jgradyc

Once I determine likely market direction and likely sector direction, I depend on charting to pick individual stocks, specifically Bollinger Bands, Fibonacci ratios, moving averages. These were difficult to do until about 20-25 years ago. Today, I just select them and poof! they appear.

A friend's 80-year-old mom wants to start trading in the stock market! She asked me (retired CFP) for advice. I'm going to help her set up two accounts. One will be a "don't touch" account which will mirror her daughter's managed account in a portfolio of Vanguard ETFs. (I plan to make two minor tweaks... adding TMFC and MFMS ETFs to the mix.) The other account will be a small "play" account that she can research and trade stocks... maybe 5% of her investable funds. She can win or lose to her heart's content. Her objective will be to "beat" the professional account! Her adult children are rich and so is she. If she finds joy in trading stocks, more power to her!

I mostly use Schwab, but I also have a TDAmeritrade account and I'm learning how to use their Sinkorswim platform. In fact, I'm ordering two monitors to let me see more on the screen. I don't day trade... way too stressful. Instead, I buy with the intent of holding for a few weeks or months. As a retired financial planner, I held a stockbroker's license for many years. It used to be much harder to beat the market because information was so hard to come by, but now it's at your fingertips. Still, my best call of the year was low tech. When it became apparent that Biden might win, I sold some tech stocks and invested heavily in cannabis stocks. Immediately after the election, I added to the position. I'm up a lot in those 8 stocks, but in retrospect, I could have thrown darts at a list of cannabis stocks and made money in November. Whenever I start thinking I'm good at this, I remember what John Kenneth Galbraith said... "Genius is a rising stock market."

This is the monitor that BestBuy rep recommended. Samsung - UR55 Series 28" IPS 4K UHD Monitor (DisplayPort, HDMI) - Dark Gray/Blue https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-ur55-series-28-ips-4k-uhd-monitor-displayport-hdmi-dark-gray-blue/6386391.p?skuId=6386391 It's currently on sale for $259. So, if I buy two of those and and the Logitech - MK540 Advanced Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Bundle - Black for $29.99, I should be set, right? Oh, I have USB-C docking station already that I bought for my MacBook so I won't be needing that

We went to Ashland City Walmart today and the paper towels were almost sold out. We didn't check the TP aisle.

Forgive my ignorance. What is a straight USB-C cable? Is it USB-C male on one end and a USB male on the other?

So I would need a USB-C to HDMI connector? I have one of those.

Thanks. You don't have problems with the text looking spidery? That just drives me nuts.

Bare with me, I'm a novice when it comes to monitors. How important is refresh rate to use a stock trading platform? How important is 4k? I'll probably go with two 24" or two 27" monitors, unless someone can steer me towards a great deal on 32" monitors. Best Buy has some 24" for under $149. But I don't know how good they are. EDITED: I'm seeing 32" 4k Samsung for $269 at Best Buy. Looking at Costco now. EDITED AGAIN: Maybe I should be looking at more expensive monitors?

So I would buy the Plugable, buy two monitors, and then I could either use my Samsung Laptop or my Macbook Air, right? Should I also buy a keyboard and mouse and just set the laptop off to the side? Or do I use all three screens? Thanks.

When you say "use IT in clamshell mode," I assume you mean the Macbook Air, right?

What website are you using to track this? I can't find it.

I've started using TD Ameritrade's Thinkorswim platform, which allows moving gadgets to multiple monitors so I want to do that. Here's the dilemma. I have a laptop I like... Samsung Spin 7 13" i5-8250U at 1.60GHz w/8GB RAM. Screen resolution is 1920x1480. It folds over on itself to use it as a tablet. One year ago, I bought (and returned) a nice Samsung monitor because 1) The resolution wasn't good enough and the text looked spidery 2) I had to set it behind my laptop, which moved it a few inches further back and my vision doesn't work well past arm's length. The monitor was a Samsung UE590 Series 28" LED 4K UHD Monitor. 3840x2160 max resolution So... do I need a laptop/desktop with higher resolution? What would you suggest? I'd prefer stay with a laptop + monitor, but I only trade at home so I could buy a dedicated desktop + monitor. I don't want to spend more than $1,000 total. Oh, if it makes any difference, I also have a 2019 MacBook Air that's just gathering dust because I prefer the PC over the Mac. If it's better to start with the MacBook Air, I could do that for my stock trading. I'm reasonably computer savvy, if that matters, but I've never worked with graphics cards and I don't know if the card in my existing laptop can be swapped out... or even if it needs to be. EDITED TO ADD: The graphics card is built in on this laptop. It can't be replaced... not that I'd need to. As I said, I don't really know anything about resolution.

If you haven't already started taking vitamin D3, you should start immediately and take a 20,000 IU on day 1 and 5,000 IU daily after that. Some people are advocating 50,000 IU on day 1. Good luck.

