Green Arrow and friends

I can relate to last night’s discusions. I have been a reasonably successful person and thought I was quite savvy when it came to finances and investing. Then I started reading Bill’s blog almost 2 years ago.

At first I was attracted to Bill’s lucid writing style with very logical but thought provoking arguments. While I did not instantly understand everything Bill was talking about, I had a sense that he was somehow different, that he was a successful person with a wealth of experience and that he was willing to share his wisdom to help others and make our world a better place.

So I stuck with reading the blog every day. At first I scanned through it for Bill’s posts because quite frankly, I thought some of the bloggers were from another planet as I had no idea of some of the things they we talking about. But as time went on I started reading more of the comments and followed up on their links to other articles. My knowledge skyrocketed. I came to realize how valuable the shared knowledge of Bill’s readers were. I also became more aware of how complicated the markets are, how diverse our backgrounds and views are and how much we can learn from other.

Over the last 2 years I am amazed that I just kept learning and learning even though I kept thinking I had reached the point of saturation. I feel like the energizer bunny that just keeps learning and learning.

Bill truly is a wizard. His basic approach of concentrating on high quality stocks and using the AZ and DZ is pure magic. Like magic this approach sifts through the market fog and magically the rabbits named AZ and DZ are yanked from a hat. And like all good magicians, just when you think you have it worked out, Bill pulls another pearl of wisdom from his sleeves, whether it be options strategies or some different way to look at a market or technical indicator.

I would now like to share, two of revelations that helped clarify concepts being discussed on this blog. I hope this will help some of the newbies and rookies to this site get a head start.

1.
Bill often writes about different time frames. Sometimes his comments seem to be contradicting earlier comments but this is only because the time frames are different. For example at the moment he has said he believes we are in a bear phase that started in July but expects a short term rally with lower highs before declining to newer lows. I therefore find it very helpful to first of all clarify in my own mind the time frame thatis being discussed. Once I worked this out the markets started to make so much more sense. Different views could both be right once the time frames and market sectors were understood.

2.
There is a huge difference between investing and trading and each require a different approach.

INVESTING
• Usually based on fundamental analysis or prospectivity of the companies ideas, assets, intellectual knowledge etc.
• Usually held long term regardless of short term market fluctuations due to the belief that the long term intrinsic value being ultimately recognized by the market.
• Wide stops if they are placed at all. Usually only sell if something fundamental changes with the fundamentals or reason for investing in the first place.

TRADING
• Usually based on technical analysis but can also be based on gut feel or hot tips
• Short term from intra day to several days
• It is absolutely Imperative to have a solid trading plan with an entry and exit strategy and that you must follow the plan no matter what
• Very tight stops must be a part of the trading plan to ensure quick exit if your trade goes against you.

Not only did my understanding of Bill’s blog escalate but I also started making more money. An example is that I read that one of the most crucial trading rules was to have a stop on every trade. So I put stops on my junior mining stocks. But with the low volume and high volatility I was stopped out a couple of times on intra day lows just prior to the stock taking off. I then realized that I was actually investing in these stocks rather than trading which required a different approach as stated above.

Mongolia the "El Dorado" of the new millennium

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/II01Cb02.html

Hi Bill,

I only started investing, or should I say speculating just over 18 months ago.

I have expertise in the mining industry and have developed an interest in junior mining stocks recently. I hold a similar view to people like Jim Rogers and Don Coxe that we are in the early stages of a long term commodities boom and that there is money to be made in the Juniors if you pick the right ones.

I know mining and found I was quite successful at speculating and selecting a reasonable number of winners. The only problem was that I was not making much money out of these picks. I was poor at the execution. As Dr Alexander Elder would say, I am a good analyst, but very poor trader (investor)

So I spent some time analyzing my speculations and learnt from my mistakes. In the first 6 months I was lucky with a 10.5% gain, but in the second six months have had a gain of over 46% in my portfolio.

