Investment World Today

There are still some very good prospects for stock trading in the technology segment.

This takes a bit of homework today, especially with the market riding up and down nearly daily, but anybody in online stock trad-ing owes it to do some research.

Some of the technology stocks show great promise, while others are obviously past their prime.

Some of the “old” technology players: IBM, Hewlett- Packard, Dell and Apple have some very clear worth, though demand for their individual products and services might be slow in the months to come.

The newer technology stocks, such as the internet ones, Google and Yahoo, are each interesting case studies.

Some see nothing but accelerated growth for Google, which owns a giant share of the search market, and see a decline and eventual buy out of Yahoo. Should I allocate shares for both, is the ques-tion. Or pick the frontrunner based on today’s knowledge and environment.

We had a special meeting of our stock trading club. We thought it was necessary for support. Over the weekend several of us had spoken and we tallied up what we had lost, and it was a lot.

We called around and some of us are going to meet at 5:00a.m., be-fore any US markets open, and see if we can at least offer some comfort for each other.

Online stock trading and options trading is not a new venture for any of us at this meeting.

One elderly guy, Jim, who has been trading for years, brought a guest, Mr. Callahan. We all looked at each other when this really old man walked up with an even older looking man.
Jim introduced Mr. Callahan around and then said that we might be able to be taught something from him.

Online stock trading was a mystery to me two years ago. I knew I wanted to be more involved in the market, as I was tired of the traditional way of buying and selling.
I wanted more control.

Researching online brokers was confusing at first. There were a number of big players, and some smaller ones.
I was determined not to make my choice for online stock trading based only on the fees charged for stock trades or for options trades.

I wanted to check the financial strength of the company. This took some investigation, but eventually I got the information that I wanted. For those companies that I couldn’t find information on their financial status to my satisfaction, I decided to pass on completely.

Then I checked to see how many companies had grievances against them, and in what number. Some had numerous com-plaints. The larger companies had complaints, so I had to take into account the number of clients or customers that they had.

It would be difficult to imagine a more interesting and chaotic time in the financial markets.

We are seeing market characteristics (reversal patterns, daily ranges, etc.) that are literally unprecedented. The volatility (as measured by Average True Range or ATR) of almost every major trading instrument is at all time highs. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at stock indexes, bonds, gold, oil, currencies, etc. It seems that the only broad groups of instruments not trading at their highest volatilities ever are the smaller commodities that don’t have big hedge fund and institutional interest- things like coffee and orange juice.

This volatility expansion is significant for several reasons:

It is broad-reaching. As mentioned above, it is hitting practically every traded instrument.

Don’t we all know that the bailout plan failed at first because the public is disgusted and would rather take a short-term financial downturn themselves than reward the powerful elite who have been fleecing us for decades. The public is sick to death of trickle-down economics, and the outcry was just too loud for government representatives to ignore.

So what does congress need to do? Congress needs to come up with a way of getting cash back into the credit market in a way that is fast and fair to the public. Here you go:

We should take the $700 billion and simply pay down the mortgages of all the homes purchased between certain dates, (let’s say 2000 when real estate prices started going berzerk and 2006, when they really started falling). That’s it. Simple.