Boogster’s Blog

Here’s what my trading buddy said last weekend:

“Hi Mike. I think it will go 1150, then may drop back 1115-1120 area and hit to 1175 -1200 but it will be very volatile, and I definitely purchase some VXI to protect if I get in… “

I got 100 shares of ASEI about a week and a half ago around the 73.50 area.  Longer term portfolio.  I also added 300 more shares short of both SBUX and  BBY.  800 shares short a piece now.  I am averaging up…I know this is bad, but we are due for a short term pullback, which is when I will exit.  My trading buddy is expecting S&P 1200 in the near term, so I think I will be getting some more AMZN on this next pullback, if we get one.   Probably another 100 shares.

So, I’ve been thinking about getting a new car.  Well, a used car.  I’ve got an S2000 now, but I can barely fit my golf clubs and a pair of shoes in there.  I love that car, but I need a bigger one.  I’ve been thinking about the Jeep Commander, or maybe a 4 door Wrangler:

I will probably complain about the gas mileage if I get an SUV.  I can’t decide.  When I got my S2000, I said to myself that I was going to drive it until it broke.  5 years later, I want a new car.  Go figure.  Always happens.  People always get bored of cars, regardless of the kind of car it is, so there’s no point in spending crazy amounts on a car because chances are that you’ll want a new car within 5 years.

Well…watching some VT vs. Miami now.  I don’t watch too much college basketball, but there’s nothing else on right now besides soaps.  Time to get some grub.  Gotta go fix a kitchen sink leak in my parent’s townhouse too.  Being a landlord sucks, especially when you’re not getting paid for it.

I reworked the SEO for all of my sites.

• Intellilinks: $32.75
• Text Link Ads: $14.50
• Full Tilt Poker: $50.00
• Google Adsense: $8.91

I’ve gotten a ton of new text links on boogster.com over the past month.  It’s probably making about $200/month just on text links right now, but these links are not reflected in my blog monthly advertising revenues.  Maybe when my blog gets re-indexed, I’ll get more buyers.  I have a ton of content, but the PR is 0.  I got PR2 on boogster.com.  Still experimenting.

I’ve been playing a little more poker since the beginning of the year.  Mainly because it’s been cold and snowy outside, which means no golf/soccer/outdoor activities.  I found a few home games in area, which I’ve been to.  I’ve played in two separate home games ($1/$3 NL) over the past two weeks and I’ve been beat for about $550.  And yeah, I played bad in both sessions.  I got bluffed out of 3 or 4 huge pots, which have costed me probably about $1,500.  These bluffed pots could easily have turned my totals from red to black.  Argghh…I hate being bluffed.  And I hate losing.

Anyways, I’m down about $1,000 in poker so far this year.  Not too bad I guess.  This includes online and live tournaments.  Only down a little over a hundo in online games though.  Soccer & golf seasons are coming up, so I don’t imagine that I’ll be heading up to AC any time soon.  Maybe one more visit before the end of the month.  With the home games so close though, I don’t know if I’ll be driving 4 hours to go play.

Here’s my current Holdem Manager graph:

I’ve included my “all-in EV” line to show that I’m not playing like a complete donk, even though my chart is all over the place.

Trading wise, I haven’t done much with my portfolio.  Still holding my positions listed under the Trading tab.  I don’t have a lot invested in any one stock/etf, which I guess is the point, so I’m not too worried about what will happen from here.  I was looking at the chart of DIA a few days ago and check this out:

Look at the bullish divergence on the McClellan Oscillator.  Classic.  My bad, that was actually the weekly chart, which shows an intermediate term bottom.  Here’s the daily:

This one shows the shorter term divergence, which my trading buddy bought.  I didn’t.  I don’t plan on doing much from here.  I still want to add 100 shares of AMZN to my longer term portfolio.  If I do that, then I will probably add to my BBY short as well.  I still want to get into Gold via GLD, UGL, NEM, GG.  Also looking at ASEI.  Heard this one through the grape vine, and I like the chart.  I think that’s about it for now.  I should probably hit up my trading buddy to ask him where he’s at.  Seriously, who cares what I think?  Hah.

Alright, time to get some real work done.  Gotta figure out what promotions to run for March on Boogster.  I ran some numbers for last year and a few “test” promotions that I ran for last year worked well, so I’m gonna push those a little harder this year.  I finally got my taxes organized too, for my accountant.  Not looking forward to the bundles that I will probably owe.  Ugghhh.

I got a dog last Friday:

His name is Rudy.  I rescued him from the PG County Animal Shelter.  He’s a beagle/english bulldog mix.  6 months old.  About 30 lbs.

