Westport Traders Network

Meeting Announcement: July 14, 2010 5:30PM @ Bogey's, Westport

2010-07-14T09:50:00.001-07:00

Greetings:

Tonight is a special presentation by 4th Row Films in NYC. The meeting will be held at our regular location, Bogey's Grille in Westport, CT at the top of Main St where it intersects rt 57 & rt 136 together.

We meet for drinks at 5:30pm at the bar downstairs, then move upstairs at 6:00pm to go over our regular monthly business. This time, however, we will dedicate the meeting to 4th Row Films and will likely avoid the regular portfolio picks and portfolio creation. If we have time at the end, then maybe we can have an informal "round table" of ideas. The more informal, the better.

I hope you all can make it - Stay in touch!

Tim West
tim_wst@yahoo.com

Next Meeting To Be Determined

2010-02-25T06:21:00.000-08:00

As of Feb 25, 2010 I have added the poll to the right. Please take that poll and I'll explain how to use that information we get from the poll results.

I will host 6 meetings this year. January was the first. My email address will also be updated so for the time being, use tim_wst@yahoo.com

Look for an evite from me in the near future. Email me and I can add you to the list(or if you would like to be removed from the evite list).

Cheers

Tim West

Meeting Announcement: Wed, Jan 13, 2010

2010-01-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Bogey's Restaurant & Grill, Westport, CT
5:30PM Drinks - 6:00PM Dinner & Discussion

For those of you who haven't checked your ideas since the last meeting Dec 2:

W.H. had BAC (.41 atr, 16.25 open Dec 3, 16.98 last), TEX (.86 atr, 19.42 open Dec 3, 22.35 last), and JRCC (.91 atr, open 18.83 Dec 3, 21.48 last).

S.K. seems to be leading with his short of the EuroCurrency from 150.5 (1.25 atr on Dec 3, 142.92 last).

See you next Wednesday at Bogey's, 5:30pm.

Tim West

Meeting Notes from Wed, Dec 2, 2009

2009-12-07T06:34:00.001-08:00

Ideas from the meeting: Initials only to protect privacy -

Idea to save money - contact Heatusa.com
20 percent discount on oil price per day and free service contract

Another idea to save electricity - measure your electrical usage using the KILL-A-WATT device, it measures the amount of electricity you plug into it.

E.K.: buy silver, slv or sivr; hillenbrand (hi). Just under 19 and trending up

B.G. - QLD, QID etf's are a favorite trading vehicle: double long nasdaq, double short nasdaq; this month choosing qid, expecting the market to go down.

J.G. - Buy Caterpillar and buy time warner (TWX will benefit from spinoff of AOL)

T.W. comment - Hudson Holdings (HDHL) is 24 cent stock, has 10mm in cash, main business is institutional stock trading.

S.K., short the euro us dollar: EUR/USD. Thinks it's going to correct in 30 days. Pricipal movers are interest rates and general feeling on the economy. People think safety, they think the dollar.

T.W. - Sell Short US Government Bonds. I'd like to be wrong on this, which is to say that if I am wrong, your borrowing costs will be lower, which is good, except it means the economy is even in worse shape. However, if I am right and rates rise, then you have borrowed at lower rates of interest, which is good. I view that as a win-win trade. Buy the TBT etf (inverse etf that profits when interest rates rise) or sell short TLT (20 year US Gov't Bond etf, formerly by Lehman). Also, I view AAPL as a significantly overvalued. Only 20 cents of every dollar of stock you buy is actual revenue at the company level. I view AAPL as a short sale. Short apple, 5 times sales, apple is a bigger short than gold, google is overvalued too.

Next meeting will be the 2nd Wednesday in January.

Note - Walter Shanley couldn't make it to last week's meeting. He contacted me by email prior to the meeting to let me know. We may have a special meeting this Wednesday in order to make any of you aware of his business opportunity. I may send out a special EVITE to invite you to his presentation.

Best regards,

Tim West

(Thank you Mike Kot for collecting the notes from the meeting)

Meeting Announcement: Wed, Dec 2, 5:30PM Bogey's

2009-11-29T21:04:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting will be held at Bogey's in Westport.

5:30pm - arrive and relax, meet at the bar
6:00pm - move upstairs to the Bogart Room for dinner and group discussion

On tap - possibly a quick business opportunity in affiliate marketing - this might be very interesting to anyone who shops on the internet. 'Tis the season for shopping and I have someone who can show you how to save a few bucks and even make a few bucks by becoming part of the internet shopping game. The quick presentation will be given by our group member Walter Shanley. You can read his profile on Linked-In.

We will see you on our last meeting of 2009! How time flies! Hope you all have prospered this year and look forward to finding more ways to MAKE MONEY AND SAVE MONEY with you next year.

All the best,

Tim West

MEETING TBD - Wed, Oct 28th at 8PM

2009-10-26T07:10:00.001-07:00

DUE TO FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS, THE NEXT TWO WEDNESDAY'S (OCT 28th & NOV 4th) I WILL BE BUSY FROM 5PM - 7:30PM.

If you are interested in meeting this Wed evening at 8pm then RSVP to twest@compocapital.com

Looking forward to meeting you to find more great investment ideas.

Timothy R West

MEETING POSTPONED TO WED, OCT 28th

2009-10-16T10:07:00.001-07:00

Looking forward to getting together at the end of this month. I'll update the portfolio performance shortly to reflect an exit at Wednesday's closing prices, as that was a month from the last meeting and our planned exit strategy.

The meeting will take place at 6pm, but do come at 5:30pm and relax at the Bogey's bar. We will then convene upstairs in the Bogart Room and order dinner from the menu. What we usually do is then go around the table and each person gives us a 1-5 minute "pitch" on their favorite investment idea for the month. The point is to discuss what trends you are seeing in the marketplace and then we can convert what you are seeing and put it into action in a portfolio.

The success of the concept is only through your participation in the process. Each person can choose any idea they wish. No one can vote your idea down, but they can attempt to convince you otherwise. So, either stand your ground or back down. But advise others too strongly and you are at your peril, because we are not attempting to be all-knowing, rather we wish to put good ideas to work in a portfolio and see how it all comes together at the end of 12 months.

From a year ago, the collection of ideas is up dramatically. Interesting too is that the portfolio of ideas was up handsomely even when the stock market was down in the depths of the bear market.

So bring your "Perspective" and add it to the "Collective" and we all will be collectively smarter (we hope) and more profitable (we also hope) over time. I'll be putting toghether some slides for a presentation on Monday, November 2 up in the great town of Easton at the Easton Exchange Club. So, I'll go through some of those charts with you before.

If you currently are not on our email list, then email me at twest@compocapital.com and I will include you on the list. An email will go out 1 week prior to the meeting and again 1 day prior to the meeting for those that replied "yes" or "maybe". If you no longer wish to be on the mail list, then let me know.

See you on October 28th! And GO WILDCATS http://www.wildcatsfootball.com 8th graders

Timothy R. West
Easton, CT 06612

Portfolio Performance for WTN

2009-10-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

scroll down to find the spreadsheet link

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Copy and Paste this into your window if the link does not work properly

Find the tab - Summary to see that we are up nicely for the year.

See you at the meeting -

Tim West

LASTLY - To save money on a new boiler for your home - please consider www.system2000.com - I have installed two of these and have saved 30% on my home fuel usage.

Next Meeting Date: Wed, Oct 14, 2009

2009-10-02T05:02:00.001-07:00

Next Meeting Wed, September 9, 2009 - 5:30PM Bogey's, Westport

2009-08-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

I will send out an email by eVite next Wednesday to announce the meeting.

There is a circle of interest in having a GANN meeting to discuss the principles and strategies of W.D. Gann. The meeting might be a luncheon between several members, led by Miriam Bakker, Robert Daries and Ken McCue. If you are interested in joining that luncheon, then reply to this or email me at twest@compocapital.com

Best regards to all,

Tim

Next Meeting: Early September on a Wed @ 5:30PM @ Bogey's in Westport

2009-08-13T21:12:00.001-07:00

August is filled with football practices and I look forward to seeing everyone the first thing in September when school is back in session because then we have practice on Tuesday-Thursday-Friday so Wednesday should be open for meetings.

I sure wish I could keep everyone up to speed on the forecasts that I have made and continue to make - and I look forward to hearing everyone's money-making and money-saving ideas at our next group meeting!

Tim West 12:15AM Friday, August 14, 2009

Meeting Summary for July 29, 2009

2009-07-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

We had a "quick meeting" last night and reviewed this website, the overall performance of the portfolio, discussed a private-REIT investing in extended-stay hotels with a decent yield, and listened to Miriam Bakker go over the techniques she has developed by studying the great trading master W.D. Gann and his "square of 9" chart.

We did not assemble a portfolio of ideas in the regular fashion - but I will note the ideas here for you to review/enjoy:

1. Walter Holder - Short Oil - Long James River Coal - Long AK Steel
2. Stan Katz - Long or Short EuroCurrency - So I suggested Short
3. Miriam Bakker - Short SPY @ 99.30 (using a 0.20 stop loss @ 99.50, but I suggested that at least an 11-day average daily true range of 1.50 points made more sense)
4. Tim West - I didn't go over my research that I brought to the meeting - so - I didn't even say that I'd choose Silver again - but here I go - Silver (long).
5. Ken McCue - Didn't get around the room to hear an idea from Ken.
6. Jordan Kerner - Gave a great overview of a real estate opportunity. As a lark, you could choose a hotel or extended stay reit with low leverage and southern geographical exposure.

Our next meeting will be in early September and will hopefully cover the "HOW TO LIVE GREEN AND SAVE MONEY" topic. I have a great speaker planned and hope to cover that material in 30 minutes or less.

I will consider putting some time into my presentation that I gave last month on "HOW TO EXIT" a trade/investment. Perhaps a "YOUTUBE"! Anyone want to help me do that?

Have a great August and we'll SEE YOU IN SEPTEMBER!

In the mean time - here's an interesting link: www.THETRADINGPIT.net

Portfolio up 4% in 1 Month (from June 24th Meeting to July 24th)

2009-07-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

MEDX - Medarex is being taken over by Bristol Myers for $16 in cash. Robert Daries' idea generated a $30,000 return for our $1,000,000 portfolio. Congratulations Robert on a 15R profit for the portfolio! I have closed our portfolio positions at this time as it is 1 month from our last meeting. Next meeting will be announced soon -

Tim West 3:20PM Friday, July 24, 2009

Westport Traders Network - Group Picks from June 24, 2005

2009-06-25T12:30:00.001-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Tim West presented on "How to GET OUT of Trades" using unique trend identification methods, time principles, psychological principles and his version of Market Profile.

The group picks totalled a whopping 21 ideas, so each position has a risk of $4762. Divide the $4762 by three times the 11-day average true range (ATR) to find your POSITION SIZE. The LARGEST position this month in dollars is Tom Murphy's Australian Dollar short position at (-$234,184) and the smallest position is Chris Besescheck's position of $4,762 of ACTC- Advanced Cell Tech. Other notable small dollar positions are Walter Holder's JRCC & AKS which total $17,204 and David Brandman's ETFC long & PALM short which toal $14,919. Position SIZE is important so that each idea has an equal LIKELY impact on the portfolio in terms of dollars at risk.

The equation for position size = [ $RISK /(3 X 11-day ATR)]
We manage a $1,000,000 hypothetical portfolio and we risk 10% per month.
We have 21 ideas this month, so $100,000 of risk spread across 21 ideas = $4762 per full idea. If you split your "idea" into two ideas, then your risk is $2381 per 1/2 idea. Now you have the methodology that you can apply to your own portfolio.

