Quick Pre Update

Dear Blog,

Just wanted to post a quick Pre Update. I found a solution to get My Tether 1.5 to work with Palm Pre WebOS 1.2.1. I used the method from Leathal's Post on precentral.net. Here's a quick copy and past of his method:

1) Connect your Pre in dev mode to your computer
2) Download the old driver
3) Open up WebOS Quick Install and choose "Send File" from the Tools menu
4) Browse to where you saved sd8xxx.ko
5) Paste the following line in Destination Folder:
/lib/modules/2.6.24-palm-joplin-3430/kernel/net/wifi/
6) Click Send to Device and reboot your Pre when it's done (Sym+Orange+R)

Cool! Also you can edit the SSID in the sh file found in TetherService.jar found in /usr/lib/luna/java. Happy PalmPre'ing!

- E.T.

It's best to learn how to learn in this era.

Dear Blog,

I find that the most important part about the Information Age is learning how to learn. I know, you probably think I'm crazy, but it's true. Information is so readily available, and there's no way to transfer it to our brains directly, so the next best thing we can do as human kind is to learn how to learn. Suck up as much knowledge as possible and lead our lives. We are on a quest for knowledge, not only about our current existence, but how we can make life better for everyone in the future. We can't change the past, but we can learn from it. We can't change the present, because all the decisions of the past has led us to this point. But we can start a change in the present to change the future. That's why the future is the only unpredictable factor that we have. On the other hand, if we can somehow transcend the present and travel to different parallel universes, then we can change the present (hence changing the past that led up to that present). Hmm, thoughts and thoughts I have, but no way to execute my visions. Even with the limits of my body, the universe is infinitely large, yet infinitely small. Typing on my computer is something I like to do, but would the universe be different if I did not type on this computer? I don't know if a tiny action like that would change the world, much less, my life... but I think every little bit does affect a strand of the infinitely small universe, which is somehow correlated to the infinitely large universe. But ummm, yeah, my thoughts will get me no where in reality. I want to make a game! I compare it to other joys in life, such as food, beverage, love, entertainment. It gives the reciever a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in their lives. I have had plenty given to me, and I want to return it. My recent kick has been Mario Strikers Charged. I finally can say I've been in first place in this game for once in my life! Of course I took pictures, check it out:

Then I had some fun with my camera I got from ebay. I'll show you pics from my daily life. Like messy computer desk. The new wood floor Steve and I put in. The dark Beignet in the shadows of the night! But can't take any more pictures, cause the lens's manual focus did not work. But seller has another one that may be even better with working manual focus she'll let me trade it for! So win/win! Can't wait to get it in!

- E.T.

Jim Cramer's Real Money - What I've Learned Part II

Dear Blog,

I'll try to finish up here. So Cramer talks about 4 categories, undiscovered/discovered companies, undervalued/overvalued stock. I'll abbreviate UC,DC,US,OS. The biggest money would be found on the UC/US but that is purely speculation. But first let's talk about DC/US. Remember E x M = P? Well, if you can predict when earning are going to go up, you'll know when price is going to go up. Simple. What about M? M changes because of macro concerns, such as up turning economy or feds cutting interest rate. Cramer also says the M anticipates E (most times), such that they balance out again. So alright, cyclical stocks such as Maytag should be bought when their Multiple is the highest and then PG or noncyclicals must be sold when their M is the highest. Now on the UD/US side, these prices shift not because of the math (E doesn't even exist sometimes), but because of behavioral finance, crowd psychology.

Cramer also gets into red-hots and 10xers. Sounds wonderful. Get in, and get out either when the stock starts to fizzle, or if you get a huge jump! Look for mass-psychology-driven movement upwards by 40% management (credible, able to sell story), 30% fundamentals (cash-flow growth, balance sheet, liquidity), 15% technical analysis (support levels, chart reading), 15% TheStreet alpha factor (Proprietary measure). http://www.thestreet.com/stocksunderten. Should be a good ride, and Cramer says it's far more predictable and gameable than Wall Street experts think.