These are the things that I learnt from others and through my own navel gazing.
1. I lost a bunch of trades when I acted on a hot tip and bought them in a panic so that I would not miss out on the expected rise. I skipped my due diligence stage stage and paid the price. (eg purchase of Yukon Zinc at $0.80 on rumour and selling at $0.23)
2. I tried to get into too many “good things” and spread myself too thin. I have done better by concentrating on my most prospective selections.
3. I do best when I concentrate on companies that already have something concrete rather than just prospectivity or nearology. Eg decent drill results or are following up on old drill results in historical mining areas.
4. I do worst when speculating on greenfields exploration or nearology.
5. I missed good gains by becoming impatient even though my homework and due diligence was very solid. (eg after PDAC in 2006 I bought LBE.V at $0.60 SWC.V at <$2.00 and UUU.V at <$3.00. I became impatient and sold LBE and SWC to chase other stocks. I sold LBE.V at $0.82 for small gains before it continued to up over $4.00 and sold SWC.V at $3.30 as it continued on its way to +$6.00. Conversely I kept UUU which was in the $8.00 range before the merge with SXR and sold it for $15 when RSI’s were very high and Uranium market looked toppy so I put in a trailing stop which was took me out at $15 on the way down to $11.
6. Use an investment strategy for these stocks rather than a Trading strategy (See my previous post).
7. You must do your due diligence and then create a trading (investment) plan for your potential trade (investment) including entry criteria and exit criteria.
8. From Dr Alexander Elder – you must write down your trading (investing) plan for every trade (investment) and critically evaluate every trade (investment) and learn from it.

Bill,
I have posted a chart of Durable Goods Consumption as % of Personal Consumption.
This percentage is at the 1982 and 1991 recession levels. What do you think?

Today we get the intellectual whipsaw, Ben followed by W. My spidey sense tells me Ben slightly disappoints on rate cuts but provides liquidity (and vigilance) and W announces a few minor fixes for home buyers via FHA/HUD like extended terms and fixed rates. Without home ownership what will W have to show for his term besides Iraq, massive debt and corruption as far as the eye can see?

It appears from the FED funds rate data that FED has adopted a new unofficial target rate of 5.0%. The average rate since Aug-08 is 4.97%. FOMC meeting on the 18th will tell for sure...

http://www.ny.frb.org/markets/omo/dmm/fedfundsdata.cfm

30-Aug 5.00
29-Aug 5.00
28-Aug 5.30
27-Aug 5.27
24-Aug 5.11
23-Aug 4.88
22-Aug 4.77
21-Aug 4.89
20-Aug 5.03
17-Aug 4.91
16-Aug 4.97
15-Aug 4.71
14-Aug 4.54
13-Aug 4.81
10-Aug 4.68
9-Aug 5.41
8-Aug 5.27

taking SLW off the table>adding to WGDFF

HMY....is a standout today. One ultimately has to let price tell the story.

The etf goldminer equally surprises me as a good way to capture an impressive proportion of a major move.

2nd Ave:

Why are you taking SLW off the table?

Anyone have any thoughts about President Bush's bailout plan for subprime mortgage borrowers. I understand that the markets have jumped because of it, but I cannot find any details or analysis of the bailout plan.

Rumors of war with Iran are picking up with two different well placed intelligence sources saying it is coming:

http://tinyurl.com/2w3mh2

Look for anti-Iran rhetoric and propaganda to begin by September 11th as confirmation of this. Also, the Defense Department has just set up a 24-hour 7 day a week press room for ostensibly for Iraq war propaganda purposes but may be for Iran war media management.

northvan-just a ST trade...went in tuesday at 10.68, out today at 11.30...plowed the net into WGDFF>much longer term position...

Community,

I haven't been able to pay as close attention as I'd like to the markets for the last week due to work. What is the current outlook for XAU? From what I read today a lot will depend on Bernanke. What is the outlook for the different time horizons?

