Some Recent Observations

The market seems to still be in a trading range these days, so I thought I would post some observations about the various accounts I am managing.
The strange thing is, my account has been going up, and Cathy's has been going down. I know that the stocks for Cathy's account were generally bought at the peak of the market, but they've basically gone in different directions over the past month - it's just weird to have a group of five stocks go in a completely different direction than another group of five stocks, unless the stocks in each group are in particular sectors. The market, as a whole, is down over the last month, just slightly. That tells me that the Dogs, for some reason are up as a group. I know that's not always the case. There are many times where the market is going up and the Dogs are going the other way. Doesn't really happen over the long term, though, and I know both of these accounts will, in the bigger picture, act generally the same way as the market. It always evens out that way. Now, granted, a five-stock account can be really affected by a fairly large move by one stock, but this hasen't reaaly happened in this case.

Cathy's account is within a couple hundred dollars (that's just under 4%) of sending a buy signal, and that's under the Market Order column. It's been showing on the 'buy' side for awhile now under the Buy/Sell Advice column. Now, the market could get volatile enough to have the account dip under that level and then go back up before the date that I do the update (again, I've learned my lesson not to trade this method any other day but the designated one.) But from what I've seen, once things are going in a direction, they don't stop. They may take a couple or three deviations from the direction, but they generally go much further than you think they will once they get going.

My account is not close to being traded. Especially since the market's been heading slightly lower recently. It's doesn't have a real strong direction right now, though. It could literally go either way. And like I said before, with this long of a trading range, when it goes, it will probably really go.