First Day Blogging

Hey everyone (or no one right now actually), I have just started a blog which will pertain to investing/trading the stock market. My goal for the blog will really be to create some dialogue within the family about investing and various strategies for your individual goals. We have an intelligent and quantitatively minded family, and I think we may all be able to learn from each other.

To try to keep this blog applicable to basically everyone in the family, I want to focus the ideas around a " lazy" or maybe "not so lazy" portfolio that can be used in an individual brokerage account to significantly outperform the markets over time (could be used in an IRA also). Also, while some of you reading this may not know this, there are relatively simple ways to profit during times when the markets are going down as well as when they rise.

I have a certain basic model that I will use to indentify trading opportunities. When the model "triggers" I will post the date, fund to buy, and price on the blog. Then I will post the same info and profit/loss on the the blog when exiting the trade. I will keep these archived/posted so that you can follow them over time. I would estimate the average holding time per trade of between 1 and 3 weeks. So over the course of a few months, you may begin to get a realistic idea of performance and volatility and see if it is something that you would be interested in using.

The funds I will be using will be mainly QLD and QID. These are exchange traded funds that double the performance of the Nasdaq 100 fund, QQQQ, to the upside and downside respectively. So, if the Nasdaq 100 rises 5%, the QLD will rise 10% and the QID will decline 10%. The converse would be true if the Nasdaq 100 declined by 5%. This allows you to buy the QLD when you expect the market to rise and to buy the QID when you expect the market to fall. So your returns will be double that of the Nasdaq 100, which is a good thing if your model is succesfull and horrible if your model is not successfull.

One main draw of this style is that say the Nasdaq 100 rises 10% after you buy QLD and then you sell. You have made 20%. Then the Nasdaq 100 falls 5% after you buy QID, then you sell. You made 10%. So you made 30% total while the Nasdaq 100 gained a total of 5%.

Please write comments, so that I don't get bored and stop blogging:)

Pete