I can’t imagine what would happen if they succeed in bringing down a major network or system. The panic will be massive.

US braces for possible al-Qaeda cyber attack - web - Technology - theage.com.au

The US government has warned US private financial services of an al-Qaeda call for a cyber attack against US online stock trading and banking websites beginning on Friday, officials said today.

The officials - a person familiar with the warning and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security - said the Islamic militant group aimed to penetrate and destroy the databases of the US stock market and banking websites.

If you remember, Telecom NZ has been hit with a deregulatory blow a couple of weeks ago. The share price dropped from 5.5 to 5. It was a very popular topic at work on that day and I discovered that a few people were still going to hold on. I don’t normally talk about stocks at work but I couldn’t resist offering people to ‘borrow’ some shares from them - as shorting is not allowed in (socialist) NZ. Unfortunately, no one agreed to. The share price has since lost another 10% or so and trades around the 4.57 mark. You can check out quotes on yahoo.

Microsoft is playing catch-up and, in my opinion, delluding itself it can beat Google in its home turf.

Ballmer said Microsoft planned to use “sheer tenacity” to wrest market share in the online advertising space from Google and Yahoo, using its software-as-a-service approach to create a range of opportunities to generate interactive advertising revenue. He said Microsoft has targeted a five-year plan for catching up and overtaking Google in that space.

Ballmer: Microsoft Will Meet Threats of Google, Linux - Over Time

Btw, MSFT has just reached a new 52 week low.

• XLE: SELECT SECTOR SPDR FUND - ENERGY SELECT SECTOR
  Outlook: Long Industry: Indices ETFs - Industry Sector
  (tags: ETFPortfolio2)
• GLD: STREETTRACKS GOLD TRUST
  Outlook: Long Industry: Indices ETFs - Broad Based
  (tags: ETFPortfolio2)
• MDY: MIDCAP SPDR TRUST SERIES I
  Outlook: Long Industry: Indices ETFs - Broad Based
  (tags: ETFPortfolio2)
• FXI: ISHARES TRUST FTSE-XINHUA CHINA 25 INDEX FUND
  Outlook: Long Industry: Indices ETFs - International
  (tags: ETFPortfolio2)
• EWY: ISHARES MSCI SOUTH KOREA INDEX FUND
  Outlook: Long Industry: Indices ETFs - International
  (tags: ETFPortfolio2)

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I’ve neglected posting my picks for long term trading this year. I’ve now added a Stocktickr feature to the right which shows the latest stocks I’m interested in. Btw if you want an invite simply click here.

Here are the new stocks added this week which I’ll be watching for entries:

Long: RADS, CNA, SIGI, MHX
Short: EDO, MVL, WMS, KBAY

Not much action in the market (at least that I could see in the morning). Finished up slightly up which could have been better had I not made a stupid mistake. This mistake pisses me off since I never do it (so why start now??). For some reason I decided to trade OSIP (short), it wasn’t in my watchlist or on any scanner. It was just a stock I read as having news and moving and the chart looked alright. Unfortunately it was a bad idea and I took a 1R loss on it. In retrospect it didn’t meet some of my other checks and balances around volume and other things I look at. Anyways trades today included:

TNS, AVII, BRCDE, LPX, LOW