Several market blogs I used to follow died in 2006, and I thought I’d give them a mention here, to put them to rest. In many cases, it was sudden infant blog death syndrome, as they were also started in 2006. In some cases, the blogs may not be technically dead, but they sure haven’t bothered to post in a while.

Maybe more died, and I’ve already forgotten them. Some that I do remember appear to be on the ropes, but if they posted as recently as mid-November I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Shameless Self-Promotion
If you have a sickly blog, why not make this list bigger next year and kill it? You can post here instead… just ask! Blogthanasia is a compassionate choice that you can make with pride in several situations. Such as: you’re tired of maintaining or paying for it, or you don’t want to put the effort into building a readership, or you only want to make posts occasionally. It looks like I’m about to have 3 contributors, which I think is really cool.

If I Threw a Funeral and Nobody Came?
I’ve often wondered what would happen if I suddenly died (other than my cats eating my remains, and people claming that I wiped out my account because I focused on risk rather than dollars). Okay, maybe saying “often wondered” is an overstatement; I don’t sit in a dark corner and dwell on it, or anything. But, there’s really no good mechanism to post a farewell post so people know what’s up. I guess maybe I could tell a friend how to write a post here, but that’s kind of morbid. Now that I have contributors posting so much great content, it might be a long time before anyone even notices I’m not posting! Oh well, I guess you’ll have to be left in suspense.

I’ve added two blogs to my Blogs I Read page above. I browse a ton more blogs, but these are the ones I enjoy the most.

I frankly thought I had added Wall St. Warrior Trader Jaime to my list a while back, but it looks like I didn’t. If you don’t yet read it, just look at today’s trade of the day on Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL), and you’ll be hooked forever (and probably insanely jealous). You also get pre-market ideas, responses to chart-reading requests, and other helpful articles as well.

Though it may not be the most family-friendly trading blog on the net, I’ve been reading Tale of the Tape for a while now, and I think it needs to get some “blogs I read” respect. You can see trading ideas, interesting charts, trades he made, along with lots of links to interesting articles. Plus, it just seems like the blog has a fun personality to it, if that makes sense.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
CAL	| |

Well, the end of 2006 is nigh, and many of us celebrate Christmas or similar gift-giving occasions. So, I thought the time was right to start putting together some gift ideas for stock traders, stock brokers, financial advisors, etc. Of course, lots of us have refined tastes, and like nice, expensive, things in general. Here, I just want to focus on trading/finance themed gifts.

Here are the ideas I’ve found so far. I may make additional posts as I find more items.

Novelty Items

• There were several fun items at www.stockmarketstore.com. Here were a couple of them that stood out to me.
  • Apron that says “Will Cook for Money to Trade”, for the trader that also cooks.
  • I Trade, Therefore I Am Shirt
  • A “Hope” Candle, may it burn brightly for you in your time of need.
• Another site I liked was GiveAShare.com, which allows you to gift an actual framed share of a stock. I’ve traded millions of shares, but never actually held a share of stock in my hands. Kind of neat.
• There’s the We have charts and graphs to back us up, so F$@K OFF Buttons and Stickers (I originally saw this on Tim Knight’s Blog). Right now, it looks like they’re selling the button but not the sticker, but I suppose you could inquire with the bitchybuttons.biz store.
  
• If you have Jim Cramer fans to find gifts for, you can get Mad Money paraphernalia at The NBC Universal Store.

Trading/Finance Related DVDs

• Trading Places the comedy with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as commodities traders
• Rogue Trader. A true story. I’m not kidding, I seriously never get tired of watching this movie… I think all traders can sympathize with how strong the urge is sometimes to make the same mistake that guy did (essentially just doubling down over and over on more and more margin). It’s incredible that he wasn’t stopped sooner.
• Barbarians at the Gate, a comedy loosely based on the leveraged buy-out of RJR-Nabisco
• Other People’s Money, a fictional comedy about a corporate buy-out, starring Danny Devito.
• Wall Street. Do I really need to say anything about this movie? Great film. Youtube has the famous Greed is Good speech, if you haven’t seen it.
• Wall Street’s ugly stepsister, Boiler Room. I thought the best scenes in Boiler Room were the scenes when they were watching Wall Street, but people seem to like this movie, so I’ll include it in the list.

