Fifty People, One Question: New York from Crush & Lovely on Vimeo.

The Two Okinawan Diet Rules (or How I’m Getting Leaner During the Holidays).

Rule 1. Eat to 80% full. The Okinawans call this rule “Hara Hachi Bu”, and if you haven’t tried it, you should. I did this on Thanksgiving — while I usually stuff myself with all the good food, I just ate until I was about 80% full. Of course, there’s no way to know exactly how full you are, but it’s a guideline. And as our brains are 10-20 minutes behind our stomachs, it usually turns out that when you think you’re 80% full, you’re actually full … while when we eat to 100% full, we are usually overstuffing ourselves.

The result of this rule for Okinawans is that they end up eating fewer calories than most people. They tend not to gain too much weight as a result, and coupled with their active lifestyles (they farm and garden and generally stay active, even into their 100s), it keeps them very healthy.

The result for the rest of us is that eating fewer calories will keep the extra pounds off. If we pair this with the next rule and an active lifestyle, we can actually lose weight during the holidays.

Rule 2: Eat healthy foods, mostly plants. Way before Michael Pollan wrote about his simple rules for eating healthy, the Okinawans had this down. They eat way more veggies than most people (mostly green and yellow ones), as well as whole grains, tofu, fish and other legumes. They eat very little sugar, and very little meat, dairy or eggs. This contradicts low-carb diets such as the Zone, Atkins, Paleo and others — I’m not saying those don’t work for whatever your goals are, but I am saying that a mostly plant-based diet has been proven to work well for the Okinawans.

If you’re not familiar with Sigur Ros then you’re in for a real treat. They are one of the best things to come out of Iceland and if you don’t believe me check out their ratings on Amazon. What’s totally unique about their music is that it’s in part Icelandic/part made up language called “Hopelandic”, so don’t feel bad if you can’t figure out what their saying, but that’s part of the draw for me. It’s great to have in the background while your working and it grows on you the more you listen to it. I didn’t warm up to it when I was first introduced to it a decade ago, but it’s now considered essential. Oh yeah, the video is so strange, so it might be best to just press play and continue doing whatever you were doing…

Right now I believe this market wants to rise, but it can’t go straight up and no matter what the retail numbers are I think we’re going to head lower next week. This should present a good buying opportunity to enter new longs and add to existing positions. If the retail numbers are better than expected we’ll probably pop Monday morning and then sell off later that day. If they’re poor then I’d expect to see the markets sell off premarket and keep the market under pressure for a day or two. As long as the selling doesn’t turn into anything more than profit taking and shaking out the weaker hands, this rally could continue through the Christmas season.

From www.wallstreetwindow.com

However, over the past week they’ve been rising in tandem. To be honest, I really don’t know what to make of this but I wanted to point it out as it caught my eye.

Any thoughts as to how this might play out?

I remain firm in my opinion that weak business models should be allowed to fail and make way for the strong who will buy them up at fair value. At this rate the governments of the world should have to reimburse investors retirement accounts that have sustained major losses during this bear market. Every bailout is going to cost us in years the length of time for a real recovery to begin. We really are mortgaging our future to get through the present.

There has to be a line drawn somewhere if this crises is ever going to resolve itself. This letter is nothing more than an intelligent, albeit equally pathetic approach to panhandling.

Dear XX,

My name is XXXXXXXXXXXXX and I am the owner of  Flag Chevrolet – Chevrolet Truck Ltd.  I employ 85 employees in the City of Surrey.  Our community and the entire Canadian automotive industry needs your help.

As the US government prepares to consider financial support for the North American Car industry, I urge you to tell our government that they need to offer proportional repayable loans to the Canadian auto industry at the same time – we can’t wait.

I need to stress that inaction is not an option.  The automotive industry represents 1 in 7 jobs in this country – a higher percent than in the US.  The choice is between supporting the auto sector with repayable loans so it can lead Canada out of this recession or denying support which could result in severe depression impacting hundreds of thousands of jobs and communities in this country.

