Crash Market Stocks - Financial Tips On Making Money In The Stock Market

It seems as if one main theme is being broadcast over all the networks and even if it is not being said directly, it is usually being implied. Are we going to be seeing a market crash with the stock market? Well, I'm not afraid to say the words (in fact they make up my domain name :) ), but my thoughts with any subject is that if it is worth talking about, and is applicable to our current market, I don't care if it's good or bad for people to hear, I'm going to talk about it. I try not flower things or be careful with my words, because my income is not based on whether or people are actively trading in the market like most analysts that are shown on CNBC.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, so I am sure some people would find it ironic that I run a website called Crash Market Stocks. I am not a "stubborn bear", meaning that no matter what, I am not going to preach you doom and gloom, even when signs point to strengthening markets. If indeed I see the opportunity once again to make money on the long side, I will say so. However, at this current time, and as you can tell if you have been following this site, I cannot find any reasons to hope for good things in the market and in the overall economy for quite some time.

It is unfortunate that our economy has found ourselves in our current economic decay and I feel sorry for those who have been wronged or taken advantage of by the greed of government and Wall Street, but I choose not to join the popular party of finger pointing and blaming, trying to figure out how and when it wrong. Instead, I continue to try and find unique ways to make money in this economy. Yes it can very well be done, and it is being done as we speak. So I'll get off the soapbox now and continue, but hopefully I have conveyed to you as a reader that there are honest, intelligent ways to make money in our current market crisis.

So are we crashing right now? I have had countless conversations with people this week all asking, what should I do? Should I pull all my money out? Are we going to rally? Should I go all out short? Well, every year I continue to ask Santa for a crystal ball and he has still yet to deliver on the request, but there are signs we are seeing in the market that can shed some light and maybe help answer the crash question.

First off, it is hard to predict a crash, because usually it comes when people least expect it. That is why it is so devastating. It comes much like a terrorist attack, and what makes it continually devastating is that people begin to react on fear, which can distort your reasoning more than your worst drunken stated. From there it's a ripple effect which creates a force like nothing we've seen recently, even in our recent large sell off days.

My personal feeling, we're not here yet. I believe we're very close, but not quite. The biggest element we are lacking in our current economy compared to the Great Depression of the 1930's, is the huge deflationary down spiraling. That was the engine behind the crash. We are indeed experiencing deflationary problems in our economy, but I believe it is going to get much worse. This is what I am mainly waiting for as a predecessor to the crash.

Another reason I feel we're not quite there yet is that everyone is expecting it. This recent sell off has lasted too long. People have altered their portfolio, been sitting in cash, putting money in treasuries and other low risk investment vehicles. I think a crash will come much more fierce and hit us when we least expect it. I think we are very close. Many signs are here. Bank failure, wide sector losses, rapid index declines, high trading volume and others. However, we're still early in this economic crisis and have plenty of time to struggle through this.

This leads me into my next thought. I believe we have a very good chance of seeing a strong bear market rally this month. The market performance from Friday does not have much to do with my belief, as I feel it was a very mild victory for bulls, but there are many readings which point to a rally this month. After dealing with GDP and unemployment news, we have some breathing room to work with where the market could gain some ground. Sure, there is always earnings reports and more new bankruptcies(GM) and bank problems, but I believe the government will also take this time to try and gain some ground with confidence. So as I have said in prior posts, I am prepared for either scenarios, rally or tank. Neither scenarios have made me confident enough, at this point, to go from cash to major positions. So I continue to wait.

If we indeed see a rally come this month, I think we could be that much closer to a market crash. Most likely if markets do begin to rally, once again people will believe the market have bottomed out and confidence would return to investing once again (people change their minds do easily). It is in that state where I believe we will see more vulnerability for a true market crash and where I will begin to prepare more fully. If that is the case, these recent lows we have been seeing will be nothing compared to what will come.

As always, these are my thoughts, and yes, we could see the market crash next week or not at all. I just don't see it likely at this point. From the graph below, you see that big turn around at the end of trading on Friday. My thoughts, PPT, but it could have bee a variety of things: Institutions getting in at new lows for some industrial stocks, shorts profit taking, or Uncle Sam. At any rate, it could spur something, but once again, maintaining is the key, so we'll see what happens Monday.


Gold starting to get some love again as the dollar begins to finally slow down. DGP's Market Club report score is +70, compared to GDX's -55 (get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here), so DGP still catches my eye for re-entry. If we see Gold get closer to 900 again, I think I may get in.

I've been getting a lot of inquiries on some of the green energy stocks I've been investing in so I will make a post tomorrow talking about a couple of them as well as a possible good opportunity for those of you looking to make an investment. I like to keep myself diversified and R&D penny stock companies always interest me and can be very profitable if picking the right companies. Also more risky too, so I factor that into my investment.

I've also enjoyed meeting a lot of good traders at the UpDown social network. Great place to interact with some good traders and share thoughts. If you haven't already, check them out and Join The Investing Social Network. It's free and worth poking around.

I hope everyone has a good weekend and is ready for some fireworks next week. It will be interesting to see how we react and if the market actually does get steam behind a rally. Happy Trading and we'll see soon.

This was my exact concern that I discussed in my post last month about the government having no more bullets left in the barrel to take down this enormous bear who has been eating at the Dow for over a week now. We saw this same trend in October and November. Whenever the market begins to consistently show strong bearish tendencies, it transforms the whole sentiment of the trading world. Almost every article you read is talking about worse times ahead or what the government needs to do to get banks nationalized. In the past, to stop such pessimism, the government usually came in with a very significant announcement to reverse the trend, such as lowering interest rates, discussing new stimulus plans, or the even the event of getting a new president filled with hope. Where we have found ourselves now, is in a point where there is not much more that the government to do or say to make things better that doesn't involve nationalizing companies and wiping out shareholder's equity. Sure they can send out Bernanke, Geithner, or even Obama himself, but the market has recently shown that they are done with the small talk.

It's hard to pin the blame on just one person or even one part of the government. I don't know who expected to see this market turn around anytime soon. Back when the stimulus was approved, we all knew that this was a "preservation" stimulus, to help slow the pain getting injected to the economy. This is why everyone was careful to say that the stimulus would create or "maintain" up to 3 million jobs for Americans. The market is becoming very impatient.