Being a private investor is the best. You can outperform the short-term obsessed hedge fund manager and you can trump the mutual fund model. Here are the tools to "trade and invest your portfolio to riches."

Ten Commandments
1. Never turn a trade into an investment. State what your intentions are when buying (trade/invest). If trading, determine the reason for the trade (like new product), and sell once it's finished coming out.
2. Your first loss is your best loss. Be disciplined and cut your losses quickly.
3. It's okay to take a loss when you already have one. Silly, silly, silly. A loss is a loss, realized or not. Cut it out!
4. Never turn a trading gain into an investment loss. You don't have gain until you realize your gain. Sell before you start bragging to your friends about the money you made!
5. Tip are for waiters. Do the homework yourself, stock tips are nothing to get excited about!
6. You don't have a profit until you sell. Gains not taken can be losses, gains taken will never be losses.
7. Control losses: winners take care of themselves. Let your winners do the walking, and make sure you don't lose money!
8. Don't fear missing anything. It's ok to miss things, don't try to invest after you feel like you missed something. You can be setting yourself up to lose.
9. Don't trade headlines. Do some homework, learn the whole story, before you click that buy button.
10. Don't trade flow. Don't trade because of people tell you to. If you are an ignorant trader without any info, you are going to lose.

Twenty-Five Investment Rules to Live By
1. Bulls and bears make money; pigs get slaughtered.
2. It's okay to pay taxes.
3. Don't buy all at once; arrogance is a sin.
4. Look for broken stocks, not broken companies.
5. Diversification is the only free lunch.
6. Buy and homework, not buy and hold.
7. No one ever made a dime by panicking.
8. Own the best of breed, it is worth it.
9. He who defends everything defends nothing, or why discipline trumps conviction. When everything is going ballistic, protect your good stocks.
10. The fundamentals must be good in takeovers.
11. Don;t own too many stocks. (5 good)
12. Cash and sitting on the sidelines are fine alternatives.
13. No woulda shoulda coulda.
14. Expect corrections, don't be afraid of them.
15. Don't forget bonds.
16. Never subsidize losers with winners. Don't sell winners to buy losers.
17. Hope is not a part of the equation.
18. Be flexible.
19. When high-level people quit a company, something is wrong.
20. Patience is a virtue-giving up on value is a sin.
21. Just because someone says it on TV doesn't make it so.
22. Always wait thirty days after an earning preannouncement before you buy.
23. Never underestimate the Wall Street promotion machine.
24. Be able to explain your stock picks to someone else. (What's going to make this stock go up? Why is it going to go up when you think it is? Is this really the best time to buy it? Haven't we already missed a lot of the move? Shouldn't we wait until it comes down a little more? What do you know about this stock other's don't? What's your edge? Do you like this stock any more than any of the others you own and why?)
25. There is always a bull market somewhere.

All this is from Jim Cramer. Important things that are hard to always keep in your head unless you read it a lot (and why I'm putting this on my blog). Let's continue.

Some picks to use on your portfolio.
A local company, oil company, brand-name blue-chip company with 2.5% yield, financial, risky/speculative stocks, secular stock, cyclical stock, technology company, young retailer, "hope for the future" (but not tech, maybe biotech) company. Remember, you can rank your stocks 1-buy now, 2-pulled back,buy more, 3-went up, sell shortly, 4-sell now. Start buying 1 and 2's and start selling 3 and 4's. Ranking stocks is a good discipline.

Next chapters talk about spotting bottoms and tops. To spot a bottom, check market sentiment, seeing the pain on the front page of new york times and Inverstors Intelligence survey of money managers. Then Capitulation, or when the sells start to crescendo off, and the brokers start selling off those violating margins around 2:30pm. If no more selling is occurring, we are, or close to, a market bottom. Then a catalyst to buy. Spotting tops can be done by analyzing competition, vaguenesss of management, overexpansion, government blindside, top in retail, fad stock tops, in-the-hole secondary (company starts selling stocks), accounting mayhem, or very hot hot market.

And for this final portion of the book called Advanced Strategies for Speculators (me), I'll try to go in depth, and understand each of his points. Let's go!