I’ve never been much of a pet person, but this dog is cool.  I guess my first prolonged experience with a pet was in college, when my roommate had two dogs.  One was a Labrador mix and the other was a german shepherd.  I didn’t think much about these two dogs because they weren’t mine.  I just remembered that I went ballistic one night when my roommate went away for the weekend and left me to take care of the dogs.  After a drunken night, I came home to find a gigantic pile of poop on the floor with a puddle of pee right next to it.  Definitely had to clean it up.  DAGGER.

Anyways, being a dog owner is like a whole nother culture.    I don’t know what it is, but every time I take him out, other dog owners always play the “guess the breed” game.  “Oh, is he a beagle?”  “How old is he?”  Those are the usual questions.  Then, it’s usually customary to ask the other person if he/she owns a dog, and ask about the breed type/age.  Seriously though, I don’t really care about the other person’s dog, but I feel obligated to ask.  Then, you get the randoms who just come up and say “oohhhh, what a cute little dog?”  I wish I could teach Rudy how to “sick” someone or “‘get him”, but he’s a nice little doggy that likes it when people rub up on him.

Before I got him, I went out and bought some pet supplies.  A crate, a leash, some toys, food, etc.  It’s been less than a week, and he’s already destroyed the crate and the leash.  Bit right through em.  Fifty bucks for the crate, and ten for the leash…gone.  I went ahead and ordered another metal crate.  I doubt that he’ll be able to bite through this one.

I’ve watched a lot of Dog Whisperer and I tell you, Cesar Millan makes it look a lot easier than it really is.  I’ve been trying to get Rudy to “come” and he only comes about 50% of the time.  I was able to get him to “sit” though…with a bribe.  I signed up for Petsmart’s Beginner training program, which starts today.  Eight week program for $109.  Let’s see how it goes.

Don’t worry, this blog will not turn into a dog blog.

8 tabled last night, just to see how much easier it’d be. It was fun, except it costed me about $500.

It’s definitely a lot easier with Table Ninja and Holdem Manager because not only can I do quick actions with my mouse and one button, but I can also see what type of player I’m up against within seconds.  In Holdem Manager, the VPIP tells me how many hands my opponent has played, then I have 3-bet stats, continuation bet on the flop/turn percentages, pre-flop raises, aggression factor, etc.  I can even see how often my opponent has folded to a continuation bet on the flop/turn, so I’ll know whether it’s profitable to put in a continuation bet or not.  Too bad it has not made me a better online poker player.

I’ve been playing a little bit of online poker lately.  With all of this snow that we’ve gotten, it’s been hard to keep occupied indoors.  I can only watch so much TV.  It’s been a pretty swingy past couple of sessions:

For the year, I have played over 4000 hands, but I am up nubs.  I guess the other reason that I’ve been playing so much is because I just got hold of this new software called Table Ninja.  It’s pretty cool.

Right now, I believe it only works with Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, but basically, it allows you to automate a lot of things, like posting blinds, check/call/fold/bet, etc.   It will also automatically get you situated at a table with only one click.  And the table screens pop up when it’s your turn to act at a table.

I am a multi-tasker, so I like being able to do things quick.  With online poker, there’s a lot of waiting and clicking, when it’s your turn.  However, instead of switching from mouse to keyboard, I can use Table Ninja to set my function keys to perform my betting functions for me with one push of a button.  Pretty silly.

The software costs $60 and integrates nicely with Holdem Manager.  Too bad, my online game is still a little bit hurting.  I’ve done some reading on what it takes to be a good online player, but jesus, there are a lot of stats to know.  VPIP, 3BET, 4BET, pre-flop raise…all of this shit.  I just want to play poker, you know, but I hate it when others have an “advantage” by using these stats, so I might as well learn what the F they’re doing, so that I can counteract them.  The whole point is to win anyways.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that there’s a ton of players who buy in for the minimum ($20) and all they do is push when they get a semi-decent hand.  I really don’t know if this is a profitable strategy or not, but I’ve seen so many donkeys do this lately.  It’s kinda annoying.  They usually open a pot by min-raising, then doing a small continuation bet on the flop.  In order to counter act these dipshits, I usually just 3-bet preflop and basically put them to a decision right then.  I’m thinking that there’s no way that it could be profitable, but who knows.

I’m not even profitable myself, so I guess I’m a dipshit too.  I am still down $296 after 34,401 hands online.  How bad is that?  I imagine with rakeback and bonuses, I’m probably breakeven now.  Definitely not good though.  I think my problem is that I go on tilt a lot, and I’m way too loose aggressive sometimes.  If I were playing to conquer the online poker world, I’d probably put a little more time into studying my game, but to be honest, I think I just play to keep my mind occupied while I’m doing other shit.  Of course, I’d like to win, but winning is probably directly proportional to the amount of time that I spend studying the game.

No biggie.

