‘APPLE BUYS AMD!!!! …. Oh.. wait.. it’s the Arabs.’

The first company is Eldorado Gold Corp. (EGO: 7.72 +3.21%). Eldorado has been rallying thanks to the weakening dollar and rising costs of gold. On Friday, EGO closed at $7.00 - just six short cents below it’s 3-month breakout point of $7.06. I am currently long 300 shares of EGO at $6.97 and will buy another 700 or so at the $7.06 break-out point. I believe it is very likely that EGO will break-out Monday because gold has continued it’s rally over the weekend, now trading at $980 up from $975 on Friday. Futures on the Dow are down for Monday morning, so I think this should help EGO along the way also. To make things even more convincing, the StockTiger has EGO as a break-out pick at the same price. I’d definitely rate EGO a buy at $7.06 per share for some nice profits. Always remember to set stop-losses to prevent large losses and keep large gains!

The second is Idearc, pronounced Idea-Arc(?) (IAR: 2.23 +15.54%). This is a company that was spun-off of Verizon wireless. It’s a phone-book advertising company with 9 billion in debt and in my humble opinion, nowhere to go. Phone books are more out-dated than rotary telephones. It may have some bounces in the short term, but I’m not going anywhere near this company. I am a child of the Google generation, as whenever I need to find a phone number or information about a location, I just look it up right on my phone. As the baby boomers slowly convert to the digital age, the ‘Phone book’ will die just like vinyl records and VHS tapes. Who wants to carry around a 10 lbs book full of information you’ll only use once every three months, when you can just look it up on your computer in a fraction of the time? With the advancement of smart GPS units, PDA’s, and Smart Phones the Yellow pages will be gone by the end of the next decade. Might it make for some good trading action now? Yes, maybe. But ask Verizon - they’re the ones that loaded it up the majority of their debt, and gave it the boot. Verizon knows what they’re doing. I have no position in IAR.

Please keep in mind that I am not a financial professional.  These are only my ideas, instincts, and personal beliefs.  Do not make any buy or sell decisions based on anything you read here.  Thank you!

Don’t set a date or time for when ‘real life’ starts. This is one of the worst things that you can do for yourself and the people around you. Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about.

‘I really want to learn how to play guitar, but I feel like I’ll have more time once I get to college. I’ll just wait until then when I’ll be able to make more of my own decisions to start up.’ - The high school Junior

‘I hate my life, I can’t wait until this semester is over. None of my classes are going well, I have no time to do anything. It will be so nice once all of this is over.’ - The college Freshman

‘Once I get a promotion, then we’ll definitely get to spend more time together. The extra $4,000 dollars per year will definitely make a difference in our lifestyle. We can start going to the gym then too! It’ll be great. Just as soon as I get that promotion.’ - The Junior Financial Analyst

I’m sure that you’ve can personally relate to one of these above statements, or one similar to them. There is great value to planning for the future and looking forward to the next step. It is a crucial part of making sure you’re healthy and wealthy in the future. But more important than actually planning for the future, is taking action for the future. When it comes down to it, what happens if you never get that promotion that you’re waiting for? If you were planning on everything getting better when that point in your life arrives, what happens when it comes and nothing changes?

We must take action to start planting seeds now to create fulfillment and accomplishments in the future. I myself am guilty of saying ‘If only this were the case.. I’d be able to…’ Please excuse the language, but this mentality is bullshit. We must treat every day as a gift - I don’t care whom you might think it is a gift from- God, Allah, Muhammad, Mother Theresa, The Tooth Fairy, or Santa Clause.

Grab a hold of every day, and make it your own. Do things that you would want to look back at yourself 10 years from now and be proud of.

Mean while, begin to plant seeds to ensure your success. Start making small contributions to a retirement account, start doing 10 push-ups per day, buy a guitar. It takes commitment, dedication, and planning to accomplish great tasks that are seemingly beyond your ability. For example:

How many push-ups can you do? Do you think you can do 60 in a row? The fact is: you can. How many can you do now? Let’s say you can do 10 push-ups in a row. Starting tomorrow morning, I want you to do 10 push-ups every morning when you wake up. Just 10 each day. On the 8th day, (the start of the second week) I want you to do 11 push-ups. It shouldn’t be that hard, you’ve been doing 10 every day for an entire week, you’re just adding one more, right? So what happens the week after that? 11 is easy now. You add one more. Yes, it might take a while - but after 1 year of just spending a minute or two in the morning doing push-ups every day, you will be able to do 62 push-ups in one set.

