Posts Tagged ‘ stock market ’

 
Friday, August 21st, 2009

Stock market investing has always seemed like a game of cat and mouse. When you have caught the mouse you are happy, however when it leaves or the market decreases you are extremely upset. Despite the present state of our economy people are still engaging in investing in the stock market. In fact the internet has opened up a lot of doors to online investments as well in stock picks.

With investing in the market via the internet you do not have to worry about obtaining a broker. In fact you are given complete control over your investments and inadvertently your success rate on the market. There are many different platforms that you can take advantage of utilizing online investments as your tool.

You need to look into several different factors before you begin investing in any source of stocks. One important aspect that many people overlook is how the stock market can play game with your emotions.

Before you invest any means of money you need to realize that when you invest in the market you are taking a chance of both gaining as well as losing a substantial amount of money. You need to make yourself aware that these type of investments are a game of chance.

You should also try to learn a great deal about the technical aspects of investing. Learning how to properly read charts and things of that nature will benefit you on the stock market immensely. You want to be an investor that realizes the value of their investment, not someone that simply invests in things without knowing anything about what they are getting themselves into.

Another great thing for you to do before you decide to invest in a company is seriously contemplate if the company is worth you investing in. You should look over the company’s finances and things of that nature to see if your investment will be a great idea or turn into an investor’s nightmare.

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What your about to learn has nothing to do with using a stock screener. If you want to greatly improve your stock trading skills and accuracy, you need to learn this secret.

A retired institutional investor told me this secret years ago. The amazing thing is that this simple secret still works today. My accuracy now hovers around 80% thanks to this secret. I use it every week and I’m going to show you how you can use it every week as well.

No doubt you have heard the phrase “two minds can think better than just one”. I have a new phrase for you as it applies to this trading secret: “3 Professional Brains Can Produce What 89,697,618 Unprofessional Brains Can Not”

There is more than 85 million traders in the U.S. alone and yet none of them have discovered the secret I’m about to tell you. Is this because most traders are ignorant? No it is not. The reason is that institutional investors have a range of tools that give them better insight into the market and in spotting trends before the average trader.

The secret is called the Weekend Effect. The Weekend Effect can be summarized like this: trading action is lower on Friday and Monday and returns are lower on Monday.

Miller did a study in 1988 that proved that returns are usually negative on Monday. Miller’s research seems to suggest that the reason behind this is individual investor trading. In a second study, Lakonishok and Maberly (1990) and Abraham and Ikenberry (1994) used what is known as odd-lot trading as a measurement for individual investor trading patterns and found evidence consistent with the Miller hypothesis.

Volume is less on Friday’s because institutional traders are not buying as evidenced by the absence of large-size trading activity. In fact, institutional traders will close out their trades on Thursday or the very latest on Friday because they do not like to hold open positions over the weekend.

Trading activity is significantly lower on Monday for large-size trades. Moreover, small-size trades have a higher percentage of sell orders on Monday morning compared to other days of the week. If small-size trades reflect individual investor activity and large-size trades reflect institutional investors then both types of investors play a role in the negative return on Monday. The individual traders directly contribute through their trading and institutional traders indirectly contribute through their withdrawal of liquidity on the proceeding Thursday or Friday. Institutions indirectly contribute by their absence on Friday and Monday, which reduces liquidity.

You can increase your odds of having a money making trade by going long on Tuesday and taking profits on Thursday.

Now that you know markets often sell off on Monday, you can buy Monday’s sell off. At the very least, don’t sell your long position on Monday. Early Monday trading has the greatest percentage of downside head fakes.

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The closing price is more important than the opening price. Knowing this can give you a serious advantage over most other traders. I’m going to show you how to pull profits out of this truth like money being spit at you from a broken ATM machine!

Let us just dive right into this.

The closing price reflects the final consensus of value for the day. This is the price most people look at when they get off work or when they print their daily charts at the end of the day. It is especially important in the futures markets, because the settlement of trading accounts depends on it.

Professional traders trade throughout the day. Early in the day they take advantage of opening prices, selling high openings and buying low openings, and then unwinding those positions as the day goes on. Their normal mode of operations is to fade”trade against”market extremes and for the return to normalcy. When prices reach a new high and stall, professionals sell, nudging the market down. When prices stabilize after a fall, they buy, helping the market rally.