Our next meeting may include a GREEN presentation on "How to save money in your home using green technologies" - stay tuned !

Feel free to contact me at twest@compocapital.com

To contact Barbara Rockefeller - http://rts-forex.com and go to Amazon.com to order her books.

The next meeting will likely be at the end of July - the last Wednesday.

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT - Wed, Jun 24, 2009 5:30PM

2009-06-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

Bogey's Restaurant, Westport, CT
5:30PM Drinks
6:00PM Presentation on STOP PLACEMENT STRATEGIES by Tim West
DINNER A LA CARTE from Bogey's menu
6:30PM Round-Table Discussion/Collection of Portfolio Ideas

Please email twest@compocapital.com if you plan to attend -

We can only have 20 people comfortably at our meetings - so if we need more room then we'll have to find another location -

I look forward to seeing you next Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at Bogey's -

WTN Portfolio +3% since Thursday May 28th!

2009-06-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

The link to the spreadsheet is in the next entry below - scroll down to view the portfolio.

Since it is all "longs" I may be able to enter a portfolio at "Marketcracy" so you can track it that way.

WTN Portfolio +3.1% for Apr 23-May 27, +6.1% YTD

2009-05-27T13:49:00.001-07:00

scroll down to find the spreadsheet link

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Copy and Paste this into your window if the link does not work properly

Find the tab - Summary to see that we are up 51% from January 2008.

See you at the meeting -

Tim West

LASTLY - To save money on a new boiler for your home - please consider www.system2000.com - I have installed two of these and have saved 30% on my home fuel usage.

NEXT MEETING - WED MAY 27 - 5:30PM

2009-05-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

Greetings again from Tim:

WE ARE BETTER OFF WHEN WE SHARE (Our Philosophy)

THE MISSION: To share perspectives, experiences, and insights to help all of us make and save money in our portfolios.

Our meeting will be next week - on Wednesday, May 27th, which is 5 weeks from our last one. I had posted to the blog that we would be meeting this week, but since I didn't get the notice out last week to give you enough time to put this on your calendar, Mark and I decided to postpone the meeting to next week. Monday is Memorial Day, so I hope you all will be plenty relaxed and have thought endlessly about your next idea for the meeting.

Many thanks to all of you who came to the last meeting on April 22nd and shared their perspectives on markets, opportunities, risks, trends and ideas.

The ideas for the group are up for the year so far. Come to the meeting with your idea and if you don't have an idea - no worries. Feel free to comment on others and absorb the information.

I hope you can make it on May 27th at 5:30PM for drinks, 6:00PM for dinner/meeting upstairs at Bogey's Grill in Westport, CT.

Updates to WTN Portfolio

2009-05-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

There are updates to the portfolio that you may follow by subscribing to this website - scroll down to find the subscription link.

Tony Sanfilippo had added an SP500 long position to hedge his FXP position (which is a short of the Chinese Stock Market Index FXI). He banked that profit and utilized the $5000 gain to offset his current loss of $7000 in FXP. This allows him to increase his position from 1400 shares to 2400 shares and change the stop to $13.90, down from the original $15.70. Essentially, the hedge of long S&P500 helped save $5000, but now that $5000 is at risk here.

My SP500 trading strategy outlined at the meeting is chugging along with three (3) closed profitable trades of 1R or $7000 profit so far. As of now, Thursday at 11:38AM, the SPY is 1 Range (avg range over 11 days as of yesterday's close is $1.95)below today's high of 93.15 which provided an entry long at 91.20 and has a target to exit at 93.15 with a stop at 3 x 1.95 down from 91.20. It may seem unusual to risk 3 ranges to make 1 range, but that is how I set up the trade. For those of you who know me - silver is my favorite long term, fundamentally based position and as of April 22 it is up from $12.19/oz to over $14/oz with an average range of $0.33. This means that silver is up more than 5R or 5-ranges. Recall we risk 3R or 3-ranges when we enter any position. That R is calculated using the last 11 days of True Range. I can explain true range at our next meeting.

Overall, the portfolio is relatively quiet, with overall profitability very quiet and within $6000 either side of breakeven. With so many opinions on the short side of the overall equity market this month, we are doing well to just breakeven. Here's hoping you are all doing well and look forward to seeing you later this month at Bogey's Grill in Westport.

Meeting Summary for April 22, 2009

2009-04-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

1) Spreadsheet is updated http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

2) Tim's recommended websites http://www.financialsense.com and find Chris Puplova's commentary. Read them all at your earliest convenience. He has many charts that tell many stories you don't see in the regular media. Also, listen to the MP3's of his father Jim Puplova discussing trends, conversations with authors, etc.
Chris' comments http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/archive.html
MP3's from their site: http://feeds.feedburner.com/fsn
David Tice on 4/25/09 is a great listen.

Thanks to all for coming and sharing your views and opinions. I strive to make it the most interesting meeting possible for me, which I hope will continue to translate into the same for you. There is so much potential from a group to make great decisions, and I am happy to offer a bottle of fine wine for the next winner with the best pick. I hope everyone has a big month. With 2 Citigroup long ideas and 2 or more SP500 short recommendations, we may have a very balanced month, and that is fine.

3) We pulled up a website www.mrci.com and pulled up a chart of the US Dollar Index from the following page http://www.mrci.com/pdf/charts.php (OR COPY & PASTE THIS INTO YOUR BROWSER)

4) We also looked at the high correlation of markets over 181 days also listed at this site - http://www.mrci.com/special/correl.htm (OR COPY & PASTE THIS INTO YOUR BROWSER)

5) We missed hearing directly from Tim Allabashi and how he sees the Australian Dollar doing better than the US Dollar because he feels the Aussies didn't get themselves into the same mess financially as we American's have. I hope we get around to you at the next meeting Tim Allabashi! We want to hear your ideas.

Review of ideas:

Ken McCue chose to short a rally in the ESM9 futures up to 870 (using Tim's 3 range stop). Target 760 & 750. Also go long at those two levels targeting 950 and 1000. Risk once long from 760 & 750 is the big question. How many R (avg ranges) do you wish to risk on that position?

Jim Sullivan chose to sit aside, but had the sense that crude oil would stay in a range from 35-50 for awhile now that the speculators (those who were long) appear to be out of the market. We could discuss selling options with a limited risk strategy at the next meeting as a way to profit from Jim's observation. Google "IRON CONDOR" to see that is selling a call spread and a put spread to take in premium, but to prevent a run-away loss if the market makes a run.

Ed Katz sees the market in a holding pattern until fall, then a rally. Thinks Pepsi (PEP) is a buy. They report earnings on May 16. (Tim's note - nice chart in that it is different from most other charts and seems to be at a support level at decent valuation too).

Tony Sanfilippo thinks it is a good idea to go short the Chinese market by buying the FXP exch-traded-fund which is double-short. He would like to protect profits by trailing his stop by 3R once a 5R profit target is reached.

Stan Katz sees the current administration's tactics as a negative and sees a market break into this October/fall and that people are "carried away with Obama". The money they are throwing at the banks is a bad thing. Short the Dow Jones Industrials.

Miriam Bakker had to depart prior to sharing her idea about airlines long vs Dow Jones short. We look forward to hearing more from Miriam at the next meeting. (This position is not in the portfolio as it needs to be aired to the group)

Pamela Grayson preferred to sit on the sidelines again while she formulates a great idea for us.

Robert Daries is bearish on stocks of insurance companies with write-downs as a main concern. To pick a value stock with potential though he chose Proctor & Gamble (PG) as a long against a short-sale of Sysco (SYY) the food distributor.

Ilene Rogers is also not a fan of what the Gov't is doing and thinks that interest rates will be much higher in the future. She admits she is afraid of fighting the Fed here but thinks we'll need higher interest rates to attract buyers to get the auctions done. 1 trillion to 2 trillion is a lot of new money to raise in a year. Buy TBT which is a double-levered etf that goes up in value when Treasury Bonds (20 year) fall in price.

Kueun Choi is a bull on Citigroup due to its Gov't ownership and likely continued support from the Gov't to keep it afloat. Buy Citigroup on Thursday's close 4/23 to buy just in advance of the release of the "stress test" results. $1.75/sh stop loss please.

Rick Jaffe saw an opportunity to own JAVA (Sun Microsystems) shares at a discount to the $9.50 all cash offer from Oracle. With the stock at $9.16 there is a small profit sitting there and there is a chance that another company may pay up for JAVA. (Tim's note, maximum 10% of our $1 million in any 1 stock)

Peter More (spelling?) joined the group and shared his concern about the overall stock market. He recommends selling short the SP500. He sees a retracement of the recent rally that will send the market down.

Kempton Coady recommends Citigroup using a $1.00/sh stop loss. He also says the Gov't will not let it fail, so you can overlook the fact that Citigroup may be bad fundamentally (or even insolvent). Kempton mentioned he had already timed an entry into Citigroup on the long side after seeing the trade set up with near zero borrowing costs with Warren Buffet in agreement, a toxic asset program was in the works and Bernanke in full support. Nice job Kempton - feel free to post ideas directly to this BLOG next time :-)

Mark Juviler suggested shorting the EuroCurrency and going long the Agricultural etf DBA.

Tim West passed on buying silver (a big mistake already) despite many side-comments from the crowd ---- and decided to establish a trading strategy for the S&P500 instead. Tim suggests buying 1R dips in price, risking 3R from there and exiting at a 1R profit. Then repeat the process. This method will do well in a sideways or choppy market, which is likely after such a strong, directional advance that the market has had since the 25% gain from the March low.

The meeting ended at close to 9PM and we look forward to seeing you again next month.

I didn't get around to bringing my new dart board and darts in to pick a random portfolio - and I didn't nail down the date of the next meeting, which I'll assume with be the third Wed in May. Remember, the winner gets a bottle of red or white fine wine from my collection. I'll bring 1 of each - the winner can choose.

Last month the winner was Channing Allen with his Home Depot & Target longs. He surmised that the employment situation wasn't as bad as most had thought and that there was upside potential in the market. Nice job Casey - on your 2nd WIN!

Feel free to post any replies to this commentary or email me directly at twest@compocapital.com

Cheers!

Tim West

Next Meeting Wed, April 22nd, 5:30PM Arrive, 6:00PM meeting

2009-04-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

The spreadsheet has been updated as of moments ago (2:19PM Tuesday, April 7th).

Next week is vacation week for local area schools so we are going to meet the following Wednesday, April 22nd at Bogey's Grill in Westport, CT.

I will send out an eVite announcement tomorrow (2 weeks ahead) and a reminder again next Wednesday (1 week ahead).

We will be discussing "automated trading strategies" and our "regular round table" discussion to find emerging trends and opportunities. The account is quiet so far this month, down $17K or 1.7%. We are still up for 2009 and are up nearly 50% from Jan 1, 2008 (15 months).

We look forward to seeing you at the next meeting -

Best regards,

Timothy R. West

Next Meeting Wed, March 18th, 5:30PM drinks, 6PM Meeting

2009-03-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings again from Timothy R. West:

WE ARE BETTER OFF WHEN WE SHARE (Our Philosophy)

THE MISSION: To share perspectives, experiences, and insights to help all of us make and save money in our portfolios.

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, March 18, which is 5 weeks from our last one. We decided to move the meeting back a week to allow at least two weeks of spacing.