I haven’t done much over the past week or so.  I did add 200 shares of BBY short near the $37 area, so I have 500 shares short total now at an average of $37.10.  I also added 500 shares of SBUX short yesterday near $21.89.  I really don’t think that we’re in for a sharp drop lower from here.  It’s interesting that we have a bullish divergence with the McClellan Oscillator:

It’s very hard for me to ignore this indicator, so I can’t get myself to short any more here.  We’re due for a bounce to the upside from here.  Best case scenario, we get consolidation.  Regardless, it’ll be hard for us to continue dropping from here.

I was thinking about adding a long or two to hedge some of my shorts.  I’d like to add another 100 shares of AMZN.  Also, I’ve been watching gold in the form of GLD and UGL here.  Anything under $100 for GLD and I will start accumulating for my longer term portfolio.  I’ll probably get some UGL.  Up to 500 shares for the longer term.  I may diversify by getting some NEM and/or GG, the usual gold suspects.

Who cares what I think right?  I emailed my trading buddy and he went long the S&P last week some time.  We bounced for two days when he called his long position…I’m not sure if he’s still in or not.  He’s looking to go long gold for a short term trade as well.  He thinks that there will be pressure on the gold over the next 40-60 days, but for the longer term, it should be golden.  As far as the markets, he’s thinking that the S&P is headed for the 1000, then 920 area in the near term.

So, we’ve been pummeled with snow over here on the east coast.  I think we got about 2 feet of snow and more is expected over the next two days.  Pretty crazy.  This is the most snow that I’ve seen in the area…ever.

Here we go:

• Google Adsense: $6.32
• Full Tilt Poker: $50.00
• Text Link Ads: $14.50
• Intellilinks: $32.75

I’ve been reading a lot about SEO lately.  If you don’t know what SEO is, it’s basically a way to get your websites ranked the highest in search engines, with Google as the most important.

I’ve built a handful of websites already, but I have done nothing in terms of SEO for these sites.  As a matter of fact, a few nights ago, I realized that there was a problem with this blog.  I had the Metatag plugin and the “All in one SEO” plugin enabled at the same time, so there were two entries for both Metatag Keywords and descriptions.  When google indexed this blog, it was showing the same title for all posts, so I had like 5000 duplicate titles.  In indexing terms, this is bad.  I realized this through google’s webmaster tools.

Anyways, without going into too much detail, since it’s kinda boring for those of you who are not interested, I’ve begun “optimizing” my sites, so that people may stumble upon my site in google searches.  The end result, of course, is me having more hits to my sites, and in return, I make more money.

There’s a lot to learn, but I have a good based, along with a ton of content already written in this blog, so it’ll be easier for me.  I guess the whole reason why I’ve been reading up on SEO is because the google adwords campaign that I started last year made me some good money.  Naturally, I want to learn more about the things that make me money, especially when it took very little effort to make that money.

So, I’ve got some SEO ideas here.  Just thinking of some ways to implement them.  No clue if they will work or not, but I’ll report back once I get everything setup.

There are so many ways to make money.  I was thinking about putting some money to work in real estate, but every time I think about it, it’s so much easier putting money to work in the stock market or building a website or something.  So much easier.

Played my heart out, but as with all tournaments, you need a little luck and you have to not get unlucky…if that makes any sense.  I played well the entire day.  Picked my spots, made some good laydowns…built my stack to around 52,000 chips, well above average.  There were 1,100 players that started the tournament and we were down to about 220.  I figured that I needed about 100,000 chips to make it to the cash at 100 players.  10% of 1,100,000 starting chips is roughly 100,000 chips.  I went card dead for an entire two levels, literally paying zero pots and dropped down to about 40k chips.  Then, on the big blind, I get dealt TJ.  Limped all the way around, the flop came 9-Q-K rainbow.  Dream flop for me, giving me the nuts.  I checked and it went all the way around in a 4 handed pot and the dude pushed, to my delight.  I had him covered, so I was licking my chops.  I hollywood-called and he turned over K-Q.  4 outs.  He hit a Q on the river and I was down to about 10k chips.  Dagger.

That was pretty much the start of the end.  I was able to double up once A-8 vs. A-9, when I hit my 8 on the turn, but my night ended in a 3-way pot with me holding K-J to pocket 4s, and A-9, with two of us all in.  No King or Jack and IGHN.  I was pretty close to the money too.  There was probably about 150 left.  Sucks.  11 hours of playing and nothing to show for it.  The life of a tournament player, I guess.  Some people love it, some people don’t.  I like to get rewarded for my efforts.  Instead, I play brilliantly, make minimal mistakes all day, and I get punished.  It doesn’t make sense.  I guess it’s that hope of making the final table and that $39,000 first place prize that makes me continue to play in tournaments.  One day, one day.  Makes me bitter when I bust out of a tourney.

