Charts and Tables Up! The election weekend has got my schedule scrambled, my broker's IT team was locked in a death struggle with their computers and I was locked out some of my preferred tools for charts and tables. I downloaded a new version of Internet Explorer and it took a while to figure out the new features and beat some of them into a semblance of usefulness. In other words, this is just another day in the digital age. The issues have in part unwound and I'm in gear and rolling. See ya at the hall.

I've been thinking. What would I do if I was starting to self manage my own account? What if I had just gotten blessed to do so at the most recent meeting? What would I do and how would I handle it? I had already been investing and trading my family IRA's and an individual trading account regularly since 2001, so when we finally got some funds worth investing in in 2004, I hit the ground running with a full tool box and a modicum of experience. What tools and experiences have worked the best for me since then and which things aren't working as well? I could spend some time and effort looking back at this and make myself a better investor and trader... And I could give some thought to what the differences are between trading (my personal trading account) and investing (my 401a account). And I could give some thought to how I would handle it differently if I had only an hour a month vs an hour a week that I cared to spend on it. It's something you'll see and hear about in the near future.