Just wanted to let any of my followers know, that I have returned to blogging. The name of my new blog is “TRUTH“, as in “In all satire, there is an element of truth”. The purpose of TRUTH is to be a lighthearted look at current events. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave me a comment there.

Unfortunately, life is what it is. For me, work has just gotten too hectic for me to maintain this blog. While I have enjoyed the last 4 years with all of you, I just don’t have the time to post any more.

Feel free to comment in this last lonely thread, or you can go to Marshall’s blog, MFI Diary. He is a good guy, and a savvy investor, so I think he will take good care of you. While I may not agree with him on every stock, most of his picks are pretty good, when they aren’t awesome.

I am not giving up on investing. To the contrary, this blog has been a wonderful learning experience, and I would recommend it to any of you. My main advice to anyone starting a self-investing blog would be: Maintain a thick skin, and be prepared to listen to a lot of suggestions that just aren’t you. In other words, people will frequently give you tips that won’t suit your style. If you follow those tips, your results will probably show it. But there are also people whose investment tips will suit your style. And that brings us back to the purpose of setting up a self-investing blog: To really learn your own style. I feel comfortable in my investing “suit” now.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean my own style won’t continue to evolve in the future. At the moment, I have a comfortably conservative daytrading scheme (which is still evolving) combined with a long-term value approach. A year from now, this could change.

I wish you all the best, and I appreciate all the time you folks have dedicated to me and my blog. Farewell, and God bless.

Here are my final portfolio results for August:

Ed’s Overall: +1.47%
Ed’s IRA: -0.21%
Ed’s 401k: +3.03%
S&P 500: +3.77%
ACWI (all-world index):+2.58%
Nasdaq:+4.82%

Although I had 8 positive daytrades against 5 negative in my IRA, my final results were down 0.03%. The last multi-day trade was what put me into the red. Without that one, my daytrades were up 0.08%.

As for my 401k, it was a pretty good month, even if I didn’t beat the benchmarks:

DIS: 4.00 to $89.88 ( 4.66% , 43.19% overall, 44.34% overall with dividend)– bought at $62.77
GOOGL: 2.81 to $582.36 ( 0.48% , 33.37% overall, 33.37% overall with dividend)– bought at $436.655
JTP: 0.08 to $8.43 ( 0.96% , 6.31% overall, 10.77% overall with dividend)– bought at $7.93
MSFT: 2.27 to $45.43 ( 5.26% , 23.25% overall, 24.67% overall with dividend)– bought at $36.86
PSEC: -0.30 to $10.31 ( -2.83% , 3.51% overall, 6.67% overall with dividend)– bought at $9.96
SDRL: 0.99 to $37.25 ( 2.73% , 12.03% overall, 14.53% overall with dividend)– bought at $33.25

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 2005 (August’s high and the all-time high), and 2025 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 2003, inside the 2001-2003 (3 data points) range.
DOWNSIDE: 1993-1998 (6 data points), 1982-1990 (July’s high and 5 data points), 1968 (June’s high), 1966 (50 day moving average), 1963 (20 day moving average), 1927-1939 (July’s low and 9 data points and the 100 day moving average), 1924 (May’s high), 1904 (August’s low), and 1901 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands).

S&P 500 Daily Momentum: Bullish (weakening)
S&P 500 Daily Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Weekly Momentum: Bearish (weakening)
S&P 500 Weekly Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Futures: Slightly Positive
Overall: The markets were running last week on low volume. Will the volume come back this week? Until then, the momentum indicators seem headed to neutral, in spite of the price action.

Welcome back! Time to look at what lies ahead for this week.

The earnings are almost non-existent this week, with PVH Corp. (PVH) being the largest company reporting (on Wednesday).

But we do have some big U.S. economic reports due this week:

TUESDAY: ISM Manufacturing Index
WEDNESDAY: ADP Employment Report
THURSDAY: International Trade Gap Report
FRIDAY: August Employment Report

Reminder: U.S. markets will be closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

Time for the long weekend open thread, where you can talk about whatever you like.