It's still too early to reach a conclusion, but the flu has almost disappeared this year. The CDC's flu tracker shows 122,000 tests cumulatively so far for the 2020-2021 flu season with 319 positives (0,3%). For the same week in 2019 (week 46 of the year), there were 190,000 tests, 7,371 positives (3.9%). So we have 95% fewer flu cases so far this flu season! Edited to add: Here's the link to the CDC's database from last year and this year. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/pastreports.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/Week47.htm

I didn't want to copy your entire post, but I agree. Logical fallacies are so fascinating. One that is killing Americans every day is confirmation bias by our public health officials. They absolutely refuse to consider any "evidence" that isn't the subject of double-blind FDA-approved clinical trials. 62 clinical trials are underway on vitamin D right now, but public health officials refuse to even mention it as a possible preventive and therapeutic because of their preconceived bias against vitamin supplementation. Is vitamin D3 a miracle cure? No. But the data is so far is compelling enough for me to take it and recommend it to everyone I see.

I subscribe to ConsumerLab. It's a service that independently checks supplements to make sure they contain what they're supposed to contain. Anyway, they recently did a study of masks. It's behind a pay wall, but their #1 rated mask was the KN95 mask by WWDOLL. I just ordered 25 today. (That's their smallest package.) I normally wear a surgical mask, but I'm stepping up to a higher quality mask as we move into what is normally flu season. I say "normally" because so far this flu season has been almost nonexistent. Cases of the flu are way down according to the CDC Flu Tracker. Here's the link to the mask. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08L34LN8P?pf_rd_r=CFSEX9PAYY2RZHC9F4DA&pf_rd_p=40eb7df6-3345-4945-93b1-96c5bd9a116d

I'm retired and a competitive runner so I've researched everything related to COVID and vitamin D. I even wrote an Op-Ed for the NYTimes and when it was rejected, I wrote a different one for the Wall Street Journal... also rejected. Over 60 clinical trials on vitamin D are underway right now, which is impressive considering that it's generic and no pharmaceutical company can make billions selling it. Dr. Fauci admitted taking vitamin D himself, but he still won't recommend it to the masses... infuriating!!! Meanwhile, studies are appearing almost daily on the possible benefits of vitamin D. Here's one newly released study of seriously ill 50+ year olds that found that taking vitamin D AFTER hospitalization reduced the need for oxygen therapy from 61% of patients to only 17% of the patients taking D + B12 + magnesium. And these were really small doses if you take these supplements. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33039952/

I decided to see how this flu season is going and so far, it's almost nonexistent! The CDC flu data tracker shows 319 positive cases so far this flu season vs 5,299 at this point last flu season. That's 94% fewer cases!) I don't know how these numbers are determined, but they do provide a way to compare week to week and season to season.) This is an interactive webpage so you'll have to dig around, but it has some interesting charts on the flu. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

This a great question! In my opinion, the end game is to hope it mutates out of existence, kinda like previous SARS. The vaccine is being held out to placate the masses, but realistically, not enough people are going to take the vaccine to get herd immunity. Only 36% got the flu shot last year and it's been around 40% for the past few years. There are lot of people who aren't going to take a vaccine that's been rushed to the market. I know that I won't be taking it. The best guess it that it will require periodic re-immunization... billions for the pharmaceutical industry. To me, the biggest hope is vitamin D. It's an antiviral and it modulates the deadly cytokine storm. Over 60 clinical trials are underway, which is impressive considering that vitamin D is generic and no pharmaceutical company can make billions by selling it. Scotland is giving free vitamin D to high risk populations. The UK has proposed a similar step. If the US would do this, it could stop the COVID spread by reducing its effects on some people to no more than the flu. Or at least, that's my personal theory. I buy my vitamins on sale and try to always keep at least a 3-month supply. There's currently a sale for online vitamin orders at Costco. IIRC, those 600 capsule bottles of vitamin D3 cost me $11.99 each. I anticipate at some point, the media will "discover" vitamin D and it will disappear off the shelves faster than toilet paper.

The CDC COVID Data Tracker is a pretty good source to see moving trends. You can drill down to the state and even to the county level. What's immediately apparent to me in moving around the tabs on this site is that although the number of cases of COVID in the US are spiking, the death rate isn't increasing at a comparable rate. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases

Wow. That's really an eye-opening article. So the tests are WAY too sensitive, resulting in up to a 90% false positive rate. ...and that's being reporting in the NY Times!

Since this thread is mostly about prepping and I haven't seen a mention of it yet, I'll add this. Get a solar panel and a charge controller that will allow you to dial in the desired output. I use this to power my driveway gate. I saw one on Amazon that has USB charging ports built in. Next, get rechargeable batteries and a universal charger for AA and AAA. Eneloop are typically the best, but I have some Amazon Basics as well. I also have a charger for 18650 batteries. An inverter to run anything 110v electric you might need for short periods of time. Download every survival book you can find. Lots are free online. Download local GPS and terrain maps so you can access them offline. Candles. Matches. Water purifier (unscented Chlorox). Emergency supply of essential medications. Emergency supply of COVID treatment supplements for entire family: vitamins D3 and C, zinc, melatonin, Pepcid. FWIW, I think a generator is a bad idea unless you have a fortified compound. If the SHTF, then the sound and lights will attract people who assume, correctly, that you have more than they do and some of those people won't hesitate to use violence to take it from you.

I've listened to the news conferences with the President's medical team. In the Q&A, not one reporter has asked, "Why is the President taking zinc and vitamin D? Do you recommend it? If not, why is he taking it?" You'd think at least ONE reporter would care about the thousands of people dying worldwide every day and would like to know if these supplements could prevent some of those deaths.

Just to follow up on my post on the vitamin D clinical trial, here is what I posted on vitamin D back on Sept 17th.