AMZN purchase

I've been wanting to hold AMZN (Amazon.com) for the past year. I almost bought a bunch at 50 back in November and probably should have since it really recovered well. I like what they are doing with EC2 (Cloud Computing) and think this is going to be huge. They are very well managed and I like their leadership so I fell like my money is safe. I made a 5% of my account purchase and may buy some more. The strike price was 76.32 and I'll put a stop in at 67.20.

MON purchase

I purchased a 5% of my account holding of MON today. I've been looking at it for the last few weeks. May buy another 5% in the next few weeks. It executed at 79.70. I'll put in a stop at 70.50.

USG purchase

I've been looking at the market and finally decided to put half my account back in. I've been looking at USG since it hit 5 and bought a small 2.4% holding that executed at 8.65.

I'll put in a stop at 4.90.

SDS purchase

I purchased a 4.5% share of my account in SDS. This is a stock that tracks the S&P500. If the S&P500 goes down, SDS goes up, if S&P goes up SDS goes down. So you can see that I'm betting the S&P doesn't hold the gaines over the last week. I almost bought it on Friday, but waited until this morning. I bought it at 81.93 when DJIA was sitting around 7500. I'll probably sell it if the DJIA hits 6500 again.

The announcement that the governement is finally stoping the bailout at GM and Crysler is my reason. The auto companies have been mismanaged for a long time and it's finally coming to the end of the road and this will have a negative impact on the economy overall for the next few months at least.

GIS purchase

My broker asked me to look at GIS (General Mills). I don't take all of his recomendations, but looking at this chart and knowing people are still going to need food I'm bought a 5.6% share of my account. The purchase price was a 53.10 and I'm putting a stop at 48.10.

IBM Sold

My stop on IBM triggered at 97.50. I'll buy it again in the 80s. I made 16.5% on this in less than a month. Whenever something goes up that quickly I tend to want to sell it even if I think it has long term possibility. In this case I didn't just sell it, I put in a stop a few % below where it was. I'm planning on keeping 10% high water mark stop losses on everything I own. This would have saved me a lot last year, but I still feel like I got out at the right time (half in September and half in early October).

IBM stop changed

I changed the stop on my 9% holding of IBM to 97.50. It is currently trading around 98.50 and I should probably just sell it since it went up 17% in a few days, but I'm going to try and follow it up if it continues. There has been quite a rally over the past week and I'm still mostly on the sidelines, but glad I got back in some. Overall, I'm up for the year so that is a good sign.

ATVI purchase

I made a 4% purchase of ATVI today. I didn't want to be totally out of ATVI right now and when I saw it ranging around 9.70 again I decided to buy. I'm going to start collecting it again after I sold it at 10.14 and 11.86 last year. The purchase price was 9.718.

IBM stop

I forgot to put in another stop on IBM and did so today after it closed at 88.62. I put the stop order in at 80.10.

IBM buy

I've continued to watch IBM and wanted to get back in before it crosses back over my stop price. I bought at 4.5% share, then bought another one a few hours later so now I have about 8% of my account in IBM at $83.75 and $83.58. The cost average is 83.67.

IBM stop triggered

The stop I had on IBM triggered at $85.51. I think I should have set it at $83.50 and I'm a little disappointed it sold. It only dropped because the entire market was being hammered. It was a 4.5% holding of my account. My account is mostly in cash at this point.

AMT purchase

I purchased a 2.5% block of AMT (American Tower Corp). The strike price was 28.11. I put a stop in at 23.90.

DOW bond purchase

I purchased a DOW chemical bond (DOW09A) based on a broker recommendation. It's a 5% of my account purchase. It earns 8.55% and will be paid out on 10/1/09. It doesn't seem like DOW Chemical is in danger of going under so probably a little better than my cash accounts at this point.

IBM stop changed

I changed my stop on IBM to 85.50. It jumped up to 91.50 today and I figured it would be a good time to move the stop to where this would at least be a break even instead of a loss of ~20% from where it sits now. If it hits 95 I'm going to consider selling it.

I HATE playing the market for the short term, but this economy is not allowing me to run any sort of long term strategy. Tell me if you have any ideas? I got into GLD/SLV to hedge inflation last year and it went crazy and has been seeing all time highs which scream bubble to me so I sold it, but I don't even feel like cash is safe since I don't completely trust the solvency of any of the brokers. Wall Street has no soul.

IBM purchase

I made a 4.5% purchase of IBM this morning. I almost did this yesterday, but decided to wait. The strike price was 84.57. I think they are in a strong position moving forward and after selling GLD and SLV yesterday I don't want all my money in cash. I also put a stop in at 75.75.

GLD/SLV sales

I think that GLD and SLV have topped out so I sold them both this morning. Too bad since I really just wanted to hold these as something with real value. Now I'm holding almost all cash and I have no idea what to do with it. I almost bought some IBM this morning, but after looking at the chart and seeing that it had hit 67 back in december I think it still has some downside from it's current 86.77. I'll probably regret that, but this market just has me spooked.