The waves of buying and selling by amateurs that hit the market at the opening usually subside as the day goes on. Why? Most traders on the west coast have a day job they have to go to so they log-on in the morning before work, put on a trade, then check it when they get home. Even traders on the east coast will put on a position at market open while at work and then check it at the end of the day. Near the closing time the market is dominated by professional traders.

Knowing this is a huge advantage! Why? Because it means that closing prices reflect the opinions of professionals. Look at any chart, and you will see how often the opening and closing ticks are at the opposite ends of a price bar. This is because amateurs and professionals tend to be on the opposite sides of trades. You want to trade with the professionals, not against them.

You should consider closing out your long position if the stock you are trading opens and then goes up near its day’s high but drops the rest of the day and closes near its day’s low. What this tells you is that professionals are fading against your position and so you need to get out.

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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Are there any profitable and authentic online Forex trading software and where can you download them? Having examined several currency trading methods and software, I have started to understand that majority of them are not profitable over the long term although their systems’ logic makes accurate sense. They are usually disguised as some influential system and software by able marketers who look to create high proceeds by selling them to inexperienced traders.

However, there are some authentic Forex courses and software that are really valuable and work to make money in the long term. Their owners usually offer helpful lifetime maintenance to keep informed their customers about the hottest market fashions.

1. How to Make Money with a Piece of Authentic Online Forex Trading Software?

A few of the best currency tools comprise software that can assist its users study market trends and also creates deals and produces income automatically for its users. The entire package that I use provides me with a basic education on forex trading and what I need to do to get in progress making bucks from currencies trading. It should give you a clearer knowledge of Forex trading and also introduce you to a complete host of devices and software that can make your trading processes easier.

2. What Are the Most Common Drawbacks of Online Forex Trading Software?

Most courses and systems will require their users to understand and analyze complicated mechanical diagrams and terms needlessly. These sophisticated investigations processes can generally be eliminated with the right business techniques and software programs. These are the exact kind of devices that make huge financial organizations huge profits daily, and dealers worldwide are continually searching for the most beneficial Forex software. I currently use a software course also known as an Expert Advisor that earns me money consistent every single month.

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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

A good trading system is about much more than just selecting stocks. Certainly that is important as well. However, a good trading system will provide the ability for you to protect against losses, manage your money, add proper leverage when necessary, and also select a stock selection maximizing your reward and minimizing your risk.

The guess work is taken out of the way for you. The stock is purchased when criteria is met, the amount of stock purchased is also based on certain criteria. The stock is sold when criteria met, and there are protective measures against a stock’s demise, and where possible and appropriate leverage is created to maximize the returns without taking on more risk than you can handle.

This trading system will be talked about in 5 additional parts in addition to this intro. This post is designed to explain the trading system, its functions and how it operates.

1) Exit strategy. Every good system trader will first know the exit strategy. It doesn’t matter what vehicle selection you use, if you have no exit strategy, you’re stuck. The trick is to understand that unless you want to get trapped in an investment you have to know when you’re getting out.

A good exit strategy has both loss protection, and profit taking, and sometimes even a 3rd stop. The first 2 might be a maximum loss, and a maximum gain before taking profits, while the 3rd one will be a trailing stop that rides the gains up, and will sell the remaining shares. There are other exit strategies such as hold forever and write covered calls against it to collect income, or protective puts in place of a stop-loss.

2) Protection. Although #1 covers most of the protection, there are several other ways to protect yourself. Protection is vital to allow you to stay in the game. Many people know that if you lose 20% you need a 25% gain to make up for it. Losses not only can result in a series of losses that wipe you out, but they also hinder your ability to gain in the future. a 95% loss for example requires a 2000% nearly impossible goal to make up for this loss. So even if you flip a coin and have a 50% chance of gaining 200% or 50% chance of losing 95% of it, you should probably not take it if all your money is at risk, because it doesn’t have the downside protection A series of wins followed by 1 loss would prevent your ability to stay in the game. Even though those odds SEEM fair, they are not without proper protection. Protection ensures that you won’t have that 95% loss, and it absolutely restricts that loss to a fixed amount, rather than take 100% risk.

