I live for that moment where you feel you've finally 'gotten' something.

You figured it out... you might not have totally solved the problem yet, but you're on the way there and you can taste it. Finishing up is important, but is nearly a foregone conclusion once you've actually _clicked_

And you do that again, and again, and again, and again.

Nothing better.

Just too much pressure. This guy agrees with me.

Also, it takes way too much time! I already 'journal' most of my trades in a certain sense so it is not hugely useful that way either.

But I do find it easier to trade when I don't really think about whether I am going to posting good results for the month. Lately I am just focused on hitting my current daily profit target, which is ~1.04% of my total trading capital, and hitting my weekly target, which is ~2.59% of my total trading capital. This may sound like an absurdly high goal, but could actually be a quite modest daily profit target for a savvy and experienced short term market participant that isn't working with a particularly large amount of capital (few million $ or less).

Every single day is a new day. How are you going to hit your target, today?

Focus is what I need. Just me and the goal for the moment.

A long time ago, I recommended Sun Times Media as a potential 'dead cat bounce'. The company was definitely a dead cat; went from NYSE to Pink in the blink of an eye. If you want some really 'entertaining' reading, check out their 8k.

I had always thought this stock pick was out of a hat, but it's interesting reading back on what I had to say regarding the potential future price action. Back then I sort of thought of it as a sort of 'Buffett' style move or some such hogwash, but I did seem to have somewhat of a handle on price action.

My story on SVN/SUTM was written somewhat after I bought the stock on Investopedia's simulator at the price of $1.05-1.14; I originally took notice of the stock at $1.00-1.02, and it was part of the reason I opened up a simulated account.

From the post:

Their share price has fallen to nearly a dollar. Currently they are selling for $1.31 a share in after hours trading. Their stock price has fallen due to the 'looting' of the company by the former CEO and others. They also cite the decline of the print advertising market as a major source of their woes. I do not have any idea if this company will do well over the long term. However, I believe that this company will experience somewhat of a rebound in share price over the next year if it does not completely explode. This is the rock bottom of the stock, I think it will get up to at least 2 dollars a share from where it's at now. After that, it's anyone's guess at this point.

...

However, my gut tells me that if nothing else, there's going to be enough speculation on this stock to make some money. This stock went up while the Dow and S&P went down.

One common method for promoting blog posts and websites is to look for other blog posts and websites that discuss similar items and then leave a comment with a link back to relevant content.

What is interesting about this approach is that people regulate their comments very tightly. Let us examine two approaches that I have encountered when attempting to promote my website through this sort of largely harmless and possibly helpful, comment 'spam'.

I promote my Zecco review on The Sun's Financial Diary

So naturally, I want my articles to have high search engine ranking. So what do I do? I search for the keywords that I want other people to get to my site by using, and look for the blogs, because those will allow the posting of comments.

Here is a search for 'Zecco Review' on Google. When I wanted to open up a brokerage account, I used this review to help determine I first open a Zecco account, so when it came full circle and I commented on it and left a link to my review, it seemed quite appropriate. Sun (the website operator) was kind enough to reply to my comment and agree with my general opinion that Zecco was a so-so broker at best.

I attempt to promote my Zecco review on Debtkid's website

The very first result of that Google search leads right to a review of Zecco on Debtkid's site. Naturally, I wanted to promote my website on the Number 1 result for 'Zecco Review'! I believe I posted almost the exact same comment that you can see on the Sun's website, and shortly thereafter, I noticed that I received a few referrals from his site.

However within a day the referrals dried up. What happened? I went back to Debtkid's site, and surprise, my comment might as well have never existed! Why would this happen?

My comment was deleted because Debtkid, as an affiliate of Zecco, is trying to receive commissions for selling Zecco account signups, and people reading my so-so to possibly negative review is not going to help him do that.

In short, Debtkid has a conflict of interest and did not act with integrity by deleting my comment

The Sun also receives compensation for people signing up with Zecco, but because he is an ethical person that acts with integrity, he is not going to attempt to omit and hide the truth in order to line his pockets like Debtkid.

I left the following comment on Debtkid's site, I doubt it will ever show up:

Debtkid is vested in having you guys sign up for Zecco; of course he's not going to write a bad review.

I attempted to drop a link here to my more nuanced and not-so conflicted-of-interest review (I am not an affiliate of any brokerage unlike Debtkid) , but Debtkid apparently did not think my comment worthy of posting.

My review of Zecco in 2008
Some difficulties I have had with Zecco, and also, SogoTrade.

And of course, the only comment on this review is blandly positive nearly content-less praise:

I love Zecco so far, and I’ve been with them for over a year. Not only do you get the 10 free trades but the rates are pretty low for options and trades after ten, lower than most all the other sites I’ve looked at. Their customer service has also been great for me so far. I recently had a technical question, emailed them and not only got back an email back within a half-hour, but also got a call from one of their engineers who helped me solve the problem.

Where were those awesome engineers when Zecco decided to take the day off and read the paper while taking a huge dump on Monday, April 14th, 2008?

Doesn't just seeing Anthony Hopkins make you feel warm and fuzzy?

After George Ingram himself appeared to comment on my article about him I started following up privately with some of the people that left comments.

One individual wanted to get into contact with another commenter, and so I helped him do so, and he also supplied me with some more information about Ingram.

