StockCharts.com - Blogs

ChartCon 2012 - our annual conference that's 100% dedicated to StockCharts.com users - is fast approaching.  In case you didn't hear, it is being held on August 10th and 11th in Seattle, Washington.  We've just finalized this year's agenda and speaker list and I wanted to let everyone know that some things have changed since we first announced the conference back in November.

First off, I am thrilled to announce that we've added two additional speakers to the program.  Greg Schnell, the author behind our very popular "Canadian Technician" blog will be presenting as will Gatis Roze, author of our new "Traders Journal" blog.  Both Greg and Gatis will be sharing their approaches for using the tools on StockCharts to analyze the markets and find great investing opportunities.

Unfortunately, I also have to announce that Carl Swenlin, the driving force behind DecisionPoint.com, will not be able to attend the conference.  His daughter (and co-author of the website) Erin Swenlin Heim will be presenting in his place however.

In addition we've rearranged and reworked several of the sessions to make things flow better.  You can see the complete agenda by clicking on this link and scrolling down.  Highlights now include:

• John Murphy discussing his upcoming new book on Intermarket Analysis
• A big announcement about some new community support programs from StockCharts
• Gatis Roze's "Tensile Trading" presentation
• The eight skills that all StockCharts experts need to know
• An hour long, in-depth session on writing Technical Scans
• Arthur Hill and John Murphy's current take on the markets with Q&A
• Detailed presentations from Tom Bowley, Richard Rhodes and Greg Schnell about how they analyse the markets with StockCharts
• A sneak peek at the next big improvements from StockCharts and much more

And that's in addition to the Northwest Wine Tasting event and the big private dinner we're having at the Boeing Museum of Flight!

There is still a limited number of seats available for ChartCon 2012.  This is THE conference for StockCharts.com users like yourself.  Don't be left out.  Click here to learn more and to reserve your seat.

I hope to see you there,
- Chip 

Today we're pleased to announce the addition of Gatis Roze to our terrific collection of authors and educators here at StockCharts.  Gatis is well known throughout the Seattle area as an investing teacher.  He has taught sold-old classes at the local college here for over a decade and has been an avid StockCharts.com user for almost as long.  Gatis' students - most of whom are established investors and traders - sign up for his courses again and again to learn about real-world investing and they are never disappointed.  But because those classes have been limited in size, Gatis has recently decided to branch out.  One of the results of that decision is his new blog here at StockCharts.

The blog is called "The Traders Journal" and will contain lessons learned from over 25 years of active trading and investing.  Gatis is a huge proponent of constantly writing down everything that happens in a journal and then periodically reviewing and distilling that journal down into a collection of lessons and best practices.

"The Traders Journal" will be a collection of articles based on lessons from Gatis' personal trading journal.  Each week, typically on Friday, he'll add another gem that can help you become a better investor.  His first article - titled "Double Your Money - Buy on Rumors" - is now available in the "Blogs" area of our website.  Everyone should take 3 minutes and read it.  If you like what you see, feel free to add a comment at the bottom of his post.  Gatis would love to hear from you.

Welcome Gatis!

- Chip

(I'm reposting this blog article from 2010 because the advice is still 100% accurate. Moving to OpenDNS is one of the best ways to improve your internet experience. - Chip)

Earlier this week, we started getting reports from several of our users that they couldn't connect to our website anymore.  This was very strange because 1.) we hadn't changed anything and, 2.) clearly most of our users could connect just fine.

After some investigation, we noticed that the people that were having connection problems all used "shaw.ca" as their ISP.  Some more testing revealed that for some unknown reason, the DNS servers at shaw.ca were missing our DNS record.

(Background:  A "DNS Server" is a computer that converts an Internet name like "www.stockcharts.com" into a series of numbers like "66.150.15.60" that your computer can then use to actually connect to our website.  If the DNS server loses our numbers, your computer cannot find us.)

Now typically most people use whatever DNS server their ISP tells them to use.  You might remember typing some numbers into a dialog box labelled "DNS Server" back when you first set up your Internet connection.  Unfortunately, many ISP's are not diligent in maintaining their DNS servers.  This can lead  to all kinds of problems such as slow Internet times and, in the case of shaw.ca this week, missing websites.

Fortunately, there is a MUCH better way.

OpenDNS.com is a free service that provides a set of rock solid, super-fast DNS servers to anyone who wants to use them.  To use the OpenDNS servers, all you need to do is replace your ISP's DNS addresses with the OpenDNS addresses.  Complete instructions can be found by watching the "OpenDNS Basic" video on this page:

http://www.opendns.com/support/videos

Using OpenDNS.com has the additional advantage of protecting you from accidentally visiting dangerous websites.  It will warn you when you try to open a site that other users have flagged as dangerous.

We have used OpenDNS here at our offices for two years now and I have used it at my house for just as long.  I _strongly_ recommend them to anyone that uses the Internet - especially the good people who use "shaw.ca."  

- Chip

P.S. Several of the shaw.ca people changed their DNS settings to use the OpenDNS servers and their connection problems went away instantly.