This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Good Trading begins with a good trading environment. One element of a good trading environment is having the right tools. I’ve been reading about Boogster’s Daytrading computer system. It’s a pretty nice setup, with bonus advice on LCD setups thrown in for good measure. But for my Prosperity Game, I need to kick it up a notch. For this round of the Prosperity Game, I will spend $2000 and $2500 all at the same time. If you step into my virtual office, you will see the following ultimate daytrading computer system:

ZenView Quad 19s Quad LCD Monitors (with DVI connectors) - $2299

There aren’t too many multi-screen displays available in the market, and of the few companies that carry them, this one stands out. Although purchasing 4 LCD monitors separately is cheaper, it will not offer the beneficial space savings offered by the stacking Quad LCD’s. This is not only more pleasing to the eye, but is also more practical, as it reduces the clutter on my desk. Usage of the monitors is broken down as follows:

• LCD1: I will use this monitor to track Market Sentiment as follows: displays real-time charts of Futures, ETF’s, TICK, TRIN, and select favoured momo stocks
• LCD2: Displays real-time charts of Canadian stocks and my watch list of 70 stocks.
• LCD3: Displays real-time charts of stocks that I am actually trading
• LCD4: Button Trader and a FF Browser with Yahoo!Finance, my blogroll, StockCharts, and BigCharts

Logitech® EasyCall™ Desktop - $99.50

The neat thing about this wireless optical mouse/keyboard combo is that it has a couple bells ‘n whistles integrated into the keyboard to provide for easy VoIP calls: speakerphone, one-touch calling, and connectors for a stereo headset. This is great not only for calling in any special requests to your broker, but also to just chat with your buddies when the market action is slow.

Anitec’s GI200 SLI PC - $2084.90

This clone PC is juiced up with the following configuration:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67 GHz)
• 1.024 Gb DDR2-667 RAM
• 512 Mb DDR2 - 667 RAM
• 2x nVidia eVGA e-GeForce 7600GT KO Edition 256MB PCI-Express
• Seagate 320GB - SATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive
• LG GSA-H22N 18x DVD±Writer
• 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Network Adapter
• Integrated 802.11b/g Wireless Adapter

The reason I need a 2.67 GHz Dual Core CPU is because with so many charts and watchlists up on display, I need a CPU that has enough horsepower to process all the real-time data. This is the current problem that I am experiencing with trading from my laptop (which caused me to move an old desktop PC into my office) - with so many charts and watchlists up, just opening a FF browser with a couple of tabs will cause the CPU to increase to 100% usage.
The other cool item are the two(2) identical nVidia graphics cards. Having the same 2 nVidia video cards in one system allows them to be configured in SLI mode - this is where the two GPU’s are networked together to share the video/graphics rendering burden amongst the 4 monitors.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Though I am still delinquent on my 3rd day Prosperity Game entry, Phileo (of the Phileo’s Picture Windows stock trading blog) submitted his next entry. (If anyone else wants to start playing, just email me!) He writes:

Last month, something unusual happened precisely when I was thinking about what I should spend next for the prosperity game - my wife walked in and “proudly” showed me a Scratch ‘N Win ticket. When I saw that we had won the colossal, gi-normous, mind-boggling, tax-free amount of $2, I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but I knew I had to share it with all of you! Maybe you all can help me interpret the meaning of this potentially life changing event in the context of this Prosperity Game…… Here’s the winning ticket (click to enlarge):

Regardless of what this all means, how can I not continue with the Prosperity Game? This time, I have $1500 to spend in the Prosperity Game. I am somewhat intrigued with the notion of “Living In Video” (at least let’s pretend that I am), and I’ve always wanted to take videos of my family, so I’ve decided to purchase a camcorder. But it can’t be just any old vanilla flavour camcorder. No, it’s got to be a creme de la creme, High-Def camcorder! The Canon HV10 HDV Camcorder is what I’m talking about here. This Canon HDV Camcorder has every single one of the latest and greatest bells and whistles to get you all lathered up in a jiffy.

However, what camcorder purchase can be considered complete without accessories? Every camcorder needs to be not just protected, but pampered with a camcorder bag. And, having a spare battery helps out immensely when you’re out ‘n about recording videos of your favorite events/people for any extended period of time. The other accessory that I need is a tripod, since it comes in handy when taking shots that you want to be a part of. And finally, I will need Adobe Premiere to edit all those videos that I have taken of me eating my steak dinner, cheering on my favorite hockey team, savouring some ice wine, and wearing my slick Armani suit. That should also help cultivate my interest in the increasingly popular hobby of home video editing. Total bill is broken down as follows:

Canon HV10 HDV Camcorder: $1144
BP-310 spare battery: $30
Camcorder bag: $141
Adobe Premier: $100
Tripod: $31
4-Pack of DV cassettes: $25

Total: $1470

Hopefully there is enough leftover to payoff the tab that I owe for the Armani Suit!

I’ve been lazy, and am delinquent on my Prosperity Game entries. Phileo’s no slouch, though, and spends his second day of prosperity money like so:

Ever since my high school grad, I have always enjoyed wearing a suit. My recent job interview was the first time in over 4 months since I last wore a suit. I have a 3-button, dark grey suit that I wearing because it really fits the contour of my body and makes me feel real slick and in the zone. Plus each time I do wear it, I almost feel like a different person - I feel ready to conquer the world, I no longer walk, I have a swagger, I feel more muscular, peaceful, and I am filled with an extra boost of boldness and confidence. Incidentally, the secret to looking really good in a suit is not more muscles, or height. It’s having a wide shoulder - this accentuates the chest area. But having a good tailor to customize your suit certainly works wonders too.