So, now we are left with a broken down market, with what looks like to have no reason to get better anytime soon, especially when you have auto sales, non farm payroll, and unemployment right around the corner. Unfortunately, this environment makes it very difficult for nature to take its course and we find ourselves in one big ping-pong match from red to green. Sure, some daytraders are probably having the time of their life (if they're playing the right bumps!), but as for me, I am hoping for a bit more normality and conistancy to return to the market. It is not seeing the market continually go down that makes me nervous, but it is the way that the market is doing it which gives me great concern. Almost all technicals have been thrown out the window and anything that can be perceived as good news is quickly trumped with a hard rush of selling.

I am amazed at how well the trend of mid day rallying followed by rapid sell off to end the day is holding up. Many investors are increasing their turnover and changing their hold periods from 3 days to 1 or even half a day. Instead of covering their shorts after 3 days, they're doing after half a day. As a result, you pretty much have 2 options in the current conditions; the first is to roll the dice with day trading, which if you roll well, could be very profitable, however very risky at the same time. The second, which is my strategy, hold tight a bit longer until we see some definition come through the market as it always eventually does. It is very obvious that markets are wanting to rally, as we see plenty of green throughout the day. Buyers are just missing that extra wind that they usually would get with government help. A continuing to delay a rally, however, makes the market very dangerous and could set it spinning down hard. So we'll see.

I'm keeping an eye on RIMM. Their strength today, despite tough conditions makes me suspicious of upcoming positive news. Under $40, I definitely think they're a steal anyway (in a normal market), so I may jump into some options for RIMM. Anymore down ticking and I'm going to have to eventually consider some shorts again. Maybe FXP due to more and more problems in the Asian markets or even more SKF. If we do indeed rally, SSO is one I would like to take a ride during a bear market rally. So all of these are on my radar. Rimm has a Market Club report score of -70, but has been steadily increasing (get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here).

So, yes, the patience continues and I am confident that eventually it will payoff. It is times like these where you can loose your shirt if you play the wrong move and playing catch up is never fun. So these next two days are very critical to see if these lows continue to hold and if the S&P stays under 700. I am making money everyday, but the gains are much more moderate than I would have hoped for at this point. My Lending Club investment is performing very well, and still maintains that 10.5% target return on my investment. They are getting more love from the media as well, which has been great and can also be a very good resource for those needing to consolidate there expensive debt. I'll be on chat early in the morning, so with that, have a good night everyone, be careful, Happy Trading and we'll see you tomorrow.

The past two days are exactly the reason why I have chosen to sit in mostly cash for the time being. One can easily be sucked into (including myself sometimes) thinking momentum is moving in a certain direction and get slapped in the face with a change of the wind. Like I have said before, the market in this current limbo state is a very dangerous playing field and can change colors in a matter of minutes.

Stocks opened up strong and at one point was enjoying three digit gains. Things were looking good for the bulls and it seemed as they finally were going to pull something out. Well, lately, either the bears have been waking up late or bulls calling it a day early, but the recent trend has been to do nothing but sell the last hour of the market. Within the last hour, we saw the market sink very quickly to where it closed, down 88 points. I was lucky to have sold a lot of my FAZ put options during early trading when they were near their peak at $18.40 per contract. So even with remaining in the rest of the options and my BAC, I can afford to lose a bit from them if they do go down tomorrow, considering the very strong gains I made from my options today. Going into Friday, I don't want to even try to speculate what the market will do, but there are some things to keep an eye out for.

Obama announced the possibility of spending an additional $250 billion on banks from the budget, which is what contributed to the huge rally with financials early on in the day. These joys are continuing to be short lived and are all but gone by the afternoon as most of the banks handed back almost all their profits by close.


New home sales came in lower than expected at 309k for the month. I actually was out today looking at some bank owned homes here in Southern California and there are plenty to choose from. I think this next wave of pain is really going to start digging into the upper class's pockets. It is tough to hide from this storm no matter what class you fall under. Keep your eye out for GDP tomorrow, which should be pretty bad. PMI is pretty critical too, especially as being an indicator for the future. We find ourselves in a big day for news tomorrow, which lately, has not been good days for the market. Remember though, it is a Friday and we definitely have seen the ability of the market to rally, so I still don't find it a market with much definition for the time being.

S&P continues to stay above November 20 lows, which continues to show strength for a rally. Now if we see the S&P go below, and sustain, we could be in for one scary ride. I'm not going to rush it though, because if it's the crash I think is coming, there is still plenty of money to be made on the downside. So I will see what market does tomorrow.

So I did actually make a move today believe it or not. Towards the end of trading, oil began to go down. So I went in and bought some April expiring DUG put options, which is essentially buying DIG (Proshares Ultra Oil ETF), as I think oil definitely is waiting to jump a bit. OPEC is keeping a tight hold on supply right now, and rising gasoline prices is showing a slight increase in demand. So I think I got in at a good enough price. So I will keep you posted on how that goes.

FAZ/FAS have almost become text book for day traders the past few days. It seems like the thing to do is pick up FAS right before close, ride it up about 10% until mid day trading the following day, sell and buy FAZ for another 10% pop. Sure, it has only been a two day trend, but it has worked like clockwork. So, I'm sure a lot of you heavy day traders are having your fun with those. FAZ has a Market Club report trend score of +55, so it's been down trending (get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here).

I'm on the road a lot tomorrow, so I will try to be on chat when I can. I'm gonna hop on later tonight and discuss Asia on chat, which is currently getting killed due to horrible recession numbers. Days for FXP could be coming back. It will be interesting to see if the negative news over seas bleeds into our trading tomorrow. Happy Trading and we'll see you tomorrow.

It was interesting to watch the Dow move up and down today, as it seemed to react in the exact same way I was feeling. I was definitely torn coming into today about where the market was going to head. There looked to be a variety of forces on each side and it resulted in me teeter-tottering back in forth from Bull to Bear. In the end, I compromised and tried to fulfill both of my desires. So, it was very comical to me to see the market trade today exactly how I felt. I guess I was not alone in my identity crisis. In the end it worked out for me and hopefully I have set myself up in a good position for either way the market decides to go tomorrow.

I found some extra time today than I usually have, so I enjoyed being on the chat (right sidebar) with many of you and discussing the mid-day movements. If you haven't already, definitely check it out during the day as there are a variety of intelligent people on there sharing good thoughts and strategies.