Reentered my BBY short this morning with 300 shares.  I forgot that I was doing a pair trade with AMZN, so I gotta keep this BBY short.

I’ve been trying to decide what to do over the next few weeks.  Gold has had a nice pullback over the past few weeks.  I think I will start accumulating gold sub-$100 on GLD.  I will probably do the Proshares Ultra gold (UGL) to get more bang for my buck.  GLD is still trading near $108, so I’m gonna wait until we get sub-$100 to start accumulating.  I will also get some NEM or GG.  This gold trade will be in my longer term portfolio.

I still want to get into AAPL & GOOG longer term, but I have a feeling that we will probably consolidate for a while after these big runups in both companies.  Then, I’ll get bored, sell my ” long term” position, and it will skyrocket.  Always happens with my “long term” positions.  I never have enough patience.  I should probably stay away from these two.

I still like AMZN, so I will be accumulating if we go lower.  And maybe pairing it up with more BBY short.

Gonna look to get back into my SBUX short too.

McClellan oscillator closed below -200 on friday, but managed to squeak back up above -200 at the close today, so who knows what’s gonna happen from here.  The MO is just a gauge telling me that we’re probably oversold here.  It doesn’t usually lie, so I’m not gonna fight it here and short some stupid stuff.

Heading up to AC tomorrow to play in the $100k guaranteed at the Borgata.  It’s a $170 + $30 with 1 rebuy.  that shows you my confidence in tournaments.  I play in the cheap ones.  Actually, it’s probably gonna end up costing me $370, so I guess it’s not really that cheap.  I just need one cash in these tourneys and I’ll be back in business.  My plan is gonna be to play tight, and avoid all-ins without the nuts.   Let’s see what happens.

Looks like the S&P retraced from the 1150 level as my trading buddy had predicted.  Every time I talk to him, he’s talks about “being lucky” in predicting what will happen with the markets.  I mean, I know that no one really knows what’s going to happen in the markets, but I am a firm believer that with the proper analysis, you can put the odds in your favor of making money.  My trading buddy obviously has done his homework in regards to the markets.  I imagine that he’s probably reading the analysis of others and regurgitating this information to me.  Whatever the case, the dude is good.

I think I’m already up about $10k from the start of the year.  On paper, of course, but it’s only been 22 days.  I made just a little over $12k last year, for the entire year.  WTF?  Maybe I’m just getting a little “lucky” myself?  I don’t know.

So, I dumped half of my FXP yesterday, while sitting on the Throne at Target…dumping.  Yeah, you read that right.  Stomach problems.  TMI. I fired up my iPhone 3GS and the free app iStockManager, which integrates into my Ameritrade account.  With the click of a few buttons, I sold 500 shares of FXP for a profit of around $800 or so.  20% in 11 days, so I said F it, I should probably take some profits.  Shocker that we are up another 2% today.

Alright, I just covered all of my shorts/inverse ETFs.

• Out -500 SBUX for +$139
• out -200 GLD for +$1,194
• out -500 BBY for +$1,222
• out 900 SRS for around +$680
• out 400 FXP for +$870

My trading buddy said on 1/15:

“Not really understand how this market work but just have some luck. I think the consolidation is coming.  Based on Q4 earnings and Q1 forward PE. SP should be around 920-940. Let’s see…”

If history repeats itself, then I most definitely covered my shorts too early.  90% sure that I won’t get to reenter my shorts any time soon…at a higher price that is.  All good, I wanted to lock in the gift that was given to me over the past week.  We’ve had a nice drop.  The Dow dropped 4% this week.

So, now I’m holding:

• 100 AMZN @ 127.35
• 300 VCLK @ 9.70
• 500 UNG @ 10.03
• 200 IBKR @ 17.35
• 100 FXP @ $7.75
• 100 SRS @ $7.42

That’s it.    I’m holding 100 each of FXP and SRS because of the 10% idea that The Fly had.  I’m just gonna leave those and see what happens.

That’s about it for now.

Wish I would’ve seen this before I bought my HP HDX16t:

Just downloaded Firefox 3.6, but I soon realized that my fingerprint reader was no longer working.  I remembered that there was a fix out there somewhere because DigitalPersona didn’t initially work on Firefox 3.5 either.  Anyways, I modified the Firefox 3.5 fix, so that it works with Firefox 3.6.  Basically, I changed the “maxVersion” variable to “3.6.*” in the install.rdf file.  Here’s the modified file:

Digital_Persona_patch.zip

Just download, rename it to Digital_Persona_patch.xpi and drag it into your Firefox browser, then install the plug-in.  Should fix your problems.  Don’t blame me if your computer brick’s though…