I must have bored myself with all that talk about boring shares; just jumped in and bought 200 ASX at $33, for a total of $6600. I figure unless the crash comes, they'll keep going up - they've peaked around 34.5 so far - and are unlikely to go down too dramatically. nothing's sold for me since Feb 2, which was not really the idea. I have habits to finance - renovation, art, etc - and actual work is not particularly appealing, I must say - I'm trying out for some well-paid work on Friday, but it sounds dead boring. there's that word again.

no entries lately? That's because there's nothing happening. I have about $20,000 locked up in VBA, OLY and BTA; VBA keeps hovering just below what I paid for it, and I expect it will soon pop its head above water just long enough for me to slice it off and run away with only a tad more than I put in; OLY I bought way too high and am resigned to a long wait; BTA is a mad, volatile stock which I also bought too high. This week they have announced they are trialling a cure for the common cold, and testing their existing products for bird flu efficacy; if both of those come through, I may not sell my shares after all. I may keep them until they go up by a factor of ten, then sell them.

meanwhile, from my "hold" portfolio, my vote for most boring stock: RAB, which I bought at $1.28 two months ago, which is still at $1.28, which has had no trades since I bought that stock, despite a standing order for several thousand shares at $1.30, which has been there for WEEKS. it pays a tidy dividend, owns some solid properties and is dead boring. a good retirement stock, methinks. I'm not selling mine any time soon, put it that way.

a PSV trade came through yesterday, earning maybe another $200-ish. Biota continues to be a bugbear; I think it has a "floor" around $1.40 as it seems not to have gone below that for a while, and bounced back by 10 cents yesterday at about $1.44. apparently The Lancet dissed their key product this month, which hasn't helped. I may have to wait until the case they have against their distribution partner comes to court - if it's strong, the shares should go up on that. late March.

have considered selling out, but reluctant to realise a loss of that size - at least a couple of thousand dollars. would take a long time to catch that up.

meanwhile, can't figure out what's happening with my special trading account. I transferred lots of money into it to cover trades, but none seems to be going in or out.

one call to Comsec has scotched that plan; they don't allow short selling. which is kinda a pity because the AWB, in my untutored opinion, is going to dive again today. any company headed by people who enjoy posing with guns in Iraq has to have problems; plus it may lose its monopoly on wheat sales.




have I mentioned that I have no idea what I'm doing and that no one should rely on what I say for ANYTHING?

finally, a deal came through within 24 hours: my RIN shares, bought at $16.88, sold at 10.30 the next morning for $17.25. a whacking profit of $166, BEFORE brokerage of $40. not a huge profit, but not bad for a day. and the stock peaked at $17.30, so I was lucky to make a profit at all.

next target: PSV, another gold mining stock. BGF of course went way up beyond my sale trigger, and I could have made another $400. but that's the nature of this; you can't know for sure what's coming. anyway, PSV has been hovering and bouncing up and down, and I've bought about $7000 worth at .335, with the hope that it'll reach .35 sometime in the next couple of weeks.

seriously considering a short-selling attack on the AWB, which is diving like an Olympic champion on the idiocy it committed over Iraq. what worries me about selling short is that you have to come up with the stocks on sale day; there is no option to hold on and see what happens. if I can "sell" them for enough tomorrow morning, I might go for it. All I'd need to make $200 would be a ten-cent drop on a $4.80 share; and given that the AWB is getting thrashed to death in the inquiry room, it seems likely. of course other people are probably doing the same, but not so many as are trying to ride the rising stocks up.