SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-Bound.

Goals for next year:

1. Save up for EMERGENCY STASH, and set aside 3-6 months expenses by end of year 2008;
2. Save up for VACATION expense annually, if I put traveling budget $3000 and snowboarding budget $800, I should save approximately $4000 for this item;
- Wow, what does this mean is that I need to save 23K within next year. It almost looks like there’s no way that I can save $1917 per month but here are my action plans:

Action plans:

1.  Refinance my mortgage: A.Get rid of the mortgage insurance; B. Change into interest-only. This should save me $750 per month. However, I need to look into how much closing fee I need to pay and if that still makes sense;
2.  Stock awards: I’m putting around $700 into stock award and given 10% in return that is $770. However, I might be able to put more into it so that I have more return;
3.  Save on car insurance: A. Get rid of the unnecessary policy on my car insurance; B. Check my car insurance change;
4.  Reduce my current monthly expenditures: www.lowermybills.com
5.  Reduce my shopping cost (see next post);
6.  Investment Strategy: I need a better investment strategy, and define my risk/return expectation and tolerance.

I just started reading “Investing Success: How to Conquer 30 Costly Mistakes & Multiply your wealth”. I’ve been founding it having great points. Since I need to return it to the library, I decide to take reading notes to my personal situation.

bought 500 shares of SPKL @$1.82

Lessons learned: 52 week high != continue to climb; good news != continue to climb; when it climbs high enough, sell

To sell tomorrow: I’ll watch for FRM, it broke its 52 week high today so it should still climb tomorrow and I’m considering what price should I sell tomorrow…. FRM ususally doesn’t go up too much – 10% would be a lot and early morning limit should be set higher

To watch to buy tomorrow: SNEN, SPKL

Maybe I could have bought more… but since I haven’t watched this stock I’d like to start small and accumulate along the way (if there’s a chance )

this is my current holdings:

stock                       shares           bought            current             gain/loss 

QXM                        70                 9.80                11.97                 22.13%
FRM                        60                  8.74                10.40                19.02%
LFC                          12                 89.08               96.51                7.54%
VMW                       10                 91.05               101.61              10.09%

Apparently this looks good but I’ve made *A LOT* of mistakes during this period, let me tell you.

I sold 30 shares of QXM @$9.25 ($9.25!! Yes, I know!), and then I sold 50 shares of QXM @$9.60… both times I sold at a loss;
I sold 59 shares of FRM @$8.90…

Guess picking a good stock is not all that hard – you look at their business model, you look at their estimate earnings and P/E, you look into how much debt it has. However, the tricking park is when to sell, hold and buy. I don’t believe the analysist rating (however, CAPS is good to look at) and one thing I’ve learned is that if you are confident about the stock you are holding and the market, you should never panic when the price drops, you might need to keep it a bit longer but it will rebound. When the stock is in a uptrend but the price actually dropped, it’s a great buying opportunity.

In Aug-Sep subprime crisis, stocks went up and down much faster so I shouldn’t use my one week thing to judge how long I’ve been holding a certain stock.

So, what am I going to do now?

Stocks that I’m currently holding – I’m very confident in FRM, QXM and VMW. If the price drops I will actually buy more. VMW earnings are coming in later this month, definitely no sell before that;

Stocks on my wishlist – CHNG, CDGT, STV, NOV ( I will get up early tomorrow for them)
CHNG: China natrual gas, it has been doing really well lately, dropped today… I might want to buy tomorrow.
STV: IPO on Oct 5 with 75% return already. It sounds very risky but hey, high risk high return…
NOV: recommended by NOV… seeking buying opportunities…

Stock that I’m not sure – LFC: it has been doing really well lately but I think it’s slightly over-valued. However, there are just good news that they opened new branches and i will keep holding it when there’s some correction, , maybe.

So it only makes sense if I’m going to put together the earning publishing dates of my watchlist:

10/09/2007: OXM – Q1 2008 Oxford Industries Earnings Release
10/24/2007: VMW – Q3 2007 VMware, Inc. Earnings Release
10/25/2007: MSFT – Q1 2008 Microsoft Earnings Conference Call (5:30pm)
11/12/2007:  NTO - Q3 2007 Northern Orion Resources Inc. Earnings Release 

04/02/2008 – 04/12/2008: LFC – Full Year 2007 CHINA LIFE INSURANCE CO LTD Earnings Release
04/05/2008 – 04/15/2008: ZNH – Full Year 2007 China Southern Airlines Earnings Release

Sold 200 shares of LNX @5.03, man, my earnings is only $14…. darn it…

As of today, 09/30/2007, I’m holding:

119 shares of FRM @8.88;
80 shares of NTO @6.15 + 155 shares of NTO @ 6.22 = 235 shares of NTO @ 6.196
150 shares of QXM @9.86;

Doing some research now to decide what I should do for this week …

Bought 50 shares of QXM @9.93 and 50 shares of QXM @9.88, so the average price is $9.91. This is one of the sweetest thing of using Zecco! For example, today I really want to buy QXM again, but the price is looking a bit high, so I first bought 50 shares when it went a bit down (in case it went up too much later), and then it kept going down more, I bought some more. Really need to take advantage of $0 comission fee!

New Lesson Learned today:

1. Look at after hour price/trades: very important parameter for the open price the next day. Also, Google Finance and Zecco provide this – but not every site (btw, MSN Money is so lame! It provides this really nice-looking interactive chart tool, however, when you click on a point, it usually doesn’t show the price. Instead, Google Finance doesn’t require you to install anything and it just works. *sigh*);

2. Look at real-time quotes: Zecco can always returns real-time quote (last sale price), it’s really helpful if you use Limit Order a lot. Fidelity also provides this function, but you either need to open a new window or go ahead and make an order.

Anyways, I’m feeling lazy today, so keep it short. Now that market has gone to a normal state, I need to learn something that works for a good market. A lot to learn from ClearStation (I’m loving it!)… and I just got really into this fiction “The Key” and I want to do some reading tonight!