Before the automotive industry was side-swiped  by the credit crisis that they did not create, GM was already working hard to become a leaner, greener and more innovative Company.  GM has already taken significant and painful restructuring steps to lower Costs and adopt a more competitive business model which will be shared in detail with government.  I sell GM vehicles and I can vouch for GM’s progress in terms of  Technology, the environment and fuel efficiency – and so can the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who purchase a GM automobile every year.

As the owner of an automobile dealership, I also want you to know that asking the industry to consider bankruptcy is not an option.  It will not work because I cannot sell – and my customers will not buy – an automobile where I cannot guarantee it’s warranty and parts replacement.

I am writing this letter on behalf of my employees and the hundreds of thousands of  Canadians who earn their living by working in the automotive industry.  So are the millions of Canadians who drive GM vehicles every day.  I ask you to join us.

I have been a General Motors dealer for over 40 years.  During that time the industry has evolved from basic transportation to where our cars and trucks have technology that requires multiple computers.

The economic strength of our country is tied to our manufacturing industry.  Losing a 100 year history is not good for Canada.

Please call your local MP to support our industry or access on Facebook. If you are not currently a member, it’s free to join.  http://www.facebook.com/GM Once you are logged into Facebook go to the search command at the top right hand corner and type in
I’m for GM and this group will show on your screen, click on the group to become a member. Thank you for your time and understanding.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX-XXXXXXX
President
Flag Chevrolet – Chevrolet Truck Ltd.

Just came across a startling graph showing the enormity of the 2008 bailouts. I’m speechless and disgusted.

clipped from www.voltagecreative.com

Related Stocks:  COST, GM, LTD

1. Volume was actually quite high this week, despite  being a holiday when volume typically dries up. If you compare this 4 day rally to the last attempted advance at the end of October, you’ll clearly see that buyers came into the market with force. I do agree that we’re going to have to see more volume come in soon if this market is going to move any higher, but that will most likely occur next week when traders come back from stuffing their face with turkey.
2. The McClellan Oscillator is layered behind the Dow showing the number of advancing issues less the number of declining issues. During the last rally I pointed this major overbought state out, calculating that the move up was just about over. However, this move up is still way below the last peak, indicating that there is more room to run.

1. First and foremost my market timing indicator has issued a buy signal today. Now the last two times this has occurred in the past few months it was quickly rejected after a few days of bullish tape. This could very well happen this time around, but I suspect that this 3rd time we’ll get a meaningful rally. So far we’ve rallied 17% off the lows in 4 days which is quite impressive since I fought it all the way, however the average bear market rally during the 1929-1932 is 33% . I would suspect some pullback here, and then a continuation of the move up to sucker as many people in as possible before the next down move.
2. Oil continues to fall and the longer it stays down the better for the consumer. It had a big volume rally today and maybe this is the start of a move up for oil, but so far every rally has been sold and I don’t see any reason to think otherwise right now.
3. Expectations for this market are so low that the economic numbers are going to have to be cataclysmic to get a severe reaction out of investors.
4. Seasonality is bullish right now and everybody is commenting on the low volume rally, but if you look at the volume on the Dow it’s actually high when you compare it to some of the volume from days we sold off the week prior. The fact that we’ve been having above average volume on a holiday shortened week indicates some buying interest in this market.
5. Everybody is calling this a bear market rally so it’s probably going to fulfill that prophesy. The real question is how high is this rally going to take us.
6. The Vix looks like it’s heading back down towards it’s 200 moving average around 31, which is a level that used to be considered high volatility. I really don’t know where this indicator is going to end up, but it will probably be a few dozen points lower than were it closed today.

Before Tweetdeck I always had to click refresh to see new messages and I always missed messages from people who I was not following. I don’t know about you, but I can only follow about 25 people max before it gets way to confusing. Some people are following hundreds of people and I have no idea how they keep everything straight and do they really read every tweet? With Tweetdeck your posts are updated in real time just like an instant messaging service, and you can see anybody who replies to you even if you are not following them. In addition, it makes direct messaging, replying, retweeting, and viewing profiles much easier.