Apparently, the guy that left a comment about having lunch with George in Chicago sparked the interest of the gentleman I was in contact with. According to him, George is violating the terms of his probation and he should still be under house arrest in San Antonio, TX.

He also led me to this write-up on George Ingram III in an oil industry newspaper. It's very revealing to say the least, but you'll have to pay five bucks if you want to read it. It discusses his attempt to take control of Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-run oil company, through some sort of ridiculous scheme where he would put 'no money down.' He also made very ambitious claims regarding potential future increases in oil production. Of course, if the deal went through, Ingram's Denver-based company Global Intelligence Corporation would receive a $155-mil contract to provide "data systems [based on] secretive decision software software supposedly in use by the US Department of Defense."

Central to all of his schemes are his ready promises of vast amounts of cash. However, this is cash that he doesn't have access to at the moment - because according to him it is tied up in illiquid foreign investments.

At least two Ingram relatives say his claims of great wealth and secretive government links are pure fantasy... "There was no big inheritance," says one cousin: "It's a fairy tale. The whole family is mystified."

"He's one of the biggest liars ever created, or he's a man of incredible means," says Texas lawyer Edward Watt. Watt won a $50,0000 judgement against Ingram in 2003 for unpaid legal bills, despite elaborate counter-claims Ingram raised, and lost. Watt says he does not expect to be paid, convinced Ingram is un-collectable.

MF Smith blasted [Ingram's claims of great wealth in his chapter 11 bankruptcy filing] as "incomplete, inconsistent, and unverifiable" and noted Ingram did not own a car, could not pay the $850 bankruptcy filing fee and his house had been foreclosed in 2000. "What is an individual with a net worth of $1.7-bil doing in bankruptcy?"

Edward C. Bahl

One commenter named 'Denis Robinson' with an e-mail address tied to globalintelcorp.com is most likely Ingram himself. Global Intelligence Corporation (GIC) is the fraud shell company that Ingram set up in order to facilitate the 'investments' he attempts to con out of people. The most amusing part as far as I am concerned is that the company purports to be an expert in 'Business Intelligence' - something I know more about than I would like.

This 'Denis Robinson' attempts to slag the name of a one Edward C. Bahl, who apparently was just another one of George's victims, along with such information-age stalwarts as Verizon and IBM.

Verizon was never paid [for funding a Global Intelligence Corporation operation] and the hardware disappeared. Ingram blamed his employees for stealing, says Edward Bahl, whose firm was stuck wtih $100,000 in unpaid consultant billings. . . "I should have known then that Ingram was a fraud," says Bahl, who went on to help Ingram found GIC in Denver, funding much of that development by maxing out his own credit cards. Ingram blames Bahl for GIC's downfall.

Ingram is often lucky in that his victims would rather not admit to their being conned out of lock, stock, and barrel and thus sometimes do not file formal complaints.

Oh yea, what about good old American PureTex Water Corporation that had such big plans to open the 'World's Largest Bottled Water Plant' in Texas?

PureTex's only "asset," says Bahl, may be the gold-plated board Ingram persuaded to lend their names to the venture. They have included former Space Shuttle pilot and Marine Gen. Charles Bolden, ex-NASA Johnson Space Center head George Abbey, president Michael Frazier of Houston Investment bank Simmons & Co, and Fulbright & Jaworski law partner Howard Wolf.

White Collar Psychopath? (a clinical definition)

some consider the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath


I found an excellent article by Jerry Russell and Richard Stanley titled Psychopaths, Secret Societies, and the New World Order that discusses some salient features of our neighborhood sociopaths.

traits that help define psychopaths
• a smooth, glib capability to lie, manipulate and dissemble
• completely callous lack of empathy or concern for others
• shallow emotional affect and lack of remorse
• egocentric grandiosity
• living off others or predatory attitude
• lack of realistic long term goals
• blaming others for their actions
• breaking parole or probation, varied criminal activity

Does this remind you of anyone? If it's someone in your personal life, run!

A paper by Harris, Rice & Quinsey (1994) argues that psychopathy is a "taxon" -- that is, a discrete subclass, more or less as distinctive as male vs. female, or cat vs. dog. This is based on a statistical analysis of a population of subjects with their scores for psychopathy. The distribution of scores is strongly bimodal, indicating a lack of "shades of gray" for the psychopathic personality syndrome. This is a strikingly unusual result in personality research, which usually finds a continuous range of variability in personality traits. While a five-factor personality model (introversion/extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness) is often considered sufficient to describe the normal range of personality, the psychopathic personality is very difficult to represent within this space (see Miller et al., 2001), exhibiting highly differentiated sub-traits within the major personality dimensions (where we would normally expect to find correlated sub-traits.) The unusual pattern of sub-traits is, in our view, another basis for believing that psychopathy represents a distinct genetic syndrome.

Essentially, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a psychopath.

The psychopaths have developed an extraordinarily powerful camouflage mechanism. When it fits their purposes, they are glib, friendly and easy-going, devoid of the petty anxieties that trouble most of us and cast a pall over day-to-day interactions. They are the very embodiment of charisma and chutzpah. In this way, they stay hidden and undetected by their victims until a trap is sprung. Precisely because most human beings have an instinctive internalized sense of fair play and altruism, they are incapable of seeing when another human being does not share these attributes.

Here is a link to a Google search on the word 'psychopath', and I also leave you this tidbit on the prevalance of anti-social personality disorder in the general population.

Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.