For the last of this summer’s one-hit wonders, I am going to push the limits a little. Murray Head originally reached #14 on the U.S. charts in 1969 with Superstar, from the play Jesus Christ Superstar:

Head played Judas Iscariot in the play. But he had a much bigger hit 25 years later, in 1984, with One Night in Bangkok, from the play Chess. The song reached #3 on the U.S. charts, and #1 in 10 other countries:

The music for One Night in Bangkok was written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA (who knew a little bit about writing international hit songs), while the lyrics were written by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice. Rice is known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber (i.e. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita). So One Night in Bangkok has a good artistic pedigree.

Unfortunately, this song also gets a William Shatner award for worst cover, from Mike Tyson (yes, THAT Mike Tyson) in the movie Hangover 2:

However, there is a runner-up for the Shatner award: Robey, an actress (best known from the syndicated Friday the 13th tv series) who thinks she can sing:

At least Tyson’s version was mercifully short, and played for laughs. Robey doesn’t even have that excuse.

Enjoy your long weekend folks, and I’ll see you next week! I am outta here!

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 2001-2002 (2 data points), 2005 (August 26th’s high and the all-time high), and 2020 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 1996, inside the 1993-1998 (5 data points) range.
DOWNSIDE: 1982-1990 (July’s high and 5 data points), 1977 (August 20th’s low), 1971-1972 (2 data points), 1968 (June’s high), 1965 (50 day moving average), 1964 (August 15th’s high), 1959 (20 day moving average), 1958 (August 18th’s low), 1955 (August 14th’s high), 1947-1948 (2 data points), 1944 (August 11th’s high), 1941 (August 15th’s low), 1927-1939 (July’s low and 9 data points and the 100 day moving average), 1924 (May’s high), 1921 (August 4th’s low), 1916 (August 1st’s low), 1909-1913 (3 data points), 1904 (August 7th’s low), and 1898 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands).

S&P 500 Daily Momentum: Bullish (weakening)
S&P 500 Daily Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Weekly Momentum: Bearish (weakening)
S&P 500 Weekly Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Futures: Positive
Overall: Light volume with only small movement has left the technicals almost stalled this week. Momentum indicators for the S&P 500 seem headed to neutral, while overbought/oversold indicators still read about the same as they did at the beginning of the week.

And now for the news…

The Daily Beast: Why Obama Backed off More ISIS Strikes: His Own Team Couldn’t Agree on a Syria Strategy

After lots of bluster about striking ISIS on Syria, President Obama threw cold water on the idea Thursday, disappointing those who wanted him to take the fight to ISIS in Syria.
After a week of talk of eliminating the “cancer” of ISIS, President Obama said Thursday that he was not planning to significantly expand the war against the Islamic extremist movement anytime soon.

His remarks came after days of heated debate inside the top levels of his own national security bureaucracy about how, where, and whether to strike ISIS in Syria. But those deliberations – which included a bleak intelligence assessment of America’s potential allies in Syria — failed to produce a consensus battle plan. And so Obama, who has long been reluctant to enter into the Syrian conflict, told reporters Thursday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for confronting ISIS on a regional level.

Only 875 more days of the lamest presidential administration ever…

Yahoo News: Nokia will have its revenge on the smartphone industry

Bobb posted this article yesterday in the comments:

Business Korea has just published a very provocative piece that depicts a monstrous troll attacking its home country’s pride and joy, Samsung. That troll, you’ll be surprised to learn, is Nokia.

The reason for this is easy to understand: Samsung may be forced to pay one of the history’s biggest patent royalty sums to Nokia, and fellow Korean electronics titan LG is not scot free, either.

What unleashed the beast in the Finnish company was its decision to sell its handset division to Microsoft a while back. As long as Nokia was a phone company, it was bound by a web of cross-licensing deals limiting how much it can charge for its thousands of handset-related patents. Nokia needed to use both essential and non-essential patents held by Samsung, Apple, Motorola and other industry giants, which put a rather severe cap on how much it could charge other phone vendors.