I highly recommend signing up for Twitter and whittle your list down to a core group of people you find interesting or users who can add value to your life/career in some way. I find it so easy to share a link, thought, or observation with my followers verses posting it on my blog. If I see something in the markets that’s happening now, it’s 10x faster to type a few lines on Twitter instead of logging into wordpress to blog a link. Nothing will replace blogging, but I really understand now how Twitter can add value to many bloggers.

Here are a few places to start. Go to Twitter to sign up, and then get Tweetdeck as it’s the best tool to maximize Twitter’s versatility that I’ve found. If anybody knows of other applications please let me know about them and how you use them in your trading.

If you haven’t heard of Stocktwits or Twiticker check them out to find some great traders and stock ideas. once you are following a few, you can view who they’re following to discover more. It’s basically six degrees of separation at work.

Click the link below if you want to view my twitter homepage.

On a day when Citigroup was plastered all over th enews you would have thought volume on the XLF would have been considerably higher than it was. This market is not going anywhere without support from this industry. I just with the government would quit with all the smoke and mirrors and let the free markets be free.

Related Stocks:  IWM, XLF

Those images of soup lines and other references to the depression era have terribly distorted the perceptions of the man-in-the-street. I wonder how many people have any sort of realistic outlook of what is likely to happen in the economy. For example, many people are not aware that a recession means the cessation of economic growth – not the cessation of economic activity. The economy will continue to perform at a level just a couple of percentage points behind last year. The country will not stop functioning, as some people have come to believe. Importantly, few Americans have a realistic understanding of the level of economic activity in other parts of the world. They remain caught up in the out of date notion that the U.S. is the only important driver of world economic activity.

Market Guidance: Past, Present, and Future

With the Dow hovering around 8000, the problem is that there have been absolutely no signs of capitulation whatsoever. What that means is that the Dow could fall much lower from current levels. Even worse, we are still at the early stages of the economic fallout. Consumers have not fallen yet and hedge funds have only begun to fail. Hundreds of corporations will file for bankruptcy and thousands of banks will fail. The results of the holiday season should begin another downward turn. I invite you to check back to a couple of articles I wrote a few months ago to serve as guidance for your investment strategy. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6229.html

Corporate Insiders In Buying Frenzy - From Trader’s Narrative, making a bullish case.

I really would have had more confidence in this rally if we wouldn’t have moved so far so fast. The trend is still down and we’ve really only moved back up to the triangle as seen above. If RSI can break through this trendline we may move further than I think.

Nobody can be surprised that the dollar finally caved, but a weak dollar doesn’t necessarily mean a strong market. In fact, the dollar and the markets used to have a more direct relationship than recent days. You can short the dollar via UUP.

This is one chart to watch because if this turns up from here, it appears to be forming a cup with handle pattern with is very bullish and would be very bad for the overall market. For this pattern to play out it almost has to immediately turn up from here. A lot of people are sticking a fork in the Vix here, but I’m not so sure it’s best days are behind it.

Related Stocks:  UUP

DJIA  40%

SPX  46%

NAS  48%

These numbers would have been a lot worse had the market not rallied over 5% today. Brutal. These markets are falling faster than they ever have in history.

Overseas:

Nikkei   48%

Hang Sang  48%

Brazil  50%

Europe 48%

Commodities:

Gold   -4.5%

Oil  -51%

They also gave 5 things to look for in a market bottom.

1. Look for the media to focus on something other than armageddon.
2. High volatility changing to lower volatility. A drop in the Vix back to a more normal range.
3. Ted spread to begin acting more normal.
4. Watch financial/brokerage stocks (BKX) to turn around.
5. Watch Japanese Yen/US Dollar for signs of weakness.

Nothing really new under the sun here, just thought it would be nice to recap some of the stories for anybody who didn’t get a chance to listen to the Financial News Hour.