Apply this example to every day life and conquer tasks that you thought you could never do. Buy a guitar, start taking lessons. Don’t hate your life, make it exciting. Find time to do things that you enjoy now, regardless of your responsibilities it’s a dreary thought, but tomorrow may never come. Make time to spend with your significant other and if it’s necessary, hit two birds with one stone and exercise together. It’s a great time to talk about anything while you’re side by side on Elliptical machines! A $4,000 dollar raise will not increase the amount of time you can spend with them if you can’t figure out a way to do it now-there will always be something.

I will leave you with this: chase your dreams- if you run into a brick wall that’s holding you back- just remember this: walls are there to keep away those who don’t want it badly enough.

Geez, do I hate it when I have to use the red font for my trading updates. It was a difficult week for me in the markets as I practically gave back all of the above-even gains from last week. It has now been a little over a month and a half, the challenge is more than half over. At this point, I have approximately 5 weeks to generate a roughly 98% return-wow. Although my account hasn’t grown significantly since the beginning of the challenge, my understanding of trading has. It has been quite a learning experience and I can’t wait to continue the curve from here. I’ve updated my rules a bit and here are some of the new ones:

1. Nothing goes straight up continually - always take your profits.
-There is really no way to know that a stock will stay above a certain price at any time. Take your profits when you can, you’ll always be ahead of everyone else if you do, especially in a down market.
2. Never enter an order to be filled at market open.
-You have no idea what will happen in the first 1/2 hour of volatility. Let the stock establish it’s personality before you enter a trade.
3. Don’t short until the stock is over-bought.
An ugly $450 loss this week taught me this lesson. Shorting into what looked like weakness, only soon enough for a clip to come out announcing good news for the stock. Although it did come back to below my profit mark, I had already cut losses. Don’t fight the trend. It’s an uphill battle.

That’s all for now… until later.

The last week has been a very interesting one around A-Train Finance headquarters. It’s been a few since an update, and I promise to be better about posting more often. The trading challenge is still going in full swing, currently up 11.7% since January 1st, 2008 for a total of $8,920.

My biggest play yet was on Valentines Day, this past Thursday. The stock was Ambac Financial Group, (ABK: 2.19 -11.34%). After a morning spike, then gradual decline into the afternoon, I saw strong consolidation at $9.36 so I decided to buy in. I have to admit, ABK has been one of my favorite stocks to trade since the beginning of the trading challenge. It seems to follow a particular pattern almost every day. It gaps up, and then equalizes back down. There are a ton of ways to make money off of stocks like this, which I’m currently developing. Anyway, back to the trade. I bought in at $9.36 and waited. It sat steady for about 45 minutes, and then started to climb. For the next hour or two, it consistently kept making new highs, and continuing up. It peaked at $11.16, and dropped back to the $10.70’s a bit. I entered a sell order for $11.00 right as it bounced one last time right up to $11.00. This was by far my best executed trade so far. A profit of about $1650 after commissions.

I’m currently holding 2000 shares of Charter Communications, (CHTR: 1.17 +1.74%) purchased @ $1.01 / share. It’s a very slow moving one, but is trending upwards nicely, currently at $1.04. I think this will be a good short term play, and I have a sell target of $1.10 - $1.15.

Also, I currently have 500 shares of E-Trade Financial (ETFC: 3.03 -11.14%) at $5.05. I am expecting it to hit $6.00 relatively soon. I’m thinking it should gap up nicely to around $8.50 within the next few months. Company insiders are picking up shares, and no one is selling. I think by the next quarter things should be picking up for E-Trade quite a bit. Please keep in mind that I do not give buy or sell recommendations. Please do your own research.

Anthony: Hey Tim, what’s up? Thanks for agreeing to do an interview for A-Train Finance.

Tim: No problem, I’m a fan of what you’re doing with your site, [there are] so many crap finance bloggers out there (mostly from horrifically boring value investors) you’re def. not one of them.

Anthony: Thanks a lot, I appreciate the feedback. So what have you been up to these days? You seem like a busy guy.

Tim: Yeah, the TV show ‘Wall Street Warriors’ exposed my story to soooo many people, and that helped me realize how many boring/full of BS people there are in finance. So, I closed my hedge fund and decided to change things for the better; I’m going to liven things up–Will Ferrell style–and that entails me using my big fat opinionated mouth to do what it does best all while detailing my trading strategies on my blog, in my book and DVD. Oh yeah and I have TIMtv and TIMRadio coming out too, just because I need to try everything to reach people.

