Well, I took a test for a civil service job today. The last thing they said was, "It will be 4 to 6 weeks before you see the test results." So . . . I guess I'm still unemployed for awhile. My plan of taking money out of the market to live on is getting scary, five more months of no income and flat trading days, and I won't have a portfolio left. Building this website has been a great way to learn and have fun, but I doubt it will ever make me any money.

I'm going to be on the job hunting trail all next week, so my blogging will be minimal, but my trusty old 700 MgHz is coming with me, it's old, but sometimes it seems like my whole life is on that hard drive. I love that computer, but the day is coming when a new computer will get an extra hard drive.

The Market can make you look and feel like a genius, or look and feel like a fool. I'm definitely not looking like a genius at this point, but I guess it takes more than a three cent drop over three days to look like a total fool. I'm a little worried, because the volume on ATSX today was high, but it went down. I don't know where all the sellers are coming from, because I picked this stock specifically because I thought it looked to be out of sellers. I'm going to blame it on market conditions, as the indexs bled some more. With the news saying this is the worst week in the markets year to date, I guess I should be glad to only be out about 150 bucks. This is real world stuff boys and girls, and I've got over 1500 bucks riding that this thing goes the right way sometime soon.

At least all the indexs are showing green this morning, lol the dow ticked red right as I typed that. There it's back. My "day trade" in ATSX is now in day 3, it's sitting still right now at .30. I'm too busy trying to learn how to build these pages the way I want them to care too much at the moment, but my ticker is running at the bottom of the screen, of course.

If this blog site doesn't start acting better I'm moving my stuff somewhere else. The dern thing seems to be down about half the time, and it's hit or miss whether you get what you just clicked, or a "can't be displayed" message.

It's kind of hard to get excited or inspired in this market. I sat on the internet through this whole market session and watched my ticker. Not a single up tick on anything I own, and down ticks on my most solid long position (I've been holding some BSIC since it was.25, although I only have a couple hundred shares left) it ticked down, but not enough to worry about, I'll probably keep that position for another 10 years, so minor fluctuations don't mean much there.

In real life, I'm supposed to be washing and ironing my good clothes because I have a civil service test to take Saturday, and interviews to do in North Carolina Monday, it's about a 15 hour drive, but they're the only place that's shown real interest in my resume. I have to be packed and traveling by Sunday morning.

I'm starting to think all the clicks I was seeing on this blog the first couple of day were me building it, basically blogging to myself. I guess. Only eleven clicks today. Trying to decide wheter to delete the adsense that came with the site. They make my pages less attractive, and it doesn't look like they are going to generate any clicks or even modest revenue. If I ever do get respectable traffic here I'm looking for banner ads. If you or somebody you know has stock related banners that need a home, I'm looking for something to fill in my sidebars. I'd prefer cpm or cpa, but would consider cpc. I have 4 or 5 pages laid out, and I don't know how much will have to go in this blog before it rolls over to a new page. I'm just going to enjoy building a site based on my interests, try to get communications from people with similar interests, and if my site gets enough attention I'll worry about advertising then. My e-mail is on here, so don't be shy, looking for interesting conversation about stocks, or history, or web publishing/business. Holding up in this market without losses is an accomplishment I guess, but it pisses me off to be ready to go back to every day trading, and have the markets in general tank right now. Down markets mean opportunities though.

The market indexs (indices if you want to be correct, I guess) are still bleeding off their recent run ups this morning. Personally, I'm up a measley 44 bucks on the open, and my favorite picks are sitting still. In a way the bad market conditions might be good for my stocks, because sometimes the big institutional money comes down into my bargain basement picks when the big boards are looking weak. I predict a fairly decent day, for me, but you never know til the closing bell.

Well, it was an ugly day on wall street today. They're blaming it all on Greenspan, the fed, and that new guy burkinstock or heim or whatever his name is. My major index screen had red everywhere, I was expecting blood to start oozing out of the screen. The Dow, the Nasdaq, Amex, S&P were all down at the close.

I know some of you think I look like a fool, because both my stocks I've talked about were down today. My new pick went down as low as .27 but rallied to close down a penny costing me 50 bucks plus commissions on paper, but I didn't sell, the name day trading can be decieving, especially on penny plays. I decided to give it another day or two, since todays total volume was less than 1/3 of average daily volume I never got too scared. My TRTI dropped 25%, but only 250 shares changed hands, so thats not a real price. Anyway, this blog software wouldn't let me sign in all day, and my click counter is screwed for today so I have no idea if anybody is even interested in reading this. Other than that, it's been a peachy day.

Good Morning all, I sold some long positions that I was not happy with and freed about 1/3 of my funds for day trading, and I'm in ATSX for 5k shares at .31. We'll see if the magic touch is with me today. Market news in general was bad at the close yesterday, so that might hold things back today. By the contrary philospohy its a good day to buy though. I still like this pick.

Hey guys, last post for today. I did my homework, and at market open tommorrow I'm going to free up some cash and play ATSX on the OTC Big Board as a day trade, providing I can get the cash and get in before it goes. I think it's gonna go, not sure I'll have time to get in, but I'm gonna try to be out of bed at the open. With my sell orders going in tonight, to free my cash, I'll be looking to buy in first chance I get. This is a good chance to point out that day trades sometimes take 2 or 3 days to develop, I expect it to move up early tommorrow, but I could be wrong, of course. AND, this one shows so much stored up strength it may make a two day run up, tempting me to mess up all my standard advice about making goals and getting out (It'll be a intraday judgment call tommorrow), but you have to make every play on its own merits. This one is fundamentally borderline, but the chart is screaming at me "day trade gem".

