Project Plum

Trading For All the Money in the World

noreply@blogger.com (Project Plum) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:52:00 +0000

Sunday, August 30 2009

It is 3am in the morning and I still can't sleep. The frightening experience and every grim outcome that could have potentially taken place during that incident constantly replays itself over and over in my head and closing my eyes only makes the mental images that much clearer. I am not quite sure how to absorb and reflect on the situation, but I know one thing is for certain, I'm truly happy that we are alive.

This past Saturday afternoon I rented a Harley for the day for my girlfriend and I to escape the scorching heat of the South Bay and head towards the cool breezes of the coastline in Half Moon Bay. This was our second time renting a Harley from Mark's Cycle shop down the street from our home, so it was fairly easy to setup the reservation, pick up the bike, and be off on our way and that is exactly what we did.

We soon found ourselves on the freeway flying about 75mph north on the 280. The sky couldn't be any more clear and blue. Traffic conditions were moderately light and we were in such a lively mood to be riding for the first time in a great while, almost one year exactly based on our last rental log date. Every so often we would see another cruiser fly by coming from the opposite direction and we would occasionally exchange our waves and nods. The day started out perfect for a weekend ride. This was all up until I the bike started acting acutely different.

Once we finally reached a good cruising speed on the freeway, something just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like I was taking the bike for a ride, but in actuality, the total opposite; the bike was riding me. Every so often, I would feel the bike wobble a bit or gradually pull me to the left and right. I knew there was something wrong, but I figured it must be the wind or maybe just the characteristics of this Soft Tail Classic that I wasn't quite familiar with. After all, this was the first time I ever rode this particular model Harley so I didn't take much caution to the signals the bike was giving to me.

As we continued to cruise down the freeway, the wobbling and pulling started to get progressively worse. This time the bike started to fish tail ever so slightly. At 75mph this strange movement started to scare the hell out of me so I immediately down shifted the bike a gear in hopes that the strange swinging motion would subside, but it only seemed to aggravate the movements even more; thus, suddenly the bike began fishtailing violently. I locked my arms and griped the bars as tight as I could both in response to the alarming fright as well as trying to fight the bikes harrowing movements, but obviously the effort didn't prove much to help the situation of cars honking, swerving and veering off the lanes around us. We soon found ourselves fishtailing and swerving uncontrollably in between lanes. Two things immediately came to my mind at that very moment. One, head straight for the shoulder and two, pray to God that we were still on the bike when we finally got there.

Suffice to say, we both made it to the shoulder of the freeway in one piece despite plowing through some shrubs and getting some tiny nicks and scratches after dumping the bike into the dirt. Not to mention that we walked away clean wearing nothing but jeans, white tees and our open faced Ed Hardy helmets. Like all accidents, it happened so fast that all we remembered was getting up from the ground, brushing off the dirt from our clothes, and pinching each other to make sure we weren't just dreaming. It seemed so surreal at the moment.

Now that I finally placed my thoughts to the pen, I feel it gave me a chance to truly breathe in and understand everything that had happened today. I'm just grateful period. Grateful that we are both alive and well. Not to sound so cliche-ish, but life is such a wondrous mystery. When all seemed helpless and hopeless, by whatever forces in this world a miraculous path to safety was presented to us. Because of my deficiency in creative writing I can't explain the feelings and emotions that I felt and feel at this very moment. Like I said, I'm just happy to be alive. It is such a beautiful feeling to realize how so little we really need in this life to truly feel wonderfully happy. That I wouldn't trade for all the money in the world...

What Platform Do You Use?

noreply@blogger.com (Project Plum) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Time and time again I get the same question, "What is the best platform to use?" Personally, I use Etrade because I feel they do a great job in tying together all my financial assets, not to mention I can use any ATM in the world for free. However, the real answer is, "It depends." I came across a really good article from Barron's that had a good ranking chart depending on your style of trading. Here you go!

Data courtesy of Barrons

Plum Education - A Technicians Toolbox

noreply@blogger.com (Project Plum) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:47:00 +0000

Now what is a trader without his tools? In this article I'm going to share with you all a list of common tools that every professional trader uses in their day to day tactical plans. In the future, I'll share with you which combination of tools I use to make my day to day decisions. For now, take a look at the list and learn a couple of them, understand them, and try to apply a couple of them. See what works for you. Telling you what you should use is not teaching someone to fish for themselves, it's fishing for them. And like I promised, I wouldn't do that to any of you...

Price

Patterns: Triangles, rectangles, candlesticks
Momentum: Relative Strength Index (RSI), Stocastics, MACD, Bollinger Bands
Trend Identification: Trendlines, Moving Averages, Channels

Volume

Liquidity: Market capitalization, turnover
Participation: Volume, Cumulative Volume Index
Breadth (aka Internal Market Indicators, Market Internals): Up Down Volume, Advance Decline Line, McClellan Oscillator, Arms Index, TICK, TRIN, BANK, Market Breadth

Sentiment

Speculation: Put-Call Ratios, IPOs, Mutual Fund Cash Levels, Commitment of Traders Report
Consensus: Bullish/Bearish Surveys

Caught Between a "ROK" and a Hard Place

noreply@blogger.com (Project Plum) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:01:00 +0000

My first real post regarding a stock. Yay! I'll be honest and straight to the point. I am not the greatest at writing and the whole point of these blogs is to just say it as it is and I'm going to do just that. If you've been watching Rockwell Automation (ROK), which I doubt you have, this stock has been on a scream upwards. Bank of America recently upgraded the stock from 26 to $50 just yesterday citing conditions that fundamentals are improving. Improving!? Yes, they beat estimates by four pennies (23 cents, analyst estimate: 19 cents), but this is after they drastically reduced their FY2009 guidance from first quarter from 1.55-2.25 range to 1.40 - 1.70. Who isn't going to beat this quarter's estimates!?

Let's not forget that Rockwell's largest customers include almost all of the automobile companies. Automotive is doing terrible (for lack of a better word) and there are no signs of improvment by the end of this year. Consumer confidence ratings just came in at 46.0 for July vs the so called analyst estimates of 49.3. As long as automotive is in a slump, so too will all of the companies that benefit from their prosperity.

Looking at the technicals, we may see a bit of a push upward since bears (shorts) own about 8% of the shares outstanding giving this stock a 7.9 days to cover ratio and given the volatility of the market, I wouldn't be surprised of another 5% jump before we consolidate. In addition, we also made a move past 39.00 which was a psychological resistance point giving us a bit more room to about 42.50.

But let's not let the upgrades fool us. This month alone has been a 25% jump. I can bet you a dollar that someone (if not everyone) is in the money and just about ready to pull the sell trigger and when they do, I'll be riding on top of that wave with my shorts.

A New Day

noreply@blogger.com (Project Plum) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:28:00 +0000

We've been doing our best to fast track the construction of Project Plum; however, we didn't realize how much effort there was to get a website up and running. From blogs, to tweeters, to widgets, to newsletter services. The effort is just tremendous.

I guess this is just what happens when you get day traders to plan out a website.