Apologies for not having this up first thing in the morning. There were a lot more submissions to go through than I expected…

Anyway, without further ado, I present the 80th installment of the Carnival of Personal Finance! I’ll be reading through the submissions I haven’t already today and moving the catagories or deleting irrelevant posts. If you find any problems, please contact me.

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Whew…

I had thought that once we’d moved into the new house that things would calm down and I’d be able to write. I’ve really missed tending this blog, more than I’ve had time to realize in the past few weeks. Anyway, I’m back and hopefully for good. There are still some things going to that will pull me away but I should at least be able to get back on schedule.

So, first things first, an update on where we’re at. I will likely post more detailed news on many of the topics below, when I do I’ll link to them from within this entry.

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I’m happy to be hosting the 28th installment of the Carnival of Investing this week. There are nearly 30 posts in this week’s edition and while I haven’t read them all yet, the ones I have appear to be pretty well written.

Special thanks to Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog for keeping the Carnival going. Next week’s host will be Mighty Bargain Hunter.

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Made a few trades last week that both generated some cash and put me back in the black for at least one of my positions. I still have a ways to go however.

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Still getting pummeled by the market but I’ve strengthened my position somewhat. I can’t say we’re at a bottom, I think we’ll continue to have a volatile market until the end of the month when the Fed likely raises rates. The comments made after that will determine the overall direction for the market.

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It looks highly likely that the Fed will continue to raise interest rates in the short run. Too bad too, I think the economy is slowing somewhat. Most of the inflation we’re seeing is either tied directly to energy or is a part of it. Slowing the economy down is not truly going to help with that without seriously hurting the economy as a whole. So, it’s time to start getting a bit defensive.

I made a couple of moves this past week, both of which were on the bullish side.

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As I thought, I watched the market for much of the day. Was an interesting ride. My IE portfolio was down over $400 for the day at one point, then up over $200. I ended the day up just under $100.

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I had Friday off and am home today as well.  Friday I couldn’t help but watch the markets on and off all day.  I resisted the urge to become a day trader (because I don’t know enough about what I am doing) and only made one trade.

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A few days ago, May 12th actually, I got concerned with the run-up in the overall markets and subsequent drop in the Dow. I shifted our 401K accounts more into cash and bonds. The Dow closed at 11,380 that day and has subsequently dropped to 11,128. So I saved us a couple thousand in losses.

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Two days ago saw the largest drop in the Dow in three years. After an initial recovery yesterday the Dow slipped yet again by an appreciable amount. All of my stocks are now down but yesterday Shanda (SNDA) saw a nice increase of over 10%.

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