I came across an interesting post in a blog written by someone who just started trading.

On the sidebar, he mentions that he has recently read Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom and How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market. Currently, he is reading Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques and Tools and Tactics for the Master Day Trader.

So, two days into my new career as a master day trader (joke!) and I have chalked up 5 straight trading losses. The good news is that I am being disciplined and ensuring I have stops in place to limit my risk, or at least I thought I had.

I felt compelled to read the entire post because it was, well, like staring at a trainwreck. I could have left a comment on this fellow's blog, but I thought it might be more useful to dissect the trades - with only the knowledge that he should have known based on the books he's read to date.

I scanned the rest of the blog, no

He argues that most individual investors, including many wealthy people, are better off with a plain-vanilla portfolio of regular and inflation-protected Treasury bonds and low-cost index funds tied to U.S. and foreign equities, as well as real-estate stocks.

My friend Peter pointed me to a Barron's article on David Swensen, who as Yale University's Chief Investment Officer, “has compiled a 17.4% annualized return for his school's endowment fund over the past decade, easily making him one of America's most successful investors.”

His new book, Unconventional Success looks like a good one. In the meantime, I found a short interview with him at NPR. Enjoy!

Dear Lord, this is a boring market. This is the S&P 500 for the last four days; up 0.43%, up 0.02%, up 0.22%, down 0.35%, and today we’re up 0.08%.

The Buy List is up 0.32% today. Wake me when something happens.

Calling these hearings a circus would be an insult to America’s fine carnival-based economic sector.

James Mulla, chairman of ConocoPhillips, said "we are ready open our records" to dispute allegations of price gouging.

ConocoPhillips earned $3.8 billion in the third quarter, an 89% increase over a year earlier. But he said that represents only a 7.7% profit margin for every dollar of sales.

"We do not consider that a windfall," said Mulva.

Raymond said Exxon Mobil's exploratory and capital spending plans are based on how long it takes to bring new wells, plants or other developments into production. The company's planners pay no

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