’re the only market-investing guru I know; what do you think about this: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2006/nf20060523_2210.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
I think that you probably don’t invest in companies that would receive this sort of release, but maybe you have some thoughts anyway.
Adam
on May 30, 2006 at 8:06 am
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I had not seen that before, thanks for the link. If I were looking at a company covered under such a waver I’d have to investigate them and the law much more closely. Releasing a company from strict regulation allows them to be a bit more liberal with the numbers they release. That may be good for a short term investment but that would be hard to figure out since it is unknown if any company has been covered by it before.
With so many companies out there it would probably be best to avoid them. There are always other opportunities.