What Do You Want?

What if you know what you want? I ask this question often: What do you want? The obvious answers are wealth, possessions, health, with few people at first not understanding that my question is who are you and what do you want from life? How do you want to be remembered. Are you doing what you want right now? Why not?

This question and your learning about yourself helps you learn to trade but having you not subconsciously sabotage your own success, or simply gamble on a tip, or "hold something way too long"....there are psychological reasons this happens, and that we break rules.

This is what we must learn.

Our stock portfolios, for long term traders, are doing extraordinarily well. Remember, you can view stock charts of our stocks and bonds at www.stockcharts.com and as subscribers you know what of our shifty fifty we actually own, and what we are watching.

The question abounds on how to invest now for the years ahead and I've learned from just watching and reading the ongoing Wall Street Fraud that the whole money supply, the devaluing of the USD, and the new Wall Street games (AIG the most traded stock in the last 6 months), that there is more to the house of cards, and that more money will be needed, not for health care, but for the banks again if we do not gain control.

Jobs are a serious issue. I'm a believer that the jobless rate will stay 8 to 10% for an extended period, no matter how much better the stock market moves, or the economy improves. This may be the new way.

Our investments on the long term, are all short term. We carry 25% trailing stop losses on all open positions at all times, and often move it to 15% trailing stop if the market seems ominous.

What do you want? Begin thinking what you are striving for, why you trade why you work, and what are you being for? It's a question every human should ask themselves.

The Bank Presidents May have just been stupid, not evil!

I have been reading much of the detail of our financial meltdown and the "evil empire" we have heard about that fed Wall Street. I've sent you many Mat Taibbi journalism exposes on Goldman Sachs and the role they play, but other forces are at stake. When I tell you you will shake your head even more, knowing our nation was run for 20 years by games of Wall Street and we built a wealth on "nothing".

What I've learned?

Far from manipulating their firms books, many could not understand them. The Economist says "Citigroup's boss reportedly learned of its $43 billion of toxic assets only in Sept. 2007, but was told the losses were unlikely.

There is no doubt many of these Bank CEO's (7 of the top 10 banks CEO's are gone) were stupid, bought $87,000 rugs, had planes, built offices, and were generally jackasses.

But the difference may be that these false numbers stretched so far back, involved the customers they do business with, and were built on such new "vehicles" like CMO's and derivatives that it is true when they say only a few men (all men, by the way) brought down Wall St. Others were complicit, many benefited, but I believe the false numbers were so false that many at the top were not smart enough to know what they had done.

So we say we must never let this happen again, but it will. Somewhere, somehow.

I own a company that for 30 years has done consulting with family busineses, from 2 million to 800 million, and have seen my fine partners analyze books away to show the owners of the small businesses what they have or have not done. Fully 80% of those that hire us, even in bankruptcy, have no "understanding of what they have wrought".

Understand this as you watch the nation fight. There is no quick solution, and the problems have mounted and are so entwined that undoing the knot is half of the game.