China s stock markets are volatile and Shanghai s Composite is showing a price/earnings ratio one associates with bubbles of the Asian sort (Taiwan was 100 when it popped, Japan was 71, China is now 69; all of these numbers tower over …
China s stock markets are volatile and Shanghai s Composite is showing a price/earnings ratio one associates with bubbles of the Asian sort (Taiwan was 100 when it popped, Japan was 71, China is now 69; all of these numbers tower over … Continue Reading…
China s stock markets are volatile and Shanghai s Composite is showing a price/earnings ratio one associates with bubbles of the Asian sort (Taiwan was 100 when it popped, Japan was 71, China is now 69; all of these numbers tower over …
Stocks and shares, unit trusts and investment trusts Shares give you part ownership of a company, so the value of your investment is linked to how the company - and the overall economy - performs. You can also invest in funds which buy shares in a wide range of different companies. Over the last 25 years it has become quite common for people to own shares directly through a number of different ways: * In the UK for example, many people bought shares when the government sold nationalized companies * some people were given shares when their building society or insurance company changed from a ‘mutual’ (where its members were the owners) into a company with its shares being bought and sold * as an employee you might also be awarded shares in your company as an incentive - this may be through a share option scheme, when you’re offered the right to buy shares in your company in the future at a price agreed now
You can also buy shares directly in companies trading on the stock exchange through a stockbroker. An alternative to owning shares directly is to invest your money in a fund or a company which, in turn, invests its money in shares. Your investments will be taken care of by a professional manager who uses skill and experience to decide which companies to invest in, buying and selling shares to grow your investment. This is called a ‘managed scheme’. Your investment is spread over a larger portion of the market that you could do yourself, so reducing the risk. Unit trusts can have any number of investors, so are known as ‘open-ended’ funds. You invest in these funds by buying one or more ‘units’. The price of units varies depending on how well the fund performs. Investment trust companies invest in other companies. Because of this these shares are limited in number, unlike unit trusts, so they’re called ‘closed-ended’. The value of your shares still depends on the performance of the investments but also on the demand for the investment trust company’s shares themselves. You make money from your shares by the companies that you invest in declaring ‘dividends’ or an amount payable per share. The more shares you own, the more money you make. But of course, business trends go down as well as up, so be aware that it just as possible to loose your investments as it is to make a profit!
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The stock market can present you with a lot of hot stocks every day. Many of them are new technology stocks that come from the nanotech, biotech, voip, healthcare, homeland defense or internet sectors.
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In past articles I have touched upon how to play a penny stock or micro cap stock near its bottom. You will come across a lot of stocks at or near their bottoms when trading penny stocks, here are some tips for timing your purchase correctly.
Once you have found a stock you like, take a look at its 52-week high and its 52-week low. This will give you the stock’s trading range for the year. When a stock is trading near its 52-week low it has a better chance of moving upward in the trading range. When at a 52-week high, some traders may feel its to risky to purchase and will wait until there is a retrace in price. This is a general rule for the majority of penny stocks that trade within a range. There are some obvious exceptions, such as great news causing a penny stock to continually make new 52-week highs.
When a stock you like is near or at its 52-week low, you must investigate why. Search for any S-8’s, SB-2’s, or an increase in the amount of operating shares. These filings are dilution, the company will have added shares to the market causing an increase in supply and a price drop. If these filings are not present and there is no reason for the stock to have dropped this low, then it may be a good time to invest.
You should have a good reason why you like the stock before purchasing. Some major things to keep an eye on are stocks in very strong markets. Currently gold and oil stocks are strong, therefore finding undervalued gold and oil penny stocks is a good idea. Another of my favorites is finding a penny stock with an innovative product, these types of products can garner national media attention and often will draw the interest of other big companies in that field.
Ideally, you want to find a company that has increasing revenues and a lot of valuable assets. These types of companies are hard to find and you must investigate thoroughly. Often you must assume they will generate revenues in the future. Look at the amount of shares the insiders are holding: is there a small float with a large amount of insider ownership? This would be a sign that the insiders think that their shares will be very valuable in the future. At times you will also find that institutions are holding a percentage of shares, which would also be a good sign.
