Roving Mad

So with the market soaring like it has lately, I’ve been monitoring and watching the stock market a lot more.  I still have much to learn about valuation but I have read a few books on technical analysis.  One of those books is Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes by Brian Shannon.  It’s a great book that talks about using technical analysis and modifying what you look at based on your trading habits and timeframe.  By reading it, I’ve figured out that I’m not a short term trader by any means, but I want to be involved frequently.  So I’m more of a medium term trader – maybe a trade every week or two.  That also gives me a better chart to read and I can try to time my entrances and exits better.  Still getting used to it, but I’m starting to see the patterns.

I tried to use my trading platforms to draw charts for each of my stocks but I now use a much easier alternative.  Enter Finviz.  A great, free stock site full of great information on individual stocks – charts, a stock screener, heat maps, gainers/losers, relevant earnings announcements.  It’s really amazing the kind of information you can get for free from their site.  They do have an Elite platform that is a paid portion – but I haven’t found the need to use that just yet.  Maybe if I get more familiar with valuations – then I think the EPS, P/Es, forward P/Es, etc. will mean more to me.

But the greatest thing about Finviz is the charting.  Based on my trading habit, I can pull up a chart on any stock and it will automatically draw the relevant chart lines that I’m interested.  It has MAs, but it will also draw the channels or trendlines that you can follow to time your entries.  Or to monitor if a stock is hitting resistance or support, or breaking out.  I haven’t trusted my analysis enough lately but had I, there would have been some winners.  Of course, everything is hindsight so I might not have hit every point perfectly, but I think I need to have more confidence in my picks.

Just take a look at some of these examples: AAPL and F.

On AAPL, this is the recent chart so some of the lines have been redrawn but back in the middle of December 2011, the stock hit the bottom trendline at about 380.  It bounced right off that and started its ascension into the stratosphere.  That was my first miss.  Based on this recent chart – if you were gutsy enough, you might have purchased around 460 when it pushed right through the upper trendline and you would be sitting on almost 9% in profit now.  And all this for just bringing up the chart in Finviz and making a call.  No messing around with drawing your own lines.  It’s all right there.

Same with F.  Back in mid-December, the trendlines were different but it broke the upper trendline around 11, which is where I bought some.  Now it’s sitting up by 12.48.  Again, easy to see, easy to make the decision.

So I’m pimping it pretty hard but I have no financial gain/stake in this.  It’s just damn easy.  So try out Finviz.  And subscribe to the Elite if you need it.  Or if you just want to support them.  If I can make more trading, I might just do that.

I just went through an FHA refinance earlier this year and I am about to wrap up another refinance. If you were regretting missing the rates from last November, well they are just as low if not lower now and now is the time to refinance again! Do your best to find a lender that will do it at no-cost so it truly will be just paper work to save you money. I know some of you may be afraid of debt and want to pay your mortgage off early – but this is basically free money. If you are struggling to make payments, this will ease the burden. If you have a decent amount of equity in your house, pull some out! You are sitting on an ATM basically. At least put it to better use, like that 2nd home/investment property you’ve always dreamed about.

So just my opinion here but I like my opinion. I’m open to debate on this so comment away.

5 Year Chart of 30 Year Fixed Mortgage (source: bankrate.com)

I pointed out 2 alternate driving routes on the way from DC to New York and vice versa. Hallelujah, one of them is no longer needed!

The EZ Pass lanes at the border of Delaware are now open and it’s a vast improvement over what used to be there, both pre-construction and during construction.  Along with the speed that you can blast through (within the legal limit of course), there’s another improvement in all this construction.  Delaware has a new rest stop and it’s beautiful!  Bizarre that I even typed that about a rest stop…  I wish I had taken pictures while I was there but it’s basically a comfortable airport lounge with a great design.  Food court is designed well, it’s clean, it’s bright, it’s spacious.  I love it so much I stopped on the way up and on the way back from a recent trip to Philly – that I did in one day.  Another bonus is the gas prices are not that far from what you would see in New Jersey so definitely worth the stop.

With good news, comes bad news.  New Jersey Turnpike traffic North continues to be horrible.  We’ve used an alternate route a few times to get around that too.  The backup happens around construction on 7A so if you notice traffic getting heavy before Exit 7 on the NJT Northbound, try this.

