More Metro Fun

The metro trains have been all screwed up in downtown Manhattan (where the lines all cross each other). A train will make a stop, then suddenly the announcer will say "we are going to be stopping at station whatever (which is totally not on the line)", and then there is a scramble as about a hundred people get out of the train before they end up going in the opposite direction they intend to go. Then all those poor people have to figure out how to work their way back to their stop.

To go between my flat and work place I had a choice of two lines which happened to be sharing the same track because of construction. Either one was fine, they both made the same stops. One day, I was sitting on Line B to get to my connection, and the train just up and went on its usual pre-construction course without any announcement at all. This was a problem because I did not realize what happened until I was seeing unfamiliar stops. So I jumped out first chance I had and found a map to figure out where the heck I was. I ended up way out on the West Side of Manhattan. I have never been on any of the lines or stations on the West Side because all my business was on the East Side or even further east in Queens or Brooklyn. I had no idea how to get where I want to go without backtracking. There was a map at the station, but if the trains are picking routes out of a hat then a map is not help at all. I got on a line that thankfully made the stops it was suppose to make and I bailed out on the East Side before I ended up in Queens, found my regular line, and made it to my place of work.

Another night I stepped on a line to Brooklyn on the southern tip of Manhattan to go home, and the announcer came on and said "mumble mumble last stop mumble". I figured he meant last stop before Brooklyn, so I just sat down and the train began moving. I noticed that I was the only person in the wagon, and I thought that was kind of ironic. Most of the time it is packed, and here I am with a wagon all to myself! Nice! Then I looked out into the other wagons too, and I thought "wow, looks like I got the whole TRAIN to myself!". The train then began to slow, and eventually stopped deep in the middle of the earth. This happens sometimes, so I waited as usual. Only, the train wasn't going anywhere. Time passed, "what is going on?" I thought. Then I began to think back and everything suddenly came together--the train was parked off the line. I walked down through the wagons while the automated announcer kept saying "It is a violation to walk between cars while the train is in motion...."--the stupid train is NOT in motion! You do your thing first, train! I found the guy in the middle who does the doors, and he asked me "fell asleep?" And I apologized and said I am new to New York and what is going on with the train???? Apparently the line was moved back to express schedule and no longer made the trip to Brooklyn at night, so it was waiting off the line before turning around and going back the other way. I waited a few minutes, the train returned to the station I just left, so I got out and found another train to Brooklyn. Whew!

My Braiiiinn!

I am drooling to get onto the platform tomorrow and start live trading. The only thing to damper my enthusiasm is ALL THE HOMEWORK I have to do ("Pre-market Preparation") before I can trade tomorrow. I have to have an action plan written out, a checklist to determine if a trade is good enough to enter (risk management), and have an idea of the market sentiment of that day.

As a day trader, I will make my money on the movement of the market, either up or down. I WANT the market to crash because then I can "short" stock (stocks fall twice as fast as they go up). Now is a great time to short stock because the whole market is falling at the moment.

Tomorrow I will be using real money live on the real market, even though I may only trade 10 shares at a time, with maybe 10 trades for the day. A mature trader will use 1000-3000 shares in a trade, with maybe 1-2 trades a day. One trade of a $0.30 gain means a profit of $300 for a share lot of 1000. I'll be aiming for a gain of $1+ per share. It is all so exciting because money is exciting. The hard part is not getting excited because that is when traders make mistakes.

Day 1 Pro Trading

The class size is small, only 20 people. But I am the youngest. Most are in their forties or fifties. Why do I end up being the youngest in all the circles I pass through? Most of my friends are older than me, the people I work with are older, and now back to school--and everyone is older than me. What's up with that?

Everyone but me and another guy are experienced traders. I am very happy for that because the instructor does not waste time explaining basic concepts and terms. We can move quicker to the hands-on live trading, which is what I want. I already have the background, now it is time to put it all together.

People, don't put your money on the stock markets without the proper training. Most of the class are people who had to first lose money before they figured they should get some education about trading. I am one of the few who are getting the proper training before adventuring out into the market. I am lucky in that case because I am learning from the mistakes of my friends who got me into trading in the first place.

If math turns you on, I did Fibonacci Retracement of stock trends. Fibonacci numbers are used often in the patterns used to confirm price movements in equities. That was something I could not figure out myself without the class instruction.

The most important tool in technical analysis is identifying zones where market sentiment changes. Knowing that allows me to make targets and measure risk. There is no guessing or hope here. This is not gambling. Sentiment changes where the balance between supply and demand changes. If you know that, you know where the direction of the market will probably continue, or where it could suddenly turn.

