Drinks & Dividends - July Get Together Update

We met and discussed a few topics: where is the market going, how to make money, and leveraging Technical Analysis.

But first, the June Stock Pick winnahs!
Ray Li with EZPW
Senthil with DGX (I owe you $12, pls contact me)
Kasey with DO (I owe you $6, pls contact me)

That's twice Kasey has been in the top 3.

Nobody seems to have any insights into market direction. One person noted that there was a lot of doom-and-gloom from various stock pundits. And then the market went strong. And then it went bad again.

One thing seems to be clear: this market is not taking a nose-dive again to the degree it just took. I believe that we will be in a period of ups and downs. If so, one way to play that volatility is to try a straddling technique that uses puts and call options, or even just call or put options. basically, try to make money on the 5% weekly up-and-down moves.
Some stocks that seemed to be fairly stable are telecoms (Verizon, Qwest, ATT). Additionally, we looked at water stocks like San Jose Water. A healthy dividend and appreciation (lots more people living in San Jose these days).

Lastly, we looked at Technical Analysis. I concentrated on MACD and RSI and we considered several stocks. I don't rely on TA for determining entry and exit. I showed how TA can lead to timing decisions that actually run opposite where the stock is going.