Using a stock screener you will be able to generate lists of stocks with institutional holders, insider buying, small floats, and strong revenues. After you generate these lists, separate them by their fields, such as technology, oil, or gold. Find the companies that interest you most in the strongest of fields and begin to read the filings. You will be able to dismiss some companies almost immediately. Keep narrowing down your search until you have a handful of companies into which you are willing to invest your hard earned money.
If you have done your research correctly, the company should continue to grow in value and in time other investors will realize the potential and the price of the stock will continue to rise.
About the author: Keith Guyette M.Ed, J.D. is a professional trader as well as the owner and head stock analyst for www.bottompicks.com. Mr. Guyette is also the moderator at one of the largest stock bulletin boards on the web.
Once you`ve put the time and effort into coming up with a sound trading plan for your stock trades, and have found a good trading opportunity, it makes sense to start the trade right. Finding a good point to enter into a position involves several issues. Fist, you must know the time frame of your trade. For a particular trend stock trades, for example, you might know that you should enter no earlier than a week before the event creating the trend. Next, you must examine charts to see where the stock trades have been and where its support and resistance levels are, and think about it`s psychological support and resistance levels as well. Last, you should wait for a pullback in price if you believe that the price is temporarily high and that it will drop and create a better buying opportunity for you.
The way to make sure you enter where you plan to is to use a limit order. A limit order is an order that can execute only at the stated price or better. Limit orders sometimes make you wait behind others who placed their orders at the same price before you did, but in most situations, placing a reasonable limit order is the only smart way to enter a position. In certain situations, it may make sense to stagger your entry by buying half the shares you want at a price you think may be the lowest the stock trades will reach, and then waiting to buy the other half either when the price does get better, averaging down, or when the stock trades starts to move, adding on strength.
The wrong way to enter a position is to chase moving stock trades. Chasing stocks is a form of panic, and it practically guarantees that you`ll pay too much for the stock. Why is it so bad to pay too much? The more you pay for stock trades, the further your risk to reward ratio is shifted away from reward and toward risk. This happens because your upside has decreased due to the high price of the stock, and because the probability of the run ending increases as the stock gets more and more expensive.
There are two ways to look at the decrease in your upside: First of all, you`ll capture less of the stock`s movement, so your percentage return will be less; second, the more the stock trades costs per share, the fewer shares you`ll be able to buy. Which means that any return you get will be multiplied by fewer shares. Remember, it doesn`t matter if you miss a trade or a position because the entry price has gotten too high. It`s not the last good trade in the market. There will always be more stock trades to make. It`s much better to miss a trade than to chase a stock and end up with a loss.
Morning gaps down present good opportunities to buy stocks you want. Buying a gap down is an excellent way to enter a position, since when a stock gaps down, it often opens near what will turn out to be the low of the day. On the other hand, buying a gap up is one of the worst stock trades you can make. The gap up generally reflects the top of the market`s level of interest in the stock. Any good news from overnight has generally been priced in, so the stock`s opening price and volatility on a gap up often establishes the stock`s high of the day. Therefore, buying, or really chasing, the gap up means that you will likely buy the stock for top dollar. A good trader buys stocks that have an upside that hasn`t been priced into the stock.
Entering a short position on a gap up is a great plan, though shorting a gap down is foolish. The opening price and volatility on a gap down often establishes the stock`s low of the day, so shorting at the lowest point would be a poor trade to make. However, if you keep these guidelines in mind, you will be able to find a safe entry point for your trade. One that fits with your trading plan, and puts you on the path to consistent trading success.
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To make money in the stock market, setting stops is an imprecise science and involves a lot of trial and error, but it is an integral part of being a successful trader. A good analogy is to compare stops to buying insurance for your business. Should you avoid insurance altogether just because you`re not sure exactly how much you need, or because it will cost you a little money? No. Instead, you estimate and do the best you can, and in the end it will be well worth the effort.
Where insurance limits risk of loss through disasters, stops limit your risk of loss on bad trades. Stops make it possible to take small losses and get out when a stock goes against you, protecting your capital. Yet, some traders find that they are unwilling to take a loss on any stock. They don`t want to admit that they made a mistake.