Such forms of protections are writing calls, in this situation you are given a premium so if the stock tanks to zero in a worst case scenario you’d still end up with the premium, this is minimal protection, and only protects a marginal amount of decline before the losses continue. The other form of protection would be buying a protective put. This actually in fact does protect against catastrophic losses. The lower your stock goes if/when it crashes, the more you make from your put or puts. You are the one paying a small amount in order to protect against any sort of decline below the designated price. The lower this price, the cheaper the option. If a stock is at $50 and you buy a protective put at a strike price of 40, you will NOT be protected against losses from 50 to 40, but beyond that you will be protected to the downside.

These are somewhat more sophisticated forms of protection. Basic forms of protection are diversifying, and perhaps being short. If you buy a stock at $100, and you short one in the same sector at $100, if the whole sector goes up, you are betting not that the market will go up, not that the sector will go up, but that stock A that you are long will outperform stock B in a bull market, and stock B will under perform stock A in a down market. This offers protection although it may limit the gains as well, Plus, you actually have to be right in your thesis.

In addition, if you are short, and the stock market booms, you may get a margin call and be forced to sell. Also, if you do not use money management, you are at risk of a short term swing requiring you to sell all of your shares of the stock that went up, in order to pay for those that you were short that went up, and if you can’t cover your short, your entire account is in jeopardy of being wiped out.

So rather than being short, I recommend replacing it with buying put options, although this has lots of risks involving time decay as well that you must understand before investing. Using a business entity such as a C Corp or a LLC is another form of protection that can protect you potentially against higher taxes, and personal financial trouble such as a bankruptcy on your record if you intend on using forms of leverage such as loans.

3) Money Management and Control. A good trading system will have a form of control. it will allow you to not give up that control when things go bad. In other words, it allows you to manage your money. Money management is very important. Perhaps one of the most important things is position sizing. If you buy $10,00 of stock for one stock when you only have $10,000 in your account this is very poor money management. Continue to do this, and eventually you will suffer a large loss which will be great, and it will be very difficult to gain enough to make up for it. In addition, if the price goes lower depending on your system, you may want to give yourself flexibility. Extra cash on the sides is another form of money management. It doesn’t have to be cash per say, but some form of safety. Various forms of currency, sometimes some gold, bonds, and money market accounts that are all fairly liquid would be a few examples.

4) Leverage Leverage is about using your abilities to gain, the strength of your trading system and various tools to minimize risk, and increase gain. When you take on leverage, you should be able to reduce your position size in comparison to your capital, and still have a similar reward or gain.

Forms of leverage include options, the further out of money option you purchase, the more leverage you have if that stock does make a strong move. You can also sell options to raise capital to invest in some cases.

Another from of leverage is a loan. Whether it’s a credit card, a home equity loan, going on margin, or a business loan for an asset holding company, or even taking a company public and using the capital to invest, the idea is to gain money at x% and to invest it and make a greater return than x%. if you can do this, and manage money well, and protect yourself, Your gain is only limited to the amount of capital you can borrow at the maximum of slightly less than what you expect to gain. Generally however, if you use a loan, you should have a form of cash flow or income that will cover the costs of the loan just in case your investment goes wrong. That’s another form of money management while using leverage. Money management should be treated much differently under different forms of leverage.

5) Finally, the stock selection vehicle. You need some method to select your vehicle, based on this and your other factors you will determine time horizon and a methodology of trading. The system will help you choose your trading stocks, and exactly what to do with them. You can play around with different trading systems, but generally you should first attempt a good exit strategy and make sure your controls on parts 1-4 of your trading system are sound, and try tweaking them

Stock Trading Systems that are well defined will leave very little room for error. If you learn to use a trading system, you can choose to enhance the essential skills it takes to making your trading system better.

Unfortunately, many day traders are slaves to the computer screen and can miss a moment. Focus on building the better trading system, and not placing the better trade, and you will give yourself some valuable time. If you are really using a system, you don’t need to be the one to place the trades, and can instead higher someone to do the work for you. You can use that extra time to improve your system, or find new ways to invest, or learn how to become a better trader.

You can learn other tips like this at the System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems blog, which is full of tips for day trading, options, swing trading, momentum trading, and advice on building a trading system.

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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

With all the bad things going on in the stock market these days, it’s nice to at least know you can get something at a good price. This is especially true of blue chip stocks. Best of all, the companies that own these will typically pay you dividends even in an economy like this, so they’re a good bet.

