Dow drops 300+

on a Friday, no less.  It's almost as if something happened the previous evening to scare investors....

Movie about floor traders

and how they are dealing with the advent of computerized trading (warning: foul language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYtBgo92MOM&feature=related

Only three stocks up today; no trades at this time

CAT, JNJ, and PFE were the only three companies that saw an increase in share price today.  We will wait another week and see if conditions are a little better before making our first trade.

It's not lookin' good:

Symbol	Name	Last Trade	Change	Volume
AA	Alcoa Inc. Common Stock	12.04 Sep 2	0.45 (3.60%)	17,958,934
AXP	American Express Company Common	48.51 Sep 2	0.99 (2.00%)	8,755,573
BA	Boeing Company (The) Common Sto	64.03 Sep 2	2.02 (3.06%)	4,735,530
BAC	Bank of America Corporation Com	7.25 Sep 2	0.66 (8.34%)	305,988,590
CAT	Caterpillar, Inc. Common Stock	85.38 Sep 2	3.17 (3.58%)	11,952,119
CSCO	Cisco Systems, Inc.	15.41 Sep 2	0.41 (2.59%)	55,499,617
CVX	Chevron Corporation Common Stoc	96.41 Sep 2	2.11 (2.14%)	8,978,196
DD	E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Com	46.76 Sep 2	1.06 (2.22%)	6,994,807
DIS	Walt Disney Company (The) Commo	32.46 Sep 2	0.92 (2.76%)	9,145,736
GE	General Electric Company Common	15.76 Sep 2	0.44 (2.72%)	61,748,844
HD	Home Depot, Inc. (The) Common S	32.18 Sep 2	0.75 (2.28%)	12,278,395
HPQ	Hewlett-Packard Company Common	24.34 Sep 2	1.33 (5.18%)	18,738,765
IBM	International Business Machines	166.98 Sep 2	3.35 (1.97%)	4,979,011
INTC	Intel Corporation	19.64 Sep 2	0.35 (1.75%)	42,807,570
JNJ	Johnson & Johnson Common Stock	64.07 Sep 2	1.26 (1.93%)	13,713,987
JPM	JP Morgan Chase & Co. Common St	34.63 Sep 2	1.67 (4.60%)	41,677,229
KFT	Kraft Foods Inc. Common Stock	34.27 Sep 2	0.54 (1.55%)	8,571,787
KO	Coca-Cola Company (The) Common	69.74 Sep 2	0.71 (1.01%)	8,765,529
MCD	McDonald's Corporation Common S	89.09 Sep 2	0.98 (1.09%)	5,250,780
MMM	3M Company Common Stock	79.35 Sep 2	2.26 (2.77%)	4,391,281
MRK	Merck & Company, Inc. Common St	32.37 Sep 2	0.53 (1.61%)	13,373,610
MSFT	Microsoft Corporation	25.80 Sep 2	0.41 (1.56%)	43,897,065
PFE	Pfizer, Inc. Common Stock	18.46 Sep 2	0.45 (2.38%)	35,057,181
PG	Procter & Gamble Company (The)	62.55 Sep 2	0.71 (1.12%)	8,817,358
T	AT&T Inc.	28.05 Sep 2	0.22 (0.78%)	26,462,863
TRV	The Travelers Companies, Inc. C	48.87 Sep 2	1.34 (2.67%)	4,410,018
UTX	United Technologies Corporation	71.04 Sep 2	2.01 (2.75%)	4,838,630
VZ	Verizon Communications Inc. Com	35.56 Sep 2	0.32 (0.89%)	13,663,063
WMT	Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Common St	52.03 Sep 2	0.62 (1.18%)	10,809,445
XOM	Exxon Mobil Corporation Common	72.14 Sep 2	1.35 (1.84%)	21,071,830

Re: Stock Charts

We just finished doing quite a bit of work creating weekly price charts for each company.  Unfortunately, we are not able, at this time, to post the charts to this page, because Lotus, while superior to MS Works, still apparently has limitations of its own.  We can export charts to a pdf file, but all that exports is the out line of the chart; the plot points for some reason do not export.  We will continue working on the problem, when we have time.

A change in the rules

Doing my stock charts, we realized that it would probably behoove us to change the trading day from Friday to Monday (or the following Tuesday, if Monday is a holiday).  The website we're using for research can get us the weekly prices, but it gives us the price on the Monday of each week instead of the Friday pricing that we thought the website would produce.
In addition, since we're not using real money, we don't have to make the trade during market hours.  We'll just use the closing price on Monday.

Working on the spreadsheet

We've downloaded IBM's Lotus Symphony (it's freeware!), because MS Works is suboptimal.  Working on inputting the weekly prices for each of the Dow Components.  Hopefully, we'll be able create some weekly price charts.