The Stars are looking bright tonight

Well, today I sold a large chunk of the shares I had in War of the Worlds. It shot up last night and I didn't know if I should take the risk in this summer movie slump. I'd say I got rid of about 3/4 of my stock in the movie.

So now that I had a lot of spare H$ on my hands, I did some research and changed my strategy towards Hollywood Stock Exchange. I have chosen a more conservative route of investing in movies stars themselves, rather then their movies. A movie's stock price gets adjusted to match its opening and closing price, however an actor's/actress's Starbond gets adjusted to the average of their last five movies after they star in a movie. For example, this week Russell Crowe's Starbond adjusted to the average of his last five movies because he recently starred in Cinderella Man.
For anyone reading that actually plays on HSX, I'll give you a hint on one of the trades I made this morning. I bought all the stock I could in Kelly Hu (KHU). If you look at the price of her Starbond, it currently trades at about H$62, and she has a movie called Underclassmen coming out August 5. However, the average of her last 3 movies (she's only made 3) is H$113. So even if this new movie makes no money, her stock will eventually adjust to H$85, or a gain of H$23 per share. There's all this math to the calculations, but it doesn't matter. Kelly Hu is a good buy.

Anderson Reservoir - Today's Waterskiing Site 

Another beautiful day in Northern California

I was planning to be very responsible today. I woke up, ate, and started doing some research for a paper about off-shoring and outsourcing. Out of the blue one of my friends called and asked if I wanted to go water-skiing. I decided now was as good as any to try it out, and I had a great time. The weather was perfect: nice sun with a cool breeze to keep everyone from over heating. Even if I had just stayed on the boat I would have had a great time. However, I built up the courage to get in the cold water and had my first glorious failures at water-skiing and wake boarding. I didn't realize how much forearm strength was required to do any of these water sports. My hands are so exhausted I had to use both arms to open my car door. Even right now I can feel the burn in my wrists as I curl each finger to type. I guess I need to do more forearm exercises, but for now I'll settle for reading my text book for class as I fall asleep. Good night.

Lazy mornings

Saturday morning. I don't have any money invested in any of the movies this weekend because I could not guess which one was going to make any money. The three movies opening in the theaters this weekend are Bewitched, Herbie, and Land of the Dead. Movies are the quickest way to make Hollywood Dollars in HSX because they adjust Sunday morning to 2.8 times the opening weekend box office sales. So if Herbie makes $20 million in sales this weekend, on Sunday morning it will adjust to H$56. Well, since I couldn't make a good guess as to which of the opening three movies would do well, I didn't take the risk. My big weekend is next wekeend, when War of the Worlds comes out. Everyone go see that movie!!!

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You're in for a rare treat, cuase I actually feel like taking about my life right now. I'm trying really hard to finish my Master's Degree in Engineering Management within two years. I'm not really happy with my job and my degree is the only thing keeping me tied to it. I just have this feeling that there is something out there I'd rather be doing, but I just don't know what (or where) it is. Anyway, my efforts to accelerate this degree means that outside of my 40 hours of work in the office, I'm in the classroom listening to lectures for another 12 hours a week. This really restricts the amount of time I spend with my friends, and when I do hang out with them I am usually exhausted. Should I slow down my degree and get back into my social life? Is that worth being tied to work I am not enjoying?

And then there was....

Well, first post on my blog. Instead of re-telling the details of my day-to-day life like putting on my right sock before my left, I'm going to focus on an online hobby of mine. My coworker, LiverLvr, got me hooked on a website called Hollywood Stock Exchange. Think the New York Stock Exchange, but instead of buying stocks in companies with real money, you buy them for movies and actors/actresses using "Hollywood Dollars". It's pretty fun because I already like movies and enjoy predicting whether they are going to suck or do well. HSX just provides me a way to show how good (or bad) I am at it.

Am I going to post everyday on this blog? Maybe... probably not. But I'll try my best to keep my readers up to date on what movies are coming out, which stocks I'm trading in, and how I'm doing. Enjoy.