How do we Learn?

Yesterday I went mountain climbing again (every Saturdays and every other Tuesdays). You are welcome to join me if you find the time (by the way, we all have time - its a matter of what's impotant to you). A fellow climber told me that we went up to 1,480 meters (that's close to 5,000 feet high). We did it in about 2 hours and change. Just take my word for it - you need to try this soon. Did you know that clean, oxygen rich morning air in the mountain kills cancer cells in your body? You do now. Cancer cells dislike fresh oxygen it seems.

Oh, how did the guy know we were up 5,000 feet high? He had this cool watch that tells how high we were (Altimeter). That got me thinking. You know what? I needed (wanted) one of those. I made a call. A call to THE watch guy (Greg). He immediately sent me an e-mail with instructions on how to get the watch I want and with a good discount. The watch is called Tissot T-Touch with Titanium case and Tactile Sapphire glass (whatever that means). Now, this is a cool watch. It has a touch screen that activates to tell you: Altimeter (how high), Barometer, Thermometer, Compass, Alarm and god knows what else.
I just bought one (black, to match my Mercedes S320v).

On to business: Some of you are nervous. If you are not, you should be. The market turned sour few days ago after Mr. Bernanke (Fed. Chair) raised rates 1/4 percent and told us that it might not be finished yet with the rate increases. Do you know how many interest rate increases we've had? Even I lost count after more than a dozen (that's 12). Everything went down.

I am now expecting a bounce. It went down too quick. For long term investors this is meaningless. The market will recover anyway. But for short term traders this is a big chance. You can make a decent profit if you are in the right stock at this time ( as per my previous notes, I am long SLAB for my trading account). Most of you are (and should be) long term investors. Therefore I do not go into details regarding my trading account. But I do tell you what I do. I try to elaborate more on long term holdings. By the way, on my last blog I told you that I have increased my holdings on BTYH, IDWD and AUTO. What I forgot to tell you was that I got the money from selling my OIH holding (bought at $142 and sold at $165 for 19% gain in 1.5 months).

Yo should know that I am still bullish on Oil. I just had to take some profit to feed my next hitters. I will be back into both OIH and MVK (Bought $54.2 Sold $57.7 for 6.5% gain in 1 week) soon. Speaking of the hitters, tomorrow RICK will announce its first quarter results (I am expecting record numbers) before the market open. The stock has moved up nicely over the last few weeks in anticipation. The truth is that too many people still do not know about this comapny. That's good news for us. This stock will move up more unless some disaster happens that we are not aware of (this management seems very clear about its affairs). I know many of you own this one - cross your fingers.

How do we learn?
Most people are taught to think that we learn by our mistakes.
Not true.
We learn not from our failures but from our success - and the failures of others.
It has to do with our ability as human beings to relate better to people in their failures than in their successes, and to learn more in the process. Perhaps that's why gossip is such a unifying force. (from: AdvantEdge magazine). When was the last time you gossiped about someone's success?
I would wish that you learn from my mistakes from these pages.
I will try hard to make a few.

Tomorrow, I will revisit all my holdings.
Tomorrow ends our third inning in this game. If you do not know what I am talking about please read my blog dated 4/25 titled "top of 3rd inning". Happy mother's day and let's go RICK!