Posted by myarticlenetwork on April 23, 2010
Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only salvation they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.
Statistics show that in a bull market about 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 9 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.
But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a couple of tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the widely known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.
If you are going to trade options it is essential that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and the theory then you should not be trading options. If the terms Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.
Selling calls against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.
Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save you if the stock takes a 40% tumble.
The better solution to providing down-side stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be very compatible with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.
The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:
1. The strike price of the option
2. The current stock price
3. Choice of options, in or out of the money
4. Put expiration time
Even though the married Put protection only has a short life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 90-95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.
The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of offsetting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.
The general idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately very ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.
The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on April 18, 2010
The internet offers all of us having access to many things from the comfort of home that you simply utilized to need to rely on a professional for. In the past, if you wanted to buy stock options a person got to visit a broker, but now it is just as simple to get futures on-line. And also because you won’t be paying out that broker’s salary through big commission service fees, you will make more money for your own.
The first thing to buy shares on the net is to locate a web site which will provide you with the access to the marketplace and also the resources it is advisable to make smart expense alternatives. It is necessary for you to pick a popular, proven online dealer to work with. You’ll be sharing the banking account or even credit card information in order to set up an account so you need to be certain that you can trust your brokerage company.
Luckily you will find a number of to choose from. Be sure to shop around as well as locate one that provides lower fees for each trade as well as does not add on plenty of extra fees, including pertaining to slipping below a minimum account balance or intended for closing the account when you need to choose for this. You should also take a look at any research applications each broker offers as these will be critical for your capability to make informed choices when it is time to buy stocks online.
After you have established the account, you will be ready to start researching stocks. It’s often helpful to begin with companies that you have learned about. If you’re able to find recent news reports regarding these types of businesses those can help you make perseverance in regards to the future potential of the corporation. Any evaluation equipment offered from the online broker website will also enable you to review this company’s background and compare its performance, that of their competition and the marketplace all together.
Many websites may also offer usage of expert rankings of different shares. However keep in mind, these kinds of specialists are simply doing the same thing you are doing – considering the reality in addition to making informed decisions. When you have selected an excellent candidate then you definitely are ready to buy shares on-line. Each company on the stock exchange offers shares available at a cost that is constantly fluctuating.
In the easiest deal, you enter the price you are able to purchase a share and also the amount you intend to get. In case the share grows to that price tag then your on-line specialist will make the purchase for you. A fund is going to be shifted from your account along with exchanged for shares with stock. Congratulations, now you can declare that you buy stocks online. It is that simple.
Of course there are many more complicated ways to get stocks on the internet, but most of these include increased danger. It is actually better in order to start slow and very simple until eventually you have used to the market and its variances. It is also recommended that you plan to get high quality futures when you think they are listed at a value and hold on to them instead of constantly trading. This can be a much less dangerous approach for the long run.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on February 4, 2010
I am somebody who loves to invest money on the stock market. Some might see this as a bit of a gamble which in a way it is, there are however certain steps people can take to limit this risk which may well help them to make money.
I should point out that I am in no way a professional investor; I provide people with bargain holiday deals; I also work on projects to do with helping people to obtain affordable composite doors and about enabling people to obtain cheap phone calls.
I see the stock market as a bit of a rollercoaster in that it is always going up and down. It has many peaks and troughs which can make it hard to know when it is the right time to invest or to sell. Some people see an event such as the terrorist attacks on September the eleventh, where the stock market fell in a big way, as a good time to invest where as other people may panic and sell all of their holdings in case of another attack.
I personally prefer to buy when the market is going through a bad period as I believe it is likely to eventually pick up and should if history is anything to go by, be even higher in the future. My way of thinking is buy low, sell high.
When purchasing a single stock, such as shares in one of the top companies such as Vodafone, I always remember the price that I bought the shares at and give the stock a target price. This is the price that I will sell at, if it ever reaches that level of course. I have to say that at times I am very tempted to hold onto the shares when they reach these target levels in the hope of even higher profits. I am normally able to keep to my plan of selling high and when I have let temptation get the better of me and have held on to the shares they always seem to end up falling back. I hope that I have now learned my lesson for the future, I think I have!
If the share price after for example three months has fallen by about twenty percent, I then increase my holding by purchasing even more shares. I will then set a new target level and just repeat the process. This in a way is similar to how a unit trust works through the method of pound cost averaging, where you are able to purchase more units when the unit price is lower for your monthly premium.
What I do and have explained above is quite risky and you need to be able to hold your nerve when the stock has a bad run. You also need to have a lot of patience. I certainly would only advise people to invest money that they can actually afford to lose as one day for example I could invest in a stock which does not recover. This idea would then turn out to be some sort of nightmare which would leave me well out of pocket.
So far I have been quite lucky and the plan has been working well for me. Compared to a lot of the people that I know I am actually quite a small player in this whole stock market game and I have to say that I personally see it as a hobby than something more serious.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on October 18, 2009
Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, Bonds, Futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.
You only have to think back to major stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.
Just by reading the balance sheet and other quarterly reports they release gives you a very limited insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.
So what are the secrets to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:
* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators
* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective
* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.
The real secret to technical analysis is to become VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.
The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying much the same information and so are redundant.
For the record my set of indicators are:
* 4 Simple Moving Averages
* Bollinger Bands
* MACD
* Stochastics
But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:
Top Dog Trading Review
Posted by myarticlenetwork on October 13, 2009
Contracts in the futures market are between a buyer and seller. The contract states that the seller must provide the buyer a very specific quantity of a certain item, such as cotton, oil etc, for a price agreed today, but at a date in the future.