Another key to make money in the stock market, what often separates a good trader from a bad one is the ability to take small losses. Your goal, as a successful trader, is to take small losses and make big gains. If you do this, you`ll be profitable. But, you ask, what if you stop out of a stock you still want to trade? Well, you can always buy it back later, and likely at a better price, if the trade still has potential.
Besides limiting risk and helping you take small losses, stops are valuable because they protect profits on winning trades. As I discussed in a previous article, you must lock in your profit when you trade, or you can lose it. You can ensure that you keep your profits by using trailing stops. A trailing stop is a stop order you place below the current price of a long position, progressively moving it up as the price of the position increases so that the stop follows the position up. For a short position, to make money in the stock market you set a stop above the current price and then move it progressively down, following the position as it trends downward.
This means that once you have a profit, you move your stop nearer to the current price so you`ll stop out with most of your profits intact if the position moves against you. If the stop executes and you decide you want to trade the position again, you can buy it back at a better price than you sold it for and then ride it up again. That`s how a good trader makes and keeps money, make money in the stock market by taking small profits multiple times, rather than risking too much waiting for a big win.
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Every morning the trader sits down at his computer to begin the day, and the dilemma faced is always the same - finding a stock or two or three to make a buck on for that day. This really shouldn’t be that hard, but for some traders it is. Let’s see if we can break it down and maybe make it a little easier.
First let’s start with a few basics about your work habits. The markets open at 9:30 EST, right? WRONG! Trading these days starts at 7 A.M.! That’s the very early morning action. Then you have what some traders call the official pre-market trading that starts at 8 A.M. following that is the official market opening at 9:30 A.M. EST. This means that if you have been sleeping in, you could be missing some very interesting early morning trades. However, a word of caution here - pre marketing trading also has a higher element of risk attached to it because of a lack of liquidity.
Okay, so now that I have gotten you out of bed, you can start scanning the pages of Wall-Street Journal, Independent Business Daily and… WRONG again! Oh sure, you may find a trade or two in one of these publications, but in all too many cases that news is going be too old to trade. In addition, the news in those publications, or the reaction by the stock, is going to show up in other places.
The first thing you may want to do in the morning is check the after hours action from the day before. This information can be found a number of places. I use the NASDAQ home page under the Extended Hours Trading link found on the left side of the page. This will give you a list of the stocks that were most active in after hours for the day before. In most cases these stocks are moving on news released after the close. These links as well as others can be found at www.TraderAide.com.
While you are on the NASDAQ page make sure you take note of the Pre-Market Most Active list. This is going to be another great source of potential stocks for you to consider. An additional source on the NASDAQ page is the NASDAQ-100 Pre-Market Heat Map. This is especially useful right at the beginning and for the first hour of so after the beginning of the 5 A.M. premarket trading action. In both cases, after-hours movers and pre-market movers, the action is usually news related.
An excellent source of this news is MarketWatch. You can find it in a hundred other locations on the net, but I find the MarketWatch site easy to use and even more important, easier to search. It is also less likely to be full of non-trading” news that you really don’t need to trade.
A few of the things you want to be looking for include events on stocks that take place nearly every day, such as: analyst up/downgrades; earnings reports’ and FDA actions which could include approval, disapprovals or merely making comments on application.
I also suggest you watch Bloomberg TV early in the morning, before the 5 A.M. premarket trading begins. I prefer Bloomberg to CNBC at this time in the morning because of their presentation of the futures and the news streamer on the bottom of the screen. Once the pre market opens I suggest you change over to CNBC simply because they have, what appears to be, a much larger audience. On CNBC the stocks reported on or mentioned are often sent up or down, offering excellent trading opportunities in many cases.
Once the markets opens, almost all real-time quote systems have an element built into them that will give you at least the top ten most active on the three main exchanges, both gainers and losers. Also, they may have a more advanced “screener” of some sort. With RealTick by Townsend Analytics, Ltd, it’s called Hottrend Realtime Radar. You can leave this running throughout the day. Stocks that show unusual volume compared to their historic volume patterns will show up automatically on the Radar. It is available for both NASDAQ and NYSE traded stocks. Check with your supplier to see if this feature, or something like it, is offered.
Last but not least, you want to be checking your Dow Jones news feed for the latest breaking news starting at about 6:30 A.M., New York time. Sorry “West Coasters, but as the bank robber said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that is where the money is”.
Happy trading!
No permission is needed to reproduce an unedited copy of this article as long the About The Author tag is left in tact and hot links included. Questions and comments can be sent to Floyd at floyd@TraderAide.com.
Floyd Snyder has been trading and investing in the stock market for three decades. He was on the forefront of the day trading craze that swept the nation back in the late 1990’s, both as a trader and as the moderator of one of the Internet’s largest real time trading rooms, http://Daytraders.com. He is the owner of http://www.TraderAide.com and Strictly Business Magazine at http://www.sbmag.org
One of the things a new trader learns within a few weeks or so of beginning his new adventure into the world of day trading is the difference between three symbol stocks and four symbol stocks.
The first thing to be learned, with a few exceptions, is that three symbol stocks are listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) or the AMEX (American Stock Exchange), while the four symbol stocks are listed on the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation System). You can read more about the three different exchanges and how they operate by visiting their individual web sites.
Next, the new trader usually learns that most day traders prefer to trade NASDAQ stocks over “listed”, a term that usually refers to AMEX and NYSE stocks but not NASAQ stocks.
The reason is quite simple. Historically, the root of it goes back to the hay days of day trading in the pre year 2000 bubble days. Most of the fast moving stocks were NASDAQ stocks. This is where the largest percentage of the high tech wonders were traded. It was then, and is today, where most of the day trading action is.
A lot of tools were developed or made available to day traders for the first time, and many of them were based on trading NASDAQ stocks.
However, along with that action comes a much higher degree of risk. NASDAQ stocks are much more likely to give you huge moves up and down with tremendous spurts of volume, making them much more risky. Of course, with that higher risk also comes the potential of higher profits…or larger… much larger losses than slower, more orderly moving stocks.
That’s why I like three symbol stocks.
As a general rule they will move in a much more orderly fashion. You are less likely to get whip lashed all over the street on listed stocks. They usually move much more slowly, making it easier to read the potential move via such tools as Level2 and Stochastic charts.
However, even three symbol stocks with the right news or set of events can trade in huge volume, causing wide swings and added risks. Yet, as a general rule they will trade somewhat boring compared to their cousins on the NASDAQ.
Normal everyday events like analyst upgrade and downgrades usually do not send the average NYSE or AMEX listed stock into a mania move. Instead they will trade in a more orderly pattern. Depending on the news they will often slowly tick up or down, very often taking thirty minutes, an hour or even more to get a decent profit. They often make a number of stop and goes, minor pullbacks, but they usually do not make the drastic pullbacks that NASDAQ stocks so often do. In Daytraders.com I refer to that as a pop’n flop.
I find both Level 2 and Stochastics charts much easier to use in predicting their behavior. (See: Tools of the Trader at www.TraderAide.com and other information on Level 2 and Stochastics if you are not familiar with these terms.
Keep in mind I am talking in general terms here. Certain three symbols, NYSE or AMEX stocks, can trade every bit as radically as any stock on any exchange. There are few that have a huge day trader following and can be sent into a frenzy if the right news hits the tape.
Some these “high flyers” come out the high tech sector, which includes the Internet stocks and semiconductors. Other “high flyers” come from the biotech stocks, which have increased volatility from such news as FDA approvals. After a while you will recognize the symbols because there are fewer of them than on the NASDAQ that trade like a house on fire on the right news.
Give them a try and see if you don’t lower you blood pressure just a bit!
Happy trading!
No permission is needed to reproduce an unedited copy of this article as long the About The Author tag is left in tact and hot links included. Questions and comments can be sent to Floyd at floyd@TraderAide.com.
Floyd Snyder has been trading and investing in the stock market for three decades. He was on the forefront of the day trading craze that swept the nation back in the late 1990’s, both as a trader and as the moderator of one of the Internet’s largest real time trading rooms, http://Daytraders.com. He is the owner of http://www.TraderAide.com and Strictly Business Magazine at http://www.sbmag.org
Nothing we do in society prepares us to function effectively in the commodity markets and an environment with no real boundaries. But, most of us are brought up to function well in society, so we`ve acquired strategies for fulfilling our needs and desires that are geared toward social interaction and acceptance. We don`t just take what we want, we take other people into consideration, too. Not only have we learned to depend on each other to fulfill our needs and desires, but in the process we`ve acquired many socially based techniques for assuring that other people behave in a manner that is consistent with what we want.