Well, another market day in the books, no major news today for me. I'm still looking for the right moment to liquidate and go back to day trading. I actually spent most of the day on the job search thing. I found some really cool things to apply for besides teaching. I might try to get into museum work. I have the degree they want, but I'm a little short on practical experience since I chose archeology field school instead of museum internships when I had the chance.

I dunno what's going to happen, but I there are a lot of exciting possibilities. Teaching is actually not my first choice, but it's what everybody seems to think I should do. Anyway, I think I'm going to sell everything except the TRTI and make some day trading moves so I can walk you guys through the ups and downs of how I do it. I'm not claiming to be a definitive expert, just to have done pretty good over the years for the amount I've had to invest. I might lose my @$$. Come around every once in awhile, and see if I can live up to my own expectations. I'm going to sit down and write some more articles too as soon as I get the mood or the muse or whatever. I think I might put my quotation files, and favorite poems on here too, and with a little persuasion I might post my History papers as well, although somebody would probably knock them off as thiers in some class somewhere, unless their teacher is using that turn it in web checker thing that checks for plagarism from the net.

OK, it's morning, and I finally dragged myself out of bed. I sat up late last night writing stuff on my word processor which I'm going to post here today. I have three places where I have applications in that I need to call, and I need to do the laundry so that I can be ready to travel to several job fairs I have planned for later this week. I hate the uncertainties of the whole job search thing as much as I love the expectation. My Mom is an elementary school teacher, and she revels in pointing out how useless my degree is. I could have graduated a year sooner, and been qualified to teach High School without needing to get special permission, but I wouldn't know half as much about the subject I'll probably be teaching.

I won't sound like a disgruntled holder of a Master's Degree and say that it's a conspiracy to dumb down America that makes education majors with a Bachelor's more employable than subject majors (mine is History) with a Master's, but it is a pretty dumb policy, because I understand ten times more about History now than I did when I graduated with my Bachelor's. But there are thousands of people who don't know jack about it, and majored in PE or something, that are teaching the subject I'm expert in while I work to cut through a ton of red tape to get a job. I don't question the wisdom of our forefathers before 1914 or so, but since then they haven't done such a great job if you ask me. Anyway, I have a ton of real live things to do, and I want to get my trading philosophy stuff posted, so that's it for now.

Introduction

I've been a Day Trader and a Penny Stock Trader almost since the beginning of online brokerage. I was with BrokerageAmerica back when they offered commission free trades, but they sold my account to Ameritrade and now I pay commissions, about twenty bucks to get in and out. Day Trading and Penny Stock Trading have been very enjoyable for me. I guess I'm strictly small time, $7000 in one day is my big highlight, but I seem to be able to take money out of the market whenever I need it, and I always seem to get it back.

I've never tried blogging before although I've known about it for over a year. Bear with me as I learn to post typo free text, and write things people want to read. I guess I'm just doing this because I just finished my Master's Degree. I'm used to writing a lot, and I haven't found a job yet. The fact that some people make money doing this is another possible perk, we'll see how I do on that one over time. My Master's is in History, by the way, and it will be interesting to see if I can find a job that calls for my degree. There might be some History content in my blog eventually, but right now I'm planning to focus on stocks and my race against time to figure out some way to make money without spending my trading stake before my credit cards get maxed out.

After living off it for two months, I have about 6 grand left in my trading account, I've pulled out 1200 on the last two months, and about 5 grand total since I first started with 1800 bucks way back when I was still in the Marine Corps (in 1999 or so). Like I said, one time I made 7000 bucks in one day, but I also took a $3000 hit early on refusing to sell a stock that went chapter 11 on me. Another time I took a $2200 hit, another penny stock took bankruptcy out of the blue. Those or the big ones, but add it all up and I spent $5000, lost $5200 on bad stocks, and I have $6000 left, so that means I had to have made $16,000 gross out of my original $1800, and $11000 net in 7 years, thats not a lot of money, but I've definitely been beating the market. The big boys (professional stock analysts) call anything above a 10% annual gain beating the market, and brag about it, so I ought to be crowing like a rooster, because I'm beating the heck out of that.

Like I said, when I have the time for it, I'm into Day Trading, but I'm always into penny stocks. What I plan to write here is a running record of my trading activities. Right now, I'm kind of tied up in some long positions I have a lot of faith in, but being unemployed, I'll probably start to transition back to Day Trading. TRTI is one stock I'm in. I own 5000 shares, and I expect it to hit somewhere in the nieghborhood of a dollar within 6 months or so. I got in at .07 and its been to like .48 or .50 since I've been in it, and it was at .31 last week, but its kind of sitting still at like .21 or .23 or something like that right now.

They're a landfill waste management company with a record of pretty consistent good profits, and the stock is trading at a little over half of earnings. I peg a lot of my trading decisions to the P/E ratio. The P/E on this one is kick ass, the buying interest is the only thing missing to drive it to what it's worth.

I'm not going to name off my whole portfolio, I don't guess, just the ones I'm sure about that are worth you guys checking out. TRTI is a definite long winner, and if I sell it before a dollar it will be just to free up my cash for Day Trading. I'm pretty sure I can pull down 50 to 100 bucks a day if I go back to Day Trading, and don't have any disasters. Come back, and you can ride through the whole thing with me. That's about all the typing I'm up for right now, but I'll blog again tommorrow.

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See My Articles About Stock Trading HERE

http://myfundies.blogspot.com/

http://mydaytradingphilospohy.blogspot.com/

http://fundamental-analysis.blogspot.com/

http://artofcharts.blogspot.com/

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