There is something inherently wrong with hearing a recommendation from me, or any other pundit, unless there is a time horizon attached.

And so, sometime in this quarter or next I will have the tools available to be able to segment my recommendations into time horizons, as follows:

I categorize traders in the following five groups, depending on their time horizon:
· Intra-day i.e., < 5 session hours
· Intra-week i.e., < 5 session days
· Intra-month i.e., < 18 session days
· Intra-Year i.e., < 250 session days
· Extra-year i.e., > 250 session days

My profit objective for each time horizon:
· Intra-day i.e., > +0.5 pct per day
· Intra-week i.e., > 1.5 pct per week
· Intra-month i.e., > 5 pct per month
· Intra-Year i.e., > 40 pct per year
· Extra-year i.e., > 30 pct per year

A few points come to mind:
(i) Warren Buffett has managed to earn an extra-year total return (gains plus dividends and interest earned) of about 28 pct, which is remarkable. So, in setting my objective for gains (exclusive of dividends and interest, but prior to commission and administrative costs) at 30 pct p.a. for long-term trading, I am within the realm of reasonable expectation, but clearly a challenging one.
(ii) As the time horizon shortens, my gain objective must increase for the simple reason that (a) risk of losses increase, (b) more work is involved, and (c) costs are greater.
(iii) My personal comfort level is clearly Intra-Month, but that is based on many factors, one of which is that I feel that this is the window of opportunity that is the most level playing field between Wall Street and Main Street. I could write a book on this subject, but will leave the discussion for another day.
(iv) My readers' comfort levels are across all time horizons, and so I try to write at times for all groups. Although I try, I still need to do a better job at explaining time horizon when I write. With better tools I will, and I'm working on that.
(v) At the top banner of the website, I have sections for "Portfolio" and "Trades": these will be fleshed out when I get the tools to do a presentation automatically. Unfortunately I do not have the time to keep all this in my head and do any justice to my hopes and expectations for this blog. I need computer-support, and am organizing that presently.

For someone who has not eaten for a day (in fact reversed the process), I am thinking somewhat clearly. But, I'm going to cut off the writing for today.

Well actually, I have an hour to spare, so why not use it to tell you what's on my mind.

The medical procedure I am going to have today is one I have undergone before, and will again in two years. It is a full colonoscopy. I recommend that every person over the age of 50 have the procedure done every three to five years. In my case, there is a history of colon cancer throughout my Mom's side (all seven brothers and sisters except one) plus other cancers on my Dad's side.

I also have a Fecal Occult Blood Test and a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) Test done as part of a complete annual medical check-up. I recommend everybody does the same.

Fifteen years ago, I was in my 40's when in Atlanta on business I felt a pain in my abdomen, so I returned to Toronto for a hospital visit. I was diagnosed with gallstones that had to be removed immediately. At the pre-operative check, I failed the heart stress test. Then the internist said he didn't like some small growths on my chest, which he said he would biopsy when removing the gall bladder. I guess I was a wreck and didn't know it. A dead person walking.

Immediately after the operation, three days before the doctor gave me permission to travel, I returned for a day or two to each of my businesses in Atlanta and Dallas before going to my boat in Ft Lauderdale to take a break. Then I got the call that the biopsy on the chest material showed malignant melanoma.

You cannot believe how hard that hit me, going from a perfectly healthy person a month earlier, working my usual 100-hour weeks, to sitting in that marina looking at life, wondering if it was all worth it, doubting how long life might go on.

So I returned for another surgical operation, which proved to be successful, and then went back to my boat to relax and recuperate for a month. I made a decision at that point to give it all up, so I drove the Rolls Royce back to Toronto from Lauderdale where I had kept it at dockside, sold it to Don McKinnon, my friend the prospector who discovered the Hemlo gold mines in Northern Ontario. I then made a change of plans that extricated me from the businesses and everything else that weighed on me, and after that moved to Bahamas where I set up a small and quiet offshore business linked to HSBC.

But I can never retire, and life in Nassau was just a little too slow, and my family here, so I returned to Toronto and then went out to Vancouver for a year to start a new business called Qtrade Investor, which quickly became a notable success as the largest independent national direct access brokerage firm in Canada.

Now as my children have grown up and entered the real world, and my parent's and father-in-law's situations are coming to a final resolution, I am preparing to retire once again, probably to Bahamas.

But, you know, retiring to me means cutting back from 100-hour weeks to 60-hour weeks. So, God willing, I'll still be around doing all the things I enjoy most, which is trading, writing, building new businesses, mentoring, and so on.

I'll be back online tomorrow to discuss the 10-year U.S. Treasury Note market that is, in my view, going to take America to the brink, and probably over. You see; the bond market is not in balance today. It is being driven by external forces that have little to do with security trading.

Regrettably, the world is now at global economic Trade War. The Gnomes (who play the securities-based Trading Wars) are exploiting it. The media, for the most part, has been oblivious.

But the implications are serious. I just haven't yet figured out in my own mind whether to adopt a deflation-oriented strategy or an inflation-oriented strategy. I'm leaning deflation longer-term, and inflation for the next several months.

Now, finally, I'll call it a day.