Nothing at all about my background would lead anyone to think that I would find a career in the financial services industry.  We moved to Florida when I was 7 years old, and as I was growing up my dad worked for the Miami Herald for 23 years, mainly supervising paperboys.  My grandfather was a jockey, and later a machinist who worked in factories that made things including brass beds and plumbing fixtures.  My mom (who’s 67^th birthday was celebrated yesterday) worked as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, later as a bookkeeper in a retirement community, and then she did clerical work in a mail-order business.  Thanks, mom!  If anything, you might be the reason I work in an air-conditioned office behind a desk, as opposed to outside in the heat.

Why tell you so much about my personal story?  Because it makes it easier to see that I had no special advantages in the business of investing, and hopefully it can be an inspiration to you.  I was not born or raised with exposure to the knowledge and skills that it takes to be a successful investor. I am self-taught, and Bill O’Neil and John Murphy were two huge influences.  Throughout more than the past decade I have listened to them both at investment conferences, seen them both on television, read articles about them in magazines, and followed their analysis online.  But I still consider this career choice to be a learning experience - one that is constant and never-ending.

Top athletes train continually.  I saw a segment on a sports television program recently where one NFL coach was training his team by tossing bricks (not footballs) and having players catch them.  So the story went, Jerry Rice, one of the greatest receivers in the game, had brick catching as a part of his previous training routine.  Obviously, investors who want to get great results should do some regular training too.  It may not be fun and interesting to commit your valuable time to reading daily reports, but that should definitely be a part of your exercise routine as an investor.  How else are you going to be familiar with what is going on in the market and be in the right position to score? There is no replacement for doing the work.  It is your choice – work hard and have a chance at the big bucks and stardom, or slack off and risk getting cut from the team. 

There are certain recognizable characteristics of typical bull markets, and despite record oil and gas prices, and the damages caused by Katrina, we have actually been seeing several good indications in the recent trading activity.  One would be the market’s ability to shrug off bad news and keep on chugging higher.  Days like several of the latest up days, where the market starts by showing early weakness, then rallies and finishes strong, are also a bullish indication.  Another is the number of new highs outpacing the new lows.  So, in many ways the market is showing us textbook action of a bullish market, with the major indices technically finding support near their short-term moving average (50 DMA). And after August brought mostly declines for stocks, a move up is not entirely surprising given the state from which the latest bounce in equities began.

Without much confidence, you might be afraid things will continually melt down from here.  However, in a bull market, leading stocks do not succumb to much profit taking, and the dips are viewed as buying opportunities.  In other words, if you missed your ideal buy point on a recent breakout, you may want to watch it closely.  You might get another chance to pick up a leading stock during normal consolidation back toward its 50 DMA.  There you can usually put a tight stop loss, too.