Welcome to Friday, traders. It was a short week but one packed with news. U.S. manufacturing numbers spiked in April, and jobless claims dropped – even as new-homes sales slumped again. It’s a mixed bag of good and bad news out there; I’m just glad we’re mixing a little GOOD news in there!

Yet again the TradeKing Leaderboard heroes have knocked my socks off with some truly impressive gains this week. Newcomers include Ballpark Traveler, lil_jay890, alaska56, and JNorm4 among others – nice work, people! (If you’re curious how returns are calculated, check out our Leaderboard methodology here.)

GM topped our Trading Activity page this week as the details of the restructuring deal get hammered out. Will Profit is riled up with a rousing post, “Governmentalize This”, while over in the forums Hold or sell GM and What if GM does not declare bankruptcy? are both seeing plenty of action. What’s your take: are you playing the restructuring, or waiting this out? If you’re playing it, what side are you taking and why?

Final question for today: are you a better trader than a fifth grader? It’s not just academic. This forum post reports on a Wisconsin fifth-grade class who doubled their “bucks” in 10 weeks in a recent trading contest. Now that’s a ten-year-old I want mowing my lawn…if I can tear him or her away from the trading screen!  

Enjoy your weekends, everyone!

[image: Art star. by aDayWithMarina on flickr]
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