stylin’ the hair

Alas, of what hairstyle to choose.  A seemingly innocuous question, but one which cuts at the root of our place in a conformist culture.  I currently have long hair.  In fact, very long hair.  It started growing, and, well, since I disliked getting my hair cut, and so called ‘good’ haircuts run into some serious money, I just let it grow.  Like a youth growing through adolesence, my hair went through an awkward intermediate stage, which made me look like a real goof.  I wasn’t happy about it, but you don’t mind so much if you’re already married.  But once longer, I felt almost… non-conformist.  I felt I had broken out in some subtle, yet important way.  No longer was I slavishly following the rules of society, but I was pushing the envelope.  Well, I wasn’t really, but at least it felt like I was poking back at oppression in some small way.

Fast forward a couple of years.  Those aforementioned hair, that thing of beauty which made the old man who sat behind me at church yearn for younger days, was starting to become quarrelsome.  Like a good friend that stayed over one two many days playing nintendo, it had become an annoyance.  Always in the way, and in danger of being caught in machinery, I decided I wanted it cut.  Sure, the reason was logical enough, but the end result is that I must lose my precious little icon of independance.  Like Samson, I fear that to cut will be to lose strength.  What I fear is not so much merging back into the bland mainstream, but I fear not knowing really what I want out of hair, and, by analogy, life.  Turmoil clings to these locks like week old grease, and, by the force of it’s longetivity, thrusts forward a requirement for personal introspection.  The question then becomes, “What is my life about?”, rather than what hairstyle to choose.  Once I answer that question, I can move forward, and have the guy with the icy strands on Avenue B cut my hair proper.

Back online..

After a long hiatus, during which time the wordpress site was more or less down from my location due to some DNS issues, I’m going to start posting again.  Joy to the world.

Why no action in Sudan?

I ran across this financial times article today. 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/827e63a0-cae5-11da-9015-0000779e2340.html
What's the connection between Sudan and Chad, you say?  Well, not much unless you first understand that Chad is an oil rich country and is under attack by rebels.  Now, rebel attacks in Africa isn't news nowadays, but what IS news is that the Chad president, Deby, claims the Sudanese government is funding the rebels.  Now, hmmm, the west turns a blind eye towards the atrocities in Sudan, whlie the Sudanese goverment destabilizes Chad, and oil rich country. What's the connection?  Hard to tell, but it sure seems like someone is out to gain control of Chad's oil supply, and it isn't Sudan that will get to keep it.

Changed out the spark plugs

Changed out the spark plugs in the '02 accord today. It was about as easy as it could get. I basically ordered the OEM plugs from Amazon, unscrewed the old ones, and screwed in the new ones.  Make sure to heed the warning on the box NOT to gap the spark plugs.  They are pre-gapped by the manufacturer.

Nifty script to get quotes from yahoo stock feed

I wrote this quick python script to pull down stock quotes from the yahoo server. I'd like to figure out how to get it to retrieve historical data as well.

# Retrieve the stock quote, and additional specified info according to the
#following table, which maps to the yahoo quote service data/key matrix

import sys
import os
import urllib
import re

class YahooStockQuoter:
def __init__(self):
self.baseUrl = "http://quote.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s="
def getQuote(self,symbol,args):
url = self.baseUrl + symbol + "&f=" + args
try:
quoteInfo = urllib.urlopen(url).read()
except(e),x:
print e + x
else:
#Strip out the simple HTML tags present in the reply
quoteInfo = re.sub("<.*?>",'',quoteInfo)
return quoteInfo
if __name__ == '__main__':
if len(sys.argv) < 2:
print "Usage: %s Stock/Option_symbol additional_args" % sys.argv[0]
print "If no args are give, then the symbol, and last price are retrieved"
exit

if len(sys.argv)==2:
print "Using default args for symbol, and last price"
args="snl"
else:
args=sys.argv[2]

quoter = YahooStockQuoter()
quote = quoter.getQuote(sys.argv[1],args)
print quote