Many thanks to all of you who came to the last meeting on Feb 11th and shared their in-depth perspectives on world markets, opportunities, risks, trends and ideas. Many thanks to our iPhones (Tim's and Walter's) we were able to connect to stock and index charts on Bloomberg.com and view what each idea looked like and to review basic fundamental data. Feel free to print up information in advance.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

THE LINK ABOVE IS THE SPREADSHEET OF OUR PICKS AND THE PORTFOLIO stored at Google Docs (http://docs.google.com)

As a quick update - The Portfolio of picks is down 1% as I type after being down 2%. Several ideas were stopped out, including Russia & SP500 long positions, and Natural Gas and a bank stock. However, we are up more than 6% for the year so far even though the SP500 is already down 24%.

Come to the meeting with your idea and if you don't have an idea - no worries. Feel free to comment on others and absorb the information.

DART BOARD PORTFOLIO - Here's what I did to get the "dartboard portfolio" going - I had my 9 year old daughter circle 5 stock symbols with a black pen and 5 with a red pen from a piece of paper where I had put all 500 symbols. The longs are black, the shorts are red. We'll see how she does. I'll have to publish the picks for all to see - we can even debate how to construct the dart board portfolio. I will bring my new dart board to the meeting.

I would like to continue to spend some time on charts that I think are interesting to show the group. I think I have many ideas that will help us all make money now and in the years ahead.

Regarding our EXTRA meeting last Wednesday on AUTOMATED SYSTEMS TRADING
- I want to especially thank Tom Murphy for bringing his wireless card so we could connect to the internet. Thanks of course to Mark for setting up the connection. We had 17 people hear Mark Juviler discuss the important elements of a trading system. If you would like a copy of the slide presentation, please email Mark at mjuviler@compocapital.com to request it. We were able to log in to our trading server to display NinjaTrader to the group and to discuss a variety of topics which we can expand on at future meetings.

I hope you can make it on March 18th at 5:30PM for drinks, 6:00PM for dinner/meeting upstairs at Bogey's Grill in Westport, CT.

Automated Trading Systems Meeting - Wed March 4th - 7pm

2009-03-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

Bogart Room - Bogey's Restaurant - Westport CT 06880

Greetings from Tim:

I would like to invite you to a presentation and then have a general discussion on the topic of AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEMS. If you don't know what an AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEM is, then by the time the meeting ends you will have learned something new.

Mark Juviler will be leading us through what he has learned from writing code for programs like Tradestation and NinjaTrader over the past three years. Mark has been programming and working in the computer software business for over twenty years and he will be sharing his knowledge with you.

I have been designing filters and trading systems since 1990 when I was the "secret weapon" on S.G. Warburg's Institutional Equity Trading Desk putting out technically based (with fundamental aspects) short term trading ideas. I published as "Technical Tim" for nearly four years using powerful computers to screen and sort to find ideas suitable for our proprietary portfolio and for our institutional and hedge fund clients. There is a tremendous amount of information to share with you that hopefully I can translate into ACTIONABLE TRADING STRATEGIES ((at future meetings)).

Perhaps we can even design a trading system or two while we are together and backtest it to show you the hypothetical results, then determine what we do next with it.

Tim

TRENDS: Education and the Future of Technology

2009-02-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

If you are 1 in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you. China will soon become the #1 English speaking country in the world. The 25% of India's population with the highest IQ's is greater than the total population of the United States. TRANSLATION - India has more HONORS kids than America HAS kids. The Top 10 IN-DEMAND jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist...using technologies that haven't been invented...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet. The U.S. Dept of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs... by the age of 38.
1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than 1 year...1 in 2 has been there less than five years. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
There are over 200 million registered users of MySpace. If MySpace were a country, it would be the 5th-largest in the world (between Indonesia and Brazil)
The #1 ranked country in Broadband Internet Pentration is ... BERMUDA. #19 The United States. #22 Japan.
We are living in EXPONENTIAL TIMESThere are 31 billion GOOGLE searches every month. In 2006, this # was 2.7 billion. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google).
The first commercial text message was sent in December of 1992. Today, the # of text mssgs sent and received everyday, excees the total population of the planet. Years it took to reach an audience of 50 million: Radio 38 years. TV 13 years. Internet 4 years. iPod 3 years. Facebook 2 years.
The # of internet devices in 1984, 1,000. The # in 1992, 501,000. The # in 2008 1,000,000,000
There are 540,000 words in the English language, 5X as many as during Shakespeare's time.
It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come acrsoss in a lifetime in the 18th century.
It is estimated that 4 exabytes (4.0x10^19) of unique information will be generated this year. That is more than the previous 5,000 years. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years... for students starting a 4 year technical degree this means that...half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
NTT Japan has successfully tested a fiber optic cable... that pushes 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fiber... that is 2,660 CDs or 210 million phone calls every second. It is currently tripling every six months and is expected to do so for the next 20 years. By 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain. Predictions are that by 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the compuational capabilities of the entire human species.
In less than 5 minutes - 67 babies were born in the US, 274 babies were born in China, 395 babies were born in India
SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?(source: FLIXXY.com, Education and the Future of Technology)
Thank you Tony for emailing me the link to this information - I imagine a few of us will have some comments and insights into what this all means - I'll have a printout of this for you at the meeting to take home and discuss with your kids and family.
All the best,
Tim

Next Meeting Date: Wed, Feb 11, 2009 @ 5:30PM

2009-01-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

Portfolio Spreadsheet

2009-01-26T11:43:00.001-08:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Next Meeting - Wed, January 14, 2008 - 5:30PM

2009-01-12T07:19:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Tim!

For those of you who didn't make the December meeting, I announced the good news that our 7th Grade Football team, the Aspetuck Wildcats, won the National Champtionship title! Thank you for your support!!

For those of you who came to last month's meeting - THANK YOU! Everyone made a great effort to increase the wealth of knowledge of the group. Many thanks again go to Mark Juviler who headed up the last meeting and connected us to the web with his laptop so we could all review charts of each idea or market presented.

At the meeting we reviewed the following:
1. Portfolio performance (hypothetical) for the month and year. Another "up" month and a big up year = up over $400,000 in profits on the $1,000,000 hypothetical portfolio. I discussed leveraging this return 2:1 to show an 80% return.
2. Reviewed the methodology of how to size each position
3. Reviewed how to measure risk and how to place a stop.
4. Announced the winner of last month's contest: Bill Green
5. We showed you how you can access the website to see the spreadsheet of ideas. Here it is again http://westporttradersnetwork.blogspot.com
6. We collected ideas around the room to assemble the model portfolio for Dec-Jan.
7. Pierce Onthank updated us on AEGG (American Energy Group). Business appears to be going well.

The GROUP portfolio was up OVER 40% for 2008! THE AWARD TO THE WINNER from the November competition was ..... drum roll.... Bill Green. Bill chose a collection of automobile stocks due to their oversold prices and potential Gov't support. CONGRATULATIONS BILL!

Some have suggested we do a "dartboard portfolio" - For those who come early and have drinks from 5:30 to 6:00 before dinner upstairs at 6:00, we'll shoot darts at a list of stocks, 5 longs, 5 shorts.

Remember the mission of the group is for us all to share our perspective, experience, and insights to help all of us make money in our portfolios and/or to save money. WE ALL ARE BETTER OFF WHEN WE SHARE!

Lastly, I have a speaker planned to come show us how to use KNOBIAS (review for yourself at www.knobias.com) He'll present to us how to use their software after he sees how our meeting goes so it will be tailor fit to what we are doing. If you would like to present something to the group, let me know and we'll arrange it. SEE YOU JANUARY 14 - The meeting is a week earlier than expected due to a business trip the following week. I didn't want to wait until Jan 28 to meet, so I hope you can make it on January 14th at 5:30PM at Bogey's Grill in Westport, CT.

Happy New Year!

Tim

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT - Bogey's Grille, Bogart Room Wednesday, December 17, 5:30PM

2008-12-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Tim!

Football practices continue for my 7th grader because we WON the Regional Championship and are headed to National Championships in Orlando, Florida next week. Cheer us on! Send us your good thoughts in the mornings (9AM-10AM start time likely) of Monday, Wednesday & Friday next week. I believe in the power of positive thinking - and hope the boys can bring home the metal.

For those of you who came to last month's event - THANK YOU! You all made such a great night of ideas and perspectives. A BIG THANK YOU TO DREW STIETZEL for his follow up presentation to his summer presentation on geothermal with the GAS-BUSTER idea that extends the MPG's on your vehicles using a form of hydrogen boosting power. Drew did a great job of teaching us about the technology and hope to see Drew get his business up and running so he can install them in our vehicles as soon as possible.

Thanks also to Pierce Onthank from AEGG (American Energy Group) who gave us an excellent insight into his natural gas pipeline business in Pakistan. It sure sounded like business was going full speed ahead and the stock is up nicely to $1.00 from his previous presentations at $0.65 and $0.75. AEGG is located in Westport at Gorham Island.

Thanks to Mark Juviler for connecting us to the web using his Apple iPhone as a modem! It was very helpful to have that connection to pull up charts on each person's idea for us all to review. The "INVESTMENT IDEAS" are at the link on this website - http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

There were many ideas at the last meeting. Using LIMITED LEVERAGE - the strategy we employ at the group is up over 40% this year! If you chose to double-lever the strategy you could be up 85%. Congrats to all of you who have put your best foot forward.

THE AWARD TO THE WINNER from the October 1 meeting was Susan who shorted the S&P500 for a massive 7 range profit. Remember a 3 range profit = 1% return to the portfolio (if there are 10 ideas). Come to the meeting to learn more about how to "size" positions and how to measure risk.

Remember the mission of the group is for us all to share our perspective, experience, and insights to help all of us make money in our portfolios and/or to save money (like geothermal-dx technology for home heating/cooling/hot water). WE ALL ARE BETTER OFF WHEN WE SHARE!

Let me know if you are coming - we had 15 people at our last meeting and we have room for a few more. Do reply early! I have a few ideas for speakers. If you would like to present something to the group, let me know.

Meeting Announcement - Wed, Nov 19th, 5:30PM drinks - 6PM dinner/presentation -Bogey's Grill

2008-11-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Tim & Mark!

As far as a SPEAKER for our event - I'm happy to say that I may once again invite Drew Stietzel who WOWED us this summer with his "GAS-BUSTING" presentation on the wonders of GEOTHERMAL-DX which made it very clear to us that there is a way OUT of our demand for "home heating oil" with an investment in copper-tubing in the ground with refridgerant collecting heat in winter or dispersing heat in summer right into the ground. (Side-note: since that meeting the price of oil has dropped $80 per barrel from the $140 area to the $60 area)

WELL GET THIS! This one is even BETTER (I think). Drew has found a way to boost gas mileage on automobiles by 100% (He guarantees 50%) and more and is putting his money where his mouth is an opening a business to sell these systems and install them for you in your vehicles. The investment? $10,000? No. $8,000 ?(typical hybrid additional cost) NO. $6,000? NO! $4,000? Getting close. $2,000??? Yes!!!!! How many miles do you drive a year? @ 20,000 miles/year @ 20 miles per gallon, you will use 1,000 gallons a year of gasoline. If you paid $3.00 per gallon, that is $3000 per year. Well, if you can knock that down by 50%, you'll save $1500 in the first year alone and you'll nearly pay off the system in the FIRST YEAR.

As far as our "INVESTMENT IDEAS" and the AWARD TO THE WINNER from the October 1 meeting held at Bogey's - We'll find out who the winner is unless you go the website http://westporttradersnetwork.blogspot.com to figure it out for yourself. Come here what our group is thinking this month - so far just this year the portfolio is up SIGNIFICANTLY from our picks and pans on stocks, currencies, commodities and more. Come to the meeting and share your wealth of knowledge, opinion and perspective for WE ALL ARE BETTER OFF WHEN WE SHARE!