Take Exit 7 and keep right at the fork to get onto to US-206N.  In about 2 miles, merge right onto US-130.  Follow that for 5 miles until you hit I-195 East. (Optionally, there’s a great shopping plaza called Hamilton Marketplace that’s also a good rest stop alternative.)  Follow I-195 East for about 1.5 miles and you will see signs to get back on NJ Turnpike.

This route avoids about 9 miles of traffic but you will most likely be sitting in traffic again once you get on.  Hope it helps a little bit though.  Bonus tip: ALWAYS take the “Cars/Trucks/Buses” split on the NJ Turnpike.  ALWAYS.  When in doubt, ALWAYS!

I have been on quite the buying spree lately, as my upcoming blog posts will detail. In my buying spree, I felt that I needed to replace some sorely outdated and/or old clothes. So all but one pair of my jeans are ripped at the knees. Apparently, since I’ve had kids, I play a lot more on the ground and rough up my jeans pretty quickly. So I felt the need to replace my jeans with some complete jeans, without holes…

Now I normally have a very difficult time with jeans to begin with, even when trying them on in a store. So I decided I should just try to find the ones I have, and buy the exact same pair. Well, after searching on Google, I came upon those jeans on Ebay! It really never occurred to me to buy clothes on a site like Ebay, but why not? I guess there’s the possibility that they might be ripoffs but I would hope that the feedback system would indicate something to that effect and I could just stay away from the shady buyers.

So I just this week purchased a pair of jeans and they are on their way to me. No tax, free shipping, and no need to drive out to the store. Hopefully it’s the same as the pair of jeans I have now because I do love them and if I wear them out just as quickly, I know where to get them again.

I ended up returning the snow boots that I highlighted. I never have good luck shopping for shoes online, so that should be the lesson for all. Unless you have the EXACT same pair of shoes and you know for sure that it will fit, then you can order shoes online. Otherwise, it’s just a pain.

Also, I knew the impulse buy would come back to get me. That 3 pack of sleds I purchased for around $37 dollar, they now go for $30 dollars. And they aren’t even very good sleds. And I’ve used only one of them, one time since the purchase. I knew it…

My area is getting blasted with snow right now and it’s really the first major snowfall of the season. And every time it’s a major snowstorm – I always regret not having a few things. I never have good snow boots so when I’m trudging around in 6-12 inches of snow, I’ve got all snow gear on, and then my sneakers, which get soaked.

Also, my kids really don’t have a very good sleds. We have last-minute, leftover wafer looking things from Target that are terrible and don’t really do much. So we end up borrowing our neighbors sleds to go down our hills. Finally, my kids are getting old enough now where they want to do what Daddy is doing – so I wanted to get them kid snow shovels so they could help me out when I’m shoveling. And by help, I mean, just drag the shovel around and make more of a mess. But whatever makes them happy.

So the shoes, I’ve attempted to purchase before.Never found a good pair and just delayed on purchasing them this year because we haven’t had a huge snowstorm. Well now I totally regret it, so I went ahead tonight and just purchased the shoes below .  Yeah, after I get them, I most likely won’t need them for the rest of this season, but I’m so irritated with myself that I’m just going to get them now and NEXT TIME, I’m ready!

Salomon Snowtrip

Speaking of irritated, I saw kid snow shovels and great sleds at Bed Bath and Beyond awhile back.  But as we all know, BBB always has 20% off coupons, so I decided to hold off.  Well, never got enough coupons, forgot to go back – and lo and behold, today, they had nothing.  No kid shovels, crappy sleds.  So, think I’m going to go on Amazon right now and buy those things.  I’m not sure yet, but here are a few that I’m thinking of.

So moral of the story – just buy it.  Preferably using my Amazon links.  Enjoy the snow if you have some and be safe!

I’m on an online ordering kick. And I’m not sure why I didn’t do this before. But Amazon is offering 30% off on select diapers and wipes. The gist of it is that it’s 15% off for being an Amazon Mom (re: ordering a baby product) and 15% off for starting a Subscribe & Save subscription on the product. Now the great thing about S&S is that you can cancel the “subscription” at any time and there’s no obligation. So it works out to a free 15% off. The other benefit is that if you registered for Free Amazon Prime with Amazon Mom, you get a free month for every order over $25 bucks – which is basically a box of diapers for me.

One final consideration: Parents or Parenting Magazine often have a 20% coupon for diapers at Amazon so that will save you even more! There are a lot of coupons for sale on ebay so if you feel like saving more, you can go buy that.

