A-Train Finance

For those of you familiar with the ‘Fox Business Network’ (FBN) here is a nice little clip for you that reminds you to ‘always check your sources’. Yeesh, I feel sorry for the guys that bought into AAPL or AMD because of this show…

‘APPLE BUYS AMD!!!! …. Oh.. wait.. it’s the Arabs.’

Just a quick note to let you know that our breakout play from Monday, Eldorado Gold (EGO: 7.48 0.00%) is now .60 cents higher from it’s breakoutof $7.06 for a nice 8.4% return in just three days. I’ll be back with another post shortly!

Hello, and I hope that everyone has had a wonderful weekend. Just wanted to make a few notes about two companies that I’ve had my eye on.

The first company is Eldorado Gold Corp. (EGO: 7.48 0.00%). Eldorado has been rallying thanks to the weakening dollar and rising costs of gold. On Friday, EGO closed at $7.00 - just six short cents below it’s 3-month breakout point of $7.06. I am currently long 300 shares of EGO at $6.97 and will buy another 700 or so at the $7.06 break-out point. I believe it is very likely that EGO will break-out Monday because gold has continued it’s rally over the weekend, now trading at $980 up from $975 on Friday. Futures on the Dow are down for Monday morning, so I think this should help EGO along the way also. To make things even more convincing, the StockTiger has EGO as a break-out pick at the same price. I’d definitely rate EGO a buy at $7.06 per share for some nice profits. Always remember to set stop-losses to prevent large losses and keep large gains!

The second is Idearc, pronounced Idea-Arc(?) (IAR: 1.93 0.00%). This is a company that was spun-off of Verizon wireless. It’s a phone-book advertising company with 9 billion in debt and in my humble opinion, nowhere to go. Phone books are more out-dated than rotary telephones. It may have some bounces in the short term, but I’m not going anywhere near this company. I am a child of the Google generation, as whenever I need to find a phone number or information about a location, I just look it up right on my phone. As the baby boomers slowly convert to the digital age, the ‘Phone book’ will die just like vinyl records and VHS tapes. Who wants to carry around a 10 lbs book full of information you’ll only use once every three months, when you can just look it up on your computer in a fraction of the time? With the advancement of smart GPS units, PDA’s, and Smart Phones the Yellow pages will be gone by the end of the next decade. Might it make for some good trading action now? Yes, maybe. But ask Verizon - they’re the ones that loaded it up the majority of their debt, and gave it the boot. Verizon knows what they’re doing. I have no position in IAR.

Please keep in mind that I am not a financial professional.  These are only my ideas, instincts, and personal beliefs.  Do not make any buy or sell decisions based on anything you read here.  Thank you!

When I first started A-Train Finance, the blog’s mantra was this: ‘Start now, get there faster.’ The general concept is as follows: the earlier you start becoming aware of your financial well being and what it takes to save for retirement, the faster you’ll get to the point of financial security. This concept can be applied to all things in life. The line actually crossed my mind a few days ago and it hit me pretty hard. One thought led to another and so on. One of life’s very important lessons that you learn only after time has passed.

Don’t set a date or time for when ‘real life’ starts. This is one of the worst things that you can do for yourself and the people around you. Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about.

‘I really want to learn how to play guitar, but I feel like I’ll have more time once I get to college. I’ll just wait until then when I’ll be able to make more of my own decisions to start up.’ - The high school Junior

‘I hate my life, I can’t wait until this semester is over. None of my classes are going well, I have no time to do anything. It will be so nice once all of this is over.’ - The college Freshman

‘Once I get a promotion, then we’ll definitely get to spend more time together. The extra $4,000 dollars per year will definitely make a difference in our lifestyle. We can start going to the gym then too! It’ll be great. Just as soon as I get that promotion.’ - The Junior Financial Analyst

I’m sure that you’ve can personally relate to one of these above statements, or one similar to them. There is great value to planning for the future and looking forward to the next step. It is a crucial part of making sure you’re healthy and wealthy in the future. But more important than actually planning for the future, is taking action for the future. When it comes down to it, what happens if you never get that promotion that you’re waiting for? If you were planning on everything getting better when that point in your life arrives, what happens when it comes and nothing changes?

We must take action to start planting seeds now to create fulfillment and accomplishments in the future. I myself am guilty of saying ‘If only this were the case.. I’d be able to…’ Please excuse the language, but this mentality is bullshit. We must treat every day as a gift - I don’t care whom you might think it is a gift from- God, Allah, Muhammad, Mother Theresa, The Tooth Fairy, or Santa Clause.

Grab a hold of every day, and make it your own. Do things that you would want to look back at yourself 10 years from now and be proud of.

Mean while, begin to plant seeds to ensure your success. Start making small contributions to a retirement account, start doing 10 push-ups per day, buy a guitar. It takes commitment, dedication, and planning to accomplish great tasks that are seemingly beyond your ability. For example:

How many push-ups can you do? Do you think you can do 60 in a row? The fact is: you can. How many can you do now? Let’s say you can do 10 push-ups in a row. Starting tomorrow morning, I want you to do 10 push-ups every morning when you wake up. Just 10 each day. On the 8th day, (the start of the second week) I want you to do 11 push-ups. It shouldn’t be that hard, you’ve been doing 10 every day for an entire week, you’re just adding one more, right? So what happens the week after that? 11 is easy now. You add one more. Yes, it might take a while - but after 1 year of just spending a minute or two in the morning doing push-ups every day, you will be able to do 62 push-ups in one set.

Apply this example to every day life and conquer tasks that you thought you could never do. Buy a guitar, start taking lessons. Don’t hate your life, make it exciting. Find time to do things that you enjoy now, regardless of your responsibilities it’s a dreary thought, but tomorrow may never come. Make time to spend with your significant other and if it’s necessary, hit two birds with one stone and exercise together. It’s a great time to talk about anything while you’re side by side on Elliptical machines! A $4,000 dollar raise will not increase the amount of time you can spend with them if you can’t figure out a way to do it now-there will always be something.

I will leave you with this: chase your dreams- if you run into a brick wall that’s holding you back- just remember this: walls are there to keep away those who don’t want it badly enough.

Trading Challenge: Down $818 to $8107.00.

Geez, do I hate it when I have to use the red font for my trading updates. It was a difficult week for me in the markets as I practically gave back all of the above-even gains from last week. It has now been a little over a month and a half, the challenge is more than half over. At this point, I have approximately 5 weeks to generate a roughly 98% return-wow. Although my account hasn’t grown significantly since the beginning of the challenge, my understanding of trading has. It has been quite a learning experience and I can’t wait to continue the curve from here. I’ve updated my rules a bit and here are some of the new ones:

1. Nothing goes straight up continually - always take your profits.
-There is really no way to know that a stock will stay above a certain price at any time. Take your profits when you can, you’ll always be ahead of everyone else if you do, especially in a down market.
2. Never enter an order to be filled at market open.
-You have no idea what will happen in the first 1/2 hour of volatility. Let the stock establish it’s personality before you enter a trade.
3. Don’t short until the stock is over-bought.
An ugly $450 loss this week taught me this lesson. Shorting into what looked like weakness, only soon enough for a clip to come out announcing good news for the stock. Although it did come back to below my profit mark, I had already cut losses. Don’t fight the trend. It’s an uphill battle.

That’s all for now… until later.