How To Buy The Best Stocks

Sunday, 7. February 2010


Traders - Do You Really Want To Learn How To Trade, Stocks, Futures or Forex Using Momentum As A leading Indicator?

Click Here To Learn From A Master Trader

Free 5 Day Video Trading Course

Free Proven Money Making Trade Setup

Over 90 Minutes of Expert Trading Education Free

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW 30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to quickly buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered highly liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to aviod stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008/9 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock below at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option in order to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings releases are 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

 A675645879

How To Trade Options Correctly

Sunday, 7. February 2010

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of cash fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of cash trading options, but of course you can also lose just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go on margin you can get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that a big loss can also happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non-directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much less dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you learn to trade options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very useful skill you have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

3 Common Mistakes Made When Trading Options

Wednesday, 9. September 2009

#1 Trading options in only one direction and that’s usually up.

A very common mistake that traders make is options omission. They forget or fail to realize that options trading allows one to make money on falling prices as well as rising prices. By not trading in both up markets and down markets, they are not maximizing their investments. When you stop trading when the market is in a downturn, you are potentially leaving half the available money on the table.

Additionally, security prices tend to fall faster than they rise, so some of the biggest, quickest gainers are executed via falling share prices. So if an options traders is not considering short trades for their investment portfolio, they are missing out on some really solid trades.

#2 Not having money-management rules in place.

Another common mistake is to not strictly adhere to sound money-management rules. Critical metrics arise from guiding principles such as how much should you trade and how much should you risk? Where should you set your stops or in what manner should you hedge?

Solid money management rules control help you to control your trades. And the most important thing is they are helpful in preventing big losses and many sleepless nights.

#3 Letting your emotions dictate your trade entry and exit points.

Many times behavior that is illogical makes investors execute trades that lack the necessary fundamentals. Instead of letting sound principles guide their investing decisions, they move on pure emotions. Fear of price reversal drives traders out of winning trades too soon and fear of loss makes them stay in losing trades for too long.

And because there is zero way to eliminate your emotions completely, you must learn to control them. The most realistic and effective way to do so is to develop a set of trading rules to constrict your trading activities and to conduct the majority of your research and trading decisions outside of open trading hours.

Knowing Forex Market

Thursday, 27. August 2009

The foreign exchange market is where currencies are bought and sold. Banks, governments, financial institutions, currency traders, speculators and money managers indulge in currency trading. Foreign exchange emerged as a separate economic activity very recently in the 1970s. The forex market as it is called is now worth US$4 trillion every day. Over 60 percent of the trading is speculative trading while the remaining is related to transactions of goods and services including real assets and financial assets. Speculative trading is when the investor does not proper analysis before investing or the risk in investment is very high with also the risk of losing even the sum invested. The foreign currency market has been expanding in leaps and bounds.

There are two types of foreign exchange rates. They are the spot exchange rate and the forward exchange rate. The spot exchange rate is the current exchange rate at which two currencies are transacted between each other. The forward exchange rate is the rate that is quoted and traded today, but whose delivery and payment are made at a specific future date. Since 1940s, the Western countries had fixed their currencies to the dollar and the exchange rates were expressed in terms of dollar. But this was changed to the floating exchange rate in 1971 where the market demand and supply of the currency determined its rate.

Currencies are bought in the forex market. The investors hope that its rates will appreciate in the near future so that these can be sold to make an earning. Understanding the forex market requires understanding how the exchange rates are set and what influences them. The investor should learn forex trading by getting to know all the practical details of the business. There are a number of ways one can learn about the forex market and one of them is to try out the various learning tools available in the market. Some of them are The Forex Video Course, The Magical Forex Trading, Instant Forex Profit, The Forex Assassin, Professional Forex Training, Auto Cash System and The Forex Strategy Workbook.

Experts in forex market have successfully played the market to their advantage and raked in huge profits but their number is small. An inexperienced retail trader or speculator is disadvantaged will have less information as compared to the experienced ones. So it is not true that the same returns can be expected with the same set of tools, data sources and techniques. There is much more to it that what one may see in the first instance.

Trade In Currency

Sunday, 16. August 2009

Currency trading is the main activity of the foreign exchange market. The barter system was the prevalent system in the ancient days when trade was limited in volume and in geography. In this system, goods were exchanged directly. As trade expanded, the barter system became unwieldy. Something had to be done to make transaction manageable. That was when coins were introduced as a convenient intermediary for exchange of goods. The coins were made from precious metals as gold, silver as well as copper. It became convenient now to buy and sell goods. However, there was a catch. When the goods were of higher value, coins became problem. More coins and heavier coins caused a problem. With trade expanding even more, it became all the more important that a solution had to be found. That was when banknotes came to be introduced to add to the coins as representing higher value. The banknotes, in order to have a value, were pegged to valuable metals as the gold standard. However, later this was de-linked and now its value is as decreed by governments. The central banks controlled by national governments issued these banknotes.

Each country had its own currency. Trade between countries required that the transactions had to be carried out in multiple currencies. The expansion of international trade in goods and services required that the central banks and governments purchase more of the currencies of countries with which they carried out trade. Currency trading emerged and soon became a distinct economic activity. The exchange rate becoming determined by the market, the demand and supply regime, more and more players entered the market such as currency traders, financial institutions, and money managers.

The transactions in the forex market have crossed US$4 trillion per day. The forex market has become a foremost global economic activity. The forex trading is explained in a variety of learning tools which explains how the forex market operates and how to become a successful investor in the market. Some of these are Forex Trading Explained, Forex Trading Made EZ, Tax Lien Investing, Instant Forex Profit, The Forex Video Course, Professional Forex Training, The Magical Forex Trading, Forex Assassin, The Forex Strategy Workbook and Auto Cash System. In order to find out what others have to say about these tools, search for instance Forex Assassin reviews for Forex Assassin.

Over half the investments made in the forex market are speculative. The currency exchange rate is susceptible to quick changes due to economic, political and even environmental factors. The forex market is also vulnerable to rumors.