will, living trust, health care proxy, dual power of attorneys

A few of my daytrading colleagues have been asking where I'ved been the past six weeks. As I stated six weeks ago, in order to determine if my mindset was on the right track, I would need to make a positive gain during a downtrending market month. Despite poor timing, we managed a .25% gain in July when the market looked like it was going to implode. So far in August, we're up over 4% and within .4% of breaking even year to date. I took one of the traders' advice and sold 500 shares from one of my positions at the close on Friday just to see profit. The hope is that the markets pullback and that I can redeploy at a lower cost. But even if it doesn't, its a way of banking some profit while still riding the majority of positions.

At some point, one will have enough net worth where you'll have to make sure you've written a couple of legal documents in case of your incapacity. At least have something basic in writing before you formally go to an estate attorney since the cost of going through them is so prohibitive (roughly $3-5k for trusts). The health care proxy designates who you want to make decisions for you if you are incapacitated but still alive. The dual power of attorney is commonly a signature form that each bank and brokerage has that allows you to designate another person with executing trades or withdrawals. I realize this is something NOT to take likely, since if you designate someone who has no scruples, they could conceivably withdraw the entire account and leave you dead. But if you really give it some thought, you should be able to think of one person you can trust in the world. In my case, its my sister. There is no contingent executor on any of my documents because I do not trust anyone outside of her to respect my wishes.

Although I'm still working on my timing of when markets shift, something that has worked is NOT going to as many websites any more. I've found that those sites actually caused me to have a predetermined opinion of the market (which is generally wrong), instead of simply looking at another 100 charts and let the charts tell me what the traders really think of a given sector or average.

One thing I've noticed about my sister's 401k is that I've dropped the worst performing fund from her portfolio every June for three years now. The effect has added about 5% each year. I'm thinking its more luck than anything but I want to put some of that hoarded cash back into something she can be comfortable with. I'm pretty certain I've found the right fund for her, but all I need is one decent pullback day given they only trade at the end of the day.

YTD -0.4%