So I ended up selling a lot of SRS as it hit $80 today. I of course have plenty of shares left, I just felt this was good time in the market to take some profits. A lot of this I kept in cash, but I did pick up some FAS at $5.60 and believe it or not, a bit of LVS at $2.95 for my Vegas fix. Both have pretty strict stop losses in case of a crash. I still am not sure who will win the battle of technicals and emotions in the market, but I don't want to be caught naked on either side it decides to turn. I would tally today's trading to the bears, as with all the news, they were able to keep the trading in the red for most of the day, even with some violent spurts that looked dangerous, but were quickly smacked down back into the red. So another victory for bears tomorrow and most likely technicals will have been overruled and that can be a very dangerous position for the market.


I am still not ruling out the strong possibility for a pretty violent rally this week. I know many of you feel that there is no news that could spark such a rally. There doesn't necessarily have to be any moves, especially when you are dealing with a technical rally. There was no news in November, when we hit our original lows and pulled a huge u-turn and ended up over 3% the same day. So, I continue guarded in case of the rally, but still have a bulk of my portfolio in cash and shorts for the time being. RIMM going any lower and I will be looking to pick up some options.

I was not impressed with Obama's speech today. After cutting through all of the BS from the beginning (it felt like one of his rallies from his campaign), there once again wasn't much encouraging information that was released. In fact, I kind of became fearful during the end as he started leveraging TARP funds. Saying, if you cooperate, you'll get a piece of the pie. It smelled a lot like beginning stages of nationalization and a bit of Socialism. This makes me even more weary of me being in FAS right now, but I still think we're a ways out from that if it does indeed happen. Also, he plans to spend $2 billion on neighborhood campaigns to helping solve foreclosure problems. Are you serious? This kind of wasteful spending drives me crazy when I file my taxes.

GM's fate could become a mover for the market if the government does indeed not come to their rescue this time around. Nobody seems to be on the auto's side this time, but I still find it hard to believe that the government will turn the other cheek. A failure to come to their rescue now will blatantly show that our original bailout money was a complete waste of spending. If something does happen though, it could cause some serious movement. Check out Ford's Market Club report trending score, -90 ouch (get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here)! So, I will not be playing any auto stocks.

Tomorrow acts as a critical day for market direction. I'll try to get on chat again throughout the day and chat with you all. I believe the market will be pretty decisive in the direction it plans to go. Stay tuned tomorrow too, I will be sharing some thoughts from a friend who has spent most of his life in the oil industry. With oil being on my radar, it was great to hear from him. Have a great night, Happy Trading and see you tomorrow.

With not many more arrows left in his quiver, President Obama heads into this week hoping to be able to combat the army of more economic data being released, that so far, is not looking to be good. As he mentioned last week, Obama hopes to layout his plan more thoroughly this week to subsidize mortgages in his effort to limit home foreclosures. As he is running out of options to consider in stimulating the economy, I expect him to continually try and create new programs to hopefully attempt to bring confidence back into the markets. The problem is failing to create worthwhile plans and programs results in a waste of spending and more let down to an already battered investor. Being green and wet behind the years, I don't see much let up from Obama and his attempts.

I was actually surprised to see the market react the way it did on Friday. With the long weekend, coupled with the "new plan," I thought there may have been some buying going into the weekend. Also, many of the shorts got out of the market on Thursday. As we saw right before close on Thursday, the market shot up from a -200 point loss to almost in the green by close. Sure, Obama's announcement caused for buying, but after looking at the numbers, many of the shorts we're covering and getting out in anticipation of the long weekend. A lot of the shorters didn't want to be stuck in their shorts going into the long weekend, with the risk of new developments of Obama's foreclosure plan. Being that the volume was pretty low on Thursday, the market was very sensitive and reacted the way we saw it. Volume remained lower on Friday, but there were still a plenty of sellers in the market as it closed down over a percent.

Obama has his hands full going into this next week. With more employment, housing, and manufacturing news, which is looking to be the worse in 25 years, I expect the government to have some ammunition set aside in attempt to combat the news. However, as always, I think it will be tough to numb the pain, considering the significance of the numbers being reported. I am guessing housing starts will be the worst we've seen thus far, with jobless claims and manufacturing not far behind. This is indeed a week that could set the stages for a crash, but still much depends on how the government reacts.

I'm keeping an eye on oil as many analysts believe we will know by March whether or not we have hit a bottom. I am guessing eventually oil will settle near $75 a barrel. I'm keeping DIG and USO on my watchlist to maybe look for an entry point. I don't see huge surges from oil in the short term, but definitely some growth over the long term.

TBT is continuing to perform strong, see the market trend graph below (get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here). It dipped a bit as corporate bonds received a lot of flack and many started buying treasuries again, but I still feel there is a lot of upside in this etf as foreign nations are bound to pull out of our treasuries as our instability and economic stress increases.

So I plan to be pretty bearish this week. I will be careful entering into mid-week as I do feel there will be more given on the plan to subsidize mortgages. As crazy as the plan sounds, I am sure it will cause some to cheer. I have been very pleased with SRS. I would expect VIX levels to continue to increase, and with that, stronger movements for the leveraged ETFS. So hopefully I can continue to see gains from my shorts.

I apologize for the delay in my post. I thought with the long weekend, it would be better to wait a couple days in case of anything coming out over the weekend. I will maybe get on chat tomorrow to discuss upcoming developments with the coming week. I also plan to discuss the list of restaurants experiencing leverage risk (I'm staying away from their stock). Remember, two more weeks for the $200 Lending Club promotion. Enter and win with no money required to invest, see here for more! Happy trading and I hope for much green in your trading this week.

I don't know if it was all the media time Obama's new projected stimulus plan got this weekend or the perceived "good news" from the existing-home sales, but whatever the case, the market was some how able to stay up in the midst of some seriously bad employment news and other negative economic data. The Dow did spend some time in the red, but quickly recovered and closed the day up 38 points. Many perceived the 6.5% increase in home sales as good news and an indicator that we may be starting to see the bottom of the residential crisis. However, once again, people have failed to read between the lines.

There are two huge elements which helped increase this number. First, the median of housing prices are down 15% just from last year. Many of the houses that were sold were bank owned and were sold for a loss. Sure, if McDonald's lowered the price of Big Macs to 50 cents, they would probably sell more, but their profits would be down.

Second, THE DISCOUNT RATE IS AT 0%. For those that enjoy good credit, with the help of the FED, people buying houses are seeing rates in the low to high 4% range. At this rate, you could buy a mansion, rent it to a dog, and still probably be able to cover your monthly debt service. The point is, only a 6% rise in home sales with a 15% in price and 4-5% borrowing, is not encouraging at all.

