Rumble, Rumble

Another bloody earthquake here in Fairbanks Alaska. That's the second one in six days. Looks like it's centered about the same place as Saturday morning's quake. Not a big one this time, but scare nonetheless. Here's the info
http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/Seis/recent/sub/quakes/2009150_evid106962/evid106962.html

New blog

This has been a looooooong time coming, but I've added a new blog to my content. The new blog's focus is solely on investing stocks and Forex with a special emphasis on technical analysis. I don't have a particular strategy on updates, but believe it will be updated more often than this one is. The main idea is to help myself evolve as a trader and hopefully help others improve as well.

The new blog is at:

http://realtruefx.blogspot.com/

Maybe I should be like other white people

This post is a first expression of something I feel very strongly about, at least for this blog. I can't understand why there are so few people, especially white people, who care about what goes on in 'the hood'. I regularly read the Time Picayune online in one of America's most troubled cities, New Orleans. Almost daily there are stories about violent murders, mostly young black males. The comments section never ceases to amaze me. The vitriol and lack of compassion, along with blatant racism still astounds me! I have seen it for years and I know it exists, but it still bothers me.

Note to Conservatives: Just because we have a black President does not mean racism is over. It still is not acceptable to say "Get over slavery". It is not okay to lay all the blame on minorities for the struggles in minority communities. I could easily put together a long diatribe about this, which most ignorant folks would still ignore or not understand, but this post it not about that.

This post is about a story I just read.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/man_shot_in_marrero.html

As a summation of the story, despite the headline saying a 'man' was shot, the event was involving a 14 year old boy. It is not okay for this to happen, not acceptable. Although I am a 'sensitive' guy and perhaps might cry more easily than all you macho types, I do not cry much. This story makes me want to cry though. If this happens just once, that is a major deal to me. Unfortunately, in the past two weeks, I've read about at least 2 children murdered in N.O., and at least 4 or 5 more between 18 and 25 years of age -- all with 'illegal' weapons. The boy above was murdered with one shot from an AK-47.

Unfortunately, I live in one of the most Conservative states in the Union where guns are a sacred right and the general lack of basic comprehension of societal issues is not understood or is not a concern. I see a general, let the criminals kill themselves or let me take a shot at someone if I am ever threatened, type of attitude here. Those people miss the point that the government is not our biggest threat right now. Hunting is not the most important thing you need to protect. I don't disagree with the right to protect one's self, in fact I believe that to be extremely important. The problem is this, if all you focus on is protecting gun rights and never for a minute worry about fixing the crime or drug problems, eventually you will be overwhelmed by the problems of society and all the guns in the world won't protect you from a collapse of civilization.

There are so many things more important than gun rights at the moment, but I'll only list one -- Babies are dying in the streets in every major city in the country. There are miniature wars, that kill more of our people yearly than have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, right here at home. Babies are dying in the street! So why don't white people care? Is it because they're not your babies? A child is a child-- bottom line. Man, I'm done, for now.  :( 

Cowards!

It seems like there is a daily 'mass shooting' these days. Is it that our nation is being torn apart by the very  threads that hold it together? Are we descending into a war where everyone is an army of one free to enact vengeance on whomever may have done us wrong or who might just be standing in the way of our bullets? Is it the economy? Or is it just that the media has picked a trend that has been occurring for awhile now and begun to bring it to the attention of the masses much more regularly? I can't answer any of those questions definitively, but I do know one thing. These acts of cowardice anger me.  I mean seriously, what in the bloody hell is wrong with people?

I'll tell you one reason, cowardice, plain and simple.Poor little Billy got picked on and never had the guts to speak up before or some girl decided she was done with him and suddenly it is okay to slaughter anyone within shooting range.  Seriously, how WEAK does one have to be to even begin to think that is a way to 'get back' at someone. Really?

To anyone who is thinking of shooting up a school, or a mall, or even a government building, I say this -- do the strong thing and cock that pistol or that shotgun or that automatic weapon and slowly, carefully raise it to your own brain and pull the trigger. It's not as messy to clean up one body, and other people, who often have nothing to do with your situation can continue to live a productive life. Better yet, get some counselling or some drugs to help your psychosis. I'm angry, but I'm not heartless. I think you too should be able to be a happy, productive citizen. Yes, I do. I don't think you should be miserable. I don't think people who might have hurt you should die though. See when you commit these weak acts, guess what? You lose! The hard thing to do is almost always the best thing to do. Is it easy to pull a trigger? Yes. That is precisely why you shouldn't do it, because in the grand scheme of things, you lose by killing. If you persevere and triumph, those coming against you lose. If you want vengeance, be strong and triumph, not by killing, but by showing everyone you are worth something and not just a WEAK coward.

As for killing innocents, seriously, army of one, that is inexcusable. You should pull the trigger on yourself long before you kill innocents. That's bottom line, no honor in killing anyone, especially innocent people who are minding their own business. Get over yourselves and stop being so WEAK.

The big problem with these assaults is that it masks the real problems in our society. I guess, besides the obvious anger caused by these brutal acts, my biggest problem is that we have for a long time been at war in this country. Ask anyone in the slums of New Orleans, Detroit, D.C., L.A., or any city from small size all the way up to the largest cities. This war is rooted in drugs, historical discrimination (no matter to what extent it may exist now, the legacy exists), and poverty. We have death tolls rivalling Baghdad in some cities and that is a city that is a legitimate war zone and there seems to be no attempt to change it over a period of decades.  So we have systemic problems, which I might cover some time in the future, but for now, I'm running out of time and have to cut this short.