I’m not suggesting that because sentiment is so awful now to go out and load the boat on the long side as things could possibly get worse, and most likely will. I’m saying that when the tide does turn, be open to that possibility and position yourself accordingly.

This Crises Could Have a Happy Ending

I remember talking to a wise man at the end of the last decade who was pointing out to me how much the market had gone up during the 1990s and how stocks couldn’t possibly continue to go up at that rate. The market’s historical annual mean gain is about 8%, and yet between 1990 and 2000 the market had climbed some 15% per annum.

There is only one way to revert to the mean, the wise man pointed out, and that is for the market to go up less than that for quite some time. So we were looking at low single digit gains - or worse - for years.

That post inspired VC Fred Wilson to write this.

A Lost Decade - But Not For Everybody

When I think about what’s really going on in this “lost decade” it occurs to me that we are finally witnessing the impact of the end of the industrial era and the emergence of the information era. That’s not to say every “information stock” has done well. Intel and Microsoft have been a disaster. IBM and HP are down for the decade to date. But we also have to realize that the late 90s drove all information stocks up to crazy levels in anticipation of exactly this shift taking place. The market got it right, but as usual it overshot.

This brings us to Howard Lindzon’s reaction to both of these posts. I find his writing to be extremely entertaining and intelligent at the same time, which is a rare combination and completely appreciated.

Has It Really Been a Lost Decade in the Stock Market?

If WE are to learn one thing from the ‘Lost Decade’ of S&P, Nasdaq and Dow returns is that any idiot can make money in an up market. It is the down markets that separate the winners and losers. Averaging down (something even I have done a few times this year to painful losses) only needs to backfire once. The year 2008 is the ‘ONCE’.

It’s time to shake it off, sell your losers that are not coming back and wait. Over time, supply will shrink, the weak will go to zero and you will be left with a stock market of strong companies with great balance sheets that will be underowned. They will be underowned because 95 percent of the investing public will own reorganized airlines, banks, and auto companies. Don’t be one of them.

Related Stocks:  IBM

Beta Watchlist

Courtesy of MMachado

As you can see below it broke out of a triangle on the daily price chart and on the weekly RSI it broke out of a strong price channel. I tend to think it will gap up on Monday as gold is on everybody’s radar right now so I wouldn’t chase it, but look for a pullback to establish positions if you’re not already in.  I listed below some of the strongest stocks in this sector based on Fridays relative strength when compared against the GLD, and these are the companies I’m going to focus on.

Related Stocks:  GLD

I’m not sure how much I trust any chart pattern out there, but for what it’s worth the stock showed up on my lemmings scan this weekend. It struggled once it rose over it’s 200ema and promptly fell. This trade will really depend on the overall market, and whether it extends today’s gains.

Related Stocks:  ROSE

I wasn’t surprised to see the Dow shoot up late in the afternoon after it broke out of the symmetrical triangle it was trapped in for most of the day, but I expected it to stall around the 7965 level, which was the previous low. It shot right through that and now could easily move a bit higher near the 8200 area at the open, before some type of selling wave comes in.  The RSI has a clear range to monitor for a fresh breakout or a rejection at the upper trendline.

Or maybe the bottom was just put in and we rally to 10k. The one good thing is my crash theory may be put on hold as if it was going to occur I would have expected the markets to stay under pressure. This up move releases some of the oversold state we were in and leaves the door open for further gains.

We’re down 945 points on the Dow this week, and 201 on the Nas this week as the loses are piling up.

clipped from www.market-harmonics.com

Related Stocks:  ROSE

1. We may have just experienced the downward consolidation that I had previously thought had occurred during July-Sept, when in fact it may have just been the warm for the big fall. Now part of me hopes I’m wrong in this as I don’t want to see anymore damage inflicted on peoples retirements, but this could be a big opportunity that we won’t see for a very long time. We seem to be breaking down out of this sideways move with volume picking up and it just seems unlikely that we’re going to rebound from this level, however a double bottom could still play out there.
2. We hit new fresh multi year lows on the markets today and the Vix didn’t hit new highs? What has to happen before this goes over 100? A mass liquidation out of equities would do the trick. Even a 20% correction from today’s closing low would only be 1500 points. I think we’re going to see a intraday swing of maybe 2000 or more with the buying coming in at the close to get us off our worse levels for the day when it does happen.



