Before we get whackin' around on the keyboard tonight, just a minute to think of the families associated with the tragedy today in Connecticut.   

Every once in a while Devin does come up with the wittiest and funniest lines.  Usually it is by accident but today it was well planned and well executed.

After dinner, we watched the end of Irving Berlin's White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kay.  As we were sitting on the couch, our first few relaxing moments of yet another busy day, and as all the former troops rose to sing "White Christmas" to their retired General, Devin asked, "How did they know the words?"  Think about it.

Yes the song was originally from the movie Holiday Inn made in 1942 and many do not know it was actually first performed for the Kraft Music Radio Show.  It is credited with more than 50 million copies world wide and is the world's largest selling record of all time. 

A little research surprised me as I discovered "It's Now or Never" is not number two as I thought for many years.  It has been bumped to number 5.  Number two all time singles is Elton John's "Candle in the Wind", then Bing's "Silent Night", the famous Gruber and Mohr classic from 1818, (Bet the city of Salzberg wishes they copyrighted that one.), Bill Hailey and the Comets come in 4th with their smash 1950 hit "Just Deal Me A Hand".  Just kidding, my Buddy Butch was just freakin' sayin' NO WAY.  It was "Rock Around The Clock", credited with 25 million copies.

"It's Now Or Never", is credited with 22 million copies.  I have 128 copies of my CD "Anybody Can Make a Record" in distribution.  I am on all 7 continents.  And my CD and It's Now Or Never were recorded in the same studio, Radio Recorders, in Hollywood.

Speaking of Hollywood, guess where Devin and I were last night? (Thursday).  No, not Hollywood, Beverly Hills.  Ryan and Kristin bought us tickets to go see Donny and Marie Osmond at the Pantages Theater.  We decided to make a night of it.

We hired a car for the night, enjoyed a drink on the way to Maestro's in Beverly Hills for a fabulous meal.  

I splurged and had some blinis and caviar, a tomato and cheese salad, an amazing double pork chop and a Buehler Cabernet.  Devin had a terrific shrimp cocktail, a nice salad and Waygu Beef.

Then we headed over to the Pantages just in time to see the dynamic duo hit the stage.  Years ago Devin and I had seen Donny in "Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Robe" Musical.  

I have several of his records and appreciate his technically perfect voice.  (When you grow up learning 5 part barbershop harmony, their ain't to room for wobbly voices.)  I was expecting him to be good.

Marie, blew me away.  

Her voice and range was spectacular and her stage presence was fabulous.  She performed the aria, "Nessum Dorma" and generated the first standing ovation of the evening.  They both put on one heck of a great show.

We did not get home till about 11:30 and I was to tired to write.  Instead I finished Dr. Elder's "Trading For A Living" and started his book "Come Into My Trading Room".  It carries over a lot of the psychology theme from the first book, but provides a lot of examples of what he learned a long the way.

That is a good segue for the second part of the blog tonight.

Disciplined Profits

The book "Come Into My Trading" spends a lot of time correctly stating that most traders (and most investors, and there is a difference) are their own worst enemies.

Elder goes into so many examples of stupid stuff I have done, and continue to do.  Here are a couple of personal examples.

I will read about a great under 5 dollar stock and the press clippings are great and so since it so cheap, I will pick up 500 shares.  Now I have a line item in my portfolio for 2500 bucks.  A month will go by and it will be up 5%, I wont remember where Ai got the idea from or what my exite strategy is and say to myself, "Great pick Brian.  It has a long way to go."  Then a month later it will be down 10% and I will tell myself, it will come back.

By month three, I will have no clue what my game plan was and whether this has real potential or not.

Or, I will do diligenct in my fundamental homework and maybe even choose a decent entry point and the stars will align and stock will really take off.  (I have that with BOFI at the moment).  It will be up 30 or 40%.  Do I sell?  Do I let It ride? 

Dr, Elder's book shows you spread sheets he developed over the year to track individual trades as well as portfolio performance appraisal. 

Since the publish of his books, he has partnered with Kerry Lovvorn to create Spiketrade.com and it does all of the tracking for you.  Today we had several hours of waiting for the retractable screen door guys to finish their work so I decided I would go back and enter all of my existing trades from the Salve Lucrum portfolio into the Journal in Spiketrade.com.

That entailed 26 open position with 64 individual trades.  (This does not include options or bonds as Spiketrade is equity specific.)  Keep in mind eaxch trade REQUIRES you to provide the ticker, your direction (short or long), what kind of trade (limit, market, stop/limit), you desired entry point, your price target, your trade thesis, (the reason you wanted to make the trade)and your protective stop.

From that info, it will calculate your potential loss, risk reward ratio, and potential gain.

It then has you enter the actual trade including fees and slippage  (how much more you paid for the stock than you intended to.)  Once it has that it provides you a grade based upon the high low for the day of the trade.

When you close out a trade it asks you your reason for exit.  It then allows you to perform and immediate forensics on the trade and one several weeks later.

Here is what happened today as I was doing this painful chore.  I eliminated 4 positions (3 at a loss) because I could not tell you why I bought the things in the first place, but more importantly, I had no idea what my expectations were.  I did not have an exit plan.

Now I could build these spreadsheets and save a tonne (That was for my British friends across the pond) of money and have to populate all the market data drivers.  Or I could join spiketrade and let them do it for me. 

In conclusion, spiketrade has saved me a bunch of money on several trades I would have normally made.  It helped me limit my risk by closing out 4 dumb trades (3 at a loss) I would not have made in the first place had I been using spiketrade.

This site does not conflict with IBD CANSLIM strategies or Auer Fund Strategies or the Buffet Value worksheet I use.  It works in conjunction with those.  In fact it forces you to establish a discipline that drivers you toward either better fundamental analysis or technical analysis. 

For those folk who trade more than once or twice a month, if you sign up for one month of spike trade and use it on each and every trade and you don't improve your results (which could mean not loosing money for a change or taking a profit for a change) I will pay for that month.

That is how confident I am in the site.  I will warn that for most of you that I know, you will be doing more homework than you have in the past.  This site will make you feel foolish for buying MCD because your morning coffee tasted good today.

We are looking forward to Barron's tomorrow to see what we mised today.

Since 11/25/2012

I am not a professional investment advisor. Anybody reading my blog and investing accordingly must be out of their minds. I have made more money than I have lost. There are many more qualified people than I to actually tell you how to invest your money.

BAGAKOAA=Boys And Girls And Kids Of All Ages

Salve Lucrum=Latin for Hurrah for Profit.

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