Also, today we were slammed with a whole new round of job cuts. Our unemployment rate is quickly moving towards 9% and up into the teens. They are projecting another 500,000 job loss month for January, however at this rate, we're looking to be closer to the 800,000-900,000 range. I thought I would make a list of all the recent job cuts that have been announced the last week as it may become tough to keep track. I hope none of your companies are on this list:

* Caterpillar to Cut 20,000 Jobs
* Sprint Nextel to Cut Up to 8,000 Jobs
* Home Depot to Cut 7,000 Jobs
* Microsoft to Cut Up to 5,000 Jobs
* Intel to Cut Up to 6,000 Jobs
* UAL Layoffs Planned
* BofA Could Cut 4,000 Jobs
* Cerberus May Lay off 10% of Staff
* Clear Channel Cutting 1.500 Jobs
* GE Capital to Slash Up to 11,000
* Conoco to Lay Off 4%
* Pfizer to Cut Up to 2,400 Jobs
* AMD to Lay Off 1,000
* WellPoint to Lay Off 1,500
* Hertz to Cut More than 4,000 Jobs
* Motorola to Slash 4,000 More Jobs
* Google to Cut 100 Recruiter Positions
* Seagate Cutting 6% of Workforce
* Barnes & Noble Slashes 100 Jobs
* Oracle Cuts Several Hundred Jobs
* Boeing to Cut 4,500 Jobs
* Cigna to Slash About 1,100 Jobs

* U.S. chemical maker Huntsman said it plans to cut about 1,175 jobs, or about 9 percent of its workforce, by year-end to reduce costs and tackle the huge slump in chemical demand.
* Microsoft announced it would cut up to 5,000 jobs and said it could no longer offer profit forecasts for the rest of the fiscal year.
* Intel said it would close sites in Asia and scale back operations in the United States as part of a restructuring that could affect as many as 6,000 jobs.
* UAL announced it will further reduce the number of salaried and management employees by approximately 1,000 positions by the end of 2009. This is in addition to the 1,500 positions the company announced in the second quarter.
* Diversified U.S. manufacturer Eaton said it planned to cut 5,200 jobs, or about 6 percent of its work force, in an effort to further slash costs in the face of a struggling economy.
* Time Warner's Warner Bros. Entertainment said it would cut about 800 jobs, or 10 percent of its worldwide staff in coming weeks.
* Lee Enterprises, which publishes 49 daily newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said its quarterly profit on a preliminary basis fell 69 percent and cut its staffing by more than 10 percent.
* Rohm and Haas said it plans to cut 900 jobs, or 5.5 percent of its workforce, in a bid to tackle the slump in demand and widespread market weakness.
* Bank of America may slash as much as 4,000 jobs in its capital markets units starting this week. The cuts are expected to be in New York and reflect the consolidation of the bank’s sales and trading businesses after it bought Merrill Lynch three weeks ago.

Last month, I discussed the extreme over buying of treasuries, which pushed the yield to almost 0% numbers and pressed me to buy into TBT, the 20-year Lehman treasury UltraShort. As you can see from the graph, it has done quite well for me since I got into it. I expect this short to continue to remain strong as Obama tries to spend our way out of this mess and foreign nations begin to pull their money out of our treasuries.

Here also is the momentum graph for TBT. As you can see it is currently holding a +70 score, which is pretty strong momentum. I would expect it to keep going up for a bit more. Get your own symbol analyzed for free, all you need is a name and email, Click Here.

Banks came down later in the day due to more concerns of their ability to survive. Hello, why did these concerns ever go away? It didn't help that Fannie Mae is wanting $16 billion more from the Fed to keep a float and trust me, these secondary askings for money is just the beginning. In the next month or two all of them will be back at the table with their hands open. The debt coming due is monumental.

American Express and Texas Instruments reported horrible earnings and with the anticipation of a rocky GDP number this week, I would expect some days of down trading. However, the new Mr. Smart secretary who doesn't pay his taxes was sworn in today, and knowing this market, it could somehow cause some praiseworthy trading tomorrow. I'm sticking with my shorts and gold for the time being. I think the ticking time bomb is close enough to zero for me.

Well, tomorrow should be an interesting day. After hours are up, but that doesn't mean anything anymore. Take advantage of the free trial of INO video, because I believe it won't be offered much longer, click here. I hope to wake up in the morning to see some green in my Zecco.com account. We'll see. Happy trading and we'll see you tomorrow.

Whether it be 8000 for the Dow or 825 for the S&P, it seems as though investors have found a base to set up camp as the market may go up and down a bit, but is staying close to those numbers. The continual battle between stimulus hopes and deflation depression is causing some violent jolts in volatility, as people are not quite sure what to believe or if things are going to get a lot worse. Even if the largest stimulus considered is passed, history has shown us that in most cases, there is severe lag time for the economy to respond to an economic stimulus. Also, let me remind you that our current situation is very unique as it is a global crisis, so I would expect that lag time to be much more severe. There seems to be a definite mood change currently that is very similar to the one back in November. Even with today's Friday wanting to rally, there was a strong opposing force selling. Currently, much of the movement is a result from all the day traders, as the momentum is moving like clock work as the shorts are covered. With next week thick of economic news and earnings, including GDP, I would expect a serious move to be made.


I personally feel we are getting closer and closer to retesting the bottom and this time when we're down there, we're going to go straight through it. All of the focus is on the banks right now, and everyone's chips go with them. Let me give a few reasons why I believe the banks have much more problems ahead and why I link SKF (Financials Short) and SRS (Real Estate Short) directly go together and why I am bullish on both.

Bank of America has an estimated $64.7 billion in commercial debt and says that it considers $3.9 billion or 6% currently non-performing. Most of this current delinquency they say is from home builders who are struggling with cash flow. This doesn't even take into account the other several billions that are just now beginning to default on their loans. You can expect that number to rise dramatically. Lately it seems as if these banks are more concerned with using the TARP funds to furnish new executive offices and payoff their chauffeur. It's ridiculous. Check out the latest free videos from INO, good stuff, click here.

US Bancorp's delinquencies jumped to 3.34% during Q4, which was way up from the 1% reported the year prior. It is expected that these default rates should increase for at least the next 12 months in the commercial sector. It is also projected that over $400 billion worth of debt is to come due during this year and that there is a refinancing shortfall of anywhere between $125 to $150 billion. Where's that money going to come from? Obama perhaps? These aren't even including all of the other defaults going on behind the scenes. It is also estimated that there is over $3.5 trillion in outstanding commercial debt and that 40% of that are on bank's balance sheets, while 26% as CMBS debt. I can assure you that most of those loans are very high leveraged, anywhere from 70-80% LTV. Banks aren't lending like that anymore.

With these kind of numbers it is no wonder why I am long on SKF and SRS. I believe there is going to be more bank consolidation and maybe some government controlling until this debt problem can be sorted out. The residential credit crunch was the a taste of what is to come.

Another significant trend to note today was that Gold and the value of the dollar were not inversely related. This is very good news for my GDX and GLD options. Having GDX up almost 9%, with the dollar being up as well, shows that the inverse relationship may be breaking and they may be taking their own paths. Plus check out the fundamentals for GDX below(Click Here to analyze a symbol for free, you just need a name and an email!). I have great hope for my gold. DIG could be also taking this same route, as we saw oil jump with another OPEC cut.
Big week next week with big news. GDP should be a momentum changer, whatever it may be. I would expect some sorry numbers to set the mood for selling next week. I did put some more money into my Lending Club investment, as my 10.5% return has held up thus far, and if I can keep that consistent, it can be a good buffer for my portfolio. My $100 promotional contest I am running for them ends next week, so get in it for free for a chance to win an easy $100, click here for more. I got out of my Citi today, as I feel Monday is going to be bloody (unless of course Obama has a weekend secret for everyone which, recently, they have loved doing). Time shall tell. Have a great weekend everyone and Happy Trading.

By looking at today's Dow graph (below), it seems as the violent volatility is getting more and more every day. That coupled with the strong influx of volume we have received the past couple days can be a combination of disaster when tip toeing around a financial depression. With all the uncertainties out there, a big failure could send this market tanking. Lucky for the market, we happen to be in a week with almost no economic data reported, aside from our horrible home starts for December reported today, but no one pays attention to that right? Just to note it, they were expecting 605K in new housing starts for December. The actual number was only 550k. Even though many of these numbers are cast aside and not paid attention to, I definitely make note of the continual problems our market is seeing, because sooner or later it will catch up with us.


Google came in today with what they're calling good news by "beating market expectation." As a result, investors are cheering and buying up GOOG in after hours. Sure, they have beat SOME of the analyst's forecasts, but the fact is they're net still plunged 68%. So if you think that's something to cheer about go ahead and buy. A lot of times people become so caught up on the wording of events like "they beat market expectations" or "beat earnings" and they just turn around and buy without reading in between the lines. They're net income for Q4 fell from $1.2 billion to $382 million from the same time period just last year. OUCH. Some are calling it good news, but as for myself, I'm steering clear.

Check out the updated Market Trend graph for SKF after today's trading (Click Here to analyze a symbol for free, you just need a name and an email!). +100, which is the highest momentum rating the tool can rank. The fundamentals are definitely pointing upward and with the continual woes hitting the banks, I have to think it's going nowhere but up this month.


It was good to see SRS get a nice bounce back today as well as FXP. Asia has been having a disaster of a time trying to explain their horrible fourth quarter reports. I will touch more on that tomorrow. Watch out for our usual Friday rallies tomorrow. As I've mentioned before, Fridays have a tendency to be bullish. Especially with the downward day today, Google's "positive earnings" and the slight pullback towards the end, we may find ourselves in the green. I didn't buy anything else to prepare for it, as I already have a small position of C and UYG. A down day would definitely yield me stronger returns, but I have some long just in case.

In any case, I would expect higher volatility levels as there remains a lot of uncertainty. With that in mind, the increasing volatility is going to make the leveraged etfs extremely volatile, as prices for options should continue to shoot up with the "fear index" increasing. This is a great time to make quick 10% profits in a short amount of time. It can be very risky, but with the use of stop losses and buying on the right bumps, you can hedge some risks and make some profits.

Warren Buffet said today that he feels the credit crisis is "softening" (ha, maybe for billionaires), but that business has slowed more. He says that the negative sentiment has really slowed down consumer spending and has made it very difficult for businesses to survive. He said he expects the recession to last a while, but wouldn't speculate when. Obviously, I think that means he's planning on it being around a couple years. I like to listen to these old dogs as they're probably the only ones who's been close to experiencing what we're in.

If tomorrow does indeed rally, I plan on bulking up a bit more on SKF and FXP. I still have a ton of shares of SRS, as I still feel there is a lot of potential for profits there. If we go down once again tomorrow, I will enjoy another day in the green for my Zecco.com trading account. That coupled with my strong Lending Club returns is making it a pretty good month for me. Here are some great free videos on stock analysis you can watch click here, definitely worth watching. Happy trading everyone, have a good evening and we'll see you tomorrow.

Did you say Obama rally? People were shocked this morning as they woke up to see a monumental time in US history and Wall Street react as a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. Maybe if Obama could have broken off a bit of that $170 million dollar party today to give to the banks, the result wouldn't have been so bad. Seriously though, clearly today is evidence that bank's problems are far from over. This is not something new to this site, as we have been discussing those problems for months now, but it seemed to hit home with investors today as the Dow closed down over 4%. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi were just a few of the banks all down over 20%. These types of movements, especially during what people thought could be a huge day for stocks, should be detrimental to the market. Bulls were expecting a big victory today. It also doesn't help that Obama's big stimulus plan may not be completed for approval until mid February. I am sure today has added some incentive to get that in the works ASAP.

Well, what a day for my shorts, wow. I haven't had a day like this since October. SRS up 20%, SKF up 29%, and FXP up 16.8%. Just as I discussed yesterday, the VIX level increased 22.86% today! With the VIX increasing at this rate, these inverse leveraged etfs have the potential to be making a lot of money. Today it closed at 56. If it gets back in the 65-75 range, look out. By that time SRS should be $100+ and quickly on its way higher.

I wanted to show you a breakdown of SRS trends (see below) done from market trade (you can get a symbol analyzed for free, all they need is your email, Click Here!) Notice how they break down the moving trends of the stock/fund and give it a score at the end. SRS was give a +55. The range is from -100(being strong downward trend) to +100(being strong upward trend). So at +55, there is definitely some good momentum behind the fund. SKF and FAZ, wow. FAZ closed up just about 40%! I don't think many articles are being written today about the failure of these fund's ability to produce strong returns. As I have said time and time again. It is all about being on the right side of the momentum, and right now, momentum is downward.
Tomorrow makes me very curious. As all the energy in my body tells me the market will continue to plow downward as surely there was great devastation done today, a part of me feels that we could have an up day tomorrow. I don't expect Obama to kick back for a few days and get settled. I'm sure we can expect some sort of action before week's end to try and re-instill some confidence in the lending institutions. Also, IBM reported better than expected earnings after the close today, which has given a little bump to the tech stocks in after hours after their slaughtering today. However, world markets are responding very negatively to the horrific US trading day, which could continue to put a downer on the market into tomorrow.

