You're an income trust investor and you've been mugged by Ottawa.

From the investment perspective of a retiree banking on monthly cash distributions from income trust holdings to help pay the bills, the past few weeks have proven to be a rude awakening.

In the month after Finance Minister Goodale and the feds cast a black cloud over your income trust investments by launching a review of the income trust sector, the sector has been sacked to the tune of $23 billion in market cap, largely as a result of anxiety over how the government may alter the investing landscape for trusts.

The monthly cash distributions are still rolling in, but that's little consolation considering the capital drain on your portfolio. Bogged down by the tanking trusts, some income trust portfolios have been rocked for losses of 30 per cent or more.

Canaccord Capital, one of the country's most influential investment firms, is telling you to write your MP about what it terms a "morally indefensible attack" on investors.

That's all fine and good but, considering the dire circumstances, maybe it's time you took some real action. Perhaps you need to pick yourself up off the canvas and do what George Foreman did. Get yourself back in fighting shape. Come out of retirement.

If you read between the fuzzy lines that are Fedspeak, isn't that what Ottawa is telling you? There's no guarantee that you'll be able to bank on those monthly cash distributions from your trust holdings down the road so it's time to take the bull - er, bear - by the horns.

What the heck, you're only 86. It's never too late to become a day trader, right?

If you're from the Warren Buffett School of Buy and Hold, snap out of it. It's time to face reality. And the reality is that you need to pull up your socks, go back to school and get some street smarts.

Face it, your politicians are now playing in the street - Bay Street. The government moves the Canadian markets. Whether he's up to admitting it or not, Goodale, by fuelling speculation that the future of trusts may be in jeopardy, has the hammer over the market. Eat your heart out, Alan Greenspan. The chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve has never had as much clout over the stock market as the artful stubble-jumper from Saskatchewan.

Granny, if you're still holding those battered income trusts, the first thing you need to do is get the lead out of your cane, get downtown and fire your broker, who should have told you to sell the minute the government cast doubt over the sector and put the trusts in play as a trade, like a speculative dot-com or mining play.

Lest you wind up flipping burgers at McDonald's, you need to learn how to flip equities. Yup, it's time to ditch those corny Warren Buffett clichés and go to school on the day traders. Time to trade in The New Buffettology book for Rule The Freakin' Markets and The Day Trader's Survival Guide. While you're at it, trade in your trusty Remington typewriter for a laptop computer. And your broker for an online trading account.

Forget Buffett and the brown suits. Your new market hero is squealing like a stuck pig on CNBC's Mad Money. It's the blue-collared, perspiration-soaked Jim Cramer with his sleeves rolled up.

Welcome to the new octogenarian world where there will be no loafing over your morning oatmeal. Cancel that bridge party. You're a trader - the high-wire act in that circus on Bay Street.

You should be up by 3 a.m. for your Ed Allen workout. Work starts at 5 a.m. sharp on the West Coast - 90 minutes before the opening bell (if you don't like it, move to St. John's, where the market opens at 11 a.m.).

To limber up for the trading day, you need to tune in to Lou's Mailbag on Report On Business TV and listen to a jolly man in suspenders, Lou Schizas, point fingers at a wobbly penny stock ominously trading below the critical, life-threatening technical 200-day moving average.

To get into the loop, visit the Stockhouse Bullboards chat room to find out which stocks are getting bashed by the professional bashers and which ones the pumpers are pumping. Go to the Peyto Energy Trust chat room that has deteriorated into a political chat room and watch the bashers sling mud at Ralph Goodale.

Once the opening bell rings, there'll be a temptation to trade the income trusts you've fallen in love with. But you're a trader now and there are bigger fish to fry. You'll want to play in the street where the real action is. Check out Nortel's chart. Or maybe you'll want to catch a ride on one of those wild uranium junior plays on the TSX Venture.

And never mind if uranium play El Nino Ventures (ELN.H) doesn't have a price/earnings ratio. Forget the balance sheet. The trend is your friend. Uptrend or downtrend? That's all that matters now.

When you take a position, there'll be no five-year holds. If you see green, think red. If your trade swings five per cent in your favour, do a Jim Cramer impression. Squeal like a pig and sell like mad. Remember, the quick flip is now your cash distribution.

You want to buy groceries next week? Treat the market the way it treats you. Be cold. Be calculating. Be ruthless. Use it. Abuse it. Never, never, fall in love with a stock. Don't get caught looking. As Michael Parness says in Rule The Freakin' Markets, "last one in the pool swims with the turd."

If you get a hot hand, remember the Kenny Rogers tune. There'll be no counting your money at the table. The game isn't up till the closing bell. Only then can you unchain yourself from your laptop.

If you learn to play by the rules, who knows? Maybe you'll make enough dough so you can retire to a leisurely lifestyle and visit the French Riviera before your 100th birthday.

Oh, and if the big ox that is the market happens to deliver that devastating knockout punch it is famous for and you squander your grocery dough on the first day, don't call us.

Put some ice on those black eyes and, as Canaccord says, call your MP.

Hot Stock

724 Solutions Inc.

TSX:SVN $6.90

Up $3.87 (+127.7 per cent) on 1.6 million shares (based on weekly stats through Nov. 3 for Canadian stocks over $1) You were a long suffering shareholder of 724, you had to see it to believe it and then maybe you still didn't believe it. 724, one of the lousiest performers on the TSX this year, put on a show reminiscent of the dot-com go-go days by more than doubling in a week. The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company, whose stock had plunged about 85 per cent this year, boosted its shares by saying that one of its IP-based technologies was being utilized by Ericsson. That's all it said. Honest.

Cold Stock

Tranzeo Wireless Technologies

TSX:TZT $1.26

Down 50 cents (-28.4 per cent) on 53,800 shares (based on weekly stats through Nov. 3 for Canadian stocks over $1) This is what happens when you own illiquid stocks, especially with tax-loss selling season kicking into gear. They can fall out of bed on pathetically low volume and no news.

That's exactly what happened to Tranzeo, a Maple Ridge, B.C.-based broadband wireless communications company that hit a 52-week low after trading as high as $2.04 earlier this year.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)