Just asking for the basic, "What'd I miss?" stuff. Thanks.

Hi Bill,

With regards to my previous post especially learning # 8.

I want to keep learning and improving. I therefore want to create a one page spreadsheet template to help evaluate junior mining stocks for investing. This template will include the basic knowledge about the company share structure etc, a checklist to ensure the required due diligence is completed, stock valuation, entry criteria, exit criteria and yet to be thought of information..

Once this template is created I hope to share it with the Cara community. It could then be used to evaluate the junior mining stocks that we often discuss. The template will help readers evaluate a stock they are interested in and share the results with the community. The results will provide a basis for discussion, comparison to other stocks and learning from each other.

I therefore request from yourself and your readers to provide suggestions for things they would like to see on this template. Also there are many different “rules of thumb” for valuing mining stocks and I would like to attach mining stock evaluation tools, calculators and models as separate tabs to the spreadsheet to assist readers. So I would appreciate if readers culd please send in any information or suggestions for this area as well.

The more input the better the template will be.

If there is enough interest in this I will make sure it happens.

Bill, I can also see the potential for developing a similar tool for readers to use on other types of stock. For example you could have;

- a template to evaluate stocks to determine if they are “Cara quality stocks” suitable for the “Cara trading method”
-
- a template to evaluate stocks for consideration as “Cara micro stocks”.

Aussieontop,

Some of the things to look into for the miners would be:
-Do they have any non-recourse loan?
-What are the all in costs for the separate mining locations/projects?
-(In the current credit crunch market) Where is extra capital stored? In corporate paper that is at risk?

Aussieontop:
I think a parameter to indicate country risk would be important - there's a lot of KRY holders that would agree, I suspect, as well as EGO, and EXA (so perhaps it needs to be refineable (bad pun) to include province/state within the country).

Also a "hedge" parameter, since a lot of juniors end up with horrible financials as a result of mark to market hedges when POG is rising. Looking forward to the result.

Thanks Aussie.
For your comments. Your investing education seems to mirror mine. Although, you are further along. I can't decide if I'm investing or trading. I agree with you in that I came for Bill's cut through the BS style. It has taken me some time to recognize that nearly every word he writes has a whole paragraph of meaning as you so aptly describe regarding time frames. Now I also read and reread the comments daily. A strange and diverse group, I must say. Keep it up!
I have taken trading steps because of what I am learning here. Time will tell if I sell as well as I buy.
To the Community, I am currently long SLW,GLD,WGDFF and one who shall not be named. I also have 2 inverse etf's, SRS and SKF.
peace and Thanks Capt'n
Gray
PS to 2_ave re the dentist thing. Had a bad event with my grown daughter going to the dentist for the first time after we stopped making appts for her. She sufferrred permanent facial scarring and a total stonewall by the dentist. The stonewall by the dentist included falsifying records and asking the lowest paid person in his office to lie. At least it sounds like your dentist treated you with respect in the face of your questions, after the fact.

Hello and good day one and all,

Today I am grateful and give thanks for this precious gift you all give so freely and always. Thank you.

So, I have a small gain in IAG as of now; but I think the charts are showing Bearish trend. Am I misreading it? Bill speaks of a September rally and seems to be saying as of today and IAG has been on so many outperform lists, I am doubting my eyes.

Just a quick hang in there or get out and wait kind of remark will help much.

Thank you IA.

Aussieontop,

I've been looking to do the same thing with Cara 100 companies in an excel workbook. The ideal thing being, to have most of the information update automatically from the web (financial data). Excel has the ability to extract and update information from websites. A recent thing I've found is a group and files from a yahoo group:

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

"This group is the home base for the Stock Market Functions add-in developed by Randy Harmelink. This add-in contains a number of user defined functions for EXCEL that can allow data to be extracted and/or retrieved from the web and placed directly into EXCEL cells or ranges."

