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I decided to let go of PEIX at $16.50. I bought 1000 shares on Jan 25, 2007 at $16.00. This trade made a gain of $500 (3.1%) in less than a week.
On another note, I’m still holding on 1000 shares of AMD. AMD closed at $15.55 today, down 0.45 from my purchase price, or an unrealized loss of $450 (2.8%).
It’s interesting to see where clicks come from on my site. I have one click coming from UK Google’s search engine and the user was searching for “send a tune”. Amazingly, my post on Business Idea #1 - SEND-A-TUNE came up. I tried the same query on US Google and receive the same results.
Know your Goal
What do you want to achieve financially? Mind your objective.
Establish a Plan
How are your going to achieve your goals? Write down the things that needs to be done and the steps to take. Set up milestones to track the path of your long term goal.
Prioritize your Tasks
Figure out what needs to be down first. Place importance to tasks that have tight deadlines or are key points to your goals.
Focus on your Goals
Remind yourself regularly of what you’re trying to achieve. Follow your plans and try to avoid getting sidetracked.
Prepare for Obstacles/Changes
Every journey has its own difficulties and unexpected events. Be aware of the challenges that may arise. Not all plans work accordingly to what’s written on paper. Build some flexibility in your plans.
Have a Backup Plan
When all else fails, have a backup plan. Is the goal too high? Lower the bar. If your goal is no longer viable, go back to the drawing board and set a different goal.
Today’s quotes
PEIX 16.44 +0.33 (2.05%)
Ethanol causes jump in corn prices, but experts urge calm
This may be a temporary increase. If things don’t look too good, I may sell tomorrow.
AMD 15.79 -0.16 (1.00%)
AMD doesn’t look so good right now. The three month chart shows a strong downtrend.
WordPress offers a lot of themes. I haven’t had time to browse all of them yet. I like the theme I’m using now, but I want a 3-column blog template. I emailed the author of the template I’m using but he has not responded to me. I planning to switch to a 3-column template with a similar theme as this one. If you know of any good themes, please let me know.
And the winner of the Fastest Trade Execution Speed is… Scottrade!!
Seriously, Scottrade’s Trade Quality and Execution is absolutely amazing. Before the market opened today, I submitted three orders for the same stock and price at three different brokerage firms. I placed a limit order for TNL at $21.50 at Fidelity, Scottrade, and TD Ameritrade. And only Scottrade fulfilled my order. Interestingly, the low of the intraday trading is at $21.50. This was a really good test to see which brokerage gets the orders executed the fastest and at the lowest price. I had higher expectations for Fidelity and was a little disappointed when my orders in my Fidelity account did not execute.
Scottrade is really impressive. They have put my orders through several times in the past at the intraday bottom. I was thinking of moving my Scottrade’s money to Fidelity, but now I’m going to put that thought on hold.
Keep up the good work, Scottrade!
STX finally topped over my target of $28 on Jan 24, 2007. Unfortunately, I sold my shares before 2007. I had held them for a long time but I became impatient towards the end of last year. The stock was trading sideways for a long time so I decided to sell it. I had done some research on STX last year and believed the fundamentals should lead to a bright future.
Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity is hosting the 85th Carnival of Personal Finance.
There’s a link to my post, Money Management 201.
I contributed the maximum of $4000 to my Roth IRA at Scottrade. This deposit allows me to meet the minimum requirement for the Scottrade Elite platform. I downloaded the software, but have not used it yet. One of the features I looked forward to was the Level II quotes but I just learned that Scottrade charges $10 a month for it. I can get free Level II quotes from my non-retirement brokerage accounts so I wouldn’t be paying for it at Scottrade. I like to deposit money early in the year because I do a lot of trading and the extra funding gives me more buying power.
In the long run, companies can finance internal growth at the same rate as their return on equity. Faster growth has to be financed by taking on debt or selling more stock. Ultimately, ROE determines growth rates. - Michael Murphy