I just got back the cover for my new book Strategic Stock Trading. You can see it below. The publisher is going to send me a proof within ten days and if all goes well it should be for sale in 3-4 weeks. I'll let you know once it is. I think the cover looks good, but it is what is inside that really matters.

Someone created this video and placed it on Youtube. In it he puts Larry King and Sarah Palin in a spoof movie and has them talk about the stock market and then pray for CNBC. This is one of the funniest things I've seen this week.

There is only one thing that matters when it comes to stock trading and that is being objective about the stock market and aligning yourself with reality. That means having a strategy to interpret the moves of the stock market that works and then sticking with that strategy.

For over a month now I have been telling people that we are in a bear market and that they need to take action accordingly - both in the private members section of this site and with people I know. Last week I issued a video sharing my views to the general public.

Yesterday the Federal Reserve released its widely anticipated FOMC statement at 2:15 PM. Some people were hoping that the Fed would announce a round of quantitative easing to force the stock market to go up.

Over this past weekend Ike Iossif of Aegean Capital and Optionsadvisoryservice.com and I did an audio discussion in which we talked trading methodologies. He discussed his idea of the time stop loss order that he uses in option trading and I told him that it is often applicable to trading stocks and exchange traded funds. This may be a new concept to you, but is well worth learning about.

As we head into the opening bell this morning S&P 500 futures are trading down 2 points while the Nasdaq futures are down 3.80. Yesterday the three major markets averages traded up on the opening, but ran into trouble when the S&P 500 hit resistance at its 200-day moving average.

Last week on July 21, 2010 President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act – the so called “banking reform bill.”

Last night after the stock market closed both Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) released their second quarter earnings results for 2010.

Amazon reported earnings that disappointed investors and saw its stock plummet 10% in afterhours trading.

Federal Reserve Chairmen Ben Bernanke is scheduled to testify to Congress at 2:00 PM and deliver his bi-annual speech on the state of the economy. This is a little unusual because in the past the Federal Reserve Chairman has delivered this speech at 10:00 AM EST.