So there are a lot of spinning wheels going on at once and tomorrow is a bit of a mystery for me. However, the momentum is definitely downward and no matter what tomorrow yields, I believe we're heading for the high 6000's - low 7000's here in the next couple of weeks. Either way, expect a pretty volatile day tomorrow as there should be pretty strong forces on both sides.

Another down day like tomorrow and I will be putting some serious money in gold. With a huge stimulus plan like the one Obama is cooking, you can expect gold prices to shoot up due to future inflation worries. Quite a bit of GDX or GLD is looking to be in my near future.

Just a quick update on my progress with Lending Club. So far all the payments have been made on time and I am still on track for my 10.5% return. I may throw some more cash at it to up my principal invested as I am slowly becoming more comfortable with the company and am having success thus far. I do feel it can be good alternative investment vehicle, especially with the lack of confidence with commercial banks.

Check out this featured video of the week from Market Club showing their track record, (click here). I know it can be difficult to spend money on tools in this type of market, but as you can see from the video, they really do a good job of bringing in profits by diversification. I have been using many of their tools the past week and learned a lot. You can try a free trial of their videos, Click Here, they just need your email and name. It can be tough to find good tools out there so I flock to the ones that seem to work.

Tomorrow should be just as an exciting day to watch as today. There is definitely that nip in the air that we felt back in October where there is a lot of uncertainty. We shall see. Happy Trading and we'll see you tomorrow.

So what is Lending Club? They are a P2P (People to People) lending group (been around since June of 2007) that provides short term lending for people in need of capital. The key is that, other consumers are also investors in the loan and are collecting on the interest, not a bank. You can sign up as either a lender and invest in loans yielding anywhere from 6%-19%. You can also sign up to borrow money, which enables consumers to find very competitive rates to borrow from. Either way, it can be a win win for both the consumer and the investor if all goes well.

The biggest question I got from all of you which I passed on to Rob was what is the default rate? The first thing Rob said is that Lending Club prides themselves in the transparency of their information. As I went through the different links they have, I found this to be very true. For instance, the graph below shows the total amount of loans Lending Club has issued since its beginning. As you see, out of the $25,156,400 worth of loans they have issued since June of 2007, only $677,495 (or 2.69%) have defaulted. They define default as failure to make a payment over 120 days. This was a lot lower than I originally thought and actually made me feel a bit more comfortable with my invested funds, since I did not choose that risky of loans.
Lending Club does go after defaulted loans and are sometimes able to recover the funds. They continually update their collection process with every phone call they make all the way to the final bankruptcy judgement decision. They do a great job of keeping you updated.

Now, when choosing a loan to invest in, Lending Club does a pretty good job of getting a lot of information from their background checks on individuals and disclosing this to the investor. Below is an example of someone who is looking for a $3800 loan.
As you can see, they have their current employment, length of employment, credit score, credit balance, etc. All of the loans issued on Lending Club are 36 month (3 year loans). So one downside, is that your money is invested for a longer term. However, as I will talk about in another post, you can sell out of your position in a loan through their secondary market to liquidate your investment.

I asked Rob of loans that seem to perform better than others and he said, debt consolidation, car loans, and paying off credit cards were some that stood out as top performing loans. I did ask him ones that have not performed well and although he said nothing was black and white, he did say that a lot of wedding debt (found that funny) and student loans had some problems in the past.

Below is a picture of what it looks like when initially browsing the loans to choose to invest in. You can either choose a target investment yield and they will automatically choose a portfolio of loans for you to approve, or you can go through individually and manually choose them. As you can see, it gives the loan description, loan balance, Lending Club's value rating of the loan along with the interest rate (the larger the interest rate, the lower the value rating). It also shows how much is left to fund and the time left until the loan is issued.To sum things up for this first post, I asked Rob to give a couple points that separates them from competitors. First off, is that they are actually registered with SEC. Although, they haven't registered with all states, they have registered Lending Club with most states and have the SEC's blessing. This can be an added comfort to investors knowing they are going through proper channels.

The other big one was their platform. They are very transparent with their information and try to give the investor as much information about the loan they are investing in. The ease of use is very significant, as I was able to sign up, find loans to invest in and be finished all within 10 minutes.

I didn't want all the information crammed in a post, so I will stop here and talk more on another day about some positives about this program I have found. I see these P2P programs becoming more popular as banks continue to struggle to lend. My biggest concern is regulation, but so far I am very impressed with Lending Club as they are definitely a company worth looking into. It is free to sign up and if you are interested in signing up either as a Lender or Borrower. Feel free to ask questions in comments, I'll try to answer them the best I can. I can also have Rob answer any I can't. Have a good night everyone, and lets hope for some good money in the market this week.

It seems as if normality is slowly returning to the market as trading trends are starting to reflect economic conditions more and more. Today, they announced the employment numbers, and surprisingly it was less than expected. I am not that surprised, as I feel not many people like to terminated their employees during December. However, still realizing the detrimental impact of the number, investors seem to have realized the actual impact of the number, as the Dow traded down again to end the week. I do feel January is going to be devastating for employment numbers. In December, 524,000 we're claimed jobless as the unemployment rate has now shot to 7.2%. I expect this number to be reaching double digits very shortly. As company executives meet this month to do budget revisions and write up their new business plans, you can expect many divisions to be cut out for 2009. Q1 2009 will be extremely tough for the US.

Well, with the three days straight of down trading, momentum is definitely bearish. Sure, we have Obama taking over in two weeks, but the sentiment is beginning to get to the point where I think even the ignorant are starting to realize we're in one big mess. For the next six months, we are going to be in uncharted territory for economic data and there is not much the government can do to fix it. They will try, but there are too many cooks in the kitchen with to many messes to clean up at once.

This week we also started the bad earnings train. Wal-Mart, Coach, and Chevron started off the new year with disappointing earnings. Wal-Mart is one of my few choices for a decent performing stock and one I'm keeping in the IRA this year. If their struggling, I can't imagine what others are doing. Companies like Nordstrom, Macys, Best Buy, and Bed Bath and Beyond (just to name a few) should see a dramatic decrease in sales. I have liquidated any and all of my retail stocks.

