I can't sleep. Damnit. I really envy people who can fall asleep with no problems ... sigh.

Giving up on sleeping tonight (ain't gonna happen), I did a bit of checking up on some stocks. It's an incredibly fascinating week in the stock market...

First off, oil just hit $70/barrel, a seven month high. Gold just hit $604/oz, a 25-year high. Silver just hit $13/oz. Silver hasn't been that high since May 1983. ^Source

The commodities are all making a huge run right now; copper's jumped nearly 25% this month alone. A lot of this has to do with recent news that China's economy grew 10% this first quarter alone. There's a ton of demand for commodities to support their infrastructure (copper especially, which I'm heavily invested in.

The Chinese yuan is pegged against the US dollar right now which is causing them some monetary problems. Imagine what would happen to the price of gold if China pegged the yuan to gold... wow.

Another reason why this week is so fascinating is .. it's earnings week! This is my first earnings week ever as an investor, so I'm curious to find out how all my picks came out. Yahoo's been sliding since I bought it, so I'm hoping for a strong earnings report. We'll see.

In any case, I'm opening up a separate investment portfolio outside my IRA that I'll use for experimental stock trading (gotta learn somewhere, right?). I'm going to restructure my IRA for more long-term holdings. I'll write about my updated portfolio once I'm done reorganizing (will happen after earnings week).

. . .

I don't really understand this crazy flash video. Am I supposed to want to eat eggs? Am I supposed to be disgusted and avoid committing eggocide ever again? I'm confused.