Trading/Finance Related Books

There are a few in my Books I Enjoy page. Of books that came out in 2006, I thought these two were good:

• Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst: A True Story of Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market. It was an entertaining book, but also very informative about how the lines between the analysts and the investment bankers at major firms were scandalously blurry.
• Winning the Day Trading Game: Lessons and Techniques from a Lifetime of Trading (Wiley Trading), centered on the idea of keeping a 24-hour multi-market context in mind, and the importance of key numbers like round numbers, and the opening price for the year, etc.

…and here’s a good book I read this year, but which came out in 2004:

• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, which really made me think a lot about how much I owe my success to skill, and how much to dumb luck.

Sorry, all, still no OHLC data available from eoddata.com. Hopefully tonight I can get both days of data and resume my stock market scans as normal.

I have been very happy with the (free) service that eoddata provides me. Once or twice there have been glitches where I have to wait until late at night before I can get the data. Never have I had an overnight problem until now. It’s probably just a one-off occurence.

This is post number 300 on Move the Markets, and it’s about a post I’m not making. Gotta love that! :-)

Well, eoddata.com, where I get the data that feeds my stock market scans, doesn’t seem to want to give me today’s data. Until I can get it, there will be no scans. Probably this means I can post it tomorrow morning. Sorry for any inconvenience… I know lots of you check the list as part of your trading ritual. The good news is, probably lots of last night’s scan still applies today. I haven’t checked yet, but I don’t recall many alerts going off today, which usually means a lot of the same names would show up again.

I will try one more time tonight (in a couple hours) to see if I can get the data before I go to sleep.

I came one step closer to owning a live pig, last night. How interesting! Some background might help….

On my Ways You Can Help Me page (button at top of this page), I have a link that allows you to make donations, if you want to share your appreciation for the site that way. I’ve been surprised and extremely grateful about how often readers use it. Thank you! It really puts things in perspective, when I’m feeling tired or bored with writing on the site. How can I stop when people benefit to the point that they want to give me a cut of the money they’ve started making?

On that page, I also said I’d be happy to work with you to make a non-traditional donation work. Just to be whimsical, I said “If you want to give me livestock, I want to find a way to accept it.” So, I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when, last night, someone suggested that maybe they could give me a hog. Wow!

Of course, I immediately went to check the terms of the lease on my apartment, and while it doesn’t specifically outlaw hogs, if you read between the lines I think the anti-hog sentiment is clear enough. So, like I promised, we’re talking about how we can work that out. Who says you can’t bring home the bacon daytrading? :-)

The other great thing about the website is meeting a variety of people. As part of talking to this guy, he sent a link to the site about his farm. Check out the Rosewood Acres site (they also sell some products and services if you are interested). There’s a page on their philosophy of raising pigs happily and naturally, with comparison pictures to caged pigs. It’s just intuitively obvious when you see them side by side, which situation feels more “right.” This is one of those issues I’m aware of, but rarely have to think about, so it’s nice every now and then to get a reminder.

So maybe something will come of it, or maybe not. Truthfully, as many donations as there have been, there are far more emails telling me donations are imminent. Most of those never actually happen, but I’m thrilled that people are even considering it. It means a lot to me, to be able to help people take steps toward succeeding in this great profession.

If I weren’t so tired, I would write an article around a comment I made on JC, the NYSE Scalper’s site. But, I think the comment reads pretty well, so I will leave it at that for now and try to get some sleep. Maybe you’ve seen it already, since I hope a lot of you (the daytraders among you) read JC’s site. If not, give it a try… it’s really good.

I have a very irregular sleep schedule. I’m just naturally out of synch with the earth’s rotation. So, some weeks I’m up before the sun comes up, while others I’m just getting to bed when the sun comes up. Makes being at my screen during market hours a challenge sometimes, but it’s worth it!

I had commitments elsewhere for most of the trading day. I did stop by my platform in the afternoon long enough to confirm that it was probably not a good day for most of you, though I did note that steel stocks were up, and hotels I think.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is nicer!

