Ten Tips for Trading

 My Ten Tips for Trading for Trading or Investing in Stocks

1. Enter into every position with an established stop loss and do not ever move that down.  Minimize the maximum loss.
2. Don't trade too many stocks, but don't stick to the same 2 stocks either.  Never more than 10 total positions.  Explore other areas, research blogs, AI assist, Reddit, all good areas to look for other ideas.
3. Come up with a strategy that works for you and stick to it, as a person who is easily influenced I try not to read too many how to articles as it can knock me off my game.
4. Learn to play both sides of the trade, markets go up and down, inverse funds like QID or FAZ can help hedge markets.  Some individual stocks will have inverse ETFs, like RGTI/RGTZ
5. Use market orders sparingly, mostly just when buying, sells should almost always be limit orders.
6. For selling, raise the stop loss limit, if I'm up 10%, I'll move the stop loss to 5% to help lock in gains.
7. Use trailing stop percentages, can be helpful to capture big intraday moves.
8. After a big loss don't trade for 2 days to prevent revenge trades.
9. Losses will happen and they often come with a lesson learned, either you deviated from your strategy or your strategy needs to evolve, or it was just a bad idea and you just gotta try again.  Losing money is a great way to learn a lesson.
10. There is no perfect trading system. 

Predicting the crash of 2026

 I'm predicting that the S&P will top around 7000 in February, then drop to around 6200 in March, and by April it will be at some other level.

Apocalyptic Dream

 I was sitting in a classroom with a group of people, we were finishing up the class and then planning as a group to go to the Rockies game.  Realizing I left something at home I asked Bones to give me a ride home to grab my stuff and then meet up with the others at the game.  Bones said yes so we got in his car.

"Take a left here", I said. Bones kept driving straight, 

"Take the next left", straight again.

"Ok, take this left", straight again until we go to the top of this hill and stopped.  On the other side of the hill was a steep river, like a mountain side dropping over 3000 feet at a 45 degree angle, but a flowing river.

"We're gonna have to surf this", said Bones.

So I got on top of the roof but Bones stayed in the drivers seat and we started down the river, surfing the car, me on top of the roof, Bones in the drivers seat.  I was up and above the water, Bones was struggling to keep his head above the water but managing.  After a few minutes we made it to the bottom, where there was a big yellow house with four or five guys standing out in front.  They started to head over to us, we were basically parked on their lawn.  They had towels and handed them to us.

"Are you ok?", one of the men said.

"yeah, that was awesome I'd do that again", I said.

"I'm ok, but wouldn't want to repeat that", Bones said.

"We need to get to my house, over that way", I said pointing.

"You're gonna have to walk from here, everything is washed out, you can leave your car here".

We headed out in the direction of my house, as we started walking I noticed down in the valley below, every type of animal imaginable walking in the opposite direction  of us, we are about 500 feet above the valley bottom.  Giraffes, buffalo, elk, you name it, there was even a grey elephant giving a white elephant a piggy back ride, like a chaotic version of Noah's ark.   As we kept walking above the valley the stream of animals continued below, thousands of them, they were definitely walking away from something. 

As we walked on it became clear what they were walking away from, in the distance, there was smoke, fire, explosions in the distance but you couldn't hear them.  As we got closer a person was carrying a blue table, like a small card table, he approached us and said "it's all gonna be over soon", he put the table on the ground, set out some chairs, he sat down and I woke up.

the never ending football game

Since a football game can't end on a defensive penalty and once inside the 1 yard line every penalty is half the distance to the goal, following the principles similar to Zeno's paradox, the offense would advance to the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 yard line etc.  If the defense continues to commit a penalty this would continue on ad infinitum and the game would theoretically  never end.

The challenge I propose to my readers, specifically those who play on the defensive side of the ball is to test this theory and see what would happen.  

Bitcoin end of year 2025 prediction

 I’m predicting a price of 195k for Bitcoin by the end of the year 2025

a lot of people think....

 A lot of people think of something one way but I think of that in another way.   Only time will tell who was right and who was wrong. 

Predicting the market crash of 2024

 The end of 2024 will see a 20% drop in the markets, with the S&P closing in the 4,500 range.  I'm one of the few people who predicted the crash of 2024.  

Kid A vs OK Computer

 I like OK computer better than Kid A, but Kid A has some good songs on it too.

Pentingell Peak

Skied Pentingell Peak back in 2019 with Mike, way too hard for being such an easy peak.  

In the early days

 In the early days of my life, I had a dream of waking up to a view of snow capped peaks, and walking amongst those peaks, and that dream came true, but I never had a dream about sitting in a basement working, but just because I didn't have that dream doesn't mean that it's not a dream come true.   When benefits one, the perspective to focus on the joy in life, every breath being a blessing.  In a given day now I'll do some day trading, some work, watch a different YouTube video on the one secret to fixing your golf swing, some more work, then a 17 minute live version of Soul Sacrifice from Tanglewood in 1970, then some more work, then end the day with some Robot Chicken.   All those things can be dreams, if you'll let them.  

Big SNOW in feet!

Big snow forecasted for the mountains, measured in feet, probably going skiing on Saturday.

I haven't written a blog post in a while, so today I'm going to write one.

2018 Mount Edwards Ski

In my pursuit now of not finishing another list, I'm starting my ski most of the centennials project.  Completed #2 today, Mount Edwards, it was a fun day out. Click here if the iframe does not load

a new language

Not too long ago, a hole opened in the middle of the sky and all the words that have ever been spoken in every language were sucked up into the vacuum and the world was left without language.