#a Ask
#b Bid
#b4 Book Value
#c1 Change
#c8 After Hours Change (Real-time)
#d2 Trade Date
#e7 EPS Estimate Current Year
#f6 Float Shares
#j 52-week Low
#g3 Annualized Gain
#g6 Holdings Gain (Real-time)
#j1 Market Capitalization
#j5 Change From 52-week Low
#k2 Change Percent (Real-time)
#k5 Percebt Change From 52-week High
#l2 High Limit
#m2 Day's Range (Real-time)
#m5 Change From 200-day Moving Average
#m8 Percent Change From 50-day Moving Average
#o Open
#p2 Change in Percent
#q Ex-Dividend Date
#r2 P/E Ratio (Real-time)
#r7 Price/EPS Estimate Next Year
#s7 Short Ratio
#t7 Ticker Trend
#v1 Holdings Value
#w1 Day's Value Change
#y Dividend Yield
#a2 Average Daily Volume
#b2 Ask (Real-time)
#b6 Bid Size
#c3 Commission
#d Dividend/Share
#e Earnings/Share
#e8 EPS Estimate Next Year
#g Day's Low
#k 52-week High
#g4 Holdings Gain
#i More Info
#j3 Market Cap (Real-time)
#j6 Percent Change From 52-week Low
#k3 Last Trade Size
#l Last Trade (With Time)
#l3 Low Limit
#m3 50-day Moving Average
#m6 Percent Change From 200-day Moving Average
#n Name
#p Previous Close
#p5 Price/Sales
#r P/E Ratio
#r5 PEG Ratio
#s Symbol
#t1 Last Trade Time
#t8 1 yr Target Price
#v7 Holdings Value (Real-time)
#w4 Day's Value Change (Real-time)
#a5 Ask Size
#b3 Bid (Real-time)
#c Change & Percent Change
#c6 Change (Real-time)
#d1 Last Trade Date
#e1 Error Indication (returned for symbol changed / invalid)
#e9 EPS Estimate Next Quarter
#h Day's High
#g1 Holdings Gain Percent
#g5 Holdings Gain Percent (Real-time)
#i5 Order Book (Real-time)
#j4 EBITDA
#k1 Last Trade (Real-time) With Time
#k4 Change From 52-week High
#l1 Last Trade (Price Only)
#m Day's Range
#m4 200-day Moving Average
#m7 Change From 50-day Moving Average
#n4 Notes
#p1 Price Paid
#p6 Price/Book
#r1 Dividend Pay Date
#r6 Price/EPS Estimate Current Year
#s1 Shares Owned
#t6 Trade Links
#v Volume
#w 52-week Range
#x Stock Exchange

YTD trading analysis

Mutual fund holdings

flpsx 1/1:41, 3/20:44 7.3%
dodfx 1/1:36, 3/20:38 5.5%
dodgx 1/1:139, 3/20:146 5%

My stock portforlio has been suffering this year due to neglect.  I’m down 2.5%, which is a miserable result, considering my mutual funds blew it away.
midd 87.05/86.2
I made a play on panic selling, but didn’t sell myself once the stock recovered.
This was up 11% at one time, for a few days.
wcc 44.5/47.7
I sold too quickly on this one. It moved as I expected, and I decided to
take the gains because of some earlier experiences with waiting too long
for the sell. Well, this was different, because the stock made some
big headway, and is now at 63. My mistake here was not paying attention
to the price action,and understanding the post spike consolidation pattern.

qqqq 41.92/41.23
Playing around with the qqqq reliably cyclic pattern. Unfortunately for me,
I bought in too late in the cycle, at the MACD crossover point. If the
rally would have continued, I would have made a small profit. The point here
is that I made the right move, and sold when the pattern stalled, but I bought
3 days late in the pattern, which cost me a about 2.5% on the trade.

kbh 75.71/64.01
Well, I bought this on 1/27, right before it changed trend. I was at
the right point in the macd/stoch cycle, and even say gains for a couple of days,
but external market trends worked against me. The trend continued downward until I took the max loss at 15%.
I’m running it as a bear call play in my virtual portforlio at the moment.
The thing I should have done different here is watch the news better, and
see that housing trouble in California was severely affecting this stock.
Of course, slg, a real-estate company, saw awesome runup. It was also on my close watch list,
but I decided against it because of it’s weak trend. Go figure.

ppdi 68.25/70.2
I played this on about as well as it could have been. It just didn’t
move like I wanted, and the market forecast looks bearish, so I’m bailing
before it turns into a loss in a near-term market downturn.

arg 37.2/37.88
I picked the right day to buy, but I was a few hours too late. I should have woken
up earlier, prior to market open, or bought the day before. It’s better to buy a little
early, and see a day of unrealized loss, than miss a big move up. I sold
at what I would consider a reasonable moment. It was nearing the top of the cycle,
and was unhappy with the overall trend. In review, it looks like it’s going to recover
into a nice trend, but it’s not showing up in my screen anymore.

