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Author: Mike Celeste Editor: Tony Ponzo October Circulation: 13247

STAT SHEET WEEK ENDING Oct. 8, 2005


**************** Percent / Points
Dow Weekly Change - 2.6 % -(277)
S&P Weekly Change - 2.5 % -( 31)
Nas Weekly Change - 2.9 % -( 62)
**************************

Highlight of this past week
RMD closes out with a great gain of 63% in the
call options and 52% in the puts. The stock made a nice profit, too.

In this Issue---
SplitMaster Basic System---
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We had only one Basic play close out this past week, RMD, and that was on Friday. But as you can see by the highlight of the week (above), it did great! Hopefully, if you are a member, you were in on that play and made a good profit. I was discussing 4 of the Basic plays with my partners on Tuesday and saying how well all of them were doing---then, as everyone knows, the market took some hard hits thru Thursday. BUT--the good news is that these SplitMaster picks are still at a nice profit, just somewhat less. That is the power of our strategies. Let's see how SRZ, BOOM, CHRW and CHH do between now and Sell Date. Remember, they we are at a profit now, so we are looking for increases over Friday's close.

Big Dipper System---
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We don't have any Big Dippers currently in play, but there are 7 potentials, with RYN within 1 dollar of hitting the target buy price. All members, keep your eye on it.

Options---
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RMD closed out on Friday with great percentage gains in both the calls and the puts. It, too, was higher on Tuesday, but we will take a 63% gain in the calls and a 52% gain in the puts any day. We have 3 other sets of calls and puts currently in play, with the newest one being our old coffee favorite, SBUX, (Starbucks) which is quickly out of the gate at a profit. SBUX announced during the week that same-store sales were up 10% in the last 5 weeks. That gave the stock and options a quick boost, like caffeine does to our bodies.

S+P 500 Options---
*********************
I hate to be a tease, but we are working on another alternative play for these S+P 500's. So far it is showing outstanding results and I can say that the last test play was to buy a put on 9/19, when the SP was at 1237. It closed Friday at 1196, so you can imagine how much profit there would be in the put--depending on which month and strike price you bought. More on this to come. (8 winners out of 9 plays this year, so far.) In the meantime, depending on Monday's results, we might be expecting a play in our regular S+P 500 system.

The Quest---
*************
There are no new plays at present, but we should be making some soon. We do want to get in what we can for the balance of 2005.

Chart Indicator---
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The Indicator flirted with neutral going into the beginning of the week, but the question quickly became--Is the Nas going to hold 2100? It tried, but it finally broke down and twice hit 2069 on Thurs. and Friday, before settling a bit higher at 2090. This means that we will most likely start concentrating more on the Big Dipper than the Basic Strategy now, but we'll talk more on that as we see what happens in the market this week.

Stock Split Comments---
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We had no new split announcements during this past week. My guess is that the bad markets had quite a bit to do with that.

New Option Testing---
*************************
We were very glad we are still Beta testing the system. This past week we learned quite a bit about this particular program. What we learned was that there are some built in traps we have to avoid. Paper trading this system is definitely benficial to working out all the details so that we feel comfortable with our criteria. Another solid rule was added and it should save us a lot of $ in the long run. Who knows, if the coming week shows that our present setup is working smoothly, we may be making it official ---if not, we will stay at the drawing board until it does run smoothly. We are not expecting a 100% win rate, but we want to cut down our losers as much as possible. The Good new is, by Thursday of this week, we took the new information we discovered and made predictions on how Friday's plays would turn out and we predicted exactly on target.

Tip of the Week---
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Keeping up on stock split announcements and where to look--There are a number of sites that do this free. I use the following two, in particular.
1. http://www.investmenthouse.com/1stocksplits4.htm--click on Today's Splits for the latest. Also, on the left side of the site you can sign up for free email alerts when the split is announced.

2. Briefing.com--- http://briefing.com/Silver/Calendars/SplitsCalendar.htm
They also have a click to splits "Announced Today".

3. Yahoo has it, too, but uses Briefing.com for data. All seem to make some mistakes from time to time, but are good sources. Also, sometimes one site gets the announcement before the other.

KEEP IN MIND though, that just knowing a stock is going to split is not nearly enough information to make a decision on when and if to trade in the stock.


The Economy---
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There was a lot of fear in the market this past week, and it is probably still there. The week before, the Dow was up for 5 straight days. This past week it was down 4 straight days. All 3 major indexes are now well below the figures for the end of 2004. We're still not quite sure how much the economy has been affected by the hurricanes. Sometimes the indications are that we came out better than expected, but other times, we just can't figure it. Oil made a nice downward move this week, but in our area in CA gas prices went up about 6 cents a gallon, from $2.79 to $2,85/gal. New refineries continue to be discussed, both within the US and from outside sources. There was quite a bit of discussion around the feeling that the majors do not really want new refineries, no matter what they say. They are making huge profits at present, and every time one of the refineries "goes down" for whatever reason they give, the prices of gas goes higher. It may be that our only hope is for foreign sources to put up the refineries and ship us processed gasoline. In one way, that would be cheaper for them (and making for fewer jobs in the US-boo!) if they shipped the processed oil instead of the "raw material" oil. It certainly is an opportunity for someone to take advantage of. Whenever there is a need for a product, there is usually someone willing to step in and fill that need. In homebuilding, this is a classic matter. Usually home builders expand in number and output when there is a big demand---and end up with an oversupply at some point, but they do fill the need. There was an article in the LA Times this past week about how many restaurants have closed, with only a few new ones opening. This shows that there is only so much need and when that is filled, someone suffers when they add more product (meals). At this time, we need refineries. Oh, for the days when there was a gas station on every major corner.

A note about mutual fund performance for the 3rd quarter. The reports came out this past week in the LA Times. "The average stock fund invested in US shares rose 4.7% in the 3 months, lifting the year-to-date return to 4.4%, according to fund tracker Morningstar Inc. in Chicago."
Those figures mean that the first 6 months were losers, as the yearly figures are lower than the 3rd quarter results. Again, we compare those figures, as we did for the major indexes, to SplitMaster.com. We see--- Basic + 8.9 %, Big Dipper +12.7%, Call options +57%, Put options +117%. Year to date figures are much higher (we were positive for the prior quarters, too) and can be seen on our web site Past Results Remember, we post every single play, win or lose, so that our readers can see for themselves that we don't just tout our winners.

Today's Thought---
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High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.........Jack & Garry Kinder

Mike

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