We would also like to update you on the operation and execution of the "Automated Trading System". Hope you can make the meeting - please contact me to confirm.

In the future, meetings will be done by eVite to manage the email list. I hope you enjoyed this last month's meeting eVite. I invested a few hours to make it happen, but would have saved a LOT of time had I known that eVite can download email lists from your yahoo account. I had re-typed them individually which took HOURS. Oh well.

EVITE just sent out - NEW MEETING DATE Nov 19, 2008 (next week)

2008-11-11T21:38:00.001-08:00

If you aren't on the mailing list, then you wont receive the email about the meeting change of time to next week. Please contact me at twest@compocapital.com and I'll add you to the evite list. I am looking forward to meeting with you all next Wed @ 5:30PM, November 19, 2008 at Bogey's Grille in the Bogart Room upstairs.

Meeting Announcement - Wed, Nov 12 - 5:30PM

2008-10-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Location: Westport, Bogey's Grill & Tap Room, Main Street & Rt 57.
5:30PM - Meet in the bar
6:00PM - Dinner upstairs as we discuss markets, trends, portfolio, and award winner from last month.

Oct 1st - Meeting Review -

2008-10-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

The group meeting was unique this month, perhaps due to the recent stock market turbulence or perhaps due to a changing schedule which forced us to move the meeting from two weeks ago until October 1st. Our original cast was supported by Greg Pinyan, Mark Juviler, Casey Allen & Tim West with the rest being new members to the monthly meeting process and concept.

The meeting ended up being a discussion of the presentation given by me, Tim West, a year ago where I outlined the bear market that would unfold in the US stock market. The bear market was very much underway at more than a 20% decline, however, after the meeting the carnage accelerated.

Tim discussed the extremely similar personality of the stock market moves from the past to present and how it implied we would fall substantially further. (I'm sensing at this time, however, that the lowest prices may have been seen last Friday, particularly at 3PM, when put volumes showed up in their extremes, coupled with 75+ readings in VIX - for further details - go to http://shorttermtradingideas.blogspot.com )

The meeting also covered questions about the Presidential election: Who do you think will win? (Note that is not the same as "Who do you want to win?"). The group generally believed that Obama would win (as I recall).

Kudos goes to Jim Sullivan for winning last month with his forecast for a drop in the price of crude oil. Jim won with a stunning 5.2R return for his pick, trouncing the next 2 traders by a margin of 2R. Stan Katz came in 2nd with a 3.3R return for his short EuroCurrency and Bob Gifford nailed down a 3.1R return in his Long Home Depot idea. Overall the portfolio was up 2.2% for the month and is up 36% for the year so far. Our largest monthly closing loss was 3.5% back in June and our second worst month was -3.0% in March. Each of the last two losing months was followed by extremely large profitable months. The results exclude leverage assumptions, commissions, slippage and the impact of having actual orders in the marketplace, particularly stop orders.

Either way - the results speak volumes for the diversity of the ideas, the money management principles and the concept that you can make money without incessant amounts of trading and management of positions. I would like to give awards to the best ideas presented at the beginning of the year based a variety of criteria. These awards will hopefully be given at each monthly meeting based on a 1 year holding period assumption. This takes a lot of work, but it may show whether or not we have had skill/luck at picking investments for the longer haul. My intuition has me leaning towards the concept that we can pick up on trends for the 3-month to 6-month time frame. Again, just my intuition here.

Hope to see you all again at our next meeting.

Shall we continue with the 2nd Wednesday of the month again for the next meeting? November 12th, 5:30PM at Bogey's in Westport.

MEETING TONIGHT OCT 1, SIX-THIRTY (not 5:30)

2008-10-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

NEXT MEETING OCTOBER 1st, 5:30PM BOGEY'S

2008-09-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

I have booked the Bogart Room upstairs at Bogey's for 6pm.

Details to follow:

Tim 10:55AM Thursday, Sep 25, 2008

Portfolio For Westport Trader's Network - Aug 27, 2008 Meeting

2008-09-03T12:06:00.001-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT - Aug 27 2008

2008-08-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings WTN Members and Friends,

This week’s meeting is scheduled for today at Bogey’s Grille at the top of Main Street in Westport at 5:30PM. Drinks 5:30PM at the bar then go upstairs to the meeting room at 6:00PM. (Further details enclosed below)

Both Mark Juviler and Casey Allen cannot make the meeting tonight – so we will need someone who can bring a wireless connection to the internet, otherwise we will just have a general meeting and sharing of ideas without supporting charts and graphs. If you could bring a chart of your idea and any supporting materials (one or two copies, preferably 5 or more), then we could proceed that way.

If anyone can make it tonight, please reply so I can let Bogey’s know how many people will be attending. We should figure on having dinner served to us upstairs in the meeting room. We can choose to have a meeting first, then have dinner or have dinner while we have a more casual gathering. Let me know what works for you.

As far as tonight’s picks for the meeting - If you each send info on your pick, then I could pre-load info onto my laptop and bring that with me. That could work. I’d be happy to do that for the group and might save you some time and printing costs.

This is high time for vacations for many of you, so I realize this meeting will be low in attendance. I do hope you all will love the new location and the menu. My neighbor Jim Stablein is the owner of Bogey’s and if you like great American fare like that served at a country club, then you’ll love Bogey’s too.

I’ll miss BobbyQ’s since we have had so many great meetings there since our start last October. Bobby LeRose, the owner of BobbyQ’s and I went to college together at the University of Richmond. So, the next time you go to BobbyQ’s for live music and great barbecue, do thank him for giving us the space to have our meeting. Remember too, that Wednesday night is poker night starting at 8PM at BobbyQ’s too.

As far as future meetings, the agenda for future meetings will be addressed. I do have Glenn Neely lined up for either late September or late October. Visit his website www.neowave.com to get an idea about Glenn and his excellent market forecasting and trading service.

This email address list is not complete, but I hope that everyone knows that you can always check the website to see what is going on.

Overall, there were some BIG WINNERS in this last month’s picks. If you haven’t seen the site yet, then check it out. Otherwise, I will tell you all about it at the informal meeting tonight.

All the best to you and enjoy a great labor day weekend!

Timothy West

July 23rd Meeting Summary / Picks

2008-07-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

Our meeting was a round-table discussion format. Tim West made opening welcome remarks, reviewed the MISSION of our group and reviewed the winner from last month was CASEY ALLEN with his short DIA pick. Although he won with 2.8 ranges, he was up nearly 7 ranges at his best. We reviewed the spreadsheet of picks (link is available at the bottom of this post). Tim also paid the winner of last month's contest his prize - congratulations MARK JUVILER for winning in June! The portfolio of ideas as a whole was down just over 3% last month, leaving our group picks up just under 20% since last October's start date. This puts our drawdown at over 5% now, but still an impressive return in my opinion.

We decided on the next meeting to be held on August 20 and to move the location to Bogey's Grill and Tap Room at the top of Main Street at the junction of Rt 57. We can use the upstairs room where it is much quieter. Our round-table discussion went to 7PM and then we went into random discussions of topics on people's minds. Options strategies were mentioned. We discussed ways to save energy, including solar, hybrid automobiles, geothermal, and radiant floor heating. We went around the table and had each person lay out where they thought crude oil would be for the balance of the year. My notes will reflect that many think the top is already in place yet a few left open the idea that prices could go much higher or at least make a new high. Another thought crude could drop under $100 in the near term and potentially hit $75-$80 before rebounding. A trophy was an idea for each winner to posess for a month until the next meeting. A prize for the last-placer was another idea. Whoever is stopped out first, perhaps in the event that we get multiple stop-outs, as we had last month. I'd like to stop putting up money for the prize, although I value the picks and do want to encourage participation and put some pressure on you to find out what you truly feel is your best idea for the month. So if we want to do a prize from now on, we'll have to each kick in some money to make it happen. I'll be banker and collect a per pick prize.

Tim West announced that Glenn Neely is available to speak to our group this fall. He is the author of Mastering Elliott Wave and a legend in the world of logical, rules-based wave-counts. Glenn has added rules to those set out by R.N. Elliott and so popularly marketed by Robert Prechter that Neely labels NEoWave. NEoWave was needed to nail down logical wave counts that are consistent with post-pattern market reaction to justify a wave count. To summarize, Glenn is brilliant and has offered to speak to our group. I'll send around an email describing in more detail and you can visit Neely's website at www.neowave.com Glenn will most likely be speaking at MTA this fall in NYC.

Picks until the next meeting August 20th.

Timothy West; buy sugar using SUV8 futures. I still feel that sugar is cheap relative to corn as I had stated last month. Corn dropped over 20% from our last meeting!
Tony Sanfilippo (although he didn't make the upstairs meeting, he came early to meet with us and to the 5:30pm-6pm downstairs meeting) told me to short XLF using the ultra-short etf because the huge bounce in XLF was overdone and unprecedented. For future portfolios, I'd like to make sure that everyone hears a forecast as presented by the individual and not through me. Which brings up Stan Katz who didn't make the meeting at all. Stan has been shorting the EuroCurrency since last October at every meeting. In his absence, I felt it was important that we include his forecast despite that he wasn't there. I will presume he feels the same for this meeting.
Bob Gifford offered a long in Home Depot as we are in hurrican season.
Randy Shapiro suggested we buy gold as August has historically been the best month for gold.
Mark Juviler felt that the e-mini Dow futures were a good long.
Bill Green believes Macquarie (MIC) is overvalued and vulnerable and should be shorted.
Chris Chessari sees e-mini S&P futures as a good shorting candidate, although he admits he is a very short term trader where 10 minutes is considered a long term investment.
Miriam Bakker also thinks the S&P is a short sale using the SPY etf.
David Evans said there is more damage to Wachovia Bank and UBS. Short these stocks looking for lower prices, is David's advice.
Thanks for contributions from new members David Evans and Bill Green. I consider you members for coming to the meeting with the mission of accomplish the goals of the group: TO help each other to find ways to make money from the market. We welcome you to future meetings and hope you can continue to enlighten us with your insights and perspectives!

Please post any replies to update your position and you can view the spreadsheet for this listing by clicking on the following link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Here's the crude oil forecasts for balance of 2008:
Tim W: 100-130, high is in.
Mark J: new high coming, long term oil is cheap now, Mark encouraged by "high is in" comments by others.
Randy S: 100-130
David E: high is in, demand destruction
Bob G: high is in, long term in question due to laws for drilling offshore
Chris C: 116-145
Casey A: high is in. hold here (125)
Miriam B: dollar new low, crude new high coming
Bill G: 120-160, bear mkt (recession) hurts demand
Jim S: high is in, will break/test 100. Possible 75-80 low. Europe may slow.

We wish you all the best of good fortune and look forward to seeing you AUGUST 20 at the next meeting at Bogey's!

Timothy West

Westport "Save Money" "Make Money" Meeting Tonight July 23rd, 5:30PM @ Bobby Q's, Westport

2008-07-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Group Members!

Even if you are not a meeting-member, I consider you are a member in spirit because I care about you and would love for you to be a part of the monthly meetings. By attending and sharing your insights, observations and perspectives on ideas and trends that we discuss, it will benefit you and the group. You will have more confidence in your idea and the group will have an idea it didn't have before. I have also found that a group will make sound and logical decisions that are superior.

