Credit Card ’s Talk

When buying a stock, mutual fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) investors want to know they are receiving a good value for the money. It seems there are many methods of judging value. Most of them are complicated and many are subjective to the writer?s opinion. What is the true value now?

We all remember that as the market fell from its dizzying heights in 2000 that so-called analysts told the investment public not to worry as the correction only made the stocks more valuable. Yeah, and pigs can fly.

Any investor who has been through a market ?correction? (some of which drop 25% to as much as 60% or more) will tell that it is at the top that everything could not be better. Consumer confidence is high. Unemployment is low. Companies are making money. Mergers are going gangbusters. All the talking heads on the radio and TV are cheerleaders for buying just about any stock certificate ever printed. Put you hand in your pocket and hold tightly to your wallet.

The story remains bullish as the market tumbles. The values are wonderful according to Wall Street. If the values are so great then who is selling?

Why does anyone want to know if a stock or fund is a ?good? value? The only reason is to find out if the equity will appreciate in price. The bottom line is will the investor make money if that issue is bought?

There are literally hundreds of methods and formulas to give that answer. Each uses the same statistics and each will come up with a different answer. Some methods will work well for a while and then fail miserably. Mr. Investor won?t know the means test is not working until money has been lost. A search in Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, will reveal scores of valuation formulas.

Suppose an investor had bought PMC Sierra (symbol PMCS) after valuation analysis at $14 per share. It soared to $254, dropped to $110, then back up to $245 and did a Niagara to $2.50. It now trades below $10.00. There is no valuation method that could have kept an investor on the right side of this stock. The Buy N Holder would be lucky to be even. Let?s not forget all those sleepless nights as the stock rampaged lower every day.

Understand what valuation is. It is like beauty. It is in the mind of the beholder. There is no single valuation method that is accepted by the investment community. The investor needs to know one thing and one thing only. If I buy it will it go up? If it does then the valuation at that time was ?good?. Valuations change and when they change for a particular equity and that equity loses price it is time to say goodbye. Sell.

True value for a stock, fund, bond, house, collectible, anything is the price someone will pay for it at that moment. That is true valuation. All else is speculation.

Al Thomas’ book, If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It! has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2006

The world of trading and investment can be as frustrating as it can be rewarding! You need to be prepared…

Firstly, decide if you are a trader or an investor.

An investor is someone who enters the stock market inadvertently - usually via their superannuation policies. A trader is someone who makes a decision to buy and sell shares via the stock market. This can be done online or by using the services of a stock broker.

If you decide to become a trader - to win - you must have a survival strategy…

You need to study the market yourself - not just rely on ‘reading the news’, or listening to others advice and tips.

Take advantage of technology - computers, software, electronic data - all at your finger tips. Seek out charting software and appropriate internet sites - they are plentiful.

Ensure that you ‘manage’ your money and keep some in reserve.

Have the ability to quickly identify failures as well as successes.

Stock Market trading appeals to those who are a little adventurous - rather than just placing their capital into bricks and mortar.

But - be mindful that portfolio values are less stable than real estate as they are continually moving up and down.

However - investing in the Stock Market means that you are putting your money to work - be aware, and enjoy the gains!

Gay Redmile is the webmaster of several finance and investment sites. Having been a trader for most of her adult life - she understands the importance of undertaking research and knowing the market. For further important information visit her site at http://www.thestocktradingsite.com or if commodity trading interests you check out http://www.commoditytrading.com.

Most stock traders know that momentum trading can be a very profitable activity. You can make big amounts of cash in a short period of time. The problem is, that if you don’t know what stocks to look for and how to approach them and leave everyting to chance, you could end up wasting money instead of making your profits grow.

That’s why the most important aspect of momentum trading is the knowledge FILTER you employ to make your buy and sell decisions. There are many fantastic stock systems and trading strategies outhere, but you need to test them in order to discover which ones help you the most. That’s part of your homework as a stocktrader. Test, test and test again.

Complicated online trading strategies that rely on a boat load of technical analysis indicators can make you slow, and being slow when trading hot momentum stocks can be as dangerous as not knowing what to do in the first place.

The worst thing that can happen to a beginner momentum trader is to get information overload. It’s better to go step by step, and test a simple stock trading strategy that can show you how to focus on concrete ways to make money and pick better hot stock trading opportunities once at a time.

Fortunatly there are great sites on the web today that can show you how to trade in a sharp and effective way. One of those sites is Sharp Trades http://www.sharptrades.com

In the end, momentum trading is all about buying and selling stocks according to your knowledge FILTER. Once you master and follow your proven filter parameters like a clock, you can expect to start making serious amounts of cash on a consistent basis.

Find out how to do it with ease and simplicity at Sharp Trades.

Dan Sheldon is a UK based momentum day trader focusing on US markets since 1986. He helps people become confident and practical momentum traders, showing them how to choose stocks with ease and simplicity every day at http://www.SharpTrades.com

There can?t be many traders who haven?t at least considered the idea of telling the boss what they think of him, throwing it all in and going off to trade the stock market for a living. It?s a big risk financially, and that uncertainty is what stops most from jumping ship. Is it really possible to trade for a living?

The Dream

You know how it is, you?re sitting in a traffic jam at some unearthly hour of a particularly wet and miserