The Financial Whiz would like to apologize for the lack of updates.

Recently, I have been asked to contribute to Value View newsletter’s Young Investor column and to work as an analyst for their Dynamic Insurgents portfolio (which is a portfolio of companies that are potential Blue Chips, but are relatively unproven and operate in fast-paced industries).  This comes in addition to my work training and guiding next year’s Student Managed Portfolio Team and the general busy weeks that tend to fill a senior year.

Once I get a free moment, I will work on putting a few of my ideas together, which have been floating around in my mind for a few weeks, and then post the new content for my faithful readers.  Along with the new investment ideas, I will post updates on previous investment strategies.

My job search is going well, though some of the jobs I was interested in were looking for an immediate start, rather than a December start.  I have spoken to recruiters regarding jobs in varying places within the financial industry.  When one sent me positions that did not seem quite like the right fit, I described what I had in mind as a perfect job, and he responded quickly with a position that piqued my interest.  I am scheduled to have a phone interview with one of my top companies later this week.

I encourage all of you seeking jobs to go for the one you would really enjoy; do not settle right away because you think you must take an entry level position in something you hate to get to where you want to be.  Keep up your search!

Bryan

I wanted to thank everyone who has found this site and taken something away from it. The site has grown to over 5,000 visitors and is now receiving over 100 new visitors per day.

TheFinancialWhiz.Com launched on January 17, 2007 with the hope of providing a channel of investment strategy ideas to other investors. The site has since become so much more than that and has even sparked the creativity of the site’s viewers to develop variations of strategies that were presented. The site has grown in credibility and one article, Rydex’s CurrencyShares ETFs: The Expensive Truth, was published by Seeking Alpha on June 13, 2007 and featured on Yahoo! Finance.My plan for the future includes creating new innovative investment strategies along with expanding the new series on “Becoming a Financial Whiz” which is a systematic process for a new investor to become knowledgeable in the financial world. If you have any suggestions on topics, please feel free to email those ideas to me.

I hope that the site will continue to grow and to become an essential investment tool for future visitors. Thank you for your continued support and if you wish to contact me please feel free to email me at bryan@thefinancialwhiz.com.

Bryan W. Moore
TheFinancialWhiz.Com

Technorati Tags: financial, milestone, website

About a week ago, I stumbled upon one of the newest Web 2.0 applications that happen to meet the needs of investors. The tool is much like any other web-based portfolio monitoring application, such as Yahoo! Finance/Google Finance and Smartmoney.com to name a few, but what sets Stockalicious.com above the rest is its ability to share and display your performance to the rest of the Stockalicious community and to the world. Because of this useful and unique aspect of Stockalicious.com, I have started to implement the site on the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Student Managed Investment Portfolio website that I manage because of its ability to provide our visitors and members with real-time information concerning the performance of the portfolio.

Another great feature of Stockalicious.com is the charting abilities within the free portfolio monitoring software. Stockalicious.com allows users to map their portfolio’s performance against the standard benchmarks (S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the NASDAQ Composite) over predefined a particular time period (5 Days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year). http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/charts?show
=comparison#chart

While this feature alone does not seem to set it apart from the other portfolio monitoring applications, Stockalicious.com goes further into portfolio analysis. It also allows the user to view their annualized return based on the past performance of their portfolio. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/charts?show=
annualized_return#chart

Additionally, there is a very beneficial feature that allows viewing of the Beta, Alpha, and Correlation to the Market. This allows an investor to make changes to his portfolio based on their risk profile and perhaps add securities/funds to lower their correlation to create a more diversified portfolio. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/charts?show=
regression#chart

The Win/Loss Ratio Chart, which graphically shows the number of winning trades versus losing trades in the portfolio, is important in judging the long-term stability of a trader’s performance. It shows that if a trader has more losers than winners, a small number of trades are representing the majority of the performance of the portfolio, while someone with more winners than losers shows that the majority of the holdings represent the majority of the performance. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/charts?show=
winloss#chart

Stockalicious.com offers investors the ability to view their portfolios by different breakdowns. Looking at the Sector Allocations allows the investor to view the overall profit/performance, total value, total portion of the portfolio, and today’s performance. By clicking on each section, a popup is displayed with the component companies of each of those sectors. Along with the ability to view the sector allocations, you can also view Winners Today, Losers Today, Current Winner, Current Losers, Past Winners, Past Losers, and Holdings. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/top_10?show=
stock_sectors#positions

The Transactions Ledger, which show every transaction that has taken place in the portfolio, makes organization easy. Besides displaying the Symbol, Price, Quantity, Action and Commission, the investor can also leave comments about each particular transaction. This could be useful if a particular trader wants to keep a trading journal documenting the exact reasoning behind each particular trade or for a club like the SMIP to explain the various trades we discuss and vote on as a group. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/transactions

Stockalicious.com—in addition to being an essential portfolio management tool—could also be used as an indispensable application for bloggers. The ability to create widgets using the “Embed” option on Stockalicious.com gives the user code to place their portfolio information on their own personal website or blog. This would give readers the ability not only to read about recommendations, but also to see how those recommendations have performed. http://stockalicious.com/stock_journal/554/embed

There are many more features that Stockalicious.com provides investors, and I am sure there will be many more features released in the near future, because right now Stockalicious.com is still in beta form. I would encourage anyone to set up an account and play with the different components that Stockalicious.com has to offer investors.

Welcome to the blog and website of Bryan Moore.  Please check back frequently for updates in regards to financial situations and strategies that students, like myself, can employ to better understand and profit from the complex world of financial markets.  I hope you enjoy.