See this awesome display at Lindsaylights.com!

Some facts about the display

4 Rosea Court, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada.

Designed, built, and funded by Martin & Andrew Lindsay. We have some sponsors that help out with the supplies and friends assist with installation.

Lights draw up to 30,000 Watts of power (peak) (30KW-hr) (A savings of more than 14Kw from last season thanks to LED usage.

Over 360 channels control the lights.

More than 70,000 lights including more than 60,000 LEDs!

Synchronized to music, broadcast via FM radio (104.9FM)

More than 98,000 feet of wire (30kms +)

Over 400 hours invested to assemble the lights this year

All lights are HAND strung! (no machinery used, such as cherry pickers)

Entire show is slightly less than 4 minutes (2 sequences now running, 1 more to come)

The current 2006 “Wizards” sequence took over 40 hours to program!

This year, we play 2 songs out of 4 sequences (1 sequence is a voice-over/introduction and another is an “ALL ON” sequence):

Sequence 1, song 1: “Final Countdown” by Europe

Sequence 1, song 2: “Wish Lizt” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Sequence 2: “Wizards In Winter” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

2005 song (old) “Greensleeves” by artist “00.52”

$23,210.00 collected in donations in since 2002. All distributed to local charities.

The change is finally under-way from Blogger to WordPress – It’s about time!  Now I just need to figure out the differences between firefox and explorer views and how to get my images into the new blog.

I’m a little late to this party but I was reading the blogs debating the issue of posting stock picks and not posting stock picks. My thoughts on the subject tend to agree and disagree with some of the points and comments on those blogs but I can only explain what I do.

Here were the original blogs to debate the subject:

Taz Trader Blog: 6 Reasons Why There Are No Stock Picks

FallondStockPicks.com: Why stock selection *is* important

I write this Market Talk with Piranha blog as an add-on to my main equity research site MarketStockWatch.com. I don’t provide “stock picks” at MSW but I do supply my members with daily and weekly screens and an MSW Index. Maybe I am taking the easy way out but my screens are designed to do the actual research work for investors that don’t have the time to compile the research or some members that are just learning to invest. I integrate specific screens with educational aspects that I have learned while trading my own accounts. I do list individual stocks and I place pivot points, entry areas and sell stop areas but I don’t highlight specific stock picks for them to buy (that is up to each individual investor). One of my main goals is to teach novice investors how to develop their own method of screens by using some of the things I currently do. This will enable them to invest for themselves for the rest of their life and become their own “stock pickers”.

A typical daily screen may contain anywhere from 5 to 20 stocks in one night that meets the criteria of the screen. A couple of my favorite and most successful screens for finding winners is “Interesting Stocks making New Highs” and “Strong Stocks within 15% of a New High”. I run several computerized fundamental screeners to narrow down approximately 7,000 stocks to about 100 candidates and then perform the technical analysis. My service derived from the actual research I performed for myself each night when trading my own account using a modified approach from a popular market system. I shared this research on a weekly basis for a couple years on several free internet forums and then decided to format it and charge a fee for doing all the tedious work (after the idea was given to me by a reader). I trade and we all know that trader’s income isn’t consistent so a research service made complete sense since the work was already done each night for me. I am also an entrepreneur so the idea of an additional income stream made complete sense for me and my family and I did not feel selfish for charging a price. I perform work while filling a niche and I do expect to be paid as long as it benefits the people using it. They wouldn’t pay me if it didn’t benefit them and I would close shop if the service was no longer in demand.

However, I am seriously considering moving to a free platform in 2007 while using advertisements in the form of Google Adsense and the like to cover my expenses and time for formatting my research. This would eliminate charging members and would allow me to expose my work (which I feel is excellent) to a wider audience. Over 600 people have signed-up for MSW since officially opening in January 2005 and I am extremely proud of the fact that I created this business from thin air. Whether I charge membership fees or post up my work for everyone, I don’tmake specific stock picks for anyone. I give them research based on a set of criteria that includes fundamental and technical analysis.

Essentially, I make stock picks each night but its’ up to each individual member and investor to make their own choices based on the stocks presented. I will not and do not form an opinion or bias towards any one stock (at least I try). Members ask me questions and I tell them what I see based on my own beliefs about the market. One of the most important rules I teach to my community is the use of money management rules and the fact that many of the trades they put on will actually be losers. I do have a section titled “All-star stocks” to help promote the service (it is a business) but that by no means indicates that I only screen winners. I always admit when I am wrong and eliminate losers on a monthly (and sometimes) weekly basis and explain why they are being removed. The toughest aspect to teach new investors is the fact that they will have to accept losers. This is by far the toughest idea for novice investors to comprehend and integrate into their system. By teaching position sizing techniques and expectancy, most people come to realize that it is okay to lose but you will always find a few people that want winners at all times and always want to be invested.

So, do I support stock picks?

What ever floats your boat! Do what you love to do and do what you feel help others. Some people like stock picks and some don’t. I like to provide researched screens that take both fundamental and technical criteria into consideration and I love the fact that every stock that ever makes one of my screens was studied by my own eyes on the charts.

I’ll attempt to teach you about investing and provide you with opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise find!

I guess I am a stock picker but I will never tell you what to buy or sell.

Piranha

Born and raised in NY, I will never forget!

On September 4, 2001, I slipped a quarter into a machine atop the observation deck of the Liberty Science Center and zoomed into the beautiful buildings across the river. I was spending an extended Labor Day weekend with my future wife as we decided to go to the museum in New Jersey. We took pictures and viewed the two massive towers and Statue of Liberty on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon; exactly one week prior to the tragic events of 9-11-2001.

Little did I know that I would stand in horror watching those towers burn and fall exactly one week later from my office parking lot north of Manhattan in Westchester county (just up the Hudson River, the same Hudson River that separated me from the towers seven days earlier).

I was working for a historic preservation architectural firm at the time and we decided that we needed to contribute to the possible rebuilding of the site. We entered as one of the thousands of members into the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. You are welcomed to view our submission through this link or by searching for #790898 on the official site.

I am proud to be a “New Yorker” at heart even though I currently reside in New Jersey and I will never forget because so many heroes died and were born at the same time that day.

Chris Perruna