I wanted to share a few miscellaneous notes regarding the site, the market & the trade ideas listed here. In order to keep this simple, let me just say that the last several weeks have been what I can only refer to as my own “Perfect Storm” from a technology standpoint. For anyone interested, at the end of the post I’ll give a brief synopsis of what’s been going on as these issues have been a large part of the reason that the market commentary and trade idea updates have been very sparse lately (other than the fact that the R/R in the market isn’t very attractive… R/R not to be confused with how well many stocks have actually performed as those two metrics are often mutually exclusive).
Many of the trade ideas on the site are in need of updating and/or removal. This remains a priority but has continued to take a back seat due to the more pressing issues mentioned below. As soon as I can clean up the existing trade ideas I will spend some time looking for any attractive new setups to replace those trades that have been stopped out, hit their final profit targets or simply no longer look attractive from an R/R perspective.
I also continue to work with my programmer to restore some additional functionality to the email notification system but have run into some programming setbacks that we continue to work on. Therefore, we do not yet have an ETA on when those additional features, such as the ability to opt to receive notifications only on specific categories, will be restored. For a quick summary of the recent issues responsible for the unusually low volume of market commentary and trade ideas lately, see below:
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my relatively new, high-end desktop trading PC started crashing with increasing frequency. After doing my best to make sure all my important files were backed up, I took the advice of a tech professional and installed a new hard drive. I spent 12 hours yesterday reinstalling Windows as well as all my files, drivers, updates, as well as well over a dozen programs (which always have to be re-installed from scratch when installing a new hard drive, unlike files which can just be copied over). The bulk of that process has now been completed so once again I have access to my desktop based charting & trading programs and will be able to continue saving and annotating charts to post on the site. However, I’m still working on importing or replicating many of the settings on these programs that did not carryover with the backups. Therefore, commentary and trade ideas will continue to be on the light-side this week until that process is completed.
As a side note, I actually started penning an article to share for those new to trading or investing with some tips & suggestions on getting set up with the necessary technology. I’m still working on the draft and will probably publish two articles, one on the hardware (PC suggestions, multiple monitor configurations, back-up systems, etc..) and the other on software (trading platforms, broker comparisons, charting services, misc. trading programs, etc…). This latest snafu has been a hard learned lesson to make sure to locate all settings files for your trading platforms, charting and other programs which are often obscurely buried in various places amongst your program files, where most backup software & cloud storage services neglect to look.
On that topic, I do have a fully loaded back-up desktop PC in additional to multiple laptops in case an issue develops with my primary system, like the recent hard drive failure. I highly recommend that anyone actively involved in that market does have some kind of backup system, such as a laptop, tablet, etc.. in order to, at the very least, be able close out any open positions should your primary trading PC become unusable. Had I been more actively trading lately or the market more conducive to trading, I would have just shelved my main PC for now and worked off the back-up PC. However, since I’m still seeing a mixed bag of bullish and potentially bearish technicals, with most major indices overbought at or just above key resistance levels with divergences still in place, I’m taking the time to work on these tech issues, both with my main desktop system as well as some improvements to the site.
Finally, the icing on the cake today was an outage from my ISP (internet service provider), Centurylink, that affected 21 states and lasted the entire morning & into the afternoon. Callers were unable to get through to the support lines nor did they post the issue or an estimated time of resolution until hours after the outage began. Completely unacceptable to me so once these other issues are resolved, I will likely be changing my ISP as well. As far as a backup plan for your internet connection, cellular service is an option but more suitable for bare-bones management (opening or closing) of positions once your internet service goes down. Again, I plan to cover some of the suggested backup options in the trading technology articles soon. As I’m finally back online, I’ll study the charts later today and try to post any pertinent market analysis and or trade updates asap, maybe later this evening.