Microsoft Giveth, and Taketh Away . . .

[Noel 4,501]

Multimonitor support, haze that works properly and a few other useful features were presentin 02, now look. They did this with my former fav golf sim, Links. First they put shadows in, then for Links 2001, they took them out. Then back in again for Links2003. I bought Excel 95 some years ago--it had a very nice ability to embed .wav files easily into worksheets. So I developed a killer stock trading tool that called out buying and selling and a bunch of other very cool, if I do say so myself, features. Excel 2000 comes along--they took out embedded sound files. The whole thing looks like a move to get people to upgrade over n over, sometimes for something as pathetic as shadows in a golf sim. I remember forum posts of people saying they couldn't wait to get "shadows back". Really now!Noel

[Guest RSmith]

ROFLOL..........Maybe MS knows that you're making the "big bucks" with the customized trading tools, so what's such a big deal about $60 for a new play toy - FS9 ??PS: Care to share your trading strategies ??:-hah

[Noel 4,501]

Sure, go to www.mtrader.com. Ken is a close personal friend, and while his kids were grown up and he is a bit more of a risk taker than me, he went from a guy throwing ceramic mugs in the hills of Northern California to one of the biggest names in day trading, leaving me paying mortgage payments and raising children the old fashion way as a wage earner. I followed Ken's basic methods and built my tool for day trading. I wish to hell I had been a better entrapreneur (like Ken was) and ported my trading tool over to something stand alone. In fact that is why I bought Excel 2000, due to some ability to protect and package my product. Problem was they made it almost impossible for a novice VBA programmer to do what I had done easily with Excel 95, so she still sits on a floppy in my desk . . . .I used the tool and traded 62 days, for 2 hours each day, and made $13,000 on a $20,000 starting account--and that was after expenses. Then, one fatefull day in late October (black Monday I believe they called it), I lost $11,500 in about 45 minutes. That was my 62nd day! Ken lost about $5K that day too, as we had come across a situation we had not seen before, and the rest was history. Ken is still at it even after the market tumbles we've seen. At his peak, he was making about $120,000/month. I think he's down to maybe $15K/month now :(). It really was a rags to riches story--he's a very humble man with a big right brain, who had a knack for timing short term trades. He literally made his living with a pottery studio for the 20y before he got into trading. Since he began trading, he had a book published, has started a few other companies, is a guest writer for "The Street", and got his PPL--he bought a Beech Debonair a couple of years ago to fly down to San Jose, CA in to do conferences for Yahoo Finance. When you see his website, you will imagine a big trading firm on Wall Street. When I walk over to his home about a mile from mine, he greets me in sweats, unshaven, with a cup a joe in his hand. His "trading room" is his den, complete with several monitors (for chatting & flying!), and easy chair, and his loving wife who I introduced him to when his spouse left him thinking he was a crazy gambler. He is far from it!Noel