Friday, March 6, 2009

New website, channeling stocks, M&A news, and Peter Tork

Today's blog is a potpourri of topics of which none requires much discussion. To expedite your reading time here as well as my writing time and so we can both jump directly into the weekend, I've summarized the grab-bag of topics that have been left on my Blog Idea List.

New website!
The Stock Market CookBook will be transferring over to its new home which will be www.stockmarketcookbook.com. My software engineer is closing in on the site construction which, as with any type of construction, is taking longer than anticipated. We're shooting for sometime in the next week or two. I'm proud to tell you that it's already looking byoo-tee-full and will offer all sorts of nifty new features as well as my (almost) daily blog. We're all very excited!

Channeling stocks update
Per Monday's blog regarding channeling stock candidates, ORCL (Oracle) and PCAR (Paccar) have both broken to the downside. MDTH (MedCath) and ROP (Roper) are hovering at lower support.

Dow Chemical/Rohm-Haas (ROH) merger update
It looks like Dow and Rohm-Haas are back in merger talks. Rohm is suing Dow for breach of contract and the case is set to go to trial Monday. Rohm stock closed up 18% ending the day at $63.80. (Dow agreed to pay $78/share in cash for Rohm last July.)

Invest in further education
No matter what field you're in (with the possible exception of blue-collar work), it's important for everyone to keep up with current trends. For example, today I was reading about how web designers and operators use Google Trends as an SEO tactic. Before last week, I had never heard of SEO nor Google Trends but I know now. (FYI, SEO stands for search engine optimization, something that I'm going to have to know very soon, and Google Trends is a ranked list of current search words. I just checked it and Peter Tork's* name made the top ten which is the shameless reason I put it in my title.)

The point of this is that it's important for all investors to keep expanding their knowledge, and one of the best places to do that could be right on your own broker's website. Since I trade options, I use OptionsXpress and can say that their site provides a wealth of educational and trading tools including powerful real-time charts, options chains, a virtual trading platform so you can test out your strategies, web tutorials, stock screener, strategy scanner, etc.--everything including the kitchen sink!

I'm not getting paid to say nice things about OptionsXpress (unfortunately!) but I see that most of the popular online brokers offer similar trading tools. So before you go out and spend good money on investing seminars and books, check with your broker's website to see what's on their shelves.

As they say, a little education can be a dangerous thing, but a lot of it can make a huge difference to your investing success.

*I clicked on his name and was very sorry to learn that the affable former Monkee has a rare form of cancer.

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