Wow! This time last year I was just walking away from a 10-year career in elementary education. I simply can’t believe how fast time has gone by. I took over this website around the same time, formerly named PennStockLive which was half stock promotion and half premium stock picks. After 3-months of following the existing model we ditched the stock promotion and went premium stock picks only. At that point in time I started trading with subscribers and changed the website name to JasonBondPicks. In that 9-months I’ve cleared about $35,000 in profit or 16% on my portfolio size and learned a ton about running a premium newsletter. We’ve done several surveys and the feedback I’m collecting illustrates we’re heading in the right direction with 3-5 swing trade alerts per week with a favorite price point at $1 – $3. We’re moving to Profiding in January and after that I’ll be adding a day trading service. Then 6-months from now the final piece to this puzzle will be completed with a long term newsletter. What a year and so much more to accomplish still. I’m going to do an elaborate blog post on all this because history is a great learning tool for the future. Let’s have a look at today.

U.S. stock-index futures posted small gains Friday as investors prepared for the final trading session of 2011 with the S&P 500 Index standing in marginally positive territory for the year. There is no major economic news on tap today so looks like we’ll probably drift higher.

HDY – today is day 3 of the swing and it held $2.28 support Thursday which was key. If the pattern can hold up today then the swing is on into next year because HDY is a definite candidate to be bought heavily by institutional buyers down here. Understand yesterday’s dip below $2.28 means nothing, support is still in play when a chart closes above the support you’ve identified which is why I only use mental stops in most cases. If $2.28 breaks again today that support gets weaker and if it doesn’t bounce then I’ll definitely look for the exit and keep my loss small. I’d like to be in this stock next week though so I’m hoping that’s not the case.

PZZI, MCP and USAT are all long term trades for me meaning I’m trading these for much bigger gains than a normal swing. You know my goal is to buy support and sell strength in the future. I wish I had more PZZI so if it dips today you can bet I’ll load another 5k around $5, however the chart does not appear as if it wants to dip. My goal with PZZI is about $2-$3 profit per share but I’ll be equally happy with $1 per share or $5-$10k profit in January. MCP is a great company and it’s taken a beating. Rare earths are not going away and they just started drilling in the USA – I think this hits $30 easily in January and I’d like to have 1k shares so I can make $5-$10k profit in January. USAT is the only swing turned long in my portfolio but that won’t happen anymore per the last survey. My goal on USAT is $1.60 or better in early January and of course I’ll move on if it doesnt’ work.

Notice above for HDY I’m starting to list how long I’ve held the stock so you can better track the swing… 1-10 day holds is the goal now for all trades but I will still scale with size because that’s what smart and effective swing traders do.

Today I’ll look to buy more PZZI, some QPSA, RENN and possibly a few others but the bids must be right because these are all strategic entries, something we discussed in last night’s webinar in detail.

It’s been a wonderful 2011 but it was my first year out of teaching and the direction of the newsletter took many shapes at times. In the final quarter I was able to point the ship in the right direction which should make 2012 twice as good and I can’t wait to prove that.

Thanks you for being a subscriber and part of my trading family.

Happy New Year,

Jason Bond