Summary:

• If you want, go to ebay and buy a 20% off coupon – search “Amazon diaper coupon”
• Go to Amazon and get your 30% off Diapers

If you were looking to buy essentials to stock up on, particularly if you are looking for baby/kid/bathroom stuff, run for this deal. Medco Health Store has 3 coupons that are $10 off $25 orders. I just used all 3 in a row and I have order confirmations – hopefully I get shipment confirmations. I’ll update the post once I receive them. But I was able to order a bunch of things that I normally would get anyways from Target or some drugstore, but now I get $10 bucks off. And shipping was a reasonable 99 cents so it doesn’t even push the cost much higher.

Go now. Don’t delay:

• Site: Medco Health Store
• Valid Coupon Codes:
  1. DR10
  2. LIB10
  3. 10LIB

I drive the I-95 route quite a bit between DC and New York and the travel time can vary significantly based on traffic, construction, and just general congestion. I never really feel the difference when it takes an hour more but when it gets to be more than that, one starts to wish that one took an alternate route around some of the madness. I have a neighbor that drives from DC to Boston and ALWAYS takes the routes through Pennsylvania to get around I-95, even though it automatically guarantees adding on 1-2 hours extra on the DC to NY portion. I would rather gamble that time on I-95 and hopefully find ways around those pockets of predictable traffic. As such – I found this excerpt from my local paper interesting. It provides various alternate ways around traffic on the I-95 corridor, especially these days, with significant traffic occurring due to construction on a toll plaza in Delaware. So for my reference more than anything else, I’m re-typing/re-printing the pieces I though were relevance. Thanks to Dr. Gridlock from the December 9, 2010 issue of the Washington Post.

Around the construction for new EZPass lanes in Delaware:

The “local streets” detour that travelers most frequently recommmend is this: From I-95 North, take Routh 279 toward Newark, Del. Turn right onto Iron Hill Road. At the end, turn left onto Chestnut Hill Road. Then turn right onto Route 896 (South College Avenue). I-95 will be a quarter-mile down the road.

Some travelers wrote in to say there’s a better way that keeps off local streets. They recommend: I-95 to Route 279 to Elkton Road, which becomes Route 2. Then go north about two miles, right on Route 4 (Christiana Parkway) for about a mile, then right again on College Avenue, with I-95 ahead.

Alternate route around southbound NJ Turnpike when it goes from six to 2 lanes.

A better choice is to cross into Pennsylvania near Philly. The extra tolls involved are worth the annoyance avoided. There are several ways to do this. One I use is to take NJ Turnpike exit 7A near Allentown, and go to I-195 West then I-295 South. At the intersection with I-76/676, go west. Follow the signs to I-95 South. Continue into Delaware and Maryland, avoiding the Delaware Bridge. One piece of advice. Refuel on the NJ Turnpike first because the price is lower and it avoids having to exit the interstates to get gas, which has the potential to get you lost in local traffic.

I’m looking forward to trying these out to see if they actually save time!

I just paid for a free service.

LastPass is an online password manager that allows you to manage your password vault online but also provides plug-ins to just about every browser you can think of and offers the ability to access your password vault on a mobile device for a premium charge of $1 a month. But even without access to my passwords on my mobile device, there is so much ability and functionality of just the browser plugins alone that I have found it invaluable. So you may ask… if you are using the free portions of LastPass and have no need really for the premium features, why are you even paying? Those that know me would definitely be asking that question.

Well, it’s one of those things where I was getting it for free, but I am just so impressed by the service and how invaluable it has been to me that I preemptively said, I should support these guys and this product before it goes the way of XMarks (Edit: Actually, LastPass went ahead and bought XMarks.  My extra money helped, no doubt). I use LastPass as described – to maintain my all my passwords in a single location and I only have to remember one vault password. Single point of failure – probably yes – but how many of you are using the same password anyways…

Lastpass also doubles as a bookmark manager for my important stuff. So while I manage bookmarks in my browser – often times important, daily bookmarks get lost between random other links I have bookmarked like How to Make Korean Fried Chicken and assorted Lifehacker URLs. Credit to Lifehacker to turning me on to LastPass in the first place, though.

So that’s it – $12/year for a service that I use on all my computers (and use daily) to access all my important sites and save me time from having to dig through bookmarks and find account info that many of you continue to maintain in some notepad text file somewhere on your hard drive… I urge you to use it for free and when you realize how great it is – you might also have that crazy moment in your life where you actually splurge and pay for a free service.