One of the things I've been working on doing is using this to have Cara 100's RSI numbers automatically updated and then sorted.

moab,

Bill Cystol said in the past week to Jon Stewart,"That (invading Iran) would be a good idea." Not a bad source of real(istic) news. Maybe more to come with W.'s religion of democracy as his manifest destiny.

re: spread sheet of rsi's for cara 100,
Anyone on board at Fidelity? Wealth Lab Pro software available there, will generate real time reports and charts, signal buys/sells, offer back testing and optimization of parameters, plus give alerts to your email when criteria met, and even make the trades if you want to.

Nice relief rally. So far, glad that I was gradually reloading my portfolio after stops hit in the past month. India per software signal(not WLP) and thanks to Bill's encouragement has been the best producer.

Transports/viz railroads are doing well today thanks in part to Warren Buffet.
In July I used Fidelity's stock screen for large caps(I guess I'm touting Fido, but not really) with every long term/5 yr fundamental parameter available...
Book Value Growth (5-Yr Avg.): Highest 60%, EPS Growth: 5-Yr Hist.: Highest 60%, EPS Growth (Proj. 5 Yr): Highest 60%, Oper. Margin (5-Year Avg.): Highest 60%, Cap. Spending Growth (5 Yr): Highest 60%...
and railroads had the highest total scores. The railroads (BNI,GWR) I was holding were not doing too well until today. Nice to see fundies catch up to relative price strength.

Volume not impressive on this rally. BNI is the only position with good volume. Everything else not likely to even hit average daily volume.

"It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve -- nor would it be appropriate -- to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions." -- Bernanke

http://tinyurl.com/24n3c2

ALOHA !!

Anybody here ever heard the term "sailboat fuel"? In essence it is what Iraq private contractors call a truckload of "nothing" billed to the US taxpayers.

My friend who owns a concrete contracting business in Las Vegas, NV reported to me that yesterday he was out a one of the Air Force bases and when he drove up to the guard house to gain entry to the base he was greeted not by soldiers but by employees of a private security firm. Rightfully so he asked,"Where are the soldiers?" When you have an all volunteer Army you need the actual gun totting soldiers on the foreign battlefields not guarding the bases back home ...

After reading the following article you will come to see that George Bush did not only invade Afghanistan and Iraq but mainly he invaded the US Taxpayer!

Link: http://tinyurl.com/2fzcta

Here is an excerpt ...
In another stroke of genius, they found a bunch of abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts on airport property, repainted them to disguise the company markings and billed them to U.S. tax­payers as new equipment. Every time they scratched their asses, they earned; there was so much money around for contractors, officials literally used $100,000 wads of cash as toys. "Yes -- $100 bills in plastic wrap," Frank Willis, a former CPA official, acknowledged in Senate testimony about Custer Battles. "We played football with the plastic-wrapped bricks for a little while."

From NOAA Hurricane Center this morning:

http://tinyurl.com/293a6g

Atlantic SPECIAL TROPICAL DISTURBANCE STATEMENT

000
WONT41 KNHC 311310
DSAAT
SPECIAL TROPICAL DISTURBANCE STATEMENT
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
910 AM AST FRI AUG 31 2007

SATELLITE IMAGES AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS INDICATE THAT THE TROPICAL WAVE AND ASSOCIATED LOW PRESSURE AREA LOCATED ABOUT 250 MILES EAST OF THE WINDWARD ISLANDS COULD BE DEVELOPING INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION. AN AIR FORCE RESERVE HURRICANE HUNTER WILL INVESTIGATE THE SYSTEM EARLY THIS AFTERNOON TO CONFIRM IF A DEPRESSION HAS FORMED. WATCHES AND WARNINGS MAY BE REQUIRED FOR PORTIONS OF THE
WINDWARD ISLANDS...AND ALL INTERESTS IN THAT AREA SHOULD BE READY TO TAKE QUICK ACTION...IF NECESSARY. REGARDLESS OF DEVELOPMENT... HEAVY RAIN AND STRONG GUSTY WINDS WILL SPREAD OVER THE WINDWARD ISLANDS LATER TODAY AND TONIGHT.

