Off trading and onto “tools” for another post. Mind you this is in line with The Blogging Times Today interview with Nicholaus Baum and with Wallstrip‘s coverage of GOOG. A couple of weeks back I posted about trying Google Reader instead of Bloglines. Well I would like to apologize to IACI publicly for doubting them and their product (notice how I keep this a stock market related blog by throwing a symbol in a completly unrelated post). I tried Google Reader but I am now back to Bloglines.

I know Bloglines may not be the cuttest thing around but you have to give it to them, it has all the functionalities it needs and it is fast.

I liked the “look” of the user interface in Google Reader a lot more but I found that:

• Switching from feed to feed was much slower on average and
• adding a new feed was taking me twice as long (add first than go back and put in right category).

Overall, even though it did look better, I was not gaining anything with regards to functionality and I was slowing my morning routine down to a point where I was skipping some of my categories to save time. So I am now back to Bloglines and I will stick to it for now.

Happy friday! Away from the market a bit and into the tools department. I have been using MindManager Pro 6 from Mindjet for about 3 weeks now and I find it has really increased my productivity.

For those of who don’t know, I am big fan of the GTD approach from David Allen and I found that using MindManager was a great way to capture brain dumps on a specific project. I was using flat files before this but MindManager makes the process a lot easier. I can now dump my ideas in a complete random fashion, as they pop into my head, and organize them in a neat map later. For example, here is a map I used to store my trading related research info (this is sample only, I may another map to actually share the research info later):

But it is not only for business or professional information. Sometimes it’s the little things nagging at me that I try to get rid of. For example, here is a map I created in 2 minutes to clear my head all the things related to my 4 year old’s birthday party: Some of the items of the map are hyperlinks to webpages where found information or links to emails that where exchanged about the party. I now keep MindManager open about 90% of the time. Since Internet Explorer, Excel, Word and Outlook now have a MindManager toolbar, it makes exchanging information really easy. If I am browsing for cake recipes and I find one I like, I hit the MindMap button and a link is created in the current map. If I reading emails in Outlook and one comes about a specific project, I can click the MindMap button and a link to this email is created in my current map.

Overall, MindManager is a great way to collect and organize thoughts about a number of things. It gets two thumbs up from me.

I know most people rely on their blog readers a lot to gather information. I know my reader is frequently the first place I visit in the morning or the site I take peek at if I only have 5 mins of web time ahead of me on a weekend.

For a while now I have been using Bloglines which I love. Following a post by Gina on Lifehacker I decided to give the Google Reader a try. I plan on using it for a solid week before making my decision (and post) on the topic.

For some time now, I have been using mind mapping software to try and orgznize my thoughts. Up to now, I was using FreeMind, a free java based mind mapping software. I just now downloaded the free trial copy of Mindjet and I decided to give it a try. I will post feedback later…

I was on a trial of DownloaderXL and I ordered a licensed copy yesterday. It is really a nifty tool for anyone who plays a lot in Excel and for $50, you can’t really go wrong. The package I got includes:

• RTQuotesXL, builds a quote sheet with whatever symbols you need. Can also include charts. It gets the data from Yahoo! so have to pay Yahoo! for their real-time quotes if you want real-time in Excel. Otherwise you will get the delayed data.
• PortfolioXL allow you to create portfolios in Excel and track buys and sells.
• DownloaderXL is used to download historical quotes.
• OptionsXL downloads option chains and LEAPS in Excel.

So far I am very satisfied. It works as advertised and allowed to improve my system. Ultimatly, I will probably use the API from IB‘s TWS but for now, this gets me going with little effort.

In my current setup, I rely on two worksheets in one book: Ideas and Trades. In the Idea sheet, I throw in symbols I picked up from TC2007 and I pre-fill certain things (trigger in, stop, target, size). Since this now has the last price, I rely on “Conditional Formatting” to warm me a specific symbol is passing its trigger point. In similar fashion, my Trades sheet warns me if I’m getting near my stop or near my pre-established exit.