In the middle of my TradingWithCody Weekly Live Q&A Chat yesterday, I heard a crashing sound downstairs and found my father in law who had fallen off a ladder and among other injuries had badly broken his arm. I felt a sickening feeling and sensed my own self starting to go into a shock-like state where upon things move slowly and I soon found that I’d already sped him to the hospital emergency room and was waiting for a doctor to take a look at him. I’ve had, I’m not joking somewhere around 30 broken bones in my life and I saw more horrible stuff on 9/11 at the WTC and a few other times in my life than I’d like to remember, but shock is shock. Hoot, as he’s known, is headed into surgery to put a plate in the arm this morning and will be fine, by the way.

I’ll leave it to you to think about any parallels between this accident and how it applies to the markets and your portfolio.

Let’s get back to business for now, as it is what we all have to do when we are able to.

CIEN: Summary for Ciena Corporation – Ciena reported and the topline was a blowout, margins weren’t great though, and guidance was only inline or slightly below. So the stock was hit early, but is coming back as the day goes on. I’d mentioned yesterday that I’d like to buy a few more shares of Ciena if it got closer to $20 and with the stock seeming to firm up here near $22, at least temporarily, I’m going to buy about half as many shares as I was hoping to. I’ll buy a few more if it does drop closer to $20.

Jeff Miller interview about how he’s avoided classic investor mistakes – Excellent interview with @jeffmiller. I learned a lot about him and his approach

support@tradingwithcody.com – If you ever need help with TradingWithCody, have any questions about your account, want to lock in the Holiday Special rate even if you’re an annual subscriber and it’s nowhere near time for your renewal, or for any other reason, you can always reach out to us at support@tradingwithcody.com. You should be getting an email every time one of my articles goes up and any time I do a trade the subject line will start off “Trade Alert”.

We’ve just released the newest version of our Scutify app for iPhone – Nearly 30,000 active users of the Scutify iPhone app now, four months after releasing it. The Android version of the Scutify app is available here at the Google Play Store.

Bitcoin – A Primer from the Chicago Federal Reserve – Good background but horrible propaganda in this Fed $BTC bitcoin paper. One of the more ironic lines: “Although some of the enthusiasm for bitcoin is driven by a distrust of state-issued currency, it is hard to imagine a world where the main currency is based on an extremely complex code understood by only a few and controlled by even fewer, without accountability, arbitration, or recourse.” Kettle, pot, black, anybody?

And the other kicker in that Fed $BTC write up: “A dollar bill in my hand cannot be anywhere else at the same time, my ownership of it is undoubted, and it can be exchanged immediately and finally.” I call that absolute propaganda as QE  and trillion dollar government debt are forms of doubling ownership of existing dollars.

Bitcoin – Real-time analysis, tweets, prices and more – By far the most reasoned and smartest debates about bitcoin, $BTC and digital currencies is happening here: Join us.

Don’t own bitcoin yet? Go read this primer on how to buy bitcoins and then don’t rush into, but buy maybe 1/10th of a full position of whatever a “full position” might mean for you. I’d suggested a full bitcoin position being about 1/2 of 1% of your stock portfolio back when bitcoin was 1/10th the price it is right now, so start small if you’re wanting to get started now and you can always add to it on weakness if you so desire.

Finally, a few Holiday season gift ideas for the trader or investor in your life:

1. Consider giving them a monthly or an annual subscription to TradingWithCody.com. Email us at support@tradingwithcody.com and Bill will set it up for you.

2. Give a paperback version of one of my investment books:

Everything You Need to Know About Investing: Straightforward, irreverent and easy-to-understand strategies – by Cody Willard

Everything You Need to Know About Investing in Gold and Silver – by Cody Willard

Stock Market Events That Mattered (Or Did They?): A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Stock Market Adventure Book by Cody Willard. Be sure to check out the game version of Stock Market Events That Mattered (Or Did They?) at ThatMattered.com.