NOAA photo and video of tropical disturbance:

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/browsh2.html
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/HURRLOOPS/huvsloop.html

Hope it's not headed your way, Bill

Bill

Any insights on SSRI Coventry related woes ?

Listened to the last couple of Donald Coxe calls and following are my notes for your perusal:

• Credit crisis will not be that bad, not as bad as 1987
• Not a debiliting financial crisis which will not make everybody poor
• Crisis is that can’t evaluate price of about $2 trillion of financial assets
• Need to stop creation of products so that existing products can be valued based on actual prices
• Very difficult to tell when will be over
• To fix, will require massive reliquification which will cause a drop in the paper value of money and increase the price of gold in all currencies
• Rate cut in September not a given and may not happen
• If does, gold should really take off
• Risk is that if cut rates, foreign debt holders may rebel, drive down dollar and gold up
• Global commodities prices show that global economy is still good and actual commodity prices are only down slightly this year (commodity stocks are down more)
• Wants to be tied to basic materials (energy, metals, AG) as safest place with most upside as demand is real. Will also be best place to be when get through this tough period
• US Banks still at risk, but may not go lower; hard to know until assets can be valued
• Canadian banks are fine and should not be affected that much and will continue to raise dividends

Buffett (yes, it is him given the size of the position) has been buying BNI consistently on dips over the past 6 months.

Good Afternoon Kaimu:
I just finished reading the Rolling Stone article that you posted above. Thank you for posting it. Everyone who would like to understand how the US snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq should read it and watch the video too.

I'm looking into the excel function that Hoosier wrote about above and I can't seem to find a website that gives RSI information in a non graphic form. Does anyone know of a site that will allow you to view the RSI info on the free portion of the site?

Quentusrex,

That's the same issue I've been running into. The only one available is from Barchart.com. The problem is that it's 9 Day instead of 7 Day.

http://quote.barchart.com/techrept.asp?sym=SLW

The add-in has three formulas to get 9, 14, and 20 day rsi, using barchart.com. So, the weekly RSI is the only one in sync, daily and monthly are different.

anyone have a copy of the most recent Basic Points?

thanks.

On the future of the FED rate and markets direction:

This is the man we are all suposed to listen to!!What a remarcable article!

http://www.smartmoney.com/aheadofthecurve/index.cfm?story=20070831

I've never posted much about my personal investments, but reading others' stories and it seems I've made many of the same mistakes. Lately it's been following to many stories and spreading myself too thin.

I had a lot of luck with miners last fall which probably got me too excited and eventually had me holding more mining stocks than I ever should have. Now in the process of 'unwinding trades' like others, and also hoping for some kind of rally to sell into.

One of my worst recent trades was selling alamos after holding it down to the bottom (5.50), only to watch it pop back up to 7. Still looks to be a dog though...

One more thing I'd add to a investing model, which is probably obvious to most here, is to be on the right side of the trend as Bill likes to say. While near term miners seem volatile, next year or two looks positive given supply/demand fundamentals, so long is right side to be. When it turns however, no point buy & holding miners if there could be multi-year bear in those stocks...

As for call options, had my share of pain with those, and probably not enough experience to be dolling out advice. But I think one lesson i've learned is to either buy long dated close to or in the money when close to AZ. If it starts trading against you, don't ride it out, time premiums evaporate quicked than you think. Alternatively, and more like gambling, is to buy short dated call options on strong momentum. These 'strategies' are from a complete amateur, so any advice/slap upside the head is appreciated :)

Oh, one more thing I'd add to my 'options strategies' is to take profits quickly. If you get lucky and make 10% on a long call after just a few days or weeks, take the profit and wait for the next pullback. Then if you want to buy back in, buy further out calls again. Time is always against you...