3. The media was calling the bottom all the way down on the first leg down telling us it was a buying opportunity. I don’t think this will be the case this time around. Real fear will be in the air unlike anything we’ve seen yet. The kind that I’m to young to even know what it’s like. Wouldn’t it just be crazy if Cramer was actually right when he said the Dow could fall to the mid 5000’s. I think that would be perfectly fitting in an upside down world that if the Dow fell that low, people would still be afraid to buy into it, which is exactly the type of mentality is needed for a bottom to form.
4. This scenario is the most unlikely or at least the most least talked about possibly that I’ve heard so far. Although it makes perfect sense if you think about it and when you consider my points. After everything investors have just gone through, another crash likely would put them over the edge.

All I’m trying to do here is prepare you for what might happen as there are 100 other ways this can go down. The good news to all of this is that I think this should happen very soon, like in the next few days to a week as momentum to the downside slowly feels like it’s picking up steam. If we move higher from here and rally I will probably take this possibility off the table. We dropped almost 1000 points in 2 days and it feels like nobody really batted an eyelash over those losses. What’s another 2000?

]]> http://www.covestor.com/mbr/zentrader/blog/17378 http://www.covestor.com/mbr/zentrader/blog/17378 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:11:16 I’m going to start a new category that is totally off topic in an attempt to let my readers crawl inside my world, if only for a moment. Most of the time they will have nothing to do about trading but I’m sure knowing me I’ll squeeze something of relevance in. The entire purpose of this is to let you get to know me just a little better by letting you know what I’m currently reading or what quotes move me enough to share. I also see this as a way to keep a log of the various quotations should I want to reference them at a later time. So with that here is the first one from a novel I started tonight.

In Yann Martel’s Author’s Note, Life of Pi:

“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the alter of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”

My eldest wears a pin on her bag that sums up this sentence in just two words, “Art Matters”.

You never can be too prepared, so in the event that we do have another crash waiting in the wings and I was looking to scoop up some bargains, I’d start in the following stocks. Now I’m not turning into an investor, but if we do get a once in a lifetime opportunity to pick up bargains, then I want to designate a portion of my portfolio in longer term assets. The problem is for me to see value I feel it’s about 2000 points below where were at now, possibly more. I still can’t shake this feeling that we have a 20% down intraday decline in the works to scare the bejesus out of everybody.

MCD MO KO CAT K PG DE MMM ADM CL COST JNJ GIS

Canadian Companies: LULU THI ROG

Anybody have any other suggestions?

The idea is to buy safe “Buffet” type stock in companies whose business models are sound. I’d like to add AAPL and GOOG to the list, but that would be more of a judgement call at that time.

Related Stocks:  AAPL, ADM, CAT, CL, COST, DE, GIS, GOOG, JNJ, KO, MCD, MMM, MO, PG

It’s tough to make money during bear markets, everybody knows that. But it shouldn’t be anymore difficult to make money in a down trending market as it is in an up-trending market. A trend is a trend and as long as your a trader with the ability to short, it really shouldn’t matter which way the market is moving, correct? If the markets were up 400 points today, everybody would be happy and the media would be telling you this market is ready to rebound. I think there’s a number or reasons why it can be challenging to profit from declining markets and here are a few. Feel free to add your 10 cents as to why you’ve personally had difficulty this year trading this bear and maybe we can learn something that will help us all be more profitable traders.