I did utilize the last of my monthly free Zecco.com trades (I only get 10!) to pick up some more GDX and more SKF. I still love gold and cannot see how banks are going to get out of the mess they're in anytime soon. Especially now, as we are seeing them start to conform to mortgage restructuring like Citi has done.

The motivation has definitely shifted and I expect the panic selling to continue into next week. I am still not ruling out a temporary Obama rally that I am sure is bound to make a couple days green, but I think for the most part, people's hopes of Obama immediately turning this thing around is all but gone. Good week for me and my portfolio. My GDX has done very well for me and SRS and FXP should keep climbing as the turmoil continues (I need them too!). Make sure to check back this weekend as I am going to report on my phone call with Lending Club. He answered a lot of the questions I had and discussed other ways I can maximize my investment with the company. They even have a secondary market for re-selling or buying existing loans for discount. The post will definitely be worth reading. Check them out if you haven't. Have a great weekend and Happy Trading.

Well, well, another interesting day of trading while the world sits and waits for our dreaded employment numbers to be announced. Some are expecting the numbers to be the worst since World War 2. However, it probably won't matter, because our market has become so interested in "projected numbers" than what the actual number dictates. For example, Target announces earnings with a 4.1% drop in sales, but the stock goes up almost 3%, having the announcement better than market expectations. On the flip side, Wal-Mart announced an increase in sales of 1.7%, but because this was below market expectations, there stock goes down 7.5%. The market is becoming more concerned about the numbers relationship to expectations instead of the actual performance of the number itself. It can be very, very frustrating.

So even if we do see a horrific number for employment, unless it's the worst since World War 2, I'm sure the media will spin it off to be a positive sign, and somehow millions of people out there will buy into it. Not me, I expect the number to be very bad and as a result it reminds me of just how big of a mess we're in.

After the close, Chevron warned of probable lower earnings due to the large drop in gasoline prices. I'm sure they're doing just fine as they made mounds of cash the past two years off our $4.50+ gas prices. Still, this news could bring some more negative sentiment for energy sectors during trading tomorrow.

CITI BAILOUT
A big announcement today, was that Citi has agreed to participate in mortgage adjustments for distressed housing loans. Are you serious? I don't mean to sound unsympathetic as I am aware there are many people suffering. However, this move will support the 90 10 rule. Probably, only about 10% of the people receiving this help have actually a legitimate case to argue of their current position, while the other 90% will be bailing out people who bought out of greed and poor choices. One of the great principals this nation was founded on was a free economy. It is also known as the American dream. You can do whatever you want to do with enough work. Another element of the American dream is failure. Without failure, we have no successes. Call it survival of the fittest, yin and yang, or whatever. The point is not every business is meant to succeed, just as every choice isn't suppose to be the right one. If we don't learn from our mistakes, how will we change the future?

I could go on for hours about this, I just feel that this move (and whatever else is to come) undermines the people that were patient and worked hard for what they have. I mean, heck, if I knew the Government was going to bail me out, I would have bought three houses, knowing eventually, the Government would bail me out. If you take away accountability, you take away that spirit of free economy that originally made this country what it is. So, I'll get off my soapbox, that's just my feeling on the situation.

So to summarize this move, bankruptcy courts can alter the loans based on certain conditions. These being:

1) Only mortgages entered into prior to the date of enactment of the bill would be eligible for the treatment. All loans, and not just subprime, are eligible.

2) Borrowers have to show they made a “good faith”(What does "good faith" entail? Who knows.) attempt to work with the lender before considering this bankruptcy provision. Bankruptcy cannot be the first option, and borrowers have to prove it wasn’t.

3) Bankruptcy judges can strip away a lender’s credit or rights if they violated the Truth in Lending Act or other state and federal laws.

Many are still against such moves, but it will be interesting to see who else joins the wonderful bailout club. I would expect this to probably cause some optimistic trading tomorrow, especially in home builders and maybe some REITS. I don't know what this will do for financials, considering in the end, this will be reducing their investment. I see it as bad news, but you never know how the media will spin it.

As I have received many emails with questions about Lending Club, I was able to talk to one of the Directing managers of the site today, who answered several of mine and your questions about the program and their success. I plan on writing a post about it this weekend, sharing some of the numbers he gave me, but all in all, it was a great call and really increased my confidence in the company. I realize the risks of consumer lending, but after the call, I am a lot more comfortable with the underwriting and screening process and now believe I have a really good chance of receiving close to my 10.5% targeted returns. Definitely worth looking into.

Well, the end of the week rally could be in session tomorrow, very much depending on employment numbers. I really do think this number is going to be very, very bad and only getting worse. I would expect the market to react negatively to the number, but with the help of the Citi announcement and market manipulation, who knows, maybe somehow we'll end in the green. Happy Trading and we'll see you tomorrow.

Finally, we saw more than average volume return to the market today, as the fear for increasing unemployment as well as worsening economic conditions took the wind out of buyer’s sails. To be honest, I believe the market should be reacting like this every day, considering the mess we’re in. It’s still hard to say whether this will begin the next crash, as Obama hope still lingers, but it indeed made a statement that the bear is still out there.

Everyone is talking about the upcoming jobless reports coming out Friday. Some analysts are saying that this month we could see a jobless count of 670,000 for December (today’s ADP report showed that we slashed 693,000 jobs in the private sector). I personally feel that we will be even worse than that number and have a lot more to go. We haven’t even begun liquidating the retailer positions. Once more of these big retailers go down, we should see some absurd unemployment numbers. In fact, in regards to that subject, North Carolina had an interesting experience this past week. North Carolina, being headquarters for a lot of major commercial and investment bankers had some problems with their unemployment office. It seems that their unemployment computer service was overloaded, because over 50,000 people were trying to access it at once. After fixing it and adding room to the server, the server was overloaded a second time due to over 70,000 simultaneous requests. The actual phone number to call was down as well. I believe the reality of our situation is slowly beginning to settle in with people.

I wanted to share an article from the Boston Globe dealing with commercial real estate. Myself being a big proponent of SRS, I thought it would be appropriate. It said, “If you think selling a home was tough in 2008, be thankful you weren't trying to unload an office building.
Sales of Boston-area commercial properties plummeted 86.5 percent last year, with about $1.35 billion in property changing hands compared to $10 billion in a red-hot 2007, according to the global real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

The drop-off portends a turbulent 2009. Now, real estate investors don't have data to guide them in pricing properties in the soft economy, making it less likely that buyers will come forward out of fear of overpaying.

