Modeling equity prices moves with tips from Paul Wilmott

In Paul's book, Paul Wilmott introduces Quantitative Finance, he has a section on Stochastic calculus and how stock price charts can be modeled or approximated by using tools like Brownian motion with drift and lognormal random walks.  Don't worry about the math too much though.  His book comes with a CD-ROM that includes some spreadsheets that allow you to tweak the parameters of these tools to do your own approximations.  Check out my approximations for Apple below.  I have to admit this is going to take some practice for me to thoroughly understand this.  Cheers.

Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

WSJ The News Hub AM Report: Hot Business Issues on Capitol Hill

Here's an interesting video on current market conditions and what issues might be addressed by Congress.


Also, I sold my small position in CRUS and reinvested in AAPL.  CRUS still has potential but I just wanted to add to my AAPL position.  Cheers.
Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

My self-managed 401K return for 2010 is 41%!

I'm thankful to report that my self-managed 401K return for 2010 is 41%!  It's great to see that with some hard work that one can achieve a measure of success.  I feel a sense of relief getting a gain higher than my loss of 40% in mutual funds a few years ago.  I don't think I need help from a "professional" mutual fund manager any more. :)

I'll continue to share my progress and learnings.  Hopefully this will be helpful to others too.  Happy New Year!

My current positions are AAPL, ZAGG, and CRUS.  Cheers.
Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

Price target for ZAGG raised to $11

According to http://www.americanconsumernews.com/2010/12/northland-securities-analysts-raise-price-target-on-zagg-nasdaq-zagg-shares-to-11-00.html the price target for ZAGG was raised from $10 to $11 by Northland Securities research analysts.  FYI, the Motley Fool is recommending it as well - http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/12/30/5-small-caps-to-juice-your-portfolio.aspx .

I currently have a position in ZAGG.  Happy New Year to you!
Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

401k return for the year through 12/21 is 41.8%

My 401k account return is up to 41.8% for the year so far.  Only a few more days left to eek out more gains.  Just kidding.  I'm thankful for my progress this year and in all seriousness I'm still bullish.  Last year my return was roughly 18%.  So, I'm glad to see improvement.

I've been finding Bloomberg TV interesting for keeping up on current events and for their interviews and analysis as well.  Mid-day Surveillance with Tom Keene is quite good too.

Not to plug Bloomberg too much but they now have an Android app too.

I just want to call out again some great resources if you haven't tried them yet.

• Finviz.com (try their stock screener - http://www.finviz.com/screener.ashx)
• Yahoo Finance (check out the Analyst Opinion section; example - http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ao?s=AAPL+Analyst+Opinion)
• Investors.com (requires a subscription for some sections but is very useful for screening stocks; example - http://www.investors.com/StockResearch/StockCheckup/Nasdaq-Apple-Inc-AAPL.aspx)
• Google Finance (interesting market data & charts, data, charts and news about individual stocks; example - http://www.google.com/finance?q=aapl)

Happy holidays!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

The Trader's Edge 12/21

Art Cashin (UBS) shares his view on the current market conditions. Happy holidays!

Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.

Interesting interview with Jason Trennert (managing partner at Strategas Research Partners)

Trennert Says U.S. Job Recovery Is Near: Tom Keene on Demand - http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/News/Surveillance/vWgO.P2rxl_Q.mp3 .  What do you think?  Cheers.
Disclaimer: Please only use this information with a grain of salt and at your own risk / for educational purposes. I am not an investment advisor so please seek professional help if that's what you're looking for.