As I write futures, oil, gold and overseas markets are all roughly flat. The buzz seems to be on the fruit’s delivery of the iPhone, which so far has gone down as a fabulous hit. I am not sure how they always do it, even the T-shirts they gave out look better than most. There is a common term on the street “buy the sizzle, sell the steak” or more rudimentary “buy the rumor, sell the news.” I am very curious to see how the Fruit does today as I don’t know a single soul who has the guts to try and short this stock especially since it is sitting in a high pennant and is one of the most attractive large cap techs going right now. I am considering an options straddle to play the volatility but other than that, won’t do too much other than observe.

This week starts the new quarter and is typically a week filled with running and gunning as the big boys turn over the reins to the rookies. I am not quite sure which direction we will head however I am sure that the action will be thin, choppy and possibly full of surprises. I have a long list of opportunities should the action heat up and am looking forward to a solid week either way.

On tap for today is also the ISM manufacturing report and after the up and down trading last week after the FOMC meeting, I think we need to be ready for anything.

On a side note, we all know that most of the investor, trading or stock information on the web is downright noise however there are quite a few sites that offer up some decent information and are worth keeping an eye on. I know that even when I was trading for another fund as well as distributing a tremendous amount of daily content, I would still check in with others to gauge their opinions and always kept an open mind. By starting this blog, I am throwing another page your way and this may just be the excuse you needed to invest in a little more screen real estate.

Currently I am using 4 monitors, down from the 8 I had in my previous office a few days ago. Another 4 are on their way and is my treat for finishing out a solid 2nd quarter. I currently use a Dell Precision PWs390 with an Intel dual core processor. I have 4 Dell 20” wide-screens sitting on an Ergotron stand plugged into two general dual video cards.

During the day, while it sure isn’t easy, I run my broker platform Real Tick 3, TeleChart, IBD Daily Graphs, a news service, outlook e-mail, and a smattering of websites.

As your trading develops and you become much more serious about your craft, it may be time to invest in a few more screens in order for you to keep all your favorites directly in front of you.

Go get ‘em today!

~Q