Stocks easy, if stock goes up, you make money. If stock goes down you lose money. Arithmetic! Now let's talk about others things you can do (this is partly Cramer, partly my MBA experience). Shorting a stock (selling a stock). So let's say you short a stock at $10. You receive $10 for selling a stock (but now you owe a stock back to the broker). If it goes up to $15, you are losing $5, but if it goes down to $2 you gained $8. You are betting against the market, and you buy to cover when the stock goes down to make a profit. Be careful, because, you can actually lose more money than you "invested" when shorting stocks. Calls (or Options) and Puts have been semi explained in a previous post, but let me quickly explain it one more time. A call gives you the option to buy a stock at a strike price for a price. If I'm the broker, I'll say I can give you the option to buy this stock for $1 for the month of October if you give me $0.10. Cool! So investor gives broker $0.10 and if the stock goes up to $1.10 or higher, you get a profit, and you only spent $0.10. But if it stays at or below $1, you just lose your $0.10, no biggie. Same thing with puts, but it's for shorting, or selling stocks. So one thing I don't know is the short squeeze which I'll explain in a bit... let me read Cramer's story right quick. So when someone continues to short, the bid price goes up on the stock, and the bulls get the advantage here. If this someone is big and continues to short, the bulls will ravage the place! What should have been done? Buy puts til after the expected weak quarter was announced so that not to be forced to cover (another problem with shorts) and hopefully earn profits as price falls.

No one will ever care about your money as much as you do. Invest wisely! Thanks Jim Cramer for the wonderful book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and anxiously awaiting your new one! Let's make the monies!

- E.T.

Jim Cramer's Real Money - What I've Learned

Dear Blog,

Today I'm going to do a special blog where I skim the book one last time, and pick out points I like and put them here for me to remember later. That being said, let's go!

I'm going to start off with the point that stocks are pieces of paper. There's no HOME team! Markets and businesses change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Don't HOLD a stock and hope that it comes back. Sometimes HOLDing can be much more dangerous that selling at a loss. Don't get too emotional. It's a stock!

Buying and selling stocks is profession without standards. "Professionals" may be no better than you or me when it comes to this stuff. Here is some conventional wisdom that Cramer said is part of the reason he failed when he started. 1. Buy and hold because that's how you make the most money. Cramer changes this to buy and homework. Do an hour of homework each week per stock to see if it's worth holding. 2. Trading is always wrong, owning is always right. If you really want to make money, you are going to have to lock in those profits sometimes, especially after nice runs. 3. Speculation is the height of evil. However, speculation is what makes investing fun, it makes it exciting and interesting, and overall some of the bigger gains you will receive is by diversifying and investing in speculative stocks.

When evaluating stock's worth, you can't think about how much you bought it for eons ago, the only thing that matters is what is the stock going to do next. The future! Sometimes the past can make you blind, and you get all emotional. Losing X dollars can really blind you on what the potential future can be.

Always you limit orders. I know what it is, since I did it so much lately. It's easy, it's a price you put in when buying or selling stocks that you want or better. So a limit buy is $X or less, and a limit sell is $X or higher. Never use market orders, cause that way, the broker has the right, no, the obligation to rip you off.

The value of the stock is not based off the actual dollar amount. A $40 stock may be more expensive than a $400 stock. First we have to find the price-to-earning (PE) ratio. Take the stock price and divide it by the PE ration and you get x time earnings, or (M)ultiple. M * PE ratio = Price of stock. Easy right? Stocks tend to be more expensive mainly because of a company's past growth. Those that grow faster will have a more expensive M. But the example given by Cramer is the Super Bowl. If you made a friendly wager in the game, you know that people usually bet on the better team. But why do people bet on the underdog sometime? It's cheaper and the rewards are much higher. Get my drift? Just make sure that the stock you choose is growing at a rate that is consistent with the price, because if it's not maybe one of those could be a steal! Oh, and other ways to value a stock is by how much dividend is paid. Don't get bound by the math however, there are many more brighter minds out there that can do this as well, but we're here to exploit the anomalies in the stocks.