To clarify, I formed a group called Westport Traders Network that meets monthly to discuss ways to make money in the markets. Our mission is to help each of us to make money. We focus on a variety of different instruments, from stocks to futures and occasionally penny stocks and even real estate. We even ventured into "saving money" with a focus on geothermal-dx investing from an outside speaker Andrew Stietzel from Our House LLC in Southbury CT. The returns look extra-ordinarily strong with that technology. We also have presented "automated trading systems". I would like everyone to share with each other whatever they are willing so that we can all benefit.

I sure hope you will consider joining us. We have an added benefit that we are creating a hypothetical track record of the ideas we generate at our meetings and the gain on that portfolio is nothing less than stunning. So, we are considering the idea of opening an account to actually take the positions we discuss at our meetings. How does a 25% gain sound to you? What if I told you that was just from last October thru June? I'll release the latest results at the meeting tonight. They might be even better. Are you curious?

I hope you will find our group interesting and that you might consider coming to a meeting if you haven't already. We welcome anyone who is positive in attitude and asks questions. Bring an idea that you think is a good investment for the next month, quarter, or year or more. We hope you enjoy the process and you may find some other ideas that you can profit from.

All the best to you and hope to see you there. If you do plan to attend, RSVP.

Portfolio for Westport Traders Network - June 2008

2008-06-25T04:34:00.001-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Meeting Summary & More - June 25, 2008

2008-06-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

First, a meeting summary from our Wed, Jun 11th meeting. We had a full house of people interested in Geothermal-DX technology for eliminating the need for heating oil and natural gas for heating/cooling and air conditioning. The investment returns from Geothermal-DX are far beyond what you would ever expect to earn in the stock market with the best available techniques and strategies. Furthermore, for all of us that are concerned about the high prices of energy products these days, it is supremely nice to know that there is something we can do about it and with technology we have NOW. We can indeed reduce our carbon footprint now in ways that are extremely economical. To contact our speaker Drew Steitzel, call 203-733-5161 or email steitzels@aol.com. In a year, I'll guess that the waiting line to install one of these systems will be six months. As an additional follow-up, I went to the drilling site of his Stamford installation and I was very impressed by the crew and picked up additional information which only makes me more confident in the fidelity of the system. Google "geothermal dx" to learn more too.

As far as the performance of the group picks last month, it was a down month of less than 2% utilizing the power of money management. Mark Juviler was the winner with his short Dow Jones Industrials pick and Peter Afif was a very close second-place with his long commodities ETF pick. Congratulations to Mark for winning and to both Mark and Peter for two great picks that yielded > 3 avg true range moves in their favor. We have a new slate of picks that I posted at the website in the spreadsheet link below. Scroll down until you find the spreadsheet link.

Second, a question for you: Would you like to have a meeting on Trading System Development? Stan Katz felt we could have a separate group meeting on this topic. Any thoughts? Third, Mark Juviler and I are hosting a meeting next Tuesday, July 1st on our automated trading system portfolio in Westport. We can send you an invitation to the event separately if you send us an email request to twest@compocapital.com or to mjuviler@compocapital.com. The basic concept is that Mark and I have a system that trades in the Dow, Yen, Gold, Corn and Bond futures that is ready for funding. Come and see a live replay demonstration of this system.

Lastly, our next meeting is July 23, the 4th Wed in July. That is the best meeting date for July. Hope you can make it. Speaker/topic TBA.

Regards,

Timothy West

=========================
I typed the following comment back on June 13 after the group meeting after talking with Stan Katz.
=========================
Idea - Technically based trading decisions can be allowed for the group. In other words, you could devise a system to buy and sell automatically in order to capture a return. The risk would stay the same, you would be stopped out when the loss hit your stop for your % of the account. Last month, for example, we had 9 picks. That means $11,111 risk per trading idea because I want to limit our loss in any 30-day time period to 10% or $100,000 on our account of $1,000,000. The size of the trades would be confinded to 3 ATR's would equal a $11,111 loss. If your trading system was active, then it would require less risk per trade so you wouldn't lose your $11,111 (which is the same as saying 3R or 3 ranges, where R=Ranges or ATR's). If your systems use too large a position size you will get stopped out too fast. If you trade too small, then your return wont be optimal and over the long haul wont make enough money to make it worth your time to follow it. It is paramount to optimally size your trades to maximize your long term return. As far as our next meeting - Stan suggested that we have a systems trading discussion to cover issues related to system trading development, how to design a system, how to overcome all of the many challenges that arise when designing trading systems. Any comments, thoughts or reactions - please let me know by replying here.
June 13, 2008 6:01 AM

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT for Wed, Jun 11, 2008, 5:30PM at BobbyQ's, Westport

2008-06-09T08:57:00.001-07:00

Greetings;

Members, guests and friends: We have a unique meeting this Wednesday at 5:30PM. We have a number of items to follow up on from our last meeting on May 8th and a special guest speaker, Drew Stietzel who will enlighten us on GEOTHERMAL ENERGY for our homes. At our last meeting I felt it was an urgent opportunity for us to explore and research into alternative energy investments, companies and strategies. After speaking at length with Drew and doing some online research on DX-Geothermal, it was clear to me that we should have Drew come and speak to our group based on the what appears to be a very solid investment returns from geothermal. Can you imagine no longer burning heating oil or natural gas in your home for hot water and heating needs? You could get rid of your heating oil deliveries forever. The investment typically required to install a Geothermal system has always tended toward $40k-$50k, but Drew has a system which is under $30k for a simple installation. The potential return? What if you didn't have to buy 2000 gallons of heating oil at $4.00+ per gallon this winter? That's an energy bill of $8,000 you could eliminate. Electricity is still required to run the system and the system will increase your electric bill. However, I am hopeful that many of you will be interested to find out more about this system so bring your questions and creative minds and we will see what we can learn from Drew. We have quite a few people on this email list that are in the building and real estate trade, from bankers (to finance systems) to insurance agents, to builders and brokers (geothermal homes might sell faster in a slow market) and plenty of people that I think will be interested to learn more from someone experienced in the technology who is installing systems today. We may in fact need to have a larger venue to accept everyone who is interested to hear, so do reply so I can confirm that you are coming.

I realize this announcement is different from our past meetings, however, the purpose of the group, the mission, is to find ways to make money and the way I see it is that saving money is the same or better than making money. When you consider that you pay your energy bills with after-tax dollars, it means the returns on making a Geothermal investment are just that much higher. When you can earn a taxable equivalent return of 40% on your dollar, every year for many years to come, then we should all be listening and asking questions.

Mark Juviler and I have also been diligently expanding our A.T.S. (Automated Trading System) to include more markets and have an update to provide on our mission to build a portfolio of systems and markets.

Last month we also discussed the idea of opening an actual account at a brokerage firm in order to capitalize on the returns we have made hypothetically from our group meeting ideas. The returns from inception last October are simply too incredible not to do something about it. The portfolio of ideas was up more than 25% in 7 months with less than a 5% drawdown. We can talk further about this idea and explore who is interested in pursuing this idea further. These returns do show the POWER of the concept that many perspectives can come together at our meetings to deliver unique and solid returns.

Please reply ASAP to me Timothy West at this email tim_wst@yahoo.com and to Mark Juviler mjuviler@compocapital.com so we know you are coming.

Thank you and see you Wednesday. Remember: Bring your stock, currency, options, commodity strategy with you and be prepared to discuss to the best of your ability.

Best regards,

Tim West

Wednesday, May 14th 2008, Meeting Summary

2008-05-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Joe Bocuzzi wins the contest again and wins his 2nd month in a row! Congratulations Joe. The meeting attendees were: Tim West, Mark Juviler, Joe Bocuzzi, Pamela Grayson, Peter Afif, Stan Katz, and Ilene.

Notable news is that our portfolio of ideas, when money management principles are applied, yielded north of a 10% gain for the month. This performance, when added to our previous performance, put our 'hypothetical portfolio' up 25% with a maximum drawdown of less than 5% just since early October. I trust you are all amazed and wonder how we can capture this return in a real account.

The obvious questions are: 1. How do we structure ourselves. 2. How much capital would we need in order to finance the proper position sizes. 3. How much would it cost. 4. What are the risks. 5. Who would perform all the tasks. 6. How would we make decisions. 7. How much time is needed.

I would have liked to post the ideas from the meeting right away, but I don't want our ideas out for general circulation, as they are valuable so I would like to distribute them by email to our group or find a way to get passwords and login codes so you can get information. This may sound complicated and expensive, and it is. But our ideas are valuable and there is no sense giving them away when they are clearly so profitable.

As far as a meeting location goes, we didn't have internet access at this last meeting, which was a problem given that Mark Juviler and I (Tim West) invested a lot of time to assure we have a wireless network available to us at BobbyQ's. If someone has a wireless air-card, then do bring it for the next meeting please. Otherwise, we may need to find a more suitable location where we have a quieter location with more privacy. I am considering a change of location very seriously and will contact you all shortly about the details.

If there is a presentation that anyone has for the group, then email me at tim_wst@yahoo.com and let me know. Obviously, my presentation on QCharts software wasn't possible without an internet connection. So, with a new location or a more reliable internet connection, we will be able to have more data to back-up our discussions, especially relating to "When" to enter an investment, when to exit and various key levels of support or resistance in the historical price levels of the stock or commodity. We all look forward to having that functionality again at the next meeting.

Ideas generated by the group will be posted to the spreadsheet soon, which is available by clicking on the link below entitled "spreadsheet".

Our next meeting will be the 2nd Wednesday of June. which is June 11th. The meeting will start at 5:30PM and we will meet at the bar of BobbyQ's (pending a new location).

April 9, 2008 Meeting Summary

2008-04-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

Click on the link above to see the latest group picks from our meeting Wednesday, April 9, 2008.

Sample Presentation

2008-04-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddv24pvz_19bp8ccm

Here is a quick slideshow I just put together on Google Docs - for future reference.

Monthly Picks Spreadsheet Available from Google Doc's

2008-04-09T13:46:00.000-07:00

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p4P2Qbq7qqC1UZpy1VImeAw

WHAT - HOW MUCH - AND WHEN:
Here is the spreadsheet of the picks from the group for January, February and March. It shows all the information you need to have to make the calculations of returns, risk and the overall return of the picks. We can discuss the money management routines involved in this "position sizing technique". It is one thing to know "WHAT" to buy, but what we can all learn is that it is more important to know "HOW MUCH" to trade and "WHEN TO EXIT".

Google has a great program that allows you to use MS Word, MS Excel and MS Presentation software directly from their website. It also allows you to store the documents online.

I'll put together a group site so you can all access documents and update them.

ETF CORRELATION CALCULATOR !

2008-04-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.sectorspdr.com/correlation/

Here is a handy tool to find an ETF that has correlated the closest to a stock that you are following. Type in the symbol and it will give you the ETF's ranked according to correlation coefficient on a 6 month, 1 year or 3 year time frame. Additionally, you can find an ETF that has a negative correlation - that way you can buy that fund to hedge your stock instead of selling short an ETF.

We should discuss the arbitrage opportunities that are present between the movements of these various, yet highly similar funds and futures contracts.

Timothy West April 2, 2008 9:28AM (updated link info on Sep 8, 2009)

March to April Contest Picks

2008-03-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

The meeting last night March 12, 2008 was a round-table success. Many ideas were shared in depth and others brought up many questions. The group picks using money management, as discussed last night, have been working very well. Remember, the goal is not to be right, but to make money and that involves cutting your losing positions. If you'd like to add insight into your pick for the month, then click on the "post comment" button below. Let's hope we can keep delivering 15% returns with less than a 1% monthly drawdown like we have in the six months since October. I'll post the 11-day average true range soon.