But when Nokia got out of handset business, the need for those cross-licensing deals vanished and Nokia emerged as a Non-Practicing Entity (NPE). Or as Business Korea defines the term, a patent troll.

This means the already competitive smartphone business just got a little more expensive.

Ed’s IRA: -0.22%
DJIA: -0.25%
Nasdaq: -0.26%
S&P 500: -0.17%

The S&P 500 levels to watch today:

UPSIDE: 2001-2002 (2 data points), 2005 (August 26th’s high and the all-time high), and 2016 (top of the Bollinger Bands).
LAST CLOSE: 2000.
DOWNSIDE: 1993-1998 (4 data points), 1991 (July’s high), 1982-1988 (4 data points), 1977 (August 20th’s low), 1971-1972 (2 data points), 1968 (June’s high), 1964 (August 15th’s high and the 50 day moving average), 1958 (August 18th’s low), 1956 (20 day moving average), 1955 (August 14th’s high), 1947-1948 (2 data points), 1944 (August 11th’s high), 1941 (August 15th’s low), 1927-1939 (July’s low and 9 data points and the 100 day moving average), 1924 (May’s high), 1921 (August 4th’s low), 1916 (August 1st’s low), 1909-1913 (3 data points), 1904 (August 7th’s low), and 1896 (bottom of the Bollinger Bands).

S&P 500 Daily Momentum: Bullish (weakening)
S&P 500 Daily Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Weekly Momentum: Bearish (weakening)
S&P 500 Weekly Overbought/oversold: Neutral (leaning overbought)
S&P 500 Futures: Negative
Overall: With the S&P 500’s bullish momentum weakening, and the futures pointing down, it looks like a day for the bears today.

Bloomberg: Gold-Price Indicator Fading as ETPs Tumble by $71 Billion

Gold-backed funds that heralded record prices in 2011 and last year’s biggest sell-off in three decades are becoming less useful as market predictors.

After a decade of changing mostly in tandem, gold prices and holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion have the most-negative correlation since 2004. Investment in ETPs are headed for a fifth straight week of moving in the opposite direction of New York futures, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That would be the longest stretch since 2012, before investors began dumping gold.

Global ETPs that accumulated more bullion than France’s central bank in 2012 saw their influence wane as equities surged and the Federal Reserve took steps to ease economic stimulus, signaling higher interest rates that erode the appeal of gold as an alternative asset. As investors exited the funds, erasing about $71 billion of value, unrest from Ukraine to Gaza this year revived demand for the precious metal as a haven, boosting prices that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says aren’t sustainable.

“There is a disconnect” because “a lot of money has left,” said Mark Luschini, the chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC. in Pittsburgh that oversees $65 billion. “For gold, this year has been all about the Federal Reserve and political tension, and at the moment, the rate-increase worries are overshadowing the safe-haven buying.”

The bloom is off the golden rose. That doesn’t make gold ETP’s a “sell”. It just means the actions of retail investors in equity markets is far less relevant to the price of gold now.

Business Insider (via Yahoo Finance): This Illustration Posted By Eric Schmidt Shows How Google Thinks About Innovation

Google is one of the largest, most influential technology companies in the world. But it didn’t start out that way, and it’s not easy to maintain that status. Google Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt has shared some insight as to how Google views innovation and the competition.

Schmidt and Google’s former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg are publishing a book next month called “How Google Works.” The book dives into what Schmidt and Rosenberg learned as they helped build Google into what it is today.

Schmidt has been teasing the book by posting excerpts of illustrations and various tips from the book to his Google+ and Twitter page. His latest post emphasizes that tackling the market with different angles rather than simply trying to be better than your rival is crucial for success.

“It’s important to understand what’s going on around you, but the best way to stay ahead is a laser focus on building great products that people need,” Schmidt posted to Google+ along with the illustration.