an exciting, yet fruitless couple of days; I still have $20,000 sitting in BTA and BGF, which stubbornly refused to move yesterday despite gold going even higher. both came within a cent of my sell price, though, so I think it'll be OK.

this is all teaching me a little more caution; the new strategy will be to have three lots of money out at once. two will be on a "sell at 2.5% profit" basis, to keep grabbing those small rises in the ups and downs of the market. when I have my new trading account, each deal will only cost $40, so it's doable with around $7000 per parcel. A third will be, at least until I get more nervous, on a sell-when-ready basis, when I think a stock's going to move more than three per cent in a short period.

so I've downgraded what I think I can make, but it's still more than the interest on the money in the bank.

meanwhile, I've learned what happens when you sell shares you don't have. the broker rings you in a panic. my employee share plan shares, despite being labelled "unrestricted" on the statements, and despite my having a SRN (ownership number), were actually in some obscure Computershare trust which I need to transfer them out of. hence today I was forced to buy 500 of them at five cents more than I originally sold them for, to honour the deal. Comsec kindly waived brokerage on that deal, and I seem to be spending my entire life trying to get my ex-employer to notify the trust that I've left the company, and to get the form that will allow me to get the shares out of trust. yes, they can email me the form. but they have to get someone in Sydney to do that. so it can take up to 48 hours. welcome to the world of instant electronic communications!

then, of course, I'll have to sell the original parcel of 500 shares again. hoping the stock keeps going up a little so I don't lose even more on this schemozzle.

running total at this point: lots of brokerage fees. some paper gains on my small "hold" portfolio. no big fat profits. yet.