The commodity markets may seem like a social endeavour because there are so many people involved, but they`re not. While we may have learned to depend on each other to fulfill basic needs, the market environment is different: it`s every person for themselves.
Not only can you not depend on the market to do anything for you, but it`s extremely difficult to manipulate or control anything that the market does. If you`ve become effective in your personal lives at fulfilling your needs and desires by learning how to control your environment, but are existing as a trader in an environment that does not know, care, or respond to anything that is important to you, what do you do? You take control.
One of the principal reasons so many successful people have failed at trading, is that part of their success, outside the market, is due to their ability to control their social environment. To some degree, everyone has developed techniques to make their external environment meet their needs and desires. The problem is that none of those techniques work with the commodity markets. The commodity markets don`t respond to control and manipulation, unless you`re a very large trader.
However, you can control the way you deal with market information and your own behaviour. Instead of controlling your surroundings so that they fit your idea of the way things should be, you can learn to control yourself. Then you can view information objectively, and choose to behave in a manner that is in your own best interests. You do this by creating rules to trade by, and following them.
Nearly everyone agrees that you need to have rules to be successful in trading, but most traders have no intention of following any. Most people who are interested in trading resist the idea of creating a set of rules. The resistance may be subtle, but it`s still there.
Often this is a response to how we acquired our first set of societal rules. Our parents, relatives, teachers, or friends gave most of the guidelines we live by to us when we were children. These guidelines were taught to us, we did not create them, an important distinction. During this time, many of our natural impulses to move, express, and learn about the nature of our existence through our own direct experiences, were stifled. Some of these impulses were never reconciled, and can still exist inside of us as frustration, or disappointment. The accumulation of these types of feelings can cause a person to resist anything that keeps them from doing whatever they want, whenever they want to.
The very reason most people are attracted to trading, the unlimited freedom of choice and decision making inherent in trading, is the same reason they feel a natural resistance to rules and boundaries. The need for rules may make perfect sense, but it`s difficult to generate any enthusiasm for these rules when you`ve been trying to break free of them most of your life. It usually takes a great deal of effort to break down a traders resistance to establishing and abiding by a trading regime that is organized, consistent, and reflects prudent money management guidelines. But, once they do, the possibilities for attaining consistent trading success are limitless.
About the Author:
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You need to consider some basics before you enter the world of investing in stocks. The main reason: the stock market is a field dominated by savvy investors, who know the ins and outs of making profitable trades. For people who are not on the inside, Wall Street can be a very dangerous place. Here are a few tips that can help you in your beginning stages:
1) Don’t even consider “tips” that tell you about “hot stocks”. Consider the source: if you had a huge, cannot miss, money making investment tip, would you offer it the world at large, free of charge? You wouldn’t, and neither would anyone else. If someone is touting a can’t miss stock, they most likely have a financial interest in seeing the stock rise. Conversely, if they are rooting for the stock to miss, you can almost rest assured that have “shorted” the issue.
2) Always do your due dilligence. You’ll hear this advice over and over again, and that’s because it’s extremely important and bears repeating. You must always do your own due dilligence. Relying on the advice of others, no matter how well intentioned it may be, is almost always a recipe for disaster. Make sure you dig in and really examine the public numbers and financial releases from companies. Nothing tells the story more clearly than the numbers. Ignore basic touting techniques like press releases which have very little substance, and rely instead on hype to tell the company’s story.
3) Only invest money you can afford to lose. Sure this is a basic point, but tons of people miss it. You should only invest money that you can honestly afford to lose, and without any tears, if the worst case scenario comes to fruition. Everyone enters into investments with the right idea of earning big profits, but in many cases, this never pans out. If you lose your rent money, you can rest assured that your days of dabbling in the stock market will come to a very quick and bitter end. ut asides small amounts of money each week from your paycheck for savings and investment and use that.