1. The media. They simply don’t like it when stocks go down. They blame the short sellers as if they have something to do with the fact the entire market is collapsing. Even the government got involved in this blame game when they banned shorting in certain issues this fall, pressing the idea that profiting from declining stock prices is wrong. This is all complete garbage as shorting provides a function in the capital markets. Most of the general public and some investors don’t even realize that you can make money when the markets go down. If you don’t know how to short then I recommend learning real fast because selling the rallies have been the only way to make money this year.
2. The notion that markets have to go up. Let me explain what I mean exactly. Most people tend to believe that equity markets have to rise because that’s what they’ve been told, and so far history has been good to the majority of them. It almost seems unnatural when the markets move lower, and a good bit of the move down everybody is sitting around waiting for the markets to resume it’s uptrend. Take the chart above as an example of what I mean. As a trader I should have made a killing this year, yet I didn’t and I think I know why. The trend is obviously down, there’s absolutely no question about it yet I didn’t follow through with holding on to the short positions that I had many months ago. Was it because I really felt like the markets would bounce and take my profits? Maybe I got to short sighted with these massive snap back rallies and didn’t focus on the big picture which is down. I hear time and time again, traders saying how difficult this market is, including myself, but maybe we’re just making it more difficult on ourselves. I don’t have all the answers, as I’m just thinking out loud here.
3. Fear looks and tastes different than greed. I’ve have tried to use the same strategy that makes money in bull markets and tried to reverse it when the markets are dropping and the results aren’t the same. Same indicators, same chart patterns, same discipline = different results. The only thing I can come up with is when markets are moving higher “greed” is the one driving the car. People act differently when they have a profit and they’re pressing their luck for me and the charts reflect mass psychology, therefore the charts will act different than when somebody else is at the helm. Stocks fall twice as fast as they rise so it’s important to be quick on the draw when you turn bearish, but the emotion that causes investors to act differently when they’re losing money is “fear”. Therefore you have to devise a game plan that accounts for the change in mental behaviour if you want to profit from it.
4. Government Intervention. Part of my fear of holding shorts was it seemed like every day last month the government was sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong, giving the markets false reason to rally. They need to let the free markets be free and let the chips fall where they may. It may be more painful in the short term but I think that this bear market would have stood a chance of ending sooner than it appears it’s going to. The majority of this volatility is caused from the markets inability to price in all this unprecedented money printing and intervention by our government.

Below you can see the trendline in the RSI on the major averages and how it’s bumping right up against the upper trendline while the price chart is hovering near the lower trendline. This is really a question of which came first. Is the RSI indicating underlying strength in the charts or is the price chart an indication of major weakness. Unfortunately you really have to wait and see how the RSI reacts when it hits that upper trendline to see if it can breakthrough it which would pull the indexes most likely up to at least their upper trendlines. However if the RSI is rejected I would look for the markets to suffer another serious correction as it seems like we’ve been flirting with all week.

While I’m not getting to excited about buying any stocks long at this time, it’s always good to have a watchlist ready should the market surprise everyone and go bullish on us. here is the latest breakout I found on my scans. It’s a low volume stock at about 100k/day, but today was a step in the right direction at nearly a million shares traded. I’ll get interested in this when I see volume begin pouring into this stock, but for those of you with lesser volume requirements this may interest you.

On a side not, EBS which I profiled on Novermber 8th had nearly a 10% move today. This is another stockto track so when the next Bull market comes you’re ready.

clipped from www.finviz.com

Related Stocks:  GS, JPM, MER, MS

The above article is on Marketwatch and the way I see it, the next Depression must be a done deal if they can find not 1, not 5, but 30 reasons that we might as well stick a fork in our economy. Where exactly where these journalists when the Dow was over 14k?

Citi to Cut 53,000 Jobs, Boosting Total to 20%

Another story that really bothered me today was the Citigroup piece regarding the 53,000 employee reduction within their company. At what point do the big executives wake up and say, “Hey, I think we need to cut 50,000 jobs because we don’t need them anymore.” Don’t they have a department designed to keep a balance between work and employees? This scene from Office Space is what I picture went on inside the company when they were trying to figure out who to cut?

I just can’t fathom that people can be this stupid to conform to peer pressure, when the correct answer is so obvious. Maybe the first person is a plant, designed to say the wrong answer. If that’s not the case who’s more dumb, the first subject for giving the wrong answer, or the others for blindly following him?