Btw, these are just observations. I'm not advocating trading in options and in the future would probably only risk a very small % of portfolio in such activity.

OG-thanks for the NOAA update...NG futures has the potential to make your year, but we have lots of company in that regard, most with deep pockets...it was a simpler play when i was trying to time the 4-5% swings...holding for an "event" to drive prices has been more frustrating...hope you're keeping position size manageable...

re Harmony, in pursuit of positive news, which there is not much of (a plus,right?.. for the contraian)...the tone is mostly "the vultures are circling"....but anyway, two items below, and i love the first excerpt, all in the last few days, from Afican or mining publications...
----------------------
In recent discussions with Harmony's major shareholders, they had raised two major concerns, Motsepe said. The first was the lack of consistency in Harmony's quarterly performance and the second was the absence of management depth and succession planning.

Harmony's board had also needed to ask itself whether it should have done things differently, he said. "The board needs grumpy old men who understand the mining industry and ask difficult questions." (calling BC...half kidding)
------------------
Diversified miner African Rainbow Minerals (Arm) was on Wednesday not excluding the possibility of partnering Harmony Gold at its copper-gold prospect in Papua New Guinea.
---------

Aussieontop and others -

A standard format for trading juniors is a great idea. orking through US Silver for the microcap100 project, I learned that Juniors have LOTS of different features, which need to be accomodated in a std format.

US Silver, for ex, started up by acquiring (6/06) mines and lots of infrastructure from CDE at bargain prices. They listed in 1/07.

So, they're IN production, and aiming to ramp up quickly to major production. How to analyze the benefit to the stock price potential of a quick path to production? of exploration in already proven properties?

I'm still in awe at the responses I received yesterday. Getting advice from Bill is like getting golfing lessons from Tiger Woods. Everyone who wrote had great advice and I appreciate it. I was surprised there was no bashing, no throwing me under the bus, no vulgar words that permeate so many message boards. I'm spending the weekend reading 'Trade your way to financial freedom' by Van K. Tharp, and will then pick up a book by Elder as recommended by many on here. Thanks again.

just reading today's discourse...

great posts, everyone!

Aussie:
"Also there are many different “rules of thumb” for valuing mining stocks and I would like to attach mining stock evaluation tools, calculators and models as separate tabs to the spreadsheet to assist readers." I eagerly await your offering!!

A question for you, Aussie, and Bill and others: do you use technical indicators to time your purchases of junior miners? Given how thinly some juniors trade, is there a liquidity threshold, beneath which TA is not helpful?

regards al.

joey

aussie,

somebody posted this site here before, but it may have some info/metrics that could be useful for your spreadsheet.
i look forward to seeing it and thanks for offering it to us.

http://www.resourcestockguide.com/comparison_table_page.php?p=0|1|3|0|0|33|0

Bill,
Understanding the policitical and economic hx of gold alongside investing in gold, ideally, should overlap. I'm not there yet and kind of think that very few buying gold, for better or for worse, will have the depth in knowledge that some, like Kaimu, already grasp and appreciate. How much should we know?

From a lay pespective, fwiw, this is what keeps my interest: I've been watching my country print money at will for decades, it has the feel of a dirty secret by virtue of little public interest, there's a disconnect that no country is on the gold standard but central banks have a need to store gold, the u.s. is faltering as a super power and the usd may no longer be the common coinage, and since there is no free lunch the chickens sooner or later come home to roost. Then again I have no idea how gold would be formally structured into future trade relations in order to meet issues of trust, or as you refrain...no one wants a wooden nickel. There remains a mystique as to how this end game gets played out. Most of us just want the bankers to do whatever they have to so long we have employment and purchasing power.

Re production cost, is this a good thing or bad thing? Good if it can dictate higher prices of gold; bad if not.

