Online Stock Trading

Of course, I don’t mean that literally; not in the “close your positions by market close” kind of way. What I mean (as strange as it might sound) is the um, actually “trade during the day” way. Believe it or not, I don’t actually have the opportunity to physically place trades during market hours (I’ve mentioned this before, to some peoples’ surprise). I’ve relied almost exclusively on limit orders set prior to the market open either the night before or in the morning of each and every day. In some respects this has been a good thing: I always get what I want, independently of how the market decides to behave after news blurbs start flying over land, sea, and through air. But in another respect, it’s often frustrating: I feel blindfolded. Hell, I am blindfolded.

But not today. I had accrued so much paid time off at my job that I had to take it now, before the end of the year. They do the “use it or lose it” thing. So like wow like. I’m just going to have to get at least twenty-five grand going so I can do this full time . That was fun. Being able to actually see what the hell I was doing, to see what the hell was happening was pretty much enough to make me think twice about ever deciding to not do this full time in the future.

I was able to swap out my (PHY) and (C) holdings for a fresh dance with (ACH) and a small nickel-dime job with (PMI). More than likely, I’ll be reentering Citigroup soon, but I couldn’t pass up clamping down on more than sixteen months of savings account level gains in six days. Also, it looks like (HW) is finally implementing their share buyback. With any luck the stock price inflation will scare off some of those damned shorts. They’re killing me. After that, one more decent quarterly report from them and I should be just that much closer to my island. My island? Oh I thought I told you. Ah, you don’t know the island thing…

Well how about this then? Did you know about the Starbucks card? The free one? 10 bucks, me to you, for nothing? Yeah, the one where all you have to say is, “enter me” in a comment? Oh, of course you knew! It’s right here.

But alas, free to think and to see today, just so you know, I still placed all my orders as limits .