FYI in case there’s some of you that don’t read the StockTickr Blog, I posted my first article for them last night. It’s a different kind of article for me… a single-stock analysis. Lemme know what you think. If you like it, and have a favorite stock you’d like analyzed in a similar fashion, just ask.

The article is here: Devon Energy Corp (NYSE: DVN) Short Term Analysis.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
DVN	| |

Did August trading finally punish me enough that I went looking for some programming work? :-) No, I’m doing just fine, thanks! But, I’m pleased to announce that I’m going to start doing some programming work on StockTickr, and also contributing articles to the StockTickr Blog.

If you’ve been reading the site at all, you know how much I use and like StockTickr. It hosts my watchlists, and tracks my trades. It’s been enhanced recently to produce and retain various charts of the trades, which makes reviewing them and posting them here very easy. That has saved me a huge amount of time recently. It’s obvious to me that StockTickr is run by an active trader, as its growing feature set is so well suited to active traders like myself. So, I like the service. I’m a fan! I’m also whiney and demanding…

In the process of suggesting various enhancements, I’ve gotten to know Dave, who runs the service. Dave’s been very receptive and insightful when it comes to feature requests. With my software engineering background, though, at some point I think the natural question became “why don’t you stop whining and start implementing some of these things yourself?” :-) Ok, I’m exaggerating…. but it was still a good idea, I thought. I think with two active traders contributing, the service is all the more exciting going forward, if I do say so myself.

Not only am I excited about the possibilities, I also wanted to tell you as soon as possible for full disclosure. I’ve mentioned StockTickr a lot on Move the Markets, because I liked, used, and paid for, the service. I’ll continue to use and mention the service here, but now I have an actual affiliation with them, and you should know that! Wish me luck!

I’ve been getting feedback on the site, so I’ve made two additions recently: First, you can now subscribe via email. The button is over on the left sidebar with the RSS subscription links. Secondly, I’m imitating Trader Mike and am going to post links that I think are interesting. The last 5 entries will be over on the left sidebar, and you can just view it on del.icio.us as well.

Please keep the suggestions coming… the ones I’ve gotten so far have been good! Thanks, everyone.

It occurs to me that some readers out there might have a passion for the stock markets, but know in their heart of hearts that trading and investing are not for them. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to participate in the market action, all the same. But how? Normally, this blog is exclusively about helping traders evolve, but I’ll take this one detour into how a trader can DEvolve. Get ready, because just about anyone with dreams of participating in the stock markets can enter the exciting and dynamic field of: stock market reporting.

Stock Market Reporting
Stock Market reporters are like the Gym Teachers of the financial world. You know the saying “those who can’t do, teach?” Well, even if you can’t teach, you can still teach gym. It doesn’t even matter if you are an overweight chain smoker. For stock market reporters, it’s really the same deal, only you can’t make anyone run laps around anything.

“I sound perfect for that,” you might be thinking, “but, I don’t know anything about financial reporting.” Nonsense, pessimist! In just a few minutes you will know everything you need to know. There are really just two steps. Be careful, though, because step one is a two-parter…

Step 1: Prepare!
For this step, you need Yahoo! Finance and CNN.com.

Part A: Go to Yahoo! Finance. Look to the left. Do you see the “Market Overview”? (Hint: if you see your kitchen, you have looked too far… try to lock your eyes on-screen. Seasoned reporters can do this without even moving their heads.) Note whether the Dow arrow is a happy arrow (pointing up) or a sad arrow (pointing down).

Part B: Now, go to CNN.com. I can already hear some of you groaning. I know, there’s lots of words there, and it looks scary. But remember, you are a financial news reporter, so just read the top story’s headline (that’s the words that are bigger than the other words).

Step 2: Report!
If today has a happy arrow, then report: “Markets up on news of” + headline. If today has a sad arrow, then report: “Markets down on news of” + headline. Now, you are going to need several paragraphs below this line to establish that you are an insightful and credible reporter, but don’t panic! No one reads anything but the first line, so you can just talk about your favorite flavor of ice cream. Reporters new to the field will need to build up about fifteen of these paragraphs. Once you have a back catalogue, simply pick three at random every day and add them to today’s headline.