After some years had passed, there were two men left alone, in a cave.  Each man had two sticks.  They looked at each other, then at their sticks, and one of the men took the two sticks and smacked them together, making a "fwap"ing sound.  The other man looked back into his eyes and then back down at the sticks in his hand, then back up again.  Slowly, he took the two sticks and "fwap".  After a few minutes, the first took the sticks in his hand, this time, two whacks, "fwap, fwap" and the second took the sticks in his hand and went "fwap, fwap" in return.  The two men looked each other in the eye and knew that they were in this together, and thus, a new language was born.

Best Octoberfest beers you can get in highlands ranch area

All the best Oktoberfest beer lists contain all the rare fancy octoberfest beers that all the beer advocate wankers claim to be the best so they can lord their superiority over others when really they are just masking their lack of self confidence.  What follows here is a list of the best octoberfest beers you can actually buy in a liquor store and take home and drink.

1. Sam Adams Octoberfest
2. Paulaner Oktoberfest
3. Left Hand Oktoberfest
4. Spaten Oktoberfest
5. Sante Fe Oktoberfest
6. Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest
7. Shiner Oktoberfest
8. Great Divide Hoss Oktoberfest Lager
9. Prost Marzen Oktoberfest
10. Dry Dock Docktoberfest 

tech debt

The best way to deal with tech debt is to never accrue it in the first place.  The second best way to deal with it is to pare it down incrementally.  Finally, only as a last resort, should you freeze feature development and do a long period of paying down tech debt.  Lastly, create tech debt to create job security.

Top 10 tips for creating top 10 lists

1. Limit the topic to topics that are interesting.
2. Make #1 the most important on the list, or the least.
3. If you run out of interesting points, you should just end the list.
4. Keep the number of items between 9 and 11.

Mount Flora Ski Descent

Mount Flora was the last of the James Peak Wilderness Peaks ski descents that I've done over the past 10 years or so.  James peak, Witter, Parry, Eva, Bancroft, and Flora make up the range that dominates the view for westbound travelers on I-70 when they crest the hill just past the buffalo herd overlook.

The morning started from Berthoud Pass, at 5:30am, skinning up the service road to Colorado mines peak.  Since my brother Mike was diagnosed with leukemia, I've decided I need to just go at these peaks alone, which really sucks, because doing this alone is scary and just not a ton of fun.  Hopefully Mike will be fully healed in a couple of years and we will be back at it together in no time. So here I am, by myself, alone and afraid.  Let's see, boots on, ok, skins on the skis, ok I can do this, not too bad, let's go.   I skinned up the service road to just below Mines, just past Mines peak the windward slopes were blown free of snow so I bootpacked up to the summit of Flora.

It was cold and windy on the summit, I dropped down into the bowl and everything was still frozen solid, a fairly scary 800 vertical later I was down at ethel lake. I managed to bootpack back up to the saddle and then hike back to the pass.  6 hours, 7 miles, 2500 vert total on the day.

Click here if the slide show does not load.

2017 mountain goals

Need to figure out what do in 2017, ski a few more 14ers, at 48 currently, it would be cool to get to 50 this year.  Here's the 10 left:

• pyramid
• capitol
• n. eolus
• eolus
• sunlight
• windom
• culebra
• wilson peak
• el diente
• crestone needle

The list is getting thin, lot of them far away, and really difficult.  It'd be cool if I could do 2 or 3 this year, maybe back to telluride to try for el diente and wilson peak, maybe even do mt. wilson for a pure summit ski.  If the snow totals are epic it might be a good year to try Pyramid or Capitol too, as the more snow on those peaks the easier they'll be.  It's exciting times for sure though.  

In addition to the 14ers, last year I got to ski 2 new peaks, Citadel, and Peak 1.  It was cool skiing some of the peaks closer to home, in the ski what you see mentality.  Some of the other local peaks that are on the to do list:

• Tenmile peak
• Apache
• Navajo
• Shoshoni
• Hagar
• Flora
• Red Peak

Come summer time, it'd be really cool to get the kids into rock climbing outdoors, maybe figure out a way to incorporate that into a summer camping trip.  I know the kids would love that.  Some other hiking with the family and maybe a family backpacking trip too, if that is at all possible, maybe just me and Grady.

Either way, lots to do, several lifetimes of adventures in the Colorado rockies and I couldn't be happier to live here and have a family that not only supports me in my endeavors but also likes joining right in!

One political post

So Trump was elected and I was surprised that he was, all along I felt there is no way he we will win, and yet he did. So some people ask why or how he could be elected. Trump getting elected is the byproduct of a generation of apathy. A passive population ignoring politics, having had it usurped from them by the minority of people who feel that something different is better than anything like the current state of affairs.

For those that feel the government no longer serves them the blueprint was laid out 240 years in the Declaration of Independence. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The question is now whether or not this will precipitate any change, or will it be more of the same. People posting on Facebook or Twitter, claiming to abhor the current system, and then doing absolutely nothing about it. Personally I believe this is all part of the natural evolution of any civilization in decline, similar to the Roman Empire in 400 AD. It is part of the cycle of the ascendency and decline of a civilization. The eventual byproduct will be a civil war in this country with the lines this time being drawn on the left or the right, with perhaps abortion being the main dividing line, as slavery was during the first civil war.   Time will tell, but I do know that I'm as ashamed of the fact that our country could elect a bigot like Trump as I am of the general political apathy that has stained my generation.

I find myself reading this passage over and over to help stay grounded during these tumultuous times.  "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."