Musings on last week...........

The oft-stated phrase I heard last week, "your first cruise is probably your best cruise" is probably correct. I spent a week on this vessel;

http://www.carnival.com/CMS/Onboard_Activities/Miracle-Onboard_Exp.aspx

Carnival understands the cruise experience and I would book another trip with them in a nanosecond. That said, weather and sea conditions can have a pretty big impact on a trip and they aren't negotiable at the time of booking.

Mexico is always a treat. Not a sign of any middle-class citizenry. Not in my lifetime. No wonder millions wander around America.

The port of Costa Maya is a hoot. Build a large pier to dock a large ship and you will attract business. Belize was nice, English speaking, fairly clean and good beer. Cozumel and Grand Cayman I can do without. I have never been to Myrtle Beach but that is what they felt like. Or Gatlinburg. No shortage of financial institutions in Grand Cayman either! Can anyone say dirty money without smiling? Going down in a submarine was nice, it beats learning how to dive and I think probaby more things to see while covering so much more "ground" on the ocean floor.

Hard not to gain a couple of pounds on a ship. Food was abundant and good. Service and staff superb. All in all another great week on our planet.

Mr. Market treated us well last week. The fine folks at Web Methods (WEBM) decided to throw in the towel and sell themselves which caught me by surprise but hey, sticking with the stock with declining revenues paid off. It is nice to have an edge. My theme of owning water stocks seems to be working. MIC is headed up. Anyone care to bet against this stock NOT doubling from here?

There is nothing I'd rather do than be wildly bullish, but for me it all comes down to finding the charts I like. I worked the charts hard yesterday and today but found surprisingly few of interest. I focus heavily on stocks that are moving out of support on volume increases and there simply weren't that many on my screens. My feelings and opinions about the market are primarily a function of the hundreds of individual stocks I look at throughout the day. Volume is the key to my decision-making. It is my main measure of the emotional state of buyers. When there are big volume increases, I have much greater confidence that a price move may develop some meaningful momentum. I think of volume as the jet-fuel that drives a stock. They can't act like an F-14 Tomcat with the after-burners glowing without volume!

What we do is watch charts and see if there are signs that big buyers are interested. If volume picks up and stock starts moving, then it's probably a sign that someone knows something positive about the fundamental case. If you are a trader like me, the best possible quality the market can possess is "follow-through". Strong follow-through is what produces big gains. I seldom make one buy and one sale of a stock. My methoodology is to average in and average out and to use varying time frames. I'm constantly evaluating positions as conditions evolve.

This is a tough game and trading from a cruise ship wasn't my idea of having a great vacation nor having optimal trading tools at my disposal. Over the years I have found that the secret to success lies not so much in playing well as in not playing badly. After all, the system wasn't designed so most people could beat it.