A Sigh of Relief...

Yes, I'm definitely sighing in relief that today the stock market rebounded! Was I a bit discouraged that thing started looking bleak right as I am delving into this thing? Of course!!! I am relieved that things are bouncing back. To be honest, I knew they would. I did not doubt it for a second!

I am several chapters into my book and just starting to get into the technical analysis chapters. How to read a chart. Specifically, a "candlestick" chart. I've fought it long enough. Now I guess I have to learn. I've determined that my style of trading, once I'm up and running, will be swing trading or someone who holds their stocks a few days, waiting to take the profit and move on to the next big thing. I work part time and currently have Mondays and Tuesdays off every week and then every other Friday off too. So this type of trading will work with my schedule.

I'm sorry this blog is not more exciting. It will get better, I promise!! I think I might put a sell order in for my PRW stock that is not doing that great. If I break even, I'll be happy! Then I will buy into something that is moving better, maybe testing my charting abilities. Just to humor you, here is my watch list:
DMGI
OPBL
MLSS
CYTR
OFI
CSUH
YTBL (I discovered this one, by the way, back when it was like $2.00something and then shot upwards of like $18.00!!!)
ITLI

So that is all for now. Mostly I'm thankful the market is heading back up and giving me faith in all things good in the world.

Women's Intuition?

One of the first things I notice as I delve into the world of investment opportunities, is there are a zillion tools people use to make their stock picks. There are the fundamentalists, the techy-geeks (no offense, I'm jealous I can't read charts yet!), the copy-cats, the followers, etc. I'm sure you get the picture. I had decided early on, I'd base most of my choices on the fundamentals, mainly because I did not understand the technicals. One of the first books I read was Rule #1 by Phil Town and I thought his "rules" seemed simple to follow and effective for choosing stocks. I studied his formulas and started some spreadsheets. I used the tools on his website. Using his process I realized what sectors I was interested in and found some nice stock picks. I followed them on paper for a while. Then I started to get bored.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered stock screeners. I decided that in order to build my capital up as quickly as possible I had to find some big gainers that were very affordable (we are talking $1-$5 stocks) as my entire future as an investor was starting out with the minimum $500 you need to set up a Scottrade account! So I discovered a few good ones this way. One really good one was YTBL. It did some amazing things as some of you may be aware of and my good friend profited huge from it.

So basically, I'm finding some good picks by doing some very unconventional methods, such as screening for stocks in what I consider to be "not the correct" way to do it and also using my "women's intuition". I look for what I like to call "signs". Such as finding a stock in my screener and then the very next day reading about it in Business Week. Or hearing about a company from a friend at work and then my screener picks it up that night. These are not proven methods but so far they have led me in the right direction and now I feel almost confident enough to start snatching some of these picks up! And I did with my purchase yesterday!!

So in part, this blog will be a diary of my learning curve but also will demonstrate the possible differences that may exist between men and women investors, and which one really "get's it"!