Link to article here.

I’d say the complacency is more prevalent in the $CPC as we’re well off the high levels of Sept/Oct. The VIX looks like it wants to retest it’s old highs. I’m firmly back in the bear camp after today’s close. If the market was going to follow through with last Thursday’s rally, it should have done so already. Let’s just say I was officially tricked by the market into thinking we were going to move higher on the shorter time-frame, and it was an expensive lesson.

I sort of knew I was in trouble this weekend when I was actively searching out news to fit in with my bullish views and whenever that happens you might as well bet on the market doing the opposite. This market continues to punish traders for carrying positions overnight and rewarding short term behavior. As long as this is the case it’s best to keep your trading to a minimum.

The market could still rise here, but I’m not willing to risk any more capital to find out.

If Gold can breakout of this wedge it stands a chance of moving significantly higher. Watch the rising trendline on the RSI for clues. A breakdown will most likely send it down to the lower trendline. I have a feeling that gold can rise in tandem with the markets.

When the dollar has risen lately, the market tanks. If this chart breaks down it should be bullish for the overall markets.

It’s doubtful the market is gong to turnaround until the financials put in some type of short term bottom. I see some promising signs, but it has to happen pronto. It could easily fall into the abyss at this point if it doesn’t find support here.

For the past 10 years I’ve been battling different degrees of heartburn on and off. I’ve gone to the doctor several times because I thought I might have an ulcer or acid reflux, but nothing was ever diagnosed. They gave me prescriptions and I would get some medicine that would help out for awhile, but the problem would always return. In fact, for the past couple years it’s been so bad that it often woke me up in the middle of the night. I would say on average I had heartburn 4-5 times out of the week and it was a good night if I slept through the night without it flaring up. I guess you could say that I sort of learned to live with it, as I never really complained about it and my wife didn’t even know how bad it was.

Fast forward to the last day of the seminar which was primarily concerned with health. Robbin’s theory on health is that if you’re not running at optimal levels within your own body at a cellular level, then it really doesn’t matter how much money you;re making or how successful you are, you won’t really be enjoying your life. He offers a 10 day challenge (preferrably 30 days) to follow a few principles that he claims will transform your body and learn how to create vital life and energy. My wife and I decided that we were going to make the commitment to apply these principles for 10 days at the minimum. I’ll admit, the lifestyle changes that were required were difficult to envision at first, hence the 10 day commitment, but after a few days I decided to give it the preferred 30 days to really see if I can see a difference in the quality of my life and energy levels.

I am almost amazed to be able to write the next sentence as it is the result of applying Robbins principles for the last 5 weeks. I have not had a single bout of heartburn, not even the beginnings of a flare up since the seminar ended. Here are the changes I’ve made in my everyday routine, diet, and lifestyle that I feel make the difference. If you suffer from heartburn and take medicine, you are only masking the problem and not working to resolve the issue. I urge you to try the following steps for at least 30 days. If I could help just one person overcome this health problem that has plagued me for 1/3 of my life, I will feel that my writing this post was worth it. I will even go as far to offer my assistance by phone if you have any questions or you aren’t seeing the results that you want. All I ask is that you try the following steps for at least 10 days before emailing me at Jeff (@) zentrader.ca with any questions you might have.