Re increased demand for gold, is it true that the relatively new access to gold etfs is increasing the pog? If so, Japan has just opened up their gold etfs.

As always I appreciate your role as the great communicator for matters of practical significance.

Hoosier, I don't know if you'll get this or if I'll have to repost in the morning, but I spent the day creating a way to accurately compute the Monthly, Weekly, and Daily RSI on an excel sheet. It doesn't use public RSI numbers from the internet. Instead it downloads the actual closing prices for each stock, then does the calculation manually. Then spits the RSI's into a reference-able format. Let me know if you want a copy of the excel sheet. Any anyone else if they want it. I'm glad to share the fruits of my work.

Quentusrex,

Can you post your sheet somewhere? Maybe here?

http://www.mediafire.com/

thanks!

g034,
With Bill's comment as to your futures background I have a question. With many instruments backed by options in the futures markets I struggle with the fact that some of the commodities do not "share" the bid/ask spread in real time. How does one determine a price to pay or a price to sell if there is no recording off the floor? Theoretical value as based on Black Sholes? Is that all we have? Even brokers can't get the spread on the Nymex. Is there a more efficient way? One either pays too much or sells for too little. tia

Quentusrex,

I'm interested. Please let us know where and when you post it.

Bill, love the photos of the new workspace. How do you ever concentrate on something as trivial as the market, when you have such peaceful surroundings in which to do your thinking? I couldn't. Looking at those photos, I can almost smell the salt air, and hear the gentle lapping of the water at the sides of the boat. Cheers, and thank you for all you do for us, even from Paradise. :-)

Quentusrex,

Would appreciate very much. Sounds like just the thing am looking for.

Thanks IA

my gold short was pretty poor timing by the looks of yesterdays action, will close it out if we clip $685 on monday.

interesting times.

Quentusrex - I'd love a copy of your RSI-calculating spreadsheet.

jockgunter@yahoo.com

While I find Bill's scenario for gold very persuasive, I also can't forsee the world actually returning to a gold standard.

In college before Nixon decoupled the US$ from gold, I heard economics profs smugly dismissing the gold standard as anachronistic. After all, how could world trade and investment be constrained by how much yellow metal can be dug from the ground?

Little did they suspect the irresponsibility of today's governments!

While I think gold will explode in price as faith in fiat money declines, I also think some other form of global financial discipline will evolve. Perhaps this will be based on a range of hard commodities.

After all, in a sense the professors were right !

Quentusrex,

As Bill says, "Wherever we are, I have a feeling we are on the same page." I did the same thing, setting up the sheet to download closing prices automatically and then calculating the daily RSI 7. However, I haven't been able to figure out how to do weekly and monthly... so you're two steps ahead of me. I would really appreciate your offer of sharing your work. tpwilliamson@gmail.com

To me at least, when I get this tweaked correctly, it would save me a lot of time and effort in monitoring of stocks of companies I like... allowing me to focus limited time. Thanks Quentusrex!

very generous quentusrex. i would love a copy. maybe you could send it to Bill and he could use the site to distribute it like he does for research reports. although i don't know if it is feasible given the ISP problems. thanks so much!

I'll ask Bill if he wants to host it. If not I'll still send it those who asked.

Quentusrex,

If you are not able to post it. I would very much appreciate you emailing it to me. Not being the most computer competent. It is slow going for me. It would be a great help. Your offer to help is greatly appreciated. And, that is what makes this community so special.

jsuttie@verizon.net

Thanks again. jfs

The current excel file is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7sxl1g9tfor

One thing to know about the file is that you have to have an addon installed. Here is where you get it:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

Once you have those setup the file is pretty easy to use. Sheet3 has all of the tickers for the Cara100. If you want to replace a ticker with one of your own, you must replace it on Sheet3. All the tickers on Sheet1 are references to Sheet3.

Let me know what changes I should make. I plan to release another version soon that should make things a bit simpler.