If you’ve never heard of these, you’re probably going to wonder what make them so special. Basically, they come from companies that can be trusted to make the money they need in almost any situation. Even in times like these, you can trust that you’re almost definitely going to get your dividends from them.

In fact, given the way things are today, there’s never been a better time to make this choice. Things are going to get better eventually, and when they do, you’ll benefit more than anybody else. But first you have to get into things, and that means looking into big name companies.

One thing a lot of people aren’t sure of is just where these stocks got their name. In fact, it comes from gambling. A blue chip is the most profitable type you can have, and so it makes sense that it would be applied here. You can make a lot of money just like if you were to hit the jackpot in slots.

Even if you don’t have a lot of money, you should at least be able to buy some things what with the prices things are at these days. You’ll probably even be able to get several, and then simply sit on them, waiting for the day they’ll pay for themselves and totally make up for what you had to spend.

Of course, you are going to want to become familiar with the language of what you’re doing so you can be prepared and take in the advice of others. Better yet, the more you learn, the more you’ll be able to do. In no time, you’ll be an expert making the kind of money others envy.

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Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

A large number of commercial companies are actively involved in the Forex market. About twenty-five percent of large corporations hedge against currency fluctuations in this manner.

For an US based company, when the dollar is strong during their reporting period, accounting for its foreign earned revenue can result in a negative performance. That’s because foreign-currency denominated revenue will exchange for fewer dollars when converted and reflect negatively for the accounting period. Having a Wall Street Journal subscription will help find this data.

The daily cycle of converting one currency to another for goods and services account for 5% to 10% of Forex activities as generated exclusively by governments and businesses. The other 90 or so percent is pure speculation.

High profile players love the Forex market since they don’t get locked out due to 24 hour trading. The huge liquidity allows for easy inexpensive entry and exit points.

Forex activity is heaviest in New York from Wall Street between the hours of 8 AM to 5 PM and account for about fifteen percent of all trades. Tokyo accounts for about 10% of trades and is most active 7 PM to 3 AM EST.

Make money in Forex is made by having a formula that predicts price movements of a currency pair. Have an exit strategy that is effective can capture a profit often a few times a day.

Day traders move in and out of trades several times a day capturing a portion of the profit. Large Wall Street companies employ thousands of professional traders that take advantage of daily fluctuations.

There are many financial news services to choose from. The Wall Street Journal’s reputation for acute accurate market coverage is legendary. In order to stay abreast of the constantly changing financial landscape, it pays to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.

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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

The descending triangle is the most profitable chart pattern when trading short. The descending triangle is formed with the lower boundary of the price movement contained by a line close to horizontal and the top line slopes down toward the bottom line.

Descending Triangles Best Traded Short

Most descending triangles would be expected to break down and in fact 57%, break out to the downside making this pattern best when traded on the short side. 45% of these breakouts are profitable and on average the profit per trade is 0.92% over a period of 9 days. A good proportion, 12.1% of these breakouts make a profit of 10% or more. The descending triangle is one of the best chart patterns when it breaks to the downside and applying some filters makes this pattern even more attractive to trade.

Refine Your Entries

When you look at the performance of a descending triangle in bearish market conditions you will see the results were stronger than they were in more bullish years. Trading descending triangles when the market is in a down trend or consolidating improves your trading results. The sector should be falling to make the most profits. Unusually the trend of the sector at the end of the pattern, prior to the breakout is less important than the sector trend at the start of the pattern.

Descending triangles that breakout early in the pattern, produce similar results to those that breakout later, so this is not an important filter to use. The best results are achieved when the stock climbs up from the lower boundary and collapses back before reaching the upper boundary of the pattern.

Ensure that the volume is supportive of the breakout, i.e. volume as the share falls is greater than volume as the share rises.

Descending Triangles, Profitable When the Markets Is Not

Following a series of simple rules to determine which descending triangle to trade can improve results dramatically. By applying these filters descending triangles are profitable on 48% of the trades and return an average of 2.55% per trade in 10 days. This is a very profitable pattern to trade.

Statistics for this article have been provided by Patterns Trader after analyzing over 60,000 chart patterns on the Australian market from 2000 - 2008.