The learning curve for investing in stocks can be steep, but in the final analysis is well worth it. In no other endeavor can you make the types of returns that are associated with the world’s greatest stock investors. But make sure to take your time, and keep detailed records of all of your transactions, with particular attention being paid to what you were thinking when you made the trade. Over time, this record will become an invaluable instrument for helping you determine what type of trade makes you the most money, and it will also give you insights into your character as a trader. There’s plenty more to learn, of course, but hopefully these basic ideas will help you on your stock investing journey. Good luck.
Darren McLaughlin is the webmaster of the Stock Market Basics resource center.
This warning goes out to newbie investors, and more times than not, it falls on deaf ears. But I’ll repeat it one more time just for posterity’s sake: if you’re new to investing, be very careful of making investments in penny stocks. You will undoubtedly be very attracted by the potential returns due to the deflated share prices, but keep in mind that things are usually not what they seem to be, and sometimes penny stocks really are “too good to be true.”.
Why do pennies pose such a risk? In a word: reporting. Or more accurately, lack of reporting. Since Over the Counter (OTC) stocks are not listed on any exchange, they don’t have to follow the stringent reporting criteria which we’ve all become accustomed to for major exchange traded stocks. What this means is that these companies generally offer very little financial guidance, and tend to rely much more on hype than exchange traded stocks.
Penny stocks usually have very small floats (the amount of shares actively traded) and for this reason, coupled with thin capitalization, the stocks can be manipulated quite easily by several buyers or sellers, and some news or rumors. Many penny stock companies use spam email to promote their products. They send out to large groups of internet users who end up becoming interested in the stocks. As the emailed people start buying, the price goes up, and the investment starts to look like a great deal. At this point, the pump and dumpers will start selling all the shares they can, and the investment will come back down to Earth. The pump and dumpers make the money, and the investors who come in later are left holding the bag.
These pump and dump schemes are extremely common, and penny stocks are almost always what are used for the promotion. Particularly vulnerable to this ruse are small and new investors who have tiny amounts of capital. Most of these types of investors want to accumulate a large amount of shares with the hopes of turning a meager $200-$500 investment into a retirement nest egg. Most end up losing their capital.
These warnings might seem obvious, but it’s amazing how often people lose their head when dealing stocks. Most people feel that the number of shares is their best chance for making profits. They feel if they can but 100,000 stocks for 0.001 that somehow they’ll get rich if only the stock hits 1 cent! This is true, of course, but almost never happens. Most stocks that sell for fractional pennies are more likely to stay in that neigborhood rather than to rocket to even $10.
Remember that the only metric you need concern yourself with as it relates to investing is total returns. The higher your percentage return, the more money you have. You will never end up concerning yourself with share price if you are a studious investor. It’s meaningless in the final analysis. For savvy investors who do a ton of research, finding a bargain in the penny stock heap is possible. Once you’ve done a few trades of “normal stocks” give it a try, but lay off the pennies until you have a very good understanding of what makes share price move.
To learn more about Stock Market Basics, please visit the Investing Forum
Have you read any of the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books? They are excellent books for people who want to increase their financial savvy. I have been investing in mutual funds and stocks for over 10 years and it has helped increased our family’s financial worth. Now I want my kids to learn the different ways that they can get their money to work for them.
For Christmas, I got my 12 year old daughter stock in AFLAC and MDU. My 14 year old son got Emerson Electric and ITT Industries. As you can imagine, neither of them were thrilled with their presents. However, I also got them the game “Cash Flow 101″ (you can find this on the Rich Dad, Poor Dad website or sometimes on Ebay). This game is great to teach kids (and adults) how to make their money work for them. I recommend it highly.
Over Christmas, we spent almost one whole day playing the Cash Flow game. You are randomly given an occupation. My son was not excited when he got to be a janitor with minimal income and my daughter got to be a doctor. However, it soon became apparent that the doctor had much higher expenses and he learned that a janitor can still invest and make money.
I hope the next time I can tell you that the kids are going to NASDAQ everyday to check how their stocks are doing. Slowly but surely I think they are learning what it takes to make passive income (have their money work for them).
Mother of 3, Loves to invest
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