August 2006

August

Go Barney!  Get the Teddy Bear!

Barney Was Right!

August 10, 2006

Generally horrible stuff going on in Israel and Lebanon, and a terror plot to blow up planes was thwarted.  So the market goes up, and I expect a buy signal soon.

Mother and Child

August 15, 2006

Went into the market with $200,000 of Direxion mutual funds.  These are leveraged either 2X or 2.5X, so it is not necessary to have much.  Also, I am not all that confident of the signal that tells me to be long.  Still, the charts look decent.

August 16, 2006

Back in with about $750,000 of stocks.  Will probably buy more funds tomorrow.  Without notice, the Direxion funds at TDAmeritrade have a $50 commission paid to Ameritrade.  I had talked to a rep earlier, and he assured me that they were no-transaction-fee funds.  No more.  But at least they do not carry a redemption fee.  In the future I may go with the ProFunds, which are no-transaction-fee at this point.  Hope that does not change.  Hard to navigate with all this stuff changing without notice.  To their credit, Ameritrade did refund my $150 of fees.  

August 22, 2006

Market has fussed around, not doing much.  Everybody is worried about the Fed - some that it will raise interest rates too much, and some that it will not raise them that much. Also, there is worry about a recession, and worry about the economy growing too fast.  I have never seen the alleged experts so divided.

August 24, 2006

Bad market.  The signals that got me into this may have been bad.  Time will tell, but I am not going to give it much more time.  The problem is that there is so much bad news in the housing area that the market tanks on that news.  I got out of the leveraged funds - too much risk in this market, and too little reward for such things.  This is shaping up to be a terrible year, although after September, if there is no interest rate change, things may get better.  I do not expect a recession, but what do I know?

August 30, 2006

The market now looks much better than earlier.  I have some small gains, and I am thinking I should go in 100% instead of about 65%.  On the other hand, I am still in the phase where one is selling one's losers, and not taking any gains.  So those open profits can evaporate quickly if the market turns.  Oh well, I can't worry about everything, but I can try.  OK - I bought some more stuff.  On the way to being mostly invested.