Update:  Here’s the shortened version of the story as I see it.  The government’s taking over Fannie and Freddie, removing the CEOs of both companies, and eliminating both preferred and common dividend.  By eliminating the dividends, I don’t think there’s any interest in holding the stock.  Does that mean that FRE and FNM are headed to zero Monday?  My guess would be yes but you never know.

The fallout from the takeover may result in a nice little pop come Monday.  But I’d have to agree with everyone else out in the blogging financial world.  The rally will give great opportunities to short the market and stocks in general, but I can’t see it lasting.  What the government’s done is effectively made the public foot the bill.  On top of everything else, I don’t see how the public can afford any more debt.  Just wish the public would assume my student loans…

Tomorrow should be a fun day.  Dow +300 tomorrow?  Nah.  I think the bears squash the rally tomorrow.  I’d even be inclined to say we fall hard the latter half of the trading day tomorrow.  But in a bear market, anything goes.

Personal update:  PhD qualifiers are Sept. 20th.  Once the 20th comes and goes, I’ll be back full time.  Hopefully in good spirits.

• TLA Links: $51.96
• TNX Links: $31.37
• Private Sales: $53.27
• Google Adsense (Finally!): $101.75
• Total for April 2008: $238.25
• Total for March 2008: $298.63
• % Increase / Decrease: -20.2%

And so another month’s in the books. As you can tell, I’m not particularly pleased with the results but there’s no one to blame but myself. Posting was extremely light last month with finals week and other commitments with school. Also, typically summer months have slower than normal advertising sales. If we can hold at these levels through the summer I think I’d be pleased. I’ve been trying to convert TLA links into private sales but that’s been a bit more difficult than I anticipated. I’m sure the current blog layout isn’t helping matters much as well. To be frank, at first the layout had potential, but recently I’ve thought more and more of purchasing a premium layout or potentially biting the bullet and hiring someone to redesign this site properly. We’ll see what happens.

In terms of traffic, I’m expecting a decrease across the board as well.

• Unique Visits: 1,994
• Pageviews: 3,335
• Current RSS Subscriptions: 97
• Highest RSS Subscriptions: 97

So close to that 100 RSS mark! Expect a great party once that happens. As with April’s income, traffic’s down about 20%. And once again, I need to force myself to produce content more consistently than the anemic April. If I could only trade the markets full time, I’d have all the time in the world!

And last but not least, the top 7 articles read this month. It’s always predictable when an FOMC meeting comes out to see what article’s at the top.

• FOMC Meeting Today; How to Read Fed Funds 30 Day Futures
• General Electric Fizzles – Market Retest of Lows? (Published in Seeking Alpha)
• April 28, 2008 Edition of the Festival of Stocks
• Discount Online Broker Review – TradeKing
• Discount Online Broker Review – Zecco
• Blog Income and Traffic – March 2008
• Crude Above $115 per Barrel, Short Oil Stocks?

I was excited to see my GE article on Seeking Alpha. Although in the end I may have been wrong, it was still nice to take some data and see a side of it some folks were anticipating.

So there you have it. Items on the agenda this month include trying to get a visually appealing layout going, better (and more frequent) content, and of course my transparency study on my tiny portfolio. Have a great week!

There’s a twist to the homework assignment. Now that you’re focused on being specialized in a vehicle, take that one step further and specialize in a single underlying and just that single underlying. Learn how it moves, how it trades, what items affect it. Learn it for an entire year. While that seems somewhat excessive, it does appear to be a good exercise in focus and trading refinement. That’s why I’ve decided with the transparency of my trades, Visa will now be my project. That’s right. Visa will now be my bitch.

I will try my hardest to trade Visa exclusively. There will be times I will deviate, if only because some setups out there are so blatantly obvious or the Option Addict is on a tear (when is he never?). So starting tomorrow, here’s the game plan for Visa now that I’ve sold what May calls I had left on it.

There’s the short term game plan for Visa. I’m waiting for a short term pullback near the $83 region. With the recent $15 run-up in 48 hours, I’m expecting some sort of a breather. The other alternative is to buy on a breakout of $87.50, or today’s 52-week high and maintain a tight stop. With May options coming close to expiration, I will most likely be looking at June calls, somewhere in the 90/95 area. I don’t forsee Visa heading below $80 any time soon to be quite honest.

Let’s see how the game plan works tomorrow. Good night!