Trading Legend Mark Minervini on Growth Stocks

Beware the Official “Growth Stock” (May 7, 2013)

Traderstewie's Career Worst Trade

(as always, you can click to enlarge)

Buffet's Career Lessons for Millenials

from businessinsider's Warren Buffett Shares 9 Great Career Lessons For Millennials:

1. Find your passion.
2. Carefully choose who you look up to.
3. Learn how to communicate effectively.
4. Develop healthy habits by studying people.
5. Learn how to say "no."
6. Don't work for someone who won't pay you fairly.
7. Become involved with growing businesses.
8. Learn everything you can about your industry.
9. Young women should seek male mentors.

On Mental Toughness

from a link posted by Mike Bellafiore to Twitter:

... twelve main components of mental toughness which were identified by the participants. These twelve components were; team unity, preparation skills, competitiveness, motivation level, coping skills, confidence maintenance, cognitive skill, discipline and goal directedness, possession of physical and mental requirements, psychological hardiness, ethics and religious convictions (Gucciardi, Gordon et al., 2009).

and;

Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to:

• Generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on the performer.
• Specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined,  focused, confident, and in control under pressure.  [(Jones, Hanton et al., 2002)]

Twelve Main Components of Mental Toughness

1. team unity
2. preparation skills
3. competitiveness
4. motivation level
5. coping skills
6. confidence maintenance
7. cognitive skill
8. discipline
9. goal directedness
10. possession of physical and mental requirements
11. psychological hardiness
12. ethics and religious convictions

The Life of Rembrandt

link

The IPO Market is not Dead.

The truth is that we need the IPO market more than ever, just not at valuations already picked over by the underwriters.  That's a tough act when you have something with the enormous notoriety that Facebook does.  Not so when carpet bombing the public with ZNGA in double digits at their dead top.  By virtue of size these investment banks are arbiters of the business, so when people feel like they're getting screwed, they're getting screwed.

Some recent offerings, like CHUY, demonstrate that you can still go for the ride if you scan the IPO list and do a little homework.

Finally - THIS IS IMPORTANT - this market still handsomely rewards good ideas.  The VC culture is real and accessable.  Chase your notions, especially the good ones.

Notes to the President

Dear President Obama -

The latest macroeconomic market data tell us that despite a policy of ultimate liquidity, the Federal Reserve is unable to devalue into sustainable civil growth.

Too much growth has been pulled forward and for too long, and the present nature of social programs disincentivize legal entrepreneurship.

Consequently, [illegal] drug sales will always be a large entrepreneurial market because of the pleasure seeking behavior exhibited at large by those who have quit on themselves and require less energy to expend on personal advancement. [**]

The Fed cannot be seen as inflexible to the point that their policy creates a sovereign weakness.

Too, Free Markets and individual liberty are hallmarks of American Capitalism.

Please gather your panel of economic advisers and give back to the markets the final years of your term before making this current bastardization a political issue.

It's about the good guys and the bad guys now.  Government doesn't need to be in a market keeping the dogs back from the carcass.  If a race of market participants exist to drive this country into civil disrepair their actions must be exposed, not delayed and exacerbated by the lasting repercussions of the current face of QE.

One cannot print entrepreneurship.  Quantitative Easing was an important and necessary decision into the lows of the last crisis, it should not be another social crutch left to its devices.

** - I feel social programs incite a human characteristic for pleasure seeking by depriving the innate mechanical drive to self-support.  The pleasure derived is meant to replace the satisfaction of personal accomplishment.  In this way, social programs create a number of the victims who end up in jail.