SLV sold at 14.36
GLD sold at 97.68

The definition of a bonus

This is the definition of a bonus from dictionary.com.

bonus [boh-nuhs]
1. something given or paid over and above what is due.
2. a sum of money granted or given to an employee, a returned soldier, etc., in addition to regular pay, usually in appreciation for work done, length of service, accumulated favors, etc.
3. something free, as an extra dividend, given by a corporation to a purchaser of its
securities.
4. a premium paid for a loan, contract, etc.
5. something extra or additional given freely: Every purchaser of a pound of coffee received a box of cookies as a bonus.

Using the word bonus to give out money when your company shows stageringly poor results is not using the word properly. Giving your cronnies a wad of cash that was given to you by the government is not a bonus, it's fraud. It can also be called imbezellement or if that word is too big for Mr. Lewis maybe he knows what stealing is? Ken Lewis, John Thain and the other top three execs that split 110 million in 'bonuses' need to go to jail. This is the culture of greed that led to the current economic problems and people need to be held accountable.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4735329/Bank-of-America-chairman-Ken-Lewis-gets-subpoena-over-Merrill-Lynch-bonuses.html

Scary DJIA chart

Knowing it was a bad week I brought up a 10 year chart of the DJIA to see if (hoping) we reached some sort of double bottom. What appeared was a scary looking chart I wasn't fully expecting. I know we reached this level back in October or December, so maybe it's just the mathmatics of the chart and not showing up like I expected...?

AFL recommended

There was a recomendation for AFL today at around 18.25. I decided not to take it, but wanted to list it here so I could see what happened later...

This article is what makes me nervous.
http://community.investopedia.com/news/IA/2009/Is-Aflac-Insurance-A-Sitting-Duck-AFL0213.aspx

I'm avoiding anything that seems to have a direct link to the credit and banking crisis.

A (agilent) stop triggered

The stop on A triggered at 17.50. I don't think it was a bad buy, just a bad week or two to be buying anything. I'm looking forward to when the market doesn't have so much volitility, but I think it's going to be a while. I'm just not willing to buy and hold without stops for the forseable future. At least that keeps me from holding stuff that is going down on a regular basis.

PWRD sold (stop triggered)

The 10% stop loss I placed on PWRD triggered and it sold at 14.04. It looks like it recovered a little from there and is now sitting at 14.17, but for now I'm out.

A (agilent) purchase

Probably doesn't look like the best week to dip my toes back into the market? DJIA down 381 (4.62%) and sitting at 7888.88 the lowest I've seen in a while.

That said I did make a small 2.5% purchase of A (Agilent) based on a recommendation. The strike price was 18.51 and I put in a stop at 17.50. I'll look at selling around 21.30.

It closed today at 18.26 down 1.3% from where I purchased it. Not as bad as the general market as I think I purchased after most of the "action".

PWRD purchase

We purchased PWRD this morning.

I made a 5.5% purchase at 15.21. The stop was put in at 14.05 and I'll look at it again when it goes over 17.

PWRD recommendation

My broker recommended PWRD and I looked at it. Since it's in my main industry interest (video gaming) I feel better about it and think it's probably a good buy. The markets are closed so we are going to look at it again on Monday.

This is one of the articles I liked. I've did some work with CJ for a very short time and found them to be a top notch organization.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Perfect-World-Partners-with-prnews-14000646.html

Sell ABB

ABB went over 14 and I sold it at 14.08 for 15.7% gain. I should have done a 5% purchase...

ABB Purchase

It has been a long time since I've made any trades. Just letting my money sit in cash and gold. The change of brokers makes it really hard to create a table of my holdings and I'll try and work something out at some point.

My broker has a charting system and wants me to try some stocks with a 10% stop and sell after a 15% or so gain.

We made a 2% purchase of ABB at 12.16.

The stop at price 11. Sell when it's over 14.

PFE recommendation

My broker wants me to purchase PFE, but I've lost too much money on them previously and don't really trust their drug pipeline. The price was at 14.84 and I'll have to keep an eye on where it goes.

Current Holdings - Starting February 2009

Symbol	Paid	Cur	Acct Pct	Gain/Loss
FRE	23.11	0.64	0%	-97%
FNM	24.52	0.65	0%	-97%
SLV	10.7	12.91	14%	21%
STMP	12.98	9.34	3%	-28%
JAVA	17.26	5.73	0%	-67%
GLD	80.02	89.59	9%	12%
CASH	1	1	73%	0%

I finally figured out how to massage the data to create the holdings chart. It's not trivial, but I'll try to do it each month. I haven't done it in a long time because it really hasn't changed much in many months as I've been sitting on the side lines holding cash and metals.

Bad year

I don't think I'm in any different boat than the rest of the world, but my final for the year was -31.2%. I started selling off back in September and pretty much fell out of the market with a bunch of stops back in October. The market is down about 10% from where I got out and has continued to sway wildly. I still think it has the potential to see 6000 on the DJIA so I'm in a wait and see.