Unfortunately, life is what it is. For me, work has just gotten too hectic for me to maintain this blog. While I have enjoyed the last 4 years with all of you, I just don’t have the time to post any more.

Feel free to comment in this last lonely thread, or you can go to Marshall’s blog, MFI Diary. He is a good guy, and a savvy investor, so I think he will take good care of you. While I may not agree with him on every stock, most of his picks are pretty good, when they aren’t awesome.

I am not giving up on investing. To the contrary, this blog has been a wonderful learning experience, and I would recommend it to any of you. My main advice to anyone starting a self-investing blog would be: Maintain a thick skin, and be prepared to listen to a lot of suggestions that just aren’t you. In other words, people will frequently give you tips that won’t suit your style. If you follow those tips, your results will probably show it. But there are also people whose investment tips will suit your style. And that brings us back to the purpose of setting up a self-investing blog: To really learn your own style. I feel comfortable in my investing “suit” now.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean my own style won’t continue to evolve in the future. At the moment, I have a comfortably conservative daytrading scheme (which is still evolving) combined with a long-term value approach. A year from now, this could change.

I wish you all the best, and I appreciate all the time you folks have dedicated to me and my blog. Farewell, and God bless.

Here are my final portfolio results for August:

Ed’s Overall: +1.47%
Ed’s IRA: -0.21%
Ed’s 401k: +3.03%
S&P 500: +3.77%
ACWI (all-world index):+2.58%
Nasdaq:+4.82%

Although I had 8 positive daytrades against 5 negative in my IRA, my final results were down 0.03%. The last multi-day trade was what put me into the red. Without that one, my daytrades were up 0.08%.

As for my 401k, it was a pretty good month, even if I didn’t beat the benchmarks:

DIS: 4.00 to $89.88 ( 4.66% , 43.19% overall, 44.34% overall with dividend)– bought at $62.77
GOOGL: 2.81 to $582.36 ( 0.48% , 33.37% overall, 33.37% overall with dividend)– bought at $436.655
JTP: 0.08 to $8.43 ( 0.96% , 6.31% overall, 10.77% overall with dividend)– bought at $7.93
MSFT: 2.27 to $45.43 ( 5.26% , 23.25% overall, 24.67% overall with dividend)– bought at $36.86
PSEC: -0.30 to $10.31 ( -2.83% , 3.51% overall, 6.67% overall with dividend)– bought at $9.96
SDRL: 0.99 to $37.25 ( 2.73% , 12.03% overall, 14.53% overall with dividend)– bought at $33.25

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 2005 (August’s high and the all-time high), and 2025 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 2003, inside the 2001-2003 (3 data points) range.
DOWNSIDE: 1993-1998 (6 data points), 1982-1990 (July’s high and 5 data points), 1968 (June’s high), 1966 (50 day moving average), 1963 (20 day moving average), 1927-1939 (July’s low and 9 data points and the 100 day moving average), 1924 (May’s high), 1904 (August’s low), and 1901 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands).

S&P 500 Daily Momentum: Bullish (weakening)
S&P 500 Daily Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Weekly Momentum: Bearish (weakening)
S&P 500 Weekly Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Futures: Slightly Positive
Overall: The markets were running last week on low volume. Will the volume come back this week? Until then, the momentum indicators seem headed to neutral, in spite of the price action.

Welcome back! Time to look at what lies ahead for this week.

The earnings are almost non-existent this week, with PVH Corp. (PVH) being the largest company reporting (on Wednesday).

But we do have some big U.S. economic reports due this week:

TUESDAY: ISM Manufacturing Index
WEDNESDAY: ADP Employment Report
THURSDAY: International Trade Gap Report
FRIDAY: August Employment Report