Holding patterns

I must admit that my 'strangle' paper trades did not show a profit. They did perform very will in that I have more questions surrounding how to successfully make such a trade. I will be making experimenting more in the future, but not currently due to the fact that I am looking for a different stock as well as a clearly defined exit.

I came upon the idea of 'contrarian investing'. Basically the premise that the crowd is almost always wrong around major turning points in the market. Warren Buffett was quoted as saying, "Be brave when others are afraid, and afraid when others are brave." This has to the be the most interesting thing I have read to date about investing. It makes no sense to be doing what everyone else is doing, if this were the case, no one would ever make any money! I understand that a man must listen to logic and reason, at the same time however, most of the accomplishments that moved mankind forward were times in which he ignored said logic and reason.

Obviously I am a complete novice at trading, and I would argue vehemently that paper trading is COMPLETELY different than trading with real money. But it here in the beginning of my market education, I notice that I have the tendency to observe market movements and 'know' that what I am seeing doesnt make sense and just 'naturally' take the other side of it. I guess that is what me posting here is all about. If I look back once 2008 is complete and see that I was not profitable then perhaps it will be time to reconsider putting real money into play. Even then that is a somewhat results driven definition of success. If I learn something about myself and the market during this year, in my humble (albeit broke) opinion , I will have achieved the success I was looking for.

If you are still reading, good for you. Today there was a (in my mind) huge sell off that seemed to based off oil going over 100. Good for oil. But for the first time this year, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to be speculating towards the upside. Without further ado:

+10 AAPL 125 call @ 5.00 = $5024.95
+10 RIMM 93.375 call @ 5.35 = $5374.95
+10 QQQQ 44 call @ 1.26 = $1284.95

christmas wish list:

+10 GOOG 510 call @ 20.40 = $20,424.95
+10 BIDU 250 call @ 17.80 = $17,724.95

All of these came within 15 minutes of close. I should also point out the first time I looked at the Q's 10 minutes before I bought the price was 1.11 so I would have made a nice 22% swing in that 10 minute window. I am also watching FCX like a hawk again, for reasons I cant quite figure out I love this stock.

In poker news, after months of an overall lack of direction from the team, I finally started acting like the leader I supposedly am. Everyone has been put on a 10 day hiatus with no poker whatsoever. After this we will meet up and I will outline the plan of action for the following 30 days. It will be interesting to see how we all adjust to a bit more structure.

That is all for now, everyone be well.