Anthony: Man. You’ve got a lot going on. I wish you the best of luck. I’m surprised you’re able to fit it all in. I actually just recently finished reading your book ‘An American Hedge Fund‘, I thought it was a great read. What was it like writing your story?

Tim: I fell in love with writing, finishing it three months flat (add another three months for editing) because I had a lot to say and I was motivated to get the whole truth out there, so people wouldn’t be forced to suffer through these /half-truth/sugarcoated/BS/lawyer-sanitized finance books written by POS “financial experts” who instead of wanting to help investors learn are far more concerned with adding another revenue stream and building a platform in order to get more exposure blah blah blah. Investors learn little from that kind of BS, so to prove I’m not int his for the money, closed down my investment management business and created my own publishing company, whose business model is based on brutal honesty. In the book, I just let it all out there and that was very therapeutic because in this regulation-laden, aka oppressed, industry, I’d never been able to be so open. the writing process was also very fulfilling because no matter how successful my book is or is not, I know I have created something out of the ordinary, something I’m very proud of. And, other than some money, I’d never before created anything in my life.

Anthony: The book covers a lot, but I have some more questions for you. What keeps you motivated and why?

Tim: I’m motivated to helping others understand the stock market, stock trading, finance and greed and ambition in general. For all my mistakes, I have one of the best track records around, so I have to be doing something right. I never had a mentor nor have I ever found any books or blogs as honest as mine because people in this industry are too wrapped up in greed, reputation and themselves to ever be so painstaking truthful. It’s no wonder there’s more magazine rack space devoted to transportation than business and finance combined! “Market experts” fail to realize that the overwhelming majorty of people think finance is too boring or complex a subject for them. I think just the opposite, this is a fantastically fun and surprsingly simple game to play, if you are properly taught. If I can turn $12k into $2 mil, so can others and after you hear about all the dumb mistakes I’ve made along the way, I have to believe people can do much better than me. They just need somebody who’s honest, who has experience and knowledge to share and most of all somebody who has nothing to hide. And thanks to my rather unique journey, that’s me.

Anthony: That’s a noble cause. Share the information wealth, right? If you could go back and change any one day in your life, would you?

Tim: I wouldn’t change anything. I’ve had plenty of ups and downs, but I’m so incredibly thankful for everything. Most people wish to avoid big losses, but contrary to popular belief, losses are not the enemy, a lack of understanding is the real enemies. Losses are hugely important because they teach you life altering lessons and scar you enough to force you to remember them in the future. Surprisingly, I learned more from losing $700,000 than I did from making $2 million. I think everyone should experience losses, but ideally, with my help, those losses will be substantially lower while the gains will be substantially higher.

Anthony: That’s a great point. I’d definitely have to agree about learning more from losses than gains. On to some moral fiber- what do you consider to be your top 5 values?

Tim: 1. Honesty. 2. Honesty 3. Honesty 4. Honesty 5. Honesty

If you’re honest with yourself and others, there is nothing you can’t achieve. Seriously, think about it, if you’re eternally honest with everyone, you’re constantly learning from experiences, both good and bad, and learning is the key to unlocking the future. Whether you succeed or fail, if you learn, you’re moving forward on the path to eventual success. I sound like a freaken’ motivational speaker, but maybe I am. Here’s an example:

You, who have never invested a dime in the stock market, put your life savings, which you’ve saved up from mowing lawns and selling crap on eBay over the past few months, towards buying 10 shares of Google (GOOG), let’s say at $700. You’ve worked your ass off for that $7,000, so now you want it to grow. All the “market experts” like Cramer are saying “Google $1,000, Google $1,000″ and you know Google is a great company. You want that easy sounding $3,000, you can almost taste it. But now, one month later, Google is down to $500 and you’re freaking out. $1,000 is looking a whole hell of a lot more impossible and you’re pissed. You have several choices–wait it out and become a long-term investor…or sell and take your losses, admitting you know nothing, vowing to never trust anybody else or the stock market again…or sell half, or a third, etc. If you’re honest with yourself, you take the loss and become determined to read everything stock market related because you’ll never let such a confidence shattering loss into your life again. Good, the loss has scarred you and you’ve become determined to learn to correct. Or you hold the stock, maybe it goes up maybe it goes down, but what do you learn–nothing! Maybe you hold onto it and rush to read Cramer’s books that urge you to watch TV and get rich. LOL, what a load of crap!