It is important not to get confused about what the word future refers to. Futures traders are not day trading futures prices, we are trading today’s prices, but the settlement is taking place in the future. So we buy if we think prices will increase and we sell if we think prices will drop.
If I buy (or sell) a futures contract today, I don’t have to hold it until the contract expires, I can simply choose to sell it (or buy it) in the market at the prevailing price. Futures contracts are bought and sold in the controlled environment of a futures exchange, such as the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in the U.S. and the London International Futures and Options Exchange (L.I.F.F.E.) in the U.K.
Futures were originally developed to help offset the risks and uncertainties experienced by farmers and merchants due to the fluctuating supply and demand for produce. Take for example a coffee plantation farmer. The price that he will receive for his beans will vary according to the vagaries of supply and demand. In a year when supplies are limited and demand is high, prices will be high. In a year when demand falls and the supply is plentiful, the price will fall.
The use of futures trading in the farming industry has many benefits such as allowing the farmer to be able to plan ahead as he already knows what kind of profit he can expect from his crop of say coffee beans. The price may not be the best and the merchant may make a killing but the risk is reduced.
By using a form of futures contract long before harvest time both the farmer and the merchant can reduce their risks by setting the price.
Today the futures market has changed a lot from the historical origins. There are now futures contracts on financial instruments such as stocks and bonds. broadly speaking futures contracts are split between commodity type products and financial type products. It is usually not that important because they are rarely held until expiration.
The CBOT was started in 1848 for the benefit of the farmers and merchants. The exchange was to regulate both the quality and quantity of the actual crop that was being traded. Today the CBOT offers many contracts on items like wheat, silver, corn, bonds and soybeans.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) was created in 1919 and has managed a futures market in such things as pork bellies, live cattle and the SP500 index.
In London the biggest financial futures exchange is the London International Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). Here financial instruments such as the FTSE100, the GILT and Short Sterling are traded, the exchange is relativily new and opened in 1982.
EUREX started it’s life as the DTB, the German futures exchange. The DTB has always been an electronic exchange and started back in 1990, when electronic exchanges were still considered to be inferior to the open outcry system.
The German Bund was a very heavily traded financial contract and one of the biggest markets on the LIFFE.
Many markets in futures have very high volumes and hence very good liquidity, these are attractive markets for traders. The high leverage means that profits can be made very fast when the market moves, however money can also be lost very fast. If you want to learn to trade futures, or are even thinking of trading futures make sure that you learn as much as you can before using real money.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on October 1, 2009
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 DOW30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 contains almost all technical 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 smaller spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered very liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.
It is best to aviod stocks that are bellow $10 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 $5 and $10. Avoid buying a stock below $5 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 inorder 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.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on September 22, 2009
Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only good point they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.
Statistics show that in a bull market about 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 8 or 9 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.
But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a couple of tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the widely known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.
If you are going to trade options it is essential that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and theory then you should not be trading options. If Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.
Selling calls against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.
Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save you if the stock takes a 40% tumble.
The better solution to providing downside stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be very compatible with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.
The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:
1. The strike price of the option
2. The current stock price
3. Choice of options, in or out of the money
4. Put expiration time
Even though the married Put protection only has a limited life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.
The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of off-setting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.
The general idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your valuable stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.
The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.
Posted by myarticlenetwork on June 28, 2009
Due to the economic recession, a lot of our countrymen are experiencing job loss and economic failure. Some of them have experienced from being on the top to the bottom. There is also a situation wherein a company CEO lost his job and ultimately accepts a job in a local pizza parlor. This is because the company has suffered bankruptcy and left all their employees with no jobs. Sad that it is, but this is harsh reality. People have resorted to jobs that they haven’t done before in order to survive.
The good thing is that there are actually a lot of opportunities out there if we will just be open-minded. With the internet, one can increase his survival rate in a country suffering from recession. Among these opportunities is online stock trading. Before the age of internet, only those that are willing to risk money are qualified to engage in the buying and selling of stocks. If placing a bid on a certain stock is only based on pure speculation that the price will go up without analyzing the current market trend, then it can be somewhat similar to a gambling activity. It is similar to the forex trade wherein currency prices are always changing and the factors that underlying are quite complicated to keep track of. Stocks have also the same features with foreign currencies, hence one should exercise extreme caution backed up with a thorough research of its market trend. One way to do that analysis is with the help of stock market software.
Stock exchange is now made simple with the existence of the internet technology. Not only that it is simplified but as well as it is trimmed and streamlined for ordinary people that has little or vague knowledge of what stock trading is all about. A person can easily learn the tricks and techniques involved in the trade by doing some internet research as well as studying the free trial for stock software. These are stock software programs can be readily downloaded and installed on a personal computer. Such will run a simulation of the activities involved in the stock trading. The person will just need to familiarize himself with its user interface as well as the terms used in the trade. Without real money involved, a person is guaranteed to learn a lot from these stock software programs. You can gain the confidence that is needed to trade stocks by using investing tools. If you still want to know more before trading for real, you can use investment books to gain more insight and information.
After a person has fairly gained knowledge with the tips and techniques in the trading of stocks, he or she will be able to engage and invest in the real stock trading activities in person. Another plus factor is the existence of smart programmers that created the automated stock software programs that gives guarantee to more profitability in the trade. Not only that, some are also designed to automatically place a bid when it has accurately predicted that the prices will rise at a particular time.