"Its a huge challenge right now for investors to figure out if they're getting a fair price," said Lisa Campoli, executive vice president at commercial brokerage Colliers Meredith & Grew. "During the last downturn in the 1990s, we had the S&L crisis and some banks went under, but there wasn't the global lack of confidence we're seeing right now."

Commercial real estate is the latest sector to be hit by the deepening recession, with the fallout just now sweeping through Boston and other markets. Rents are starting to fall sharply as vacancies pile up.

The impact is especially severe in New York City, where there is a large increase in space available for subleasing, a key measure of weakness in the office market. Available sublease space in Manhattan has increased 43 percent from the end of 2007 as foundering financial companies have rapidly shed jobs and floors of offices.” All over the country real estate is dying. Just remember, most of these properties that are dying have very high leveraged loans on them. Eventually, this should come back to haunt the banks again. This is why I still can’t even closely be comfortable with buying financials right now.

As a result of the -2.72% day for the Dow, almost all of the shorts were up today. SRS had a moderate 5.5% up day as hopes for more Obama bailouts keep investors a little confident in some of these REITS. Don’t ask me why. FXP had some enormous gains, closing over 15%, as China continues to have problems with their businesses. The element that is killing China is their enormously large work force. I mean, just to give everyone jobs, they need to be exporting into almost every nation. As demand is going down, this is killing their employment. Their unemployment number may be higher than our actual population. Also, if any of you have dealt with the Chinese culture you will know that when times get tough, they close the door to spending COMPLETELY. Here in the US, we love to use our credit cards, and dig us into more debt. With the Chinese culture, most people choose to save than to spend. This lack of spending and lack of exports should bring a lot of hardships for their country and businesses.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sell off continue tomorrow. As more negative employment numbers come out and other sore economic data, I don’t see a lot of optimistic buying going on. We could rebound a bit either tomorrow or Friday, but I still feel the bear is here right now. The only thing keeping me from putting all my chips into the short side is Obama and his list of bailouts. I’m going to let that ride out a bit, plus I’ve got enough currently in SRS, SKF, FXP and EEV.

I also wanted to clarify some things with my Lending Club investment. The times that were given in my portfolio is when the loan is set to begin, not mature. So my money will be tied up longer than I originally anticipated. However, I will still be shooting for that 10.5% return, it is just going to take longer. Anyway, I love looking into these different investment opportunities. If you know of some that have worked for you, please share. Have a great night everybody, keep up the pace. Happy Trading and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Another day of nothing much but bad news hit Wall Street today, but it seems as if the hope of Obama and his plans for a new (much larger) stimulus plan seems to be keeping the market a float, even in the midst of continual turmoil. He is also warning that our deficit is nearing 1 trillion dollars. I'm sure another round of almost a trillion in bailouts will help that. That number could be doubled or tripled by 2010. As the new congress was sworn in today(mostly democrats), it seemed as though new life was breathed into financials in hopes for new USS (Uncle Sam Support), which in turn made it a big day for banks and commercial REITS and a bad day for my SRS. As frustrating as it may be for me, I have to stick by my gut, my knowledge of the real estate market, and the hope that eventually, fundamentals will move the market again, because despite what some people think and in my opinion, our current economic condition has definitely not been fully factored into this market. We’ve been given a lot of emotional morphine to dull the pain the past couple months, but there are definitely troubled times ahead.

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, as everyone has been announcing warnings the past couple days. The Fed, Corporate Execs, Obama, some analysts, and about every legitimate website. Bank of America’s CEO wrote a letter to executives warning them of their poor performance results of 2008 and urged them (including himself) not to take bonuses this year. Well, at least some companies aren’t totally greedy. AIG, learn by example.

Alcoa also announced today that they will be cutting anywhere from 13,000 to 15,000 jobs to help guard from their recent hardships. This sent their stock crashing into after-hours and may have contributed to the down market as a whole in after-hours as well. The job cuts that should continue the first half of 2009 should be pretty horrific. It is scary to think of how high the unemployment rate will hit before beginning to recover. All I know is very little businesses are making a lot of money right now. I mean over $7 trillion of household wealth was wiped out by Q3 2008. That’s 11%. Some expect this number to have almost doubled just by Q4, bringing the total loss to about 20%. That decrease is going to have serious effects on our small and large businesses, especially luxuries. And some people feel we aren't even near the bottom.

Even as the market may cheer a bit as Obama is sworn in, in hopes for some more help. If Obama does end up passing his possible $850 billion stimulus plan, it is going to be quickly squelched by the $13 trillion loss in household wealth. This is why I don’t find much hope or optimism in these talks of bailouts. They're just lost tax dollars.

In addition to decrease in wealth, there will also be a decrease in spending. We are in a recession, a dollar made is a dollar saved right now. Very few people are finding a lot of extra cash to take to the mall every month. As worth of houses have been slashed and IRA accounts cut in half, people will be extra frugal in saving the next few years. By doing so, this will lower the monetary flow of the markets and bring more turmoil and frozen lending to the market. No one is being convinced to spend money right now. Even with a stimulus checks, much of that goes to paying off debt and savings.

It is very clear that problems are not retreating anytime soon. There will definitely be buying opportunities in the market. As I have said in past posts, I like energy and commodities. The dollar has experienced a surprising recent boost the past month. I don’t expect this to continue and see a lot upside still in Gold (GDX), Silver(SLVR), Oil(DIG), and agriculture(POT). Alternative energy is also on my radar (STP). During these harsh times, I expect to see a big boost in popularity in E-commerce. I see companies like Amazon and Overstock almost doubling their customer base the next couple of years. Sure, transaction volume will go down per person, but when the market does come back, they should be front runners in my book. Also, people are going to have to shop somewhere. That’s why I stick with Wal-Mart, Payless Shoe, and Old Navy brands for retailers. Discount retailers should still be doing sales.

Well, everyday becomes more interesting and a bit more scary. I just get this weird feeling like one day the market just may crash. I know the signs aren’t here at the moment, but the market is still very sensitive and the signs don't necessarily have to be here. On another note, no loans have defaulted on me yet in my Lending Club portfolio. Only a week and a half remains until all my invested loans are to begin and I am hoping I can maintain near that 10.5% return I opted for when I began. I believe my first loan payment is due in 3 days, so I will take a new screenshot and update you on what happens from there. I hope everyone is finding their own successes out there. It should be on heck of a year. Happy Trading and we’ll see you tomorrow.