Category: Uncategorized

I made three updates to My Trader’s Journal over the past couple of days. 

1.  I’ve started keeping a MTJ ”Stock Market Sentiment” rating at the very top of my home page.  This will generally be based on the charting of indexes I do every weekend, but can change mid-week too if a large macroeconomic factor hits us.  I’m 100% right so far even if it’s only been only one day.

2.  I updated my comments to remove the rel=”nofollow” attibute …

Yesterday I closed above the $75,000 balance mark in my brokerage account for the first time.  I’ve finally decided to use this arbitrary number as an excuse to start using my name on my blog.  I’m Alexander Fotopoulos.  That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?  I’ll just go by Alex.  Actually Alex is my real name and Fotopoulos should have been my last name, but my grandfather changed it not long after my dad was born.  I’m not using my real last name due to the …

I just added a new widget to my right sidebar which shows links to other investing blogs’ posts.  The idea is for each time my page has a visitor, I get a syndication credit that will give me “advertising” on another financial blog.  For each person who clicks on my widget (or here) I also get credits from their visitors and so on and so on…

It’s off to the side, so I don’t think it’ll …

The Mega Millions lottery is up to an estimated $325 million dollars for Friday night’s drawing.  I’ve bought my tickets and if I win, I’ll pay $1,000 for each person who leaves a comment to this post or another of my stock picking posts today or tomorrow.

You’ll know if I win because I’ll change my blog from MyTradersJournal.com to I-Am-A-Lottery-Winner.com or something like that and will blog about how I spend my money.  If I win $325 million dollars, I …

I heard good news this afternoon about my family in Greece.  The village where my grandfather was born and where I still have second cousins living, Vounargo (Βούναργο), is not burned.  The area all around it appears to be destroyed and the fires are still burning, but for now it’s OK.

My family from my grandmother’s side in Zacharo (Ζαχάρω) and Kalidona (Kαλίδονα) is all OK and have now made it out to Athens.  Their houses are destroyed and had no where else …

This has nothing to do with my normal blog topic, but thought it was worth sharing.  I found this picture in Yahoo! News.  It is a satelite view of the fires in the Peloponnese and was taken on August 26th, yesterday. 

The area I circled in red is where I have family.  One of my grandmother’s cousin’s houses burned and we aren’t sure about the others yet.  We have not been able to reach anyone in the village of Vournargo where my …

I have the need for one more non-financial post about Le Tour de France.  I posted my chart of the Dow earlier for those who need their $ fix.

The media is well known for trying to create a buzz out of nothing to sell papers or gain viewership.  This year they actually had something to work with as doping in Le Tour overshadowed the event.  Two riders tested positive during the three week event for a week, one was kicked …

I temporarily interupt this investing blog to give my thoughts on Le Tour de France and the doping scandal du jour.  I’ll get a stock pick posted later this morning as usual.

No yellow jersey is being worn today because Michael Rasmussen’s team finally wised up to the rules and fired him.  He didn’t test positive so they were giving him the benefit of the doubt until they found he had lied about where he had been.  When he missed two doping …