Cost of an education...

As a dollars and cents kind of guy who proudly admits to gripping a nickel so hard the buffalo screams (umm, I mean frugal), I have often tried to calculate the costs of educating myself as a trader. I've heard that the education of a trader can be dearly expensive, alluding to those who have blown out their accounts trying to learn this art.
I met with a friend today who saves all his magazines for me to read. It's been a while so there were over two dozen. I quickly discarded the rubbish: Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Money, and Kiplingers, to name a few. But among them were my regular favorites: This Old House, Food Channel magazine, Business Week, The New Yorker, Boston Magazine, and Forbes. And in the August 24th issue of Forbes was the annual ranking of Best Colleges.
Because I have a bachelors degree, I often refer to my stock market training as my self-directed masters degree. As such, the costs of masters degrees was particularly interesting to me. For MBAs at the top ten ranked MBA programs out of the list of 50 best programs, out-of-state tuition and fees averaged $96,800. The ten lowest priced programs averaged $48,200. There's no doubt that these are not representative of all MBA programs available. State schools with in-state rates would be cheaper; the University of Southern Maine charges about $21,000 for the 60 credit-hour program. No matter how you slice it, a masters degree is a big financial committment.
What has trading cost me thus far? Down $3800 over 8 months (actually a one day loss), "tuition" is running me about $475 per month on average. If one assumes that a masters is often earned in about 24 months, my "self-directed" masters will cost me $11,400 if I continue on this track.
Yes, I know this is not a carefully considered and well-researched essay. My clumsy point is this: As expensive as trading can be to learn, it still may be the best deal out there. And the best deal of all? We are in charge of the tuition rates we pay.

August 28th - A bit later...

Here's where it is now. I've been watching it (as well as eating lunch) instead of trading it.

It just closed above the 7 EMA at the 12:35 pm candle at $48.98. An exit on my trade here would have given me a gain of $4830.

However, this is a delayed/late exit. The ideal exit signal would have been at the close of the 12:15pm candle, corresponding to the high volume spike and long tail/wick on the candle. An exit here at $46.60 would have yielded $7,210 in gains. A nice trade...

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I'm outta here. We're going for a bike ride. Only for the afternoon, though. Bad weather coming in for the week-end so no overnights until next week.

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Good trading to all. May your endeavors be educationally and financially profitable!

August 28th - Mid-Day

I had been waiting for about 30 minutes for a move in AIG. I always consider the filling of an opening gap.

The stock is still sinking even after this screen shot so I really missed most of the trade. But I am happy about pegging the breakdown. I looked for the string of closes below the 7 EMA then took it short just before the drop. What I have to learn now is patience... to hold my winners... the stock is at $48.11 right now and if I had held, I'd be up $5700 on this trade so far, instead of only up $554. I sold at what I thought would be a resistence level set by the 9:40 & 9:45 am candles. The stock has not threatened a break of the 7 EMA, the sell signal I am considering adopting.

Ok, looks like a potential reversal candle is forming at 11:55pm... we'll see how it goes.