"If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen."
-- Joe DiMaggio

I'm still not up to speed on the Web tools; I'm doing my regular weekend financial rituals, then doing screen shots of spreadsheets and graphs, capturing them to files, excerpting cropped data to new temporary files, stripping out some stuff, cleaning them up with an image editting program, sizing and resizing them, uploading them, posting them into a Web site based editting and preview program, swearing a blue streak potent enough to make a 4th year boilermaker apprentice blush, dumping everything and starting all over. Not necessarily in that order. I shouldn't have to buy my own beer as long as I'm in the trade. But eventually it gets done. So the site is updated for this week. If you've been to a recent presentation, you oughta be 90% up to speed just by dragging your eyeball across the screen. If not, you're missing all the background. You know what to do about it.
So stick a fork in it, the toast has left the building, and the fat lady just clocked the bouncer with the drumset. This is where I stop for now. Except to say, I'm heavily invested in the best four out of six stock mutual funds available to Local members and I jumped on them the week that they became available to me. I was there for much of the recovery out of post dotcom crash/Iraq war (PDCIR) period and as of last week I was up 30%+ since the McMorgan Funds were replaced with something more to my liking. Every week I do the graphs to make sure the trend is up, I use FundAlarm.com to make sure the funds are exceeding their benchmarks and are above the 50th percentile on a long term basis, and I don't sweat the noise.
The radio and print is full of hysteria over the stock market blowup last week and the end of life as we know it. But only until the next headline comes along or the market goes up. What it means to me is that instead of being up 30% since 9/04, now I'm only up 28% over the last 16 months. I've got enough of a cushion to give me a sense of calm about Monday's stock market. I kinda figure it'll probably go down. Or not. Whatever. You gotta make the money while you can and I just had a great run. Now I gotta see if there is anything left to this post PDCIR recovery. They average around 36 months and this one started in Fall of 2002. Do the math. But then, each time somebody sez, "It's different this time." Mostly it isn't. But it is never ever exactly the same either. So I'm stayin' the course. There is a real possibility that all we are seeing is a change of leadership and not a crash. If that is true and our funds are in the right place, we're cool. But if my money starts to fade away any further, I'll take some or all of it off the table and maybe change casino's or park it with the desk while I get something to eat. I've tried the wallflower strategy and the deer in the headlight strategy and didn't care for them. So I've changed the program. I like this one better.
This here's one of those internet interactive blog thingies. If ya got a comment or question ya can post it and then wait and see if I've got the time and inclination to answer it. Pretty neat, huh? See ya at the hall.