I don’t know where this is heading, I suck at teaching (I’m honest about it!), but I can tell you that if you rely on others, don’t cut your losses and go along with the crowd, you’ll never get ahead. For me, I’ve always researched to the point of dehydration, cut my losses somewhat quickly (the one time I didn’t, I lost $700,000) and mocked the crowd for constantly being such lemmings (yeah I’m talking to you, you boring value investors!). Who cares about my money, who cares about my psuedo-celebrity, from my financial journey, I’ve learned self-reliance. That’s worth more than Cramer or anybody on Wall Street will ever make. It’s not just about the money, it’s about the journey!

Anthony: One could say ‘it’s about the journey’ speaking on many different topics in life. So what do you want to see happen in your life? On your 50th birthday, what do you hope to have accomplished?

Tim: Forget 50th, I’m not gonna bore your readers with a 7,000 page essay on my goals in life, but by my 30th birthday, I hope to have taught hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of wannabe and veteran investors and traders, ideally turning thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of them into multi-millionaires, continue to be able to mouth off at anyone who bores me, continue to be able to mouth off at anyone who is a lying, a BS artist, you get the point…I’m going to talk, write, teach, blog, vlog, speak, sign language and exist until every last person has seen what I’ve seen, understood what I’ve understood and most importantly of all, play a large part in getting business/finance publications to outnumber those damn stupid transportation magazines!

Anthony: That sounds like some pretty great goals to me. Let’s get off the finance topic for a second. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

Tim: I’ve been sky diving twice, both times I loved every second of it, also got sinus infections both times because my big Jewish nose couldn’t take all the wind going through it. I encourage everyone to do it, even if you die afterwards, it’ll still be worth it, it’s a mind bending ride.

Anthony: I’ve never done it, but I might try it sometime. Maybe when I’m in my 70’s, so if I do plummet to my death, at least I will have a good 70 years under my belt. I sound like a value investor, playing it safe, right? Hah. You seem like you know yourself pretty well. What would you say is your greatest strength?

Tim: My determination. See all my comments above and multiply them by the biggest number imaginable and you still won’t have the faintest idea of how determined I am to help others and live a fulfilling life.

Anthony: …and your greatest weakness?

Tim: My need for speed. Not the drug, the action, the hype. It’s a horrible trait for a trader and it’s what always gotten me into trouble. That’s why I’ve gone into publishing, it’s the perfect quality required to overhaul the absurdly boring, snooty and lying world of finance. Remember, adapt your strategy to your strengths and weaknesses…I’ve adapted.

Anthony: If you could give a rookie trader one piece of advice, what would it be?

Tim: Never give up, never surrender. Always keep learning, never stop. Never. There is no one right strategy (you hear you me you freaken’ value investors!), find a strategy that suits your strengths and weaknesses and tailor that bitch. Eventually, you’ll find what you’re good at, but always be prepared to change. The market never stands still. You have to be able to adapt or else you’ll be done for. Never get caught up on one investment, they’re always new ones. Never trust anybody who works at any financial firm, they’re all whores who have sold their souls for salaries. You can trade from anywhere, you don’t need a fancy office, you don’t need to spend money to impress anyone, don’t be afraid of losses, but be quick to cut them and most importantly, always have fun or else find something that you enjoy more–life is short.

Anthony: Wow. Well said indeed. Your words are powerful, looks like you’ve got your projects in great momentum. Thanks for your time man, it was great talking.

Tim: The pleasure was all mine, stop by http://www.timothysykes.com anytime and we’ll continue this conversation and more.

Anthony: Sounds great, take it easy!

Tim: No, no time for taking it easy, I’m on a mission!

It’s a psychological barrier that most people will never overcome. But I say No! We must stand up and come together to ensure the security of our financial futures - especially those of us under 25. Every dollar that we spend at this very important age is potentially hundreds of dollars we’re sacrificing at our retirement. This marks the beginning of a series of posts entitled ‘The American Epidemic: Consuming Our Dollars’.

The rate cut also means that inflation will increase. Inflation is defined in Wikipedia as:

‘The rise in the amount of money circulating in a given economy over a period of time resulting in a general rise in prices. It is measured as the percentage rate of change of a price index.’

So as more money is circulated into the U.S. economy goods and services will become more expensive. Unless you are working somewhere that compensates for inflation by giving 3% raises every year, that means that the products, food and services that you buy and use will increase in price but you’ll still be stuck with your same income.

