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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: buckbldr who wrote (73905)	10/26/2006 1:42:13 PM
From: tom pope	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206150

Semper Fi to all those interested in defending our country against our declared enemies. Agree 100%, as long as the chosen defense is effective. Is it?

To: buckbldr who wrote (73905)	10/26/2006 3:49:20 PM
From: ChanceIs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206150

buckbldr - If you are still interested in options, you may want to read this article and go to the CBOW site. (This may have been mentioned to you in the past - yet I think that the simulation capability is very new.) I find options worthwhile. They give great flexibility and risk management. They are also "fun." __________________________________________________________ Trading Up -- the Virtual Way TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING ABOUT options trading, even the time-honored technique of "paper trading." For generations, aspiring traders honed their skills by recording would-be buy and sell decisions with pen and paper, and then analyzing the results to uncover the strengths and weaknesses in their analysis. Now, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, in conjunction with optionsXpress, has introduced a Website program that lets traders hone their trading skills with a "Virtual Trade Tool." The program enables traders of all experience levels to initiate virtual options trades in a simulated trading environment without risking any money. To be sure, a variety of brokerage firms offer virtual trading programs to their clients, but anyone who registers on CBOE.com's "trading tools" section can use the service for free. "Less than three months since launching the virtual trade tool, it's already the sixth most popular feature on CBOE.com as more than 50,000 visitors a month use the new tool," says Cynthia Elsener, CBOE's vice president in charge of Internet marketing. Part of the trading program's attraction is that it was designed by optionsXpress to simulate the market's ups and downs. The program accomplishes this by using actual market data, including bids, asks and volatility levels. The trading tool is the same trading platform used by optionsXpress customers. The program was made "virtual" by disabling the computer coding that enables order executions. "Most people learn options in seminars and classes, and here all you have to do is place a trade and the rest is real. We really think this is a training ground for options trading," says David Kalt, optionsXpress' chief executive officer. At optionsXpress, the program has helped traders advance their understanding of options. Kalt says his firm's customers routinely use the program to master the mechanics of advanced options strategies like calendar spreads before risking real money. Of course, nothing can replicate the reality of the market, but using real market data to power the virtual trading tool comes close. This is an important improvement over old-style "paper trading" that lacked any sense of immediacy because it relied on securities quotes printed in newspapers or on the Internet. The virtual trading tool lets users view and monitor orders and quotes just as if they were trading real positions. While the trading tool has a feature that allows users to analyze their trading performance, there is one critical element to trading that it cannot replicate -- emotion. And it is the emotion of investing real money, in real time, that most traders have trouble mastering. Real money tends to make people really emotional, and that is a key reason why there are more virtual millionaires than real ones.

To: buckbldr who wrote (73905)	10/26/2006 4:25:37 PM
From: Kayaker	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 206150

I realize this isn't the place for such a discussion, so will make this my last post on the subject. It's your insinuation that people are committing treason when they "demean OUR Commander-in-Chief" or express "Anti-administration bias" that I object to. It's not treason to criticize the president or object to administration policies; it's dissent. You want "SUPPORTIVE GUIDANCE directed to the leadership of this war". That might be your preference, but people get to make their own decisions as to how they express their dissent. I'll leave you with the words of Theodore Roosevelt in an editorial he wrote for the "Kansas City Star" during World War I, when asked to give his viewpoint re criticism of the president during a time of war.... "The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star May 7, 1918