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I’m going to do something that is unheard of in stock chart and market analysis. I’m going to tell you exactly what I look for in a stock and how I find picks for one of the most popular stock blogs on the Internet.

This is not about using technical analysis to read a stock chart. It is something much more effective.

I’m part of an exclusive stock club that gave me this algorithm. Make no mistake, this algorithm is very powerful and can produce annual returns in excess of 1,000%!

This crazy simple formula can make any computer seem to actually be able to read a stock chart and predict future price action better than a human. Many years ago, software used statistics and models for processing. This secret algorithm goes way beyond that. It’s like having 100 stock analysts and day traders inside your computer giving you recommendations!

I have used this to make a lot of money and now I’m going to tell you exactly what the algorithm is.

Now you might be thinking how a formula this valuable can be given away free. Simple. I want you as a regular reader of my free blog. I figure if I can help you make a ton of cash you’ll become a subscriber. That sounds fair.

The first component of this formula is to determine the trend. What you want are the daily moving averages in three time frames: the 10 day MA, 20 day MA, and 50 day MA. Here is the first part of the formula: 10 day MA greater than 20 day MA greater than 50 day MA. In other words the 10 day MA is higher than the 20 day MA which in turn is higher than the 50 day MA. If the stock you are looking at meets this criteria, then move on to the next component in this formula. If it does not, go back and keep looking for a stock until you find one that does.

The next step in this algorithm is to look at the previous day’s close and the last hour of trading. If the stock closed above the 5 hour MA go on to the next step. If it has not, throw out the stock and start over again with a new stock.

In this step we must look at the stock’s 3 day high. If it is at a 3 day high, you can keep reading the next step below. If not, you need to ditch the stock and start over again with another stock.

The next component in this formula is if the last price of the stock is above the 20 day MA. If it is, move on, if not, reject and start over.

The next component in this formula is if the stock has hit a 3 week high in the last week (the previous full week of trading). If not, reject the stock and start over.

In this step we need to determine if the stock traded at a 3 month high during the previous month of trading. If it has, fantastic! If not, lose the stock and start over again with a new stock.

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Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Day trading the stock market involves the rapid buying and selling of stocks on a daily basis. This technique is used to secure fast profits from the constant changes in stock values, minute to minute, 2nd to 2nd. It is rare that a day trader will remain in a trade over the course of a night into the day after.

The main question that most people ask when it comes to day trading is simple : ‘is it necessary to sit at a PC PC watching the markets all day 24×7 to be a successful day trader?’

The answer is no. It’s not important to sit at a P. C. all day 24×7. There are a number of considerations, but typically the rule of day trading is to trade when everybody else is trading.

As with all financial investments, day trading is risky in reality, it’s one of the riskiest forms of trading out there. The stock prices rise or fall according to the behaviour of the market, which is completely unpredictable.

If you are constrained by a small amount of capital, you may not be in a position to buy large amounts of a stock, but purchasing only a small amount can add to the danger of a loss. And, glaringly, it is not possible to forecast with certainty which stocks will end up in profits and which in losses.

It is also crucial to know that in day trading, it’s the number of shares rather than the cost of shares that should be the focus. If you day trade, you’ll face losses, but even for the more expensive stocks, the loss should be debatable, because prices do not usually vary to an acute degree over the course of just one day.

The day trading industry deals in a big variety of stocks and shares. Here are only a few : Growth-Buying Shares shares made from profit, which continue to grow in value. Eventually, these shares will start to decline in price, and a professional seasoned trader can usually envision the future of this type of share.

Small Caps shares of corporations which are on the rise and show no indications of stopping. Although these shares are sometimes inexpensive, they are a extremely risky investment for day traders. You’d be safer to go with big caps and / or mid-caps, which are more secure and stable thanks to a premium.

Unloved Stocks company stock that has not performed well during the past. Traders buy these shares in the hopes of generating profits if and when the stock rises in worth. As with tiny caps, unloved stocks can be a dodgy choice for day traders.

These examples are not your sole options when it comes to day trading stocks. The best way to figure out which type of stock is right for you is to invest some time for careful research, a knowledge understanding of market patterns, a solid strategy, and a controlled trading plan.

Know as much as practicable about the industry before you start basically trading. You need to learn how to trade ONLY when the market gives the right signals

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