Jim McCarthy, Long OI
Mike Gallager, Short DIA
Suzy Dinelli, No Picks
Arnold Ellison, Short FXI & Long AUY
John Wilburn, Long AEGG
Miriam Bakker, Short FXE & Short oil (USO) & Short SLV
Joe Boccuzzi, Long SPY
*Peter Afif, *Long TMA & Long AET
Bob Gifford, Short QQQQQ via Long on QID
Stan Katz, Short EUE/USD
Herb Poder, Long GSG
Mark Juviler, Short Soy Beans & Short DIA & Long SCSS
Tim West, Short TLT
Pamela, No Picks

*Previous contest winner for Feb-Mar'08 with DBA Long

MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

2008-03-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

(This is an encore version of the email sent yesterday, March 4)

Greetings,

I know many of you are eager to get together and I wanted to remind you to set our meeting on your calendar for next Wednesday.

What I would like to propose for a meeting agenda is for me to jump into the pulpit and launch into a review of the "Market Technicians Association" Annual Meeting which I attended in Tampa Florida at the beautiful Don Cesar Hotel right at the beach. There were a number of interesting points to highlight and think this is a great venue to review my two-day excursion. I suggest highly that you all go next year as it is a great way to meet people in the industry.

I would also love to show you QCharts and the power that the software has to both find and track futures and stocks. This alone could be an hour of material depending on what you are all interested in reviewing.

Keep in mind that I am now enrolled in the CFP course - so my time is more limited than before.

Of course, we will also be reviewing the ideas of group members both at the meeting and after the meeting while we sit down to a dinner where more extensive conversations can occur. The delicious menu at BobbyQ's is 2nd to none in the area so swing by and throw your hat in the ring.

I'm considering a bigger, 1-year (or end of year) prize for best market/directional call for the calendar year. Not exactly sure how to design this contest, but I like the 1-month forecasts, but realize that it is more realistic and practical to include longer time horizons. Realistically, we want to generate long-term capital gains on assets held longer than 1-year (and 1-day, to be exact).

I met with someone who would be a great addition to the group and he was interested in having a full group discusion on the gold market to include all of the bullish and bearish fundamentals of the gold market. Basically, let's cover everything we can think of on the gold market to make a case one way or the other for the outlook for gold. I personally LOVE this idea and would love to hear any reaction at all. All of us collectively could gather many reports, studies, projections of analysts, etc to pull together a "Ben Franklin" pros/cons list of reasons to go long or short gold.

As many of you know, my kick-off presentation back in October, (which was a re-do of my 2004 and 2002 presentations on gold, the dollar, real estate, stocks, inflation, wars, impeachment, presidential elections, etc....) might be worth re-visiting as well at the meeting to see which, if any, of the concepts are still at play and merit closer attention: Do any of you remember the main points or any of my presentation?

Well, we'll see you next Wednesday and do let me know if you can make it as we might need a bigger room if all of you are coming!

Best regards,

Tim West

BIG NOTE HERE: Please send all replies to tim_wst@yahoo.com by replying to this email. If you know of anyone interested in coming to the meeting, do ask them to contact me too to make sure there is room for everyone comfortably.

February 13th 2008 Picks

2008-02-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

Thank you Peter for collecting the data from the meeting:
From: Peter Afif pafif@aol.com
To: twest@compocapital.com
Sent: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:30 pm
Subject: Group Meeting Feb. 13, 2008
Picks for the month,
David Brandman: Long AVNX
Joe Bocuzzi: Long DSX
Mike Gallagher: Short oil using USO
Bob Gifford: Short QQQQ using QID
Stan Katz: Long Dollar using EUR/USD (forex)
Mark Juviler: Short Soy Beans
Peter Afif: Long DBA

Wed, Feb 13, 2008 Meeting at Bobby Q's

2008-02-11T12:50:00.001-08:00

The meeting is on for this Wednesday, Feb 13, 2008.

Arrive at 5:30PM.

Informal meeting at 6:00PM.

Mark Juviler and David Brandman will host the meeting this month.

After David's 2nd win (if ETFC holds its 100% gain through Wed's close), he and Mark will guide the group through our regular session of reviewing the past months comments and ideas to see how events transpired. Be ready to provide your idea for a market, stock or trend for the meeting. The past meetings have been extremely interesting from the standpoint that we all have many unique perspectives and view a variety of markets for possible trades. You can pre-construct your trade any way you want, even post updates to your idea at the site.

In the past month, we had one idea closed out by a formal email to me. So, that is always an option as well. In the future, we can explore options trades too as a way of defining risk.

As far as last months ideas and how to construct a portfolio out of those ideas - I hope you see how there are different ways to "size" the trades: by volatitility (11-day average true range) or by capital or some combination. Some may consider "beta-sizing" a position. Also, how do you stop out of a losing trade. Furthermore, you can "exit at a pre-defined R-profit" if you would like. So far we have seen 6R winning ideas on several occasions and one 8R profit. That seems to be the extent of a move in one month so far.

Let's all thank Mark for the laptop with wireless internet capability. If we didn't have access to the internet, then it would be necessary for you to print out enough copies of your idea so everyone could look at it and review it. Then I could scan some of the ideas and post them to the site. I will consider doing that for next time.

Please consider setting up the next meeting for the 2nd Wed of March.

Poker starts at 8:00PM so do your best to exit the room before 8PM.

Happy Trading!

Timothy West

CONTEST

2008-01-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

Mark Juviler - Short DIA -
Casey Allen - Long DIA - 2.07 avg range (14-day)
David Brandman - Long ETFC - open 2.38, 0.37 avg rg.
Randy Shapiro - Long Gold - long GLD - 86.42 open Jan 10th, 1.37 avg rg. Feb Gold crossed $900 Jan 11, GLD at 88.76. Entry therefore 88.76. If definition of "cross" is different, perhaps on a closing basis, then I can adjust, for now GLD only touched over $900 based on Feb futures.
Ernie Arnow - Buy POT - 135.16, avg rg 7.27.
John Wellbourne - Buy AEGG - 0.72 open/offering price, avg rg 0.13.
Jim McCarthy - Buy Crude Oil = USO - down 50c from 75.25 = 74.75 entry. 1.91 avg rg.
Herb - Buy Natural Gas = UNG - 39.25 open, 1.14 avg rg.
Rolf Olson - Buy MBIA = MBI. Open 12.99, avg rg 2.73. (Due to the extremely large average range = high risk = In order to risk $8500 in this stock, we only need to buy 3100 shares (8500/2.73 = 314 shs) or $43,000 (4.3% of portfolio). But we will discuss allocating 8.5% of portfolio as well as the much smaller 4.3% risk-adjusted portfolio position size.)
Peter Afif - Buy DBA (Commodity ETF) - 34.71 entry, 0.65 avg rg.
Ken McCue - Buy SPY on Jan 22. Avg rg will be reported at that time.
Tim West - Sell Short TLT - 94.87 entry. Avg rg 0.93.
-----------------------------------------------------
For position size, divide $8,500 risk per position by three times the average daily range. We do this so that our 12 positions have a total risk of 10% of our $1,000,000 portfolio. I'll use an excel spreadsheet to enter this data so you can see the position sizes.
-----------------------------------------------------
DIA -
DIA - 2.07 avg range - no position
Long ETFC - open 2.38, 0.37 a.r. = $8,500/(0.37*3) = 7657 shs = $18,225 (2% capital)
Long GLD - 1.37 avg rg. 88.76 = $8,500/(1.37*3) = 2068 shs = $183,566 (18% capital)
Long POT - 135.16, avg rg 7.27 = $8,500/(7.27*3) = 389 shs = $52,675 (5% capital)
Long AEGG - 0.72 open/offering price, avg rg 0.13. = $8,500/(.13*3) = 21794 shs = $15,692 (2% capital)
Long Crude Oil = USO - down 50c from 75.25 = 74.75 entry. 1.91 avg rg. = $8,500/(1.91*3) = 1483 shs = $110,885 (11% capital)
Long Natural Gas = UNG - 39.25 open, 1.14 avg rg. = $8,500/(1.14*3) = 2485 shs = $97,551 (10% capital)
Long MBIA = MBI. Open 12.99, avg rg 2.73. = 1037 shs = $13,481 (1% capital)
Long DBA = 34.71 entry, 0.65 avg rg. = $8,500/(.65*3) = 4358 shs = $151,300 (15% capital)
Buy SPY on Jan 22. Avg rg will be reported at that time.
Short TLT - 94.87 entry. Avg rg 0.93. = $8,500/(.93*3) = 3046 shs = $289,030 (29% capital).
-------------------------------
All summed up - we have 93% of capital contributed and we have only 9 of 12 positions on as 2 offset each other and the last gets put on January 22.
==========================================================
Now all of these calculations might make you think I have lost my mind, so I will also put the portfolio together utilizing equal capital per position and we'll see the difference. The key here is that volatility drives position size. If volatility reduces in each position, then position size can increase. If volatility increases, then position size should decrease. We will only hold a static position for this exercise.
======================
Comments? Questions?

Next Meeting - Wed, Feb 13th - BobbyQ's Westport

2008-01-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

Greetings: We had another great meeting and discussed a variety of ideas from macro-economic to industry-trends to individual stock selections. Mark Juviler presented for the last 30 minutes of the meeting (we ran out of time at 8PM and were booted out by the poker players eager to throw their money on the table). Mark presented on "How to design a trading system" and showed the three month results of one intraday trading system in the Dow Jones e-mini futures. Six of us stayed to have dinner and enjoyed a delicious variety of BobbyQ's finest meals.

Thank you everyone for your participation and I think that this month will be very interesting to see how our "Round-Table" ideas shape up.

Here are the guesses:

Mark Juviler - Short the DJIA - no reason discussed.

Casey Allen - Long the DJIA - market is oversold and due for a rally.

David Brandman - Long ETFC (E-Trade Financial Group) - They have cleared off $3 billion from their balance sheet.

Randy Shapiro - Buy Gold - based on front month Feb futures, buy on a cross of $900 OR on a drop back to $850. Risk $30 if buy at $850.

Ernie Arnow - Buy POT (Potash Corp) - It takes five years to develop a mine and they have the biggest mine operating now.

John Wellbourne - Buy AEGG (American Energy Group) - [If we had a poll from last meeting, then John would have won the contest with the gain in AEGG from last meeting to this meeting.] John updated us on the news on AEGG and what news would need to hit in order for the stock to advance. If the company gets a "reserve report" then it would be ready for a big move up.

Jim McCarthy - Crude Oil has been advancing on bearish news. This is bullish. Buy Crude Oil. 95.00 last basis March. Buy a drop of 50c.

Herb - Buy Natural Gas. Natural gas has lagged the rally in crude oil. (UNG is the natural gas e.t.f. that buys and holds various futures contracts) (USO is a crude oil e.t.f. that holds crude oil futures contracts)

Rolf Olson - Buy MBI (MBIA - Municipal Bond Insurance) - "I'm a sucker for catching a falling knife and I believe you should buy the news and sell the news. " With MBI in the news lately and the stock down from 76 to 13, there is an opportunity to buy. They cut their dividend to save $80 million and they have a $1 Billion line of credit established. Their goal is to maintain their triple-A rating. They have a bond issue that will take precendence over all other bonds issued. Also, Marty Whitman of the Third Avenue Value Fund is buying the stock. NOTE: Most responses/questions revolved around "Why not wait for the stock to bottom before buying?" or "Why not wait until the price moves back up over $20/sh?". Response: Rolf, feel free to post your reply to this question here.