MSN Stock Screener

I must say that I’m impressed with MSNs FREE!!! stock screener.  It covers a wide selection of criteria, and is very flexible.  I only wish it could screen on the Zacks rating.

Here’s my current screen, for interest’s sake.  Note I temporariliy tweaked down the % Price Change for the Last 6 Mos, otherwise almost all the stocks fell of the list.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/finder/finderx.asp?Query=SV1QS1F227Z00F234Z04L1000ZF136Z04F314ZF181Z04F314ZF114Z04L70000ZF151Z04L25ZF154Z04L25ZS10F406Z00S10F412Z00S10F410Z00S10F408Z00S98F98Z07F9998ZF154Z04F151ZS6F226Z04%22Hold%22F157Z04L25ZF106Z04L1Z&Name=StockScreen&Tickers=25

Industry Name    Display Only

Market Cap    >=    1bil

ROE              >=    Industry Avg

ROE 5yr        >=     Industry Avg

Avg vol last 2 weeks     >=    70k

Rev Growth Year vs Year    >= 25%

EPS Growth Year vs Year    >= 25%

Fundamental Grade    Display

Valuation Grade    Display

Technical Grade    Display

Ownership Grade    Display

EPS Growth Year vs Year  >=    Rev Growth Year vs Year

Mean Recommendation     >=    Hold

%Price Change Last Qtr    >= 25%

%Price Change Last 6mos >= 25%

New strategy update.

Some input from a friend of mine finally gave me the push to get into options spread trading.  The plan is to exercise my optionsXpress virtual trading account for the next 4 months to get the hang of the various spread trading strategies, and get a sample of what I can expect.  If I’m doing good, then I’ll risk 20k in my real-money account.

In parallel, the I’m going to stick with trading off my stock screen/macd/stochastic strategy, which holds up pretty good.  I was up about 10% in January, but lost most of my gains shortly after I peaked.  I’m now up about 2% from the beginning of the year, which is pretty lame.   Most of my losses have come from holding a good trade too long, and trying to get more out of it than it had.  On more than a couple of occassions I’ve been up between 5-15%, then had the stock drop, either suddenly, or take a long dip into negative territory, due to either industry trend change, or oftentimes I’m blindsided by an earnings event.  Both of these can be remedied by reading the news a little better.

New strategy update.

Some input from a friend of mine finally gave me the push to get into options spread trading.  The plan is to exercise my optionsXpress virtual trading account for the next 4 months to get the hang of the various spread trading strategies, and get a sample of what I can expect.  If I’m doing good, then I’ll risk 20k in my real-money account.

In parallel, the I’m going to stick with trading off my stock screen/macd/stochastic strategy, which holds up pretty good.  I was up about 10% in January, but lost most of my gains shortly after I peaked.  I’m now up about 2% from the beginning of the year, which is pretty lame.   Most of my losses have come from holding a good trade too long, and trying to get more out of it than it had.  On more than a couple of occassions I’ve been up between 5-15%, then had the stock drop, either suddenly, or take a long dip into negative territory, due to either industry trend change, or oftentimes I’m blindsided by an earnings event.  Both of these can be remedied by reading the news a little better.

Whoa…snow!

Well, the crocuses came up earlier last week during the SNOW STORM.  Luckily, I had already put some plastic over the front of my garden to dry out and warm up the soil.  I planted some Beans, and chard last week, but that was it.  It was a good thing too, since the weather turned south.

I found that the slugs come out after dark!  I figure the best way to control the slug population is to go out and patrol the garden area each evening.  The sluggo worked ok, but was pricey.  Hopefully this method will provide a little better protection.  I’d like to set out some beer traps, but I just can’t bring myself to see any beer go to waste.