So simply put--- STOP THE SHOOTING!

Blog therapy

It has been an extremely long time since a new entry. I don't think I have any real followers anyway, but nonetheless, this blog shouldn't have gotten to this state. I'm posting via email, so hopefully this won't look to horribly formatted. If so I guess I'll fix it when I have time.

Time, time, time. There really hasn't been much time lately. As usual there is family to take care of. That's a given and I accept that. I've also been plodding along in my forex travels. Unfortunately, that's not going well overall. I have been hanging in there and still showing promise, but still am missing some important keys to profitability and longevity in the industry. I had another temporary meltdown yesterday, so I'm recovering from that and trying to focus on moving forward. Still, I've halted trading for a few days. I plan to read, read, and read some more over the next few weeks. I may not trade until I've practiced some more and finished my course work. I've realized over the past several months, that I'm expecting success, but have yet to put in all the required work. I mean I didn't get started in my current career without a lot of hard work, why would forex be different? So cheers to hard work! I'm on it!

I'll try to blog more when I have time. It's a good distraction and therapy anyways. If I'm blogging, I'm not losing any money in trading. Also, I'm twittering. I'm not really sure why, but my plan would be for trade entries and exits at some point. I have some from the meltdown already up there, for future posterity and "look how far I've come" type stuff. Anyways, off to lunch!

The Bailout

Cue scary music! The bailout has just failed, well several hours ago anyway, and it's scary either way you look at it. I am absolutely astounded at the ignorance of the average American and the cowardice of our "leaders". Main street 'hollers' let the Wall St. bastards hang, we're not rescuing them. What is wrong with people.

This is not a Wall St. bailout. Yes Wall St. will benefit in the sense that they will probably have jobs still. Companies like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America will still exist. Yes they will still be around, more than likely, if the bailout would succeed. Guess what America? So will you. You will still have your job and home and way of life, for the most part. I know that a lot of folks will lose their jobs and already have. I get that. It's already screwed up though. Trying to hang Wall St. won't help you though. Vengeance won't do anything other than hurt everyone.

What most people miss, is if we have a series of calamitous events, rather these series of events continue then the system WILL collapse. When that happens we all will suffer. This is not just a Wall St. problem, Main St. helped create it too. People who shouldn't have had mortgages got them and then didn't pay them. As a result, greedy Wall St. began to suffer and the whole spiral developed and continues to do so. The problems are global now too, the markets around the world are suffering, and millions, if not billions are losing trillions upon trillions of dollars(yen, Euros, etc.).

I am a hard working person, and I happen to pay my mortgage on time every month. Even when I had to relocate for a job and couldn't sell my home, I still paid my mortgage. Abandoning my home and letting the bank take the loss was never an option. Working multiple jobs, eating Ramen noodles, and walking in -40 winter weather were all options. (I live in Alaska currently). Sticking it to the people on Wall St. is not an option to me. Why? Because we are all connected in one way or another. I may not know that man with the 8 figure salary and the Rolls Royce. I may or may not ever be that man myself. I do think he should be held accountable, but letting those businesses fail is NOT accountability. It's suicide. It's stabbing myself in the eye. It's cutting my own hand off. It's ludicrous!

The main reason is this, trickle down economics. I do understand that the theory is, if big business does well, it will trickle down to Main St. The idea is that if the big businesses do well, salaries will be higher, there will be more jobs, and everyone will be better off. This is not theory, it is reality, to a point. So the people in charge take more than their fair share off the top, but it still makes it's way down, even if it is crumbs. The problem is this though, when there is no money for the man up top, there is less for the man on the bottom.

When Wall St. has nothing, or big business has nothing, we all have nothing. If you doubt that, go back a hundred years, before Lehman Bros., before Ford, before Wal Mart. Go back to when big businesses did not trickle down and compare the standard of living. The vast majority of us will never be wildly rich and successful, so we hate the next man who is. For the love of God, or whoever you do love, WAKE UP AMERICA. If you kill your brother, you kill yourself.

I am just in awe of my fellow countrymen. I cannot fathom taking such a huge risk to make other people suffer, when the consequences for all of us could be truly profound. I know that we could have another Great Depression and in these days I'm not at all looking forward to that. I'm not being an alarmist, but it IS possible. I don't know if it's likely or if it will happen, but we should do what it needed so that we don't roll the dice. Then we can work together to fix the system that if profoundly screwed up without profoundly suffering at the same time. Think about it! Look at the options on the table and figure it out for yourselves. But please, please, please don't let your bitterness get in the way . Think for yourselves and get over the ignorance and mob mentality and let's work towards a real solution. Even if it is marching on Washington and demanding real action, that is better than the current solution of doing nothing. I for one, will pray for all of us, because we need some sort of intervention, devine or not.

Kinda sorta closed, but not totally

Nice subject ehh? The actual status of this blog is at the very least on hold. I haven't had time or motivation to continue to post in a while. I'm usually trying to make money outside of the blog as that portion never really took off. So feel free to take a look around at previous posts and post comments if you wish. I will respond to comments much sooner than the next time I might post. I'm learning a few new investing angles right now and that is my concentration. When I get that situated, I'll probably be opening a new blog focused solely on that. Until then, I'll make occasional posts here.

Until next time---

therealisttruest