Jim Cramer tells his experience about AT&T. AT&T was plumetting due partly to bad management. However, as it was falling, Cramer started to love this stock. Because not only is the stock a piece of paper, but it's also a living company. Just because it's price and growth are bad, check out what the company is doing, how much infrastructure they have, will they survive? If yes, buy buy buy that damaged stock! It'll be nice for you once it comes back to life on paper!

Divesification is th only free lunch. 5 is the minimum to be divesified according to Cramer, and 10 may be the max, otherwise you are a mutual fund (and will have a lot of homework!).

So what's homework? Quick summary, every report from the SEC (quarterly and annually), important articles, conference calls, and analysts' reports. Listen to conference calls before you buy a stock. OK, I'm guilty, I haven't done this yet! But I will! What are you looking for? Growing sales, high gross margins, basically see how the company is doing and get a feel for where it's at.

Businesses that do well in a booming economy are "cyclical". Ex. farming, road building, military, aircraft. Those that do well regardless are called "secular". Ex. medicine, food, hygiene, etc. Another important thing to look for is their metric or series of metric. Like revenue per room, revenue per seat, gross margin per product, etc. So you can compare apples-to-apples.

Remember, buy companies that grow faster than competitors, and grow faster than the S&P but still have a (M)ultiple that is as low as possible. Also, Cramer likes companies without a lot of debt. Too much debt can be bad for the companies, because they may not be able to pay their bills, and may be headed in a downward spiral. It takes one really bad investment to screw up your portfolio!

Charts! Never enough to buy a stock from! Anyway, make sure you know what your M is, how fast your earning are growing, and also give a guess how much the stock may decline (such as 25% M), and check out your risk reward for both. The example Cramer gave was Rite Aid vs Walgreens. Walgreen grows earnings 15%, $30 trade, and 25 M. Rite Aid grows at 12.5%, $5 trade, and 40 M (times earnings). If Walgreens earns $1.30 more, reached upper limit of 40 M, then Walgreens will go to $52 a trade (or +$22). Rite Aid probably has no gain since the M is the upper limit. Now check out the down side or 75% M. If Walgreen earns 1.30, you can say $30 [Price/share] / ($1.30) [Earnings/share] ~ 23 (M) and $23 * 75% = 17 M or $22/share. Rite Aid with $.26 earnings would yield 14 M or $3.64. The differences there would be WAG $8 and RAD $1.5. So WAG is 22 up and 8 down where RAD is 0 up and 1.5 down. WAG is a better deal! But there are many more factors that go into this, but here is a good arithmetic start! Make sure to find these calculations on the S&P as well to have a benchmark to test this on.

Ugh, I though I could cover this all in one post, but I may need to come back and hit the other half of the book. IT's long, but lots of useful info. Please take a read of this book, because it helped me a lot, and I hope it can help you. I'm looking forward to his Getting Back to Even book coming out October 13th. I'll add more tomorrow (and then I have to return the book).

What was your suffering today?

Dear Blog,

I went over to a district study meeting today, and we studied how the Spring always follows the Winter. Obvious, I know, but apply this in your daily lives. Do not think the Autumn is coming when you are in the dead of winter. Or do not think that things are going to go back to bad, when you are already suffering. Spring is coming, and things are looking up. But not only that, but suffering is part of life. Instead of thinking about how nothing good happens to you, think about what suffering you get to overcome, which will lead to your happiness. If the hardest thing you had to do was get out of bed, life wouldn't be very fulfilling. Similarly, you can never be courageous when you don't fear anything. Use your practice, your faith, whatever you have as your weapon in life, and find yourself, your goals, your life,... your happiness.

OK!

Personally I don't like the covered calls... so I'm going to stick with plain stocks and maybe some options if I could ever trade them. Can't wait to try that. I know they are risky, but they can really add some bang to a stock. Come on SoGoTrade.... why won't you take me as a customer. They said they're revamping their site so that me and other investors can reapply for options, and actually buy them.