Peter Afif - Buy DBA (Commodity e.t.f.) - Global warming is causing the price of food to advance at a time when we have a foolish policy in place to encourage corn consumption. Buy commodities.

Ken McCue - Buy SP500 on January 22nd close. Cycles are pointing lower until then and a low risk buy may present itself at that time.

Tim West - Sell Short Long Term Treasury Bonds - (use TLT for stock accounts, or USH8 for futures traders). The price of gold and the price of bonds generally do not move together but they are now. They are both benefitting from the move to "safe" instruments. However, the central banks have been injecting massive amounts of liquidity (over $2 trillion) into the system and this will turn into an inflationary spiral in the not-to-distant future. M3 is growing 16% yoy while the M2 is only showing 6%-7% annual growth. Inflation is likely running at 6%-9% and not the low 3% they are reporting right now. Interest rates will likely start rising sharply once people stop lending their money at these extraordinarily low, negative-real-rates of return. Gold is telling you to sell out of bonds - it is a matter of time until bonds come undone. I will be wrong if we go into a deflationary depression, so use stop losses equal to 3 average ranges. There were many questions relating to this position: "What if the Fed eases again? How will that affect your opinion?" "What about the deflation going on in housing?"

The next step for the contest is to collect the opening prices of each of the ideas above. I will post the symbol, price, etc, and 10-day average range. The 10-d.a.r. is the divisor for the movement in the market. Example. If Bonds fall 1.5 points and the average range is 0.75 pts, then my call would be correct by a # of 2. (1.5 correct movement/0.75 avg range = 2 avg ranges).

The next step is to build a portfolio of all of these ideas and give the same $risk for each position. We want to have each idea be equally-weighted, therefore, we will weight it according to its volatility. Our portfolio is $1 million and there are 12 ideas. If each idea were to move 3 average ranges against the portfolio, then we will design it so that we lose 10% or $100,000. So each position can risk $8,500. Therefore, we can put on whatever position size so that the risk equals $8,500. This may involve using some leverage, as you'll see.

The next post will go into the finer details.

Please feel free to reply to any idea and add comments to your forecast or to post a question. I can try to answer any questions that come in or relay those questions to the correct person.

Happy Trading,

Tim 1:01PM EST Friday, Jan 11, 2008

Next Meeting - Jan 9th - 5:30PM - BobbyQ's

2008-01-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Greetings and Happy New Year!

BobbyQ’s is ready for us to meet next Wednesday, January 9th at 5:30PM for another intriguing get together.

Last month turned out to be an opportunity for us to hear about American Energy Group (bulletin board symbol AEGG – stock price was $0.54 bid, $0.60 ask at the time). The CEO Pierce Onthank of AEGG was invited by one of our new group members John Welbourn to present his case for buying the stock of this royalty-stream-based Pakistani natural gas company. Given the recent headlines out of Pakistan with the murder of a Presidential candidate – the opportunity may be even more important to review and consider. Pierce had a persuasive argument for the company going forward and we appreciate John for inviting Pierce to speak with us.

AEGG info at Marketwatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/quotes/aegg

The balance of the last meeting was reviewing previous monthly ideas and collecting a portion of everyone’s new ideas. Unfortunately we didn’t collect everyone’s ideas and therefore there is no contest for this month – sorry or apologies to anyone who had a terrific idea that didn’t get exposure at the meeting.

The big winner of the contest for Nov-to-December was David Brandman who chose China Finance (JRJC) as a short-sale. The stock had its exact high on the night of the meeting and tumbled from the $38 area to below $17 before rebounding into the meeting. An amazing call indeed. Congratulations David. Can you do that again for us next month? I know we are all interested to know David’s ideas regarding his January Effect strategy. David mentioned some picks at the meeting, perhaps Krispy Kreme Doughnuts among others. I’d like to know what he likes now.

Mark Juviler was great to bring his laptop computer running QCharts software with live data (of course the markets were closed) so we could pull up charts of each stock or market we were discussing. It was a key element of the meeting to have Mark provide this for us and allows us to discuss whatever ideas or technical indicators we would like to. Thank you – thank you Mark.

I look forward to seeing all of you in the new year and please reply if you know you can make it.

Best regards,

NEW CONTEST NOV 7TH 2007 START, entry NOV 8th OPENING PRICES

2007-11-08T05:34:00.000-08:00

Please inspect your forecast for accuracy.

Name, Market, Entry, Avg Range, Direction Forecast
Mark Juviler DJIA 13300 245 down
Jim Sullivan DJIA 13300 245 up
Dennis - 2 pick basket GLD (Gold etf) 82.38 1.377 up
Dennis - 2 pick basket DXY (US Dollar Index) 75.505 0.52 down
Pam - 3 picks POT long vs DIA short - ratio 0.9423 0.036 up
Pam - 3 picks EMC long vs DIA short - ratio 0.1648 0.00528 up
Pam - 3 picks POT Potash Corp long 125.8 6.11 up
Ken McCue SPY 147.73 2.88 up (buy at 10:30AM, Nov 8)
Mike - 5 stockbasket ARAY Accuray 17.29 1.23 up
Mike - 5 stockbasket SUF Sulphco 6.14 0.74 up
Mike - 5 stockbasket CSCO Cisco 30.38 1.009 up
Mike - 5 stockbasket INTC Intel 26.89 0.63 up
Mike - 5 stockbasket ILMN Illumina 54.65 2.41 up
Ilene - FXF (Swiss France etf) 88.45 0.9247 up
Ilene - 2 stockbasket FLR 145.09 8.22 up
Ilene - 2 stockbasket SI (Siemens) 138.09 3.05 up
Ilene - watch only - Chinese Yuan 0.13425 0.0001 up
Tim West 30 year bond futures - USZ7 113 27/32 0.68 down
David Brandman JRJC (Chinese Finance) 38.2 3.38 down
Joe Boccuzzi FXC (Canadian Dollar etf) 108.11 1.05 up
Joe Boccuzzi SLT 25.09 1.38 up
Bob Gifford QQQQ 54.13 1.03278 short
Bob Gifford EEM (Emerging Mkt etf) 157.72 5.66 short
Stan Katz FXE (EuroCurrency etf) 146.78 0.83 short

We have 17 total bets for this month at $2 guess.
12 people at the meeting gave 17 total guesses.
Which means I collected $10 in additional bet money - so the prize pool is $34.
If you have a correction, tell me immediately.

Remember for next month, as we discussed at this meeting, you can use specific criteria to buy and sell, or to sell and buy, just like you would do with a brokerage firm. You can buy-limit, buy-stop, sell-limit, etc. You can be creative, but the idea is to capture the most "AVERAGE RANGES" during the course of the contest.

PORTFOLIO CONSTRUCTION:
Since our picks collectively made money last month and you asked me how I would construct a portfolio of these ideas - I will do my best to show you here although it may be confusing.

The first step is to divide the portfolio into slices. There were 12 people with 17 ideas, so we will divide the portfolio into 17 slices. 1/17 = 5.88% of the portfolio for each slice. That is "one way" to look at it. The other way is to say we will risk 0.588% of the portfolio per position. To achieve and define risk, I will use 3 "average ranges" as the stop loss point. The low-volatility positions will get more capital and the high-volatility positions will get less. For example: Gold via the GLD etf. GLD has 1.67% average range for the past 10 days. 3 times that = 5.01% loss to the stop out point which is where we want to lose .588% of the portfolio. That means the position size should be $58,653. With GLD at $82.38 per share, it means you would buy 712 shares. If you work out the entire portfolio, then we would lose 10% if all the ideas hit their stops. If all the positions hit 3 average range profits, then we would be up 10%.

Last month, for example, the average idea gained 0.36 ranges. Additionally, had we stopped out any idea that hit a loss threshold of 3 times its average range, then the group average would have been 1.76 ranges. 1 range = $4125, so the profit to the portfolio was 1.76 x 4125 = $7260 or 0.726% return for the month. Annualized return = 8.712%

So, why does 1 range = $4125? Because we had 8 guesses = split the 10% worst case monthly loss into equal pieces to make each position lose 1.25% for the portfolio. 1.25% of 1 million = 12,500. We furthermore want to stay in a position as long as it hasn't gone against us by 3 average ranges, so divided the $12,500 by 3 to determine the value of an average range. 1/3 of $12,500 is $4,125.

For next month I think we may just decide to do a round-table discussion of ideas. Mark Juviler might be available to give a short presentation on programming with tradestation and I'd be happy to do a review of QCharts. Mark has a laptop with wireless connectivity that would be helpful to show you the features and power of the software. Ken McCue has a speaker that could enlighten us about credit default swaps. Ken heard the presentation and he believes we would enjoy it.

For all of you interested in learning more about silver, I'd suggest you watch Jason Hommel on the video above courtesy of the link with YouTube to his "reasons why silver will double" or any other video by Jason Hommel. His website is http://www.silverstockreport.com and to view all of his past jewels of advice http://silverstockreport.com/ssrarchive.htm
To learn more about the fraud, search for Ted Butler Market Commentary at Google.

Have a great month!

WTN Contest Winner for Oct 9 to Nov 7

2007-11-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

Congratulations Joseph Boccuzzi for choosing to buy the Canadian Dollar which advanced 9 average ranges from the last meeting based on the FXC etf going from 102.19 to 108.09 where 0.66 was the 10-day avg range as of the close October 9th.

2nd place: Bob Way - long GLD +7 ranges (73.36 entry, 1.32 avg rg, 82.58 last, +6.98 ranges)

3rd place: Barbara Rockefeller - long FXE (EuroCurrency) +6.4 ranges (141.66 entry, .813 avg rg, 146.89 last, +6.43 ranges)

4th place: Mark Juviler - short DJIA for a 3.7 range profit. (14078 entry, 210 avg rg, 13300 last, -3.7 ranges)

That is the last profitable idea.

5th place: Tim West - long Semiconductors via PSI etf at 18.85 to 17.76, with 0.33 avg rg, loss of -3.3 ranges.

6th place: Tom Saracena - basket of 3 momentum stocks WBMD, RVBD, TBSI which lost 25% on average, but had average volatility of 5% daily = 5 average range loss.

7th place: Stan Katz - long US Dollar via Eurocurrency etf FXE = loss of 6.43 ranges (opposite of Barbara Rockefeller's trade above)

8th place: Ken McCue - long Uranium via Uranium futures = loss of 8.8 ranges, but only down 2.6% because of low volality in uranium. It has been a low volatility price decline.

Congratulations to the big prize winner - Good luck for the next competition - winner to be based on the closing price of the December 5, the first Wednesday of December.