This time I have $1000 to spend for the Prosperity Game. Unfortunately, many of the Gucci and Versace suits sell for way over $1000 at Bluefly.com, so I will have to settle for this el-cheapo Giorgio Armani 3-button wool suit on sale for $1095.

And in order to meet the rules of the prosperity game, I will likely have to
haggle with the Armani salesman, and talk him down to $1000!

Phileo’s playing the $1000 Experiment Prosperity Game here on MtM (though we’re both going by $500 increments, it would appear). How exciting! He has a trading blog you might want to check out. You can play, too, if you’d like; just contact me. Here’s what he sent in for the first day:

I actually went through a couple of items that I would like to buy, but they all turned out to cost more than $500.  I actually wish I was at day 2 or day 3, because it is harder to think of something to buy with only $500!   So I really had to take a few days to contemplate what I would want to buy, that would make me genuinely happy, and would cost as close to $500 as possible without going over.

Well, since there are no rules that stipulate that the $500 must be spent on one single item, what I came up with was this:

Start off with a dinner for my wife and I at Morton’s SteakHouse:

I would order the following:

• Appetizer => Smoked (Wild) Pacific Salmon
• Salad => Spinach Salad (gotta stay healthy, you know!) with Raspberry vinagrette dressing
• Entree => Double Cut Filet Mignon (has to be done somewhere between medium rare and medium) with  Steamed Fresh Asparagus (no butter), sauteed Wild Mushrooms, and Lyonanaise Potatoes
• Dessert => Grand Marnier Souffle

To be conservative, I would estimate dinner for two to cost about $120. After that sumptuous dinner, I would go to see my favourite Hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks, play the Tampa Bay Lightning.  Since they are visiting Vancouver only once in the whole season, the game has already been sold out, so I will be lucky to be able to get 2 tickets in the UPPER sections near the blue line for about $230.

I got hooked on icewine ever since I went on a wine tour out in the Okanagan, so after all that cheering and yelling at the game, we would head home and relax and wind down over a bottle of SummerHill Estate Platinum Series Pinot Noir Pyramid Aged IceWine 2002.   This particular bottle of pyramid aged icewine, being low in supply and high in demand, is asking for a price of $128. 

Any money left over would hopefully be enough to pay for babysitting!!!

It’s Day Two of my $500-increment prosperity game, and that means I’ve got $1000 to spend. I’ve been learning French in my spare time, somewhat slowly. I’m listening to lots of podcasts, etc, but still I think I could use some help with pronunciation from a teacher. So, I’ll sign up for French I at my local community college. That’s $150 tuition. I’ll assume the books will cost $100, bringing the total to about $250.

When I’m busy studying, I’m not going to want to clean up after myself as much, so I looked for French Maids. Couldn’t find any, right off, probably due to their fetishy nature. But, a normal weekly maid service for the next four weeks would cost me about $120/wk, or $480.

After all that hard studying, and having to watch my non-french maid like a hawk, I’m going to want to relax with a nice french wine. My favorites (pinots and cabernets, all of them) cost around $45. Not quite at the level of JC’s wine picks, but still very tasty. I’ll get 8 bottles, enough to have two a week in addition to my everyday, cheaper wines. That’s $360, to bring my total to $1090.

Done! Wow, in just two days, I have:

• Established weekly massages in a relaxing spa for a month
• Put myself in a french class
• Gotten a weekly maid service for a month
• Raised the quality of the wine I drink for a month

Life is good! Next time, it’s $1500…

As mentioned in the kick-off article, I am playing a game where I have to spend some imaginary money regularly (nominally each day, but we’ll see how close I can track to that). I have decided to go in $500 increments. Today is the first day of the game, so I have $500 to spend.

Well… let’s see… Since I have such a stressful life, I think I should address that with weekly massages. :-)

My favorite place for that in my city, right now, is the Crescent Court Hotel Spa. I can get an 80 minute sweedish massage for $130, which makes four weeks of massages come to $520.

Well, that was easy! I’m really looking forward to how loose and relaxed I’m going to be! As you can see, I’m not going to be a stickler about hitting $500 on the dot.

Next time (tomorrow?) it will be $1000… I already have several ideas…

I stumbled across The $1000 Experiment blog yesterday, and thought it was a fun idea. As their initial post explains, the idea is simple:

• In the morning, imagine you are depositing $1000 into your bank account.
• You have to imagine how you would spend the entire sum today, and blog about your purchases.
• The next day, you repeat with $2000, then $3000, etc.

The point of the game is derived from the Law of Attraction, which more or less says what you think about today will be your life tomorrow. It’s a warning to focus on success rather than worry about failure. So, this is a fun way to make sure you spend some time thinking about having more money than you can easily even spend. Then, you get to go through imaginary motions of doing stuff with all that abundance. Sounds fun, and certainly can’t hurt!

The other thing I think is interesting about the cases on that $1000 experiment blog, is that after a few days most of them start having a lot of trouble getting the money spent. So, it also kind of acts as a reminder (though I didn’t see anyone say this), that money isn’t really what makes you happy, or determines the quality of your life. (but it’s still damn nice to have!)

So, I’m going to do the experiment on myself here. I may not quite do it every day. But, I’ll try to make regular updates. If anyone else wants to do the experiment also, and blog it here, just let me know and I’ll set you up so you can post. These posts will be under the category “Prosperity Games,” in case I come across more things like this I want to try.

I may start smaller than $1000 initially, though. Maybe I’ll do $100, $200, … and then start moving up $1000 at a time when I hit $1000.