Once you are familiar with the basic story format, try to branch out like this: If you happened to notice that the number beside the happy or sad arrow wasn’t very big, you can choose to say “Traders still digesting news of” + headline.

Example: “Markets down on news of golden globes nominees announced.” You get the idea.

Advanced Technique: Historical Context
This technique is only for veteran financial news reporters. That is, you need to have been reporting for at least one day. If today’s arrow is different than yesterday’s arrow, you can provide your public with important historical context for the current market action. This is a way you can really distinguish yourself from the short-sighted competition. For instance, you could say: “Markets are up on news of a growing gerbil population in France, despite yesterday’s concerns over Shuttle Atlantis rolling to the launch pad.”

Pitfalls
Make sure that the headline you got in Step 1 was from a news story, and not an advertisement. You don’t want to report that the markets are up on news of a three day sale at Macy’s, beating analyst estimates of a two day sale.

If you are giving historical context, make sure today’s top story and yesterday’s top story are different. Otherwise, you’ll say the markets went up and down for the same reason. You could research today’s story, looking for any change that could explain the difference, but that’s a lot of work. Alternatively, you could switch from news story headlines to one of the news categories. These are vague enough that people reading will fill in the details on their own. For instance: Markets down on news of weather.

Variation: TV Analyst
Do you have receding clown hair and a propensity to yell and sweat profusely in front of a large audience? You may be qualified to appear on TV every day. Do you also like to decapitate toy animals and press shiny red buttons? Then you are definitely qualified to appear on TV every day. Congratulations. The added benefit of this path is that no one will care if your views are inconsistent from day to day.

Summary
This was just a bit of fun, but there’s a message in it… I suggest you don’t bother with Stock Market news. All they do is point to some event, and point to the market indices, and try to make you think they are correllated in some way. It gets even more comical when you read a service that updates a few times a day. They are reporting on a level that puts significance into market noise. It’s worse than misinformation, if you buy into it… traders should do their best to suppress the urge to attach meaning to noise. Market news just reinforces bad habits.

I can’t believe the amazing company I’m in as an installment of the StockTickr Blog’s Interview series. There have been interviews with Van Tharp, Trader-X, Bill Cara, and many other well-known experts. And now, there’s one with me!

If you read me here, you know my posts can be on the long side… I revised my interview answers once or twice to try to make them short enough … did I succeed? Go read it and decide!

Those “pick 3″ questions were really hard for books and blogs. I made a longer list of blogs here at movethemarkets, and one of this weekend’s projects will be to do a similar list of books I’ve thought were helpful.

If you look up at the bar under the “Move the Markets” title, you’ll see a new button beside the “home” button. It will take you to an annotated list of blogs I read. I read a lot more than this list, but I want to keep the list down to the ones I enjoy the most.  I’m a big fan of books and journals with annotated bibliographies.   So, rather than a bare list, I tried to give a couple sentences about why I enjoy the blog in question. Hopefully it will help you decide whether it’s worth a look.

If you are too lazy to look upward at the links bar, here is the link to the page..

[EDIT: Please go to my software page for the newest version of this plugin]

I wrote my first WordPress Plugin today! It adds a table to the bottom of every post that talks about a stock, with links to their Yahoo, Google, and StockTickr pages. So, for instance, since this post mentions International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), you should see a table at the bottom with IBM in it. It keys off that parenthetical expression.

Other updates are on the left sidebar… I put a recent comments section, and my StockTickr feed. Also, I think the site renders decently on all common browsers, now. I know there are a few cosmetic glitches if the window is too small, but it’s completely readable now as far as I know. Please let me know if you are having any problems.

If you want to use the plugin, you can download it from this location. Just put it in your wp-content/plugins folder, and activate the plugin. Whenever you mention a stock like so: (Exchange: SYMBOL) in your post for NYSE or Nasdaq, it knows to create links. If you don’t like that format for your posts… you can always put an html comment in the post like <!- - (NYSE: CSX) (Nasdaq: SUNW) - ->, so that part won’t be visible, but the table will still get generated.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
IBM	| |
CSX	| |
SUNW	| |