I know I just gone completely crazy for stocks, but I freaking love it! I am reading books by Jim Cramer. I got like 20 pages left of Stay Mad for Life, and can't wait for Getting Back to Even. One of these posts will be what I have learned from each book. Real Money was more technical, and I think I liked that one more. I hear this 3rd book is going to be the hardest, and I just can't wait.

Well my game that I'm making has been made, somewhat. I'm going to add some new features, and maybe multi platform support. We'll see! I'll give you a hint though, it will be facebook dependent.

- E.T.

Cover Calls? Yeah, I don't know!

Dear Blog,

Covered calls have been what I've been wondering about all day today. Should I do them or not? If anyone ever reads this blog now or in the future, tell me what you think in the comments section. I'll do my best to explain it in a few steps.

Regular Stock I pay $5 for a stock.
It goes up to $6. I get $1 profit! YAY!
It stays at $5. I don't gain or lose anything. OK.
It goes down to $4. I lose $1! BOO!

Options I pay $0.25 for an option with Strike Price $5.
Note: Option is right but not obligation to buy at Strike Price
Stock goes up to $6. I get $0.75 profit! YAY!
Stock stays at $5. I lost $0.25! BOO!
Stock goes down to $4. I lost $0.25! BOO! (But not too bad)

Covered Call I pay $5 for stock and sell option with stike $6 for $.15.
Buy a stock, and sell an option to someone else
Stock goes up to $6. I get $1.15 profit! YAY!
Stock stays at $5. I get $.15 profit! YAY!
Stock goes down to $4. I lose $.85. BOO! (But better than straight stocks).

OK, this all sounds good, and somehow the Covered call looks like it has a pretty good advantage. I thought so too when I first looked at this. You gain more if you can guess the strike price, and when you lose money, you don't lose as much. Win, win, right? Well.... what you are doing is capping your gains. So let's suppose this last situation...

Stock goes up to $10
Stock: Profit of $5
Option: Profit of $4.25
Covered Call: Profit of $1.15

Kind of limiting right? Oh, and you ask why are options good if these other two exists? Well, you only have to pay $.25 in my example. So you can but 20x more stock with the same amount of money in this example, hence 20x your profits! Not bad... but a dangerous game!

Well besides investing. I started to learn some facebook PHP API. Pretty cool stuff! Got my friend list to print out. And got my game board all traced out in vector graphics ready for FLASH. Now just to make the game, and maybe use a combination of PHP and flash to make this first game.

And finally on top of that, got all my camera stuff settled. I'm now getting ready to get my first SLR camera. The body came in today, and I just won a bid on the lens. I paid a total of $225 for the body, lens, extra battery, charger, and 2GB compact flash. Yeah, it's an older camera... but still ready to take some crazy pix! And joining the SLR group under $250 is pretty amazing to me! Textures make 3D, and I will make 3D now with my amazing camera!

Phew.... well onto some reading, sleeping, game making, and winning in my life!

- E.T.

Saints 2-0 and I'm up!

Dear blog,

I'm feeling good today. I got some volleyballing in and feeling all worked out. I really need some stress relief. I'm worried what will happen this week. I have a few things to do this week that I "volunteered" for, and always seem to be regretting what I volunteered for until the last minute. It's never that bad... but why do I have this regret...

Again, like last post, I want to be selfish. Just in this next few years. I need to set MYSELF up, before I try and save the world... which I won't at the pace I'm going. I say I'll do this job, I'll do that job when in fact, I'm not in dire need of money. However, in the situation I am, people ask me what I do... and I tell them I'm writing a video game... which is true! Sigh, anxiety, anxiety....

I really just need the love of that special person. I need understanding.

Anyway, quick recap of my day. Woke up around 12pm. Went over to Matt's house and watched the Saints. We did great after sometime. But Reggie needs to run better, and not stutter, not run backwards, and not try too hard. I hope Bell is OK, because he gives us at least some type of run game. Then I played some volleyball. I beat myself up alot on the court. I want to be perfect. No mistakes. But some happened. I will improve. And then home! Ahh, a very lite dinner, a quick shower, and now I'm laying in bed and blogging. Maybe more days should be like this for me. I'll at least get skinner quickly if I could keep this up every other day!

- E.T.