Westport Traders Network Meeting

2007-11-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

November 7, 2007 - Bobby Q's -5:30PM
Since the last meeting on October 9th, 2007
1. The DJIA closed at 14165 that day and peaked at 14981 on Oct 11, 2007 and dropped to its low today at 13,375, a drop of 606 pts or 4.5%
1a. The DJIA started the year at 12463 and is now up 7.1% YTD (based on 13,340 last at 3:51PM) The DJIA rallied 18.9% from the low in March under $12,000 to the peak in October at 14198
2. Bank stocks as measured by the XLF Financial ETF have dropped sharply from 35.70 that day, down to $30.23 as I type now at 3:36PM with the DJIA -311 pts
3. The Nasdaq (QQQQ) meanwhile, was at 53.38, hit a high of 55.07 and now sits at 53.55 for a small gain, a nice outperformance by technology.
3a. The QQQQ started the year at 43.16 and is now at 53.37 for a 23% gain YTD = GROWTH MANAGERS ARE OUTPERFORMING VALUE
4. The DJTransports went from 4986 (had peaked on Oct 5 @ 5023 and peaked in July near 5500) to 4674, a drop of 6.4% since last meeting and 14.6% off the highest high.
5. The FXI (China ETF) went from 191.91 up to a peak of 218.48 before slipping back to 190.07 today for a small 1% drop, but a 13% drop off the high.
5a. China's Index was at 88 a year ago and is now at 188.6, a gain of 115% in one year!!! EYE POPPING!!!
6. The Dollar was at 85.37 a year ago and is now down to 75.50, a drop of 10 pts or 12%.
7. Consumer Confidence has dropped to a new yearly low as of October 30, down 15% from its high over 111 to 95 last
8. Google - a year ago was $472, at the start of the year was $460 and is now at 731 and hit an all-time high of 747 today.
8a. GOOG - keep in mind, has $47.51 in revenues underlying each share, but revenue is growing at 161%
9. Crude Oil - See above, December crude up to 96.31 from 79.54 a month ago. Crude is also up from a low of $50 set in January on the breakdown from $80 last summer.
10. Natural Gas - 7.64 last, down from a peak last August at $11 and within 1 range of the low of the year at 7.30. NatGas was also over $9 in early November last year.
11. Money Supply - The M3 Money Supply is up 16% Year-over-Year. Dangerous liquidity creation is a signal for higher future inflation rates.

This Wednesday's 5:30PM Meeting at Bobby Q's

2007-11-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

SCHEDULE:
5:30PM ARRIVAL, get a drink and/or appetizer
6:00PM BEGIN PRESENTATION UPSTAIRS
7:00PM-8:00PM END MEETING, HAVE DINNER

Greetings,

The meeting this Wednesday will highlight the “January Effect” as interpreted by group member David Brandman. David has been successfully utilizing this powerful technique for his own account over the years and should be a great presentation. David performs investment screens to find a list of perhaps 5-10 stocks to invest in over the period of November to December and looks for a strong outperformance of these stocks in the opening months of the new year. David’s track record with this strategy is eye-popping, so I am eager to see what you all think.

As a reminder, the way I envision this group being a powerful, money-making gathering is for us all to SHARE what trends we see in motion and to step up to the microphone and give us a quick “elevator speech” on the idea. As we all share ideas in an organized fashion, we will all have some powerful ammunition. Most importantly, know that no one is right all the time and there is no booby-prize even if all your ideas don’t work. Stop loss orders take care of losing ideas. Remember, NO IDEA is “better” than another. Some ideas are culled out of in-depth research and others can be observations that a certain store is much busier than the others (Can you say “Panera Bread” in Norwalk?)

I look forward to handing out the WINNING PRIZE for the October 10th “best pick”. I figured out a new way to add some more fun to that contest, so here is what I came up with. I’ll give you 1 guess for free, which equates to a value of $2. You can buy more guesses at a price of $2 each, no limit. I imagine this will have to get “registered” with the state of Connecticut if we get too many members. Hope that good to you too.

Last month’s meeting did not include a simulated “portfolio” but perhaps we can explore that option again at this Month’s meeting.

After the October meeting finished at 8PM, a group of us gathered for dinner downstairs to the great waitress services by Crystal.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Please email twest@compocapital.com so I know how much space to set up for us at the restaurant.

Best regards,

Tim West
203-952-6721 mobile, anytime

CONTEST UPDATE for October 24, 2007

2007-10-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Here are the current results:

Mark Juviler in the lead with 2.75 ranges in his "Short DJIA" strategy.
JB in second with 1.89 ranges in his "Long Canadian Dollar" FXC.
BR in third with 1.67 ranges in his "Long EuroCurrency" FXE.
BW in fourth with 1.64 ranges in his "Long Gold" GLD.
Tim West in fifth with -1.52 ranges with his "Long Semiconductors" PSI.
Stan Katz in sixth with -1.67 ranges with his "Long US Dollar vs EuroC via short FXE.
TS in seventh place with -3.05 ranges with his basket of 3 momentum stocks WBMD, RVBD, TBSI.
KM in eigth place with -3.68 ranges with his "Long Uranium" UXZ7 contract.

Tim 8:27AM, Thursday, October 25, 2007

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2007 3:19PM

2007-10-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

I was just contacted by Chris Morse, the creator of Trend Simplicity trading system software. A few years ago I had consulted with Chris to assist him with business development. Well, he is still alive and kicking with his program and is now regularly on the "radio" with this website TIGER FINANCIAL NEWS NETWORK. So, get realplayer and then check this out when you can www.tfnn.com Feel free to comment.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2007 10:26AM

2007-10-16T07:26:00.001-07:00

Gold has tripled in value from the lows
set at $250 from 1998 to 2000. A similar event happened in 1970 to 1973 when gold lifted from $35/oz to climb over $100. So as I view this, gold could double from here ($750 now vs $100 to $200 back then) and then back down as it did into 1976

OCTOBER 10, 2007 5:30-7:45PM MEETING

2007-10-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

Great meeting last night. There were many great ideas, questions and comments shared by the group.
First, I'll put down everyone's forecasts, using initials only to protect our identity.
I'll put the symbol, direction
---------------------
MJ - DJIA, bearish - 10Day Avg Range = 210 pts. 14078 close. Reasoning "Weak economic outlook plus new stock market highs suggests over bullishness."
----------------------
TS - WBMD-RVBD-TBSI bullish - 3 stocks average = WBMD 61.35 last, 2.33 ar. RVBD 49.68 last, 2.68 ar. TBSI 53.55 last, 3.41 ar. "Fundamentals, momentum, breakout".
----------------------
SK - EuroUSD down - Using FXE (EuroCurrency ETF) 141.66 last, 0.813 ar. Reasoning "US Dollar recover or pull back"
----------------------
BR - USDollar down - Using FXE (EuroCurrency ETF) 141.66 last, 0.813 ar. Reasoning "Near recession economy or perception of recession"
----------------------
KM - Uranium bullish - Using what though? UX futures only shows a closing price. 85.10 UXZ7.
The Sep H-L for UXZ7 was 87.11-84.22. So, if we must be fair, perhaps the Sep monthly range will be used as a volatility measure. Reasoning: "Global commodity sector play"
----------------------
TW - Semiconductor Index bullish - symbol = PSI = etf by powershares - $18.85 last, 0.33 ar. Reasoning - "Seasonal fourth quarter strength in technology and efficiency investment spending driven by high energy prices will lead investors to semiconductor shares"
----------------------
JB - US Dollar Index down - using long Canadian Dollar etf = FXC 102.19 last, 0.66 ar. Reasoning - "Stability of credit markets leads to additionals easing by the Fed"
----------------------
BW - Gold - using GLD etf - 73.36 last, 1.32 ar. Reasoning "Safety"

----------------------------
So there you have all the guesses. Evidently not everyone understood the idea or just didn't want to participate. The next meeting I'd like everyone to have a 17-second "elevator speech" for an idea they have, if they want to participate in the prize. Of course, you don't have to participate.

Meeting Wednesday, October 10 - 5:30PM

2007-10-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Networking meeting to begin at 5:30 at BobbyQ's Restaurant in Westport, CT. Presentation to begin at 6:00PM. Please share your opinions with the group by posting a reply or by voting on an issue down at the bottom of this page. The presentation upstairs must end before 7:45PM to make room for 8:00PM Wednesday Poker Night at BobbyQ's. www.bobbyqsrestaurant.com for phone number and directions.

Group Purpose and Mission:
Primary Purposes: Network people and opportunities. Assess opinions on market direction.
Secondary Purposes: Education on trading styles, trading and information technology. Build an online database of group interests and books/resources owned by group members.

I am happy to have each of our gatherings as in informal network meeting where people share their thoughts on market directions, trends and how to make money in the markets. We can formalize this collection of data to form a weekly "Consensus" that we could post here. Let's find out if we have a strong "edge" as a group or if we should be "faded" as a contrary opinion.

We all want to have relevant and interesting presentations for the group meetings, so let's focus our efforts on knowing what we all want to learn more about. I'll put together a list of topics and distribute it at the meeting. Please also share your favorite financial-related websites too and I'll post them here.

Here are some ideas to consider for each meeting:
1.) An open discussion (debate style, with moderator) about one or more markets each week. Envision the Barron's Round Table discussions. This may be too "formal" for us.
2.) Investment club. Would you like to run a simulated portfolio through the website Marketocracy as a group? I have run an very successful investment club before and have more than a few good ideas on what we'd need to do to make it successful. Please share your thoughts here by posting a reply or bring your opinion about running a simulated portfolio to the meeting.

Investment Club Strategy:
Each week bring your idea(s) and be ready for a 5 minute or less discussion on each idea. We then vote to vote or we table until the next meeting. Tabling usually means we need more information. We either invest 10% in our best idea (or ideas) and review the other 10% holdings. Maximum 10 ideas in the portfolio. Once 10 ideas are active then any new idea would have to boot out an existing idea. Majority vote required for any decision to add or delete an idea. We can all track the performance at the http://www.marketocracy.com/ website. We can form an investment company around the concept if we are successful or just do it for fun.

Now, for the meeting Wednesday, October 10 -
I would like to present a slide show on some research I have been doing for many years about an "analog" to the current investment climate. The charts and data make the case that the current markets are closely mimicing a time period in the past. Since late 2002 when I realized the pattern, the markets have been unfolding accordingly and are confirming the hypothesis. Would you like to know what might be next? I am curious to hear your feedback. The forecast has implications on the level of interest rates, inflation, gold prices, real estate, stock prices, currency prices, Presidential election outcomes and mass psychology.

$50 PRIZE WEEKLY (or 2 - $25 prizes)
Lastly, remember to bring your "market forecast" to win $50 in a BobbyQ Coupon. See rules below. Whatever futures market (unless everyone wants to pick individual stocks, in which case there will be two categories and $25 for each prize) you think will move the most between the time of the meeting and the next meeting will win $50. We need to adjust the movement by dividing the price move by the average daily range (11-day average range) so everyone doesn't just pick Natural Gas (which seems to move 5%-10% every day).

Looking forward to seeing you Wednesday, October 10 at 5:30PM at Bobby Q's in Westport, CT. See http://www.bobbyqsrestaurant.com/ for directions.

Welcome to the Westport Traders Network

2007-09-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

September 4, 2007
This is the official blog for the Westport Traders Network. We are a group of professional traders that united to form networking relationships in order to share expertise and connections in this ever dynamic field. We meet on Wednesday's or Thursday's at 5:30 P.M. in a local Westport, Connecticut establishment. Our meetings are held at Bobby Q's on Main Street where it is easy for everyone coming home from New York City, Stamford and from local trading outposts. Membership is open to all who have an interest in the profession of trading. Some members trade private capital and manage hedge funds. Other members bring years of technology experience and others span the vast horizon of roles in the field, from accounting, legal and headhunting careers. If you are interested in being a part of this dynamic group and wish to come to a meeting, then bring your referral from a current group member and stop in for a great networking experience. Bobby Q's has a great menu to order from while we listen to a presentation on a relevant topic in the upstairs meeting room. The meeting adjourns when the last member leaves the restaurant. Feel free to contact me, Tim West, President and Founder at 203-952-6721. We'll see you there at Bobby Q's, 5:30PM every Wednesday or Thursday. Get on the official email list by sending your name and contact info to twest@compocapital.com to confirm the exact date of the next meeting.

Directions to Bobby Q's Restaurant at 42 Main Street, Westport can be found at their website http://www.bobbyqsrestaurant.com/ or at Yahoo's Yellow Pages site: http://yp.yahoo.com/