So what happens to the money that you have saved up? It loses value.

‘Oh no! I worked so hard to earn and save up that money! Is there anything I can do?’ you say. Why, I’m glad you asked. Yes there is something you can do. By putting your money into high interest savings accounts and investing it in the stock market you can offset the effect of inflation from decreasing the value of your money. By increasing the value of your investments and savings, it usually can either match or beat the negative percentage that inflation attacks your savings with.

On a longer time horizon, it’s always a good time to invest but now specifically is a great time to get started if you haven’t already! Check out a great post on inflation over at Dax Desai’s website.

Tires for your car - A long time ago I worked for a major tire retailer as a technician. Please, please do not buy the cheapest tires that a company sells. You know, the ones that they have the advertisement for on the front of the building..”4 tires for $100!!!” There are several reasons for this the main of which is your safety. When it comes down to it, cheap tires simply do not work as well as mid-range tires. Spending the money for slightly more expensive but better tires will save you money in the long run. There is a reason those tires are so cheap, don’t mess with this when your safety is in mind.

Regular Car Check-ups - There may be ways to make this more inexpensive by establishing a relationship with a local mechanic but just like your own health if you prevent any major issues before they occur, you’ll be better off in the long run. Making sure you check all of your cars components every few months ensures that you won’t have any major issues and if you do, you’ll have plenty of time in advance to know it’s going to happen.

Cookies - Once while on a road trip down the east coast a friend and I stopped in a convenience store to pick up some snacks. I saw a gigantic bag of ‘Chocolate Chip flavored Cookies’ for 99 cents. Of course, I bought it. They really were Chocolate chip flavored but I don’t think they were actual chocolate chips. Long story short, we fed them to some birds at a rest stop 100 miles away.

Milk - I’m sorry, but organic milk just tastes 100% better than ‘normal’ milk and it’s so much better for you. Between all of the hormones and preservatives in milk, it’s just not healthy especially to give your kids. It’s a dollar or two more per gallon but I think it’s entirely worth it for your health and taste buds.

Health Care - When it comes to health care for you and your family, I think it’s very important that you don’t go with the cheapest possible options. Although any health care is better than none both you and your family need to be protected against any treatable or foreseeable problems. Just like the car example, if you get checked frequently you can catch signs of problems early on, and have more time to treat them.

Kitchen Knives - It is actual true that the more dull a blade is, the more likely you are to get hurt with it. If you have to push harder to cut whatever you’re using the knife on, you’re more likely to slip and cut yourself instead. High quality sharp knives last longer and stay sharp longer. That $15 dollar knife set may look attractive, but you might want to spend a bit more to get lasting quality. It’s the debate of whether you should spend $15 dollars several times, or $75 once and have a good set.

Lasik Eye Surgery - Too many times I’ve heard radio commercials for the ‘new cheaper lasik’ for just $299.99 per eye! Get one eye done and get the other eye free! Come on. This is surgery we’re talking about here. These people are going to be cutting the tops of your eyeball off, lazering your eye to reshape your cornea and then reattaching it. This is not something you want to get a 2 for 1 special on. Do the research, find a good, well known doctor and save up for it.

Tipping Servers - This is an absolute, after having worked in the restaurant industry. I’ve seen all the people that either don’t tip or leave 5% tips for their servers. You must understand that this is how restaurant servers make their money. They are making $2.75 per hour without tips. They usually even have to tip out 4% to server assistants and food runners. Unless you received the worst service of your life anything less than 15% is unacceptable. If you can’t afford to tip from 15-20% for good service at a restaurant, then you can’t afford to eat there. It is part of the cost of the meal. Oh yeah, and always overtip your breakfast waiter or waitress - breakfast is typically much cheaper so they make less.

Underwear - There is a reason why they sell a pack of 35 for $1 dollar. It’s because you’ll need a new pair 3 times daily. As Kevin James of ‘King of Queens’ says ‘It’s like having a tangled web of cloth between your legs. Now I know why so many for so little.’

Blenders/Food Processors - If you’re going to make the investment to get one of these, do not get a cheap one. They are absolute crap. They break, crack, explode, catch on fire, smoke, set off fire alarms. This is another one of those save up for a few months if you have to, but get a quality piece of kitchen ware. It will last you generations and you will get your money’s worth out of it.

I’m sure there are more. Any I forgot to mention?