In Search of Express

I took a little tour of the metro system of Brooklyn and Manhattan. This originally started as a search for a station where I could pick up the B train and cut ten minutes off my daily commute to Manhattan. What I ended up doing was touring the stops along the line I have been taking so far, and only finding the elusive B train at the end when I didn't need it anymore. The weirdest stop experience was at Dekalb Avenue at 3pm when the whole station filled up with high school kids waiting for a train home. I think school buses were dropping the kids off and flooding the underground with loud, rambunctious kids, because the came down the stairs in waves. Now, I have been stuck at a station or in a wagon with some very annoying characters, but being stuck at a station with A LOT of annoying characters was not pleasant at all.

On the other hand, though, there was a rather interesting blind guy who came on the train (after the kiddy experience) who sang with some talent for change. He had a kind of little tap dance (with a walking cane!) to go along with it.

I found a route that goes straight from my flat to the stop just next to the school on Wall Street, so I won't have to worry about an hour commute before classes start at 9am. That is the most important discovery of my little underground tour.

Kung Fu Kitty

Yes, I am bleeding. But it was worth it. I had to show that I was the boss. I managed to fold that cat into a ball before it went all out on my hand. I just threw it out of the room again because it pounced on me while I was typing on the laptop I'm borrowing. This cat is fun because it is actually kind of threatening. I tease it through the glass table top and it tries to take more waving flesh from below. To get back at me the cat did a number on my luggage and pulled it open and rolled itself all over my clothes.

Ninja cat belongs to the owners of the apartment where I am staying--in Brooklyn. I never made it to Newark. There were all sorts of obstacles, which were sort of providential, because this place is way better. I am not far from Manhattan or Brighton Beach. Everything I need is right here. And for some weird reason it is quiet, even though it is Friday night.

I had one person explain to me that a commute of an hour and a half from Brooklyn is way better then Newark because in Newark I would be dead. Well, that is rather an extreme way to put it. But I can get to school or work within an hour, so that is not bad.

I have two jobs now, so I am making a little bit of money. I am preparing for my stock trading course Jan. 30th. I expect to be in NYC until early March, then I will move permanently to Texas. I plan to be in Canada this summer.

From Manhattan to Newark

Everyone has a camera. Everyone who goes to Central Park takes pictures of the buildings, bridges, and statues. Taking pictures of the buildings, bridges and statues is boring. I want unique pictures. So, I try to take pictures of the people in Central Park. I try to capture moments. Taking pictures like these is more like hunting. I walk around or stand waiting for something to happen.

I found my favorite jewelry store in Manhattan. It is at the SE corner of Central Park. Sure, all the other jewelry stores sell pretty stuff, but I found one that sells only antique Russian jewelry. All that stuff has a bloody history behind it. They are relics of an empire that no longer exists. I like old stuff like that.

Since the New York City chapter of my life is not complete without a ghetto experience, I am renting a room in Newark, New Jersey. That puts me across the Hudson River from Downtown Manhattan where I'll be studying. For those of you who don't know Newark, it is sort of the "Baghdad" of the region. Lots of robbery and shootings, gangs and drugs. I will be right next to the university, so there is a lot of security there. There is also access to useful things like a library and good stores. The cost of living there is very low, that is the main reason I am moving over there.

Back in NYC

I made it back to Manhattan. I am looking into an apartment in New Jersey to be my home for now. In the time being I have to prepare for school in February and make some money.

I wondered Central Park with my camera gear which I finally brought up from Texas. While taking pictures, I had what I think is more than my fair share of people stopping me for something. "Can you take a picture for us?" "Is it okay to walk over this bridge?" I even made a record for myself when about twenty Japanese college students stopped me to help them figure out their map of Central park and its sights. There is probably potential here for an interesting social science project.

Winter Rains

It is raining. "What is interesting about that?" you ask. I am in Texas. Rain is EXCITING in Texas! To see rain after months of sun is worth talking about. It makes a mess, though. The ground here is all clay and the water does not go into the ground. It just floods. Sometimes flash floods. We are talking about driving through lakes on the roads. This explains why the roads go over huge bridges spanning wide, dry river beds. Because they totally flood when it rains.

I have not had a chance yet, but I want to go see some flash floods. Actually, I want to take an inner tube and go ride a flash flood. Judging by all the twisted trees and rolled over rocks in the dry riverbeds, that would be a wild ride!