1. The first thing I would recommend is a cleanse/detox. Maria and i did the 12 day Wild Rose Detox. She had already purchased kits for both of us prior to the seminar, but after Tony told us that John Wayne’s autopsy revealed 28 pounds of dried fecal matter in his intestine, I was sold. Now I’m going to warn you, the detox is very hard to do but it’s vital in cleaning yourself out so you can start from a clean slate. You are restricted in what you are allowed to eat and this alone is very challenging but vitally important.
2. Drink a lot of water. I was already accustomed to drinking a lot of water daily, so this was easy. If you aren’t sure how much is enough, here is a simple formula: drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces daily.
3. Give up sugar. I never said this was going to be easy, but sugar is acid forming and there are so many harmful effects that highly acidic ph levels can do to your body. No more sodas, candy, all that stuff I love to eat.
4. No caffeine. This is another acid former.
5. Alkalize. Now you might be like me and have no idea what that means. It has to do with offsetting the acid levels in your body and can be done a number of ways. Putting lemon in my water and eating a lot of green vegetables is what I did.
6. This next one is to convert to a somewhat vegetarian diet and this was very tough for me to do. I say somewhat because I do eat meat, I just try to keep it to 20% of my total diet now. You can eat as much fish as you want, but 80% of your diet should come from live foods (fruits and veggies, everything that is healthy that most people avoid, etc). On a side note, when you get the detox kit it shows you what you can eat/not eat while on the program and a lot of what you should be eating/not eating is covered in the manual. This step was very hard for me to do, as I never really could see myself as a vegetarian. I’ve been eating meat my entire life, but I must say that it’s been worth it to me to be healthier. I do eat free range chicken, but I keep it to less than 20% of my diet.
7. Take the essential oil blend Udo’s Choice 1-2 times a day. This gets your omega 3 and 6 that so many people lack from their diets.
8. Cut down your carbohydrate intake - I drastically reduced and almost eliminated the following from my diet: white bread, rice, potatoes, pasta.
9. Cut out dairy completely. I already drank soy milk, so this wasn’t a big change, especially with the availablity of soy products in the grocery store.

I know these changes may seem radical, but I wanted to “play full out” as Tony says for 30 days, to see if I noticed any changes in my energy levels. I can say that I feel better all around, and losing my heartburn was just an added life-enhancing bonus. That benefit alone is enough to keep me on this path of wellness. Some of the other benefits are that I’ve noticed an improvement in my breathing (I also suffer from asthma) and I’ve trimmed down a bit as well. My 30 days are over, but I still continue to practice the above steps because of the increase in energy I feel and the other aforementioned benefits. I do cheat sometimes. I have a soda once in awhile, or I’ll have some dessert if it’s something I really like. I just try to limit the things that are bad for my body and have cut back my coffee intake to a few cups a week. For a program like this to work, you have to cut some corners once in awhile so it’s sustainable. If you know someone who might benefit from this post, please forward it along. I wish someone had introduced me to these principles years ago.

Related Stocks:  ROSE

I’ll get us started with my pick. ADM, supermarket to the world. The world’s got to eat. So to recap, if the markets bottomed tomorrow, which one stock would you want to own at rock bottom prices to hold for a longer term frame that you normally would.

Related Stocks:  ADM

Today negates much of yesterdays strength as the internals were 8% upside to 92% downside selling pressure. The only consolation prize is that volume was lower on all of the main indexes, but I don’t feel that volume on a day like today means much. There were just no buyers to support the market so everything tanked.

clipped from www.market-harmonics.com

However the move down in the morning did feel orderly, so at no time did I feel threatened with the longs I put on the day prior. When the market rallied I even felt like I did the right thing buying when the market had no good reason to stage a huge rally on Thursday. But just as I should have covered my shorts when the market tanked on Thursday, I should have used today’s rally to exit my longs, failing to execute on both counts. The frenzied selling in the last hour should not have happened, but I can’t blame people for taking what profits the market gave them. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake in holding so many long positions over the weekend when the media is hyping the G-20 so much this week. They had better come up with some groundbreaking results or I’m afraid the market is going to sell on the news given that it never even rallied on the rumour.

When I think about the market this week I picture a crowd on a boat that keeps running to one side of the boat and just as it was about to tip, it quickly runs to the other side to prevent the boat from tipping over. I really thought yesterday’s rally was meaningful and it still may turn out to be, but today’s weakness has me second guessing myself. Maybe we’ll have some more balance next week and everyone will realize the world isn’t ending and we’ll have a meaningful follow through. This buying pressure has to happen quickly or this market is in big trouble as we’ve seen what it’s capable of with these wild sell-offs moving the markets 400-500 points in less than an hour.

clipped from www.financialsense.com