September 2009 Trading

September was another slow month. Gains were lower than prior months and margins held fairly strong averaging 10.5 %.

I sold the following:

• Boeing
• Abbott Labs
• Dominion Resources

At the end of the month, I'm only about 23% invested with holdings in the following:

• Lockheed Martin Corp - Up 5.2%
• Eli Lily and Company - Up 1.6%
• Mcgraw Hill Publishing - Up 3.9%

I collected dividends on the following:

• Boeing
• Lockheed Martin Corp

Trading Tools

I've recently added a new tool to my trading toolkit that has made my trading life a lot easier and has also made buying opportunities a lot easier to track. I've started using Google Docs spreadsheets along with the Google Finance Function. This allows me to track real time prices and other stock attributes without having to manually transfer to an excel spreadsheet. This is awesome! Also, it makes it much easier to track my holdings across multiple PCs at home and office. But it's not all positive, there are a lot of stock attributes that I must still manually research and place in the spreadsheet, but I'm hopeful that this functionality will expand over time.

Here's a summary of the tools that I use now

• Google Docs / Google Finance - Online tracking spreadsheet with live price, eps and p/e updates.
• Yahoo Finance - Tracking other stock attributes like dividends amounts, ex-div dates, target prices, analyst recommendations. Also general financial news.
• Batstrading - Real time info about outstanding orders and real time trades.
• Nasdaq - For monitoring pre and post marking trades.
• Yahoo Stock Screener - Identifying new stocks for monitoring.
• MSN Stock Screener - Identifying new stocks for monitoring.
• Firstrade - Brokerage services.
• Blogger - This financial blog.