There is lightning and thunder too. For me, that is a summer phenomenon. But here it is, winter, with rain, thunder, and lightning. I feel like it is summer. This makes me feel some foreboding. If winter is so....nice and summer like, then what will the real summer bring?

Wow, I can't believe all my gear fits into two suitcases and a gym bag! What a miracle of dimensional manipulation! For a guy just traveling with what he needs, I am hauling an awful lot of stuff around the country.

The Huston/San Antonio area is not quite like I expected. I expected to see a big city, then go down a long, straight lonely road through the desert for three hours with not a sign of life until the next city. Towns and cities would be like lonely oases is the desert. Instead, the whole region is densely populated. Cities sort of thin out into suburbs, which then go into the suburbs of the next city, and you are already in city again. The land is flat, and you can see for very far, and the lights Huston and San Antonio at night are go way off into the horizon. This is quite unlike NYC, where everything compressed together on islands or river banks and build "up". I can easily find where NYC "stops".

I got out and visited some of the old Catholic missionary compounds. They were established decades before the revolution, and they make very good photos. The compounds themselves are ruins, but the churches are still in use and good condition.

Becoming One of the Wall Street Boys

Today was rather hectic, but should pay off big down the road. I enrolled in a school down on Wall St. for training stock traders. I will be training with some of the biggest names of Wall St. to become a professional trader. I plan to make day trading of stock my main source of income before I attend law school. Even if stock trading continues to be my main source of income, I'd like to have a second trade (law) under my belt, because the two can go together very well. I will incorporate my own business for the purpose of trading within the next 12 months. But for now, I have A PILE of homework to do before classes start in February, and I need to really work at my computer job to make money to pay off tuition.

Anyone looking to trade equities needs to be properly trained or they are going to lose a lot of money. I will be learning technical analysis of markets, and make purchases and sales according to what the market is doing at any particular moment. The thing about technical analysis is that the market does not lie. All the numbers are right there: ask price, bid price, and trade volume. The other way of judging stock is by fundamental analysis, which is looking at companies balance sheets and other financial statements. Problem is, companies always lie on their balance sheets, just look at the wonderful balance sheets financial companies had while the recession was moving into high gear. I am basically going to be a number cruncher. Learning technical analysis is a skill that can be learned rather quickly compared to a regular business education to understand the fundamental aspects of business. The course I'll take is only 56hrs. of class time and workshops. The school will give me an account with real $$$ to trade for real during workshops, which students usually increase as opposed to totally blow away. That will be fun.

Central Park Adventures Part II

For my Canadian readers, I managed to find a Tim Horton's just a few blocks from here. I have not been to a Tim Horton's in years! So, I had to drop in and get a donut and coffee. Their coffee is way better than Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts. Like everything else on that street, it was run by Indians who could barely speak English.

I had my third try for a run around the circumference of Central Park, and I made it three quarters of the way around (about 9k). Now my legs REALLY hurt. I wondered around the southern half, and found fountains and high lookouts, as well as monuments.

For some reason lots of people in Central Park speak French. Everywhere else in New York I hear Spanish or Russian, but just the Central Park area has lots of French speakers. Say, about a full quarter of people I hear speaking are doing so in French.

There are very many subjects in Central Park to photograph. There is the landscaping, monuments, surrounding buildings, and the people themselves. I'm waiting until I get my DLSR up here before trying anything really creative. And the weather has not been very good for photos either.

Happy Hangover Friday!

You know you are having fun when you can't find your boot.
New York City will be cleaning up for quite a while.
Last night there were sirens going all night long. Police, firetrucks, and ambulances. New York City celebrates the new year by hurting itself, apparently. There were enough drunk people shouting on the street that staying home may simply be a choice of safety.

We had a few get-togethers over here. I spent a good part of my day exploring the city. I went up through Harlem to go visit the gym I want to get membership with. Now, there is a good rule of thumb on how to judge if a street is safe or not, a rule that is universal around the world, be it Moscow, Mumabi, or New York City. If there are women and children on the street, it is probably safe. If there are no women or children, best to avoid that street. Same goes for time of day. If you are on a street and the sun sets and suddenly there are no women and children around, best get off the street. I applied that rule while wondering Harlem. I was NOT welcome in Harlem. The locals were very clear in how they broadcast that. People would be greeting each other in the street, talking and laughing, but when I walked by everyone became quiet and didn't look at me, and waited for me to pass before going back to what they were doing. I found a road up to the gym that is well policed (lots of businesses), so I will be taking that route in the future.

Having said that, Harlem is relatively clean and orderly place. There was just a little graffiti here and there, but otherwise no signs of vandalism.