WIG (pol. Warszawski Indeks Giełdowy, which is main index on Warsaw Stock Exchange) and S&P 500 are two indexes that I constantly monitor while trading stocks. As you may not know, currently I trade only on Warsaw Stock Exchange, but watching S&P 500 is very important, because most times WIG behave very similar to S&P 500.

Recently, I closed all my positions on stocks taking some serious losses. I didn’t have enough time to watch daily all stocks I picked and react when it was necessary. When the trend is not clear or even worse when trend is opposite to your position, ‘buy and keep’ strategy is definitely not an option. It wasn’t easy to take such a serious loss, but now I know that I saved my money from further losses.

Let’s take a look at both indexes and see how they look like from technical point of view. I don’t want to go too much into details, only basic and simple overview.

S&P 500 with SMA 100. Starting in second half of 2006 SMA100 is going up indicating uptrend. In October SMA 100 is flat. Index reached maximum and from there SMA started to slowly go down. It was the beginning of downtrend. As you can see, SMA still moves down.

Now we take a closer look in shorter perspective. There is a strong support near 1270 points, which worked well in past three times. Last days this support stops more losses. Now, the movement in upward direction is very likely, however resistance in half of black marubozu from Thursday is important. Breaking this resistance would be a nice signal to continue upward movement.

As you can see, it is very possible that there would be short-term upward movement on S&P 500. However the situation on WIG is a little different.

First, short look at WIG with SMA 100. Looks similar to S&P 500. What is interesting, that WIG reached own maximum in July, before S&P 500.

In shorter perspective situation is worse than on S&P500. WIG broke the level of minimum from January. The support didn’t work; therefore further movement in downward direction is possible.

Now it would be very interesting to watch both indexes and compare their behavior, but until there are strong signals for upward movement, I’m mostly away from the market. Right now I keep almost all my money on saving accounts and I invest in…

…this is the subject for another post.

It is time for another Sunday Roundup edition. If you want your post listed in my next roundup, don’t wait any longer and send a link to me. You can use my contact page for this purpose.

Now, enjoy these great articles I have found recently on the blogosphere.

Dumb Little Man provides 14 simple ways to super charge your brain.

Lifehacker presents top 10 ways to trick yourself into saving money.

Trent answers the question what individual stocks he would invest in.

Alan explains how important for marketing strategy personal touch is.

The pumpkin rule is described at Unclutterer.

Finally, I encourage you to visit the 158th edition of Carnival of Personal Finance. There are many amazing posts concerning personal finances, including one of mine.

That is all for this week. Have a great time.

Saving on gas and improving the fuel economy are definitely worth to consider, especially when gas prices are on the rise.

As there are already a lot of articles and posts around about this topic and I don’t want to repeat same ideas another time, I decided to prepare a list of useful links. These will definitely help you to improve your mileage and become a hypermiling master. Of course, many basic tips and ideas appear in multiple articles, but I’m sure that in every single one, you will find something unique and useful. In the end of my list, there are also links to my two posts concerning ‘car’ topic. Enjoy reading.

• U.S. Department of Energy gives tips about driving and car maintenance.
• J.D. presents 23 top tips for better fuel economy.
• Trent presents a gas station trick that puts money into pocket.
• David shows gas saving myths and real tips that work.
• There are 9 ways to save money on gas presented on SmartMoney.
• 10 more tips on saving on gas + free ebook on WiseBread.
• CNN Money exposed 4 gas saving myths.
• FiveCentNickel presents how to improve your gas mileage.
• Basic tips as well as some advanced tactics are presented at MyMoneyBlog.
• Read at Gather Little by Little how to become a hypermiler.
• Broke Grad Student refers to 9 simple ways to save on gas.
• Finally, I present how to utilize your time when stuck in traffic and I encourage you to optimize your routes.

If you have your own tips related to saving on gas, which are not mentioned in above articles, please share them in comments.

photo credit: Andy King

Achieving goals is a matter of motivation. Unfortunately, lack of motivation can happen to all of us, but we cannot afford that this will stop us on our way to success.

My recent way to kick motivation is especially interesting for people who spend a lot of time online. I find it easy, nice and effective. What it is and how it works?

Read about it, watch about it, discuss about it….

…about your task, about what you have to do and about your goal.

Let’s say that I should go today to the gym, but my motivation to do so is about zero. What I do? I read some articles about strength training on my favorite blog concerning this topic.

Need to kick myself for a martial arts training? I watch a kung-fu movie or I visit Youtube for a good fighting, action-packed clip.

Feeling lack of motivation to work on my blog? I read Problogger.

Do you see the pattern? Get interested in your task by reading about it on blogs or other sites. Watch movies or clips; get involved into discussion on forum or chats. This way you gain knowledge which would be helpful in achieving your goal, you set mind in your goal’s direction and you increase your motivation.

Of course, you must do some trials and errors. Some channels will very easily trigger your motivation, some not. Sometimes tasks related to your goal are so unattractive, that you will find it hard to motivate yourself in anyway. But in many cases I found this idea working pretty well.

Good idea for start is to look into our childhood and find this pattern there. Do you remember how much you wanted to play football after watching a good play at TV or how much you wanted to be a kung-fu master after seeing Enter the Dragon? Do you remember how much you wanted to travel across the world after reading a great adventure story? Find out how this idea worked on you in the past. Feel it again. Then it would be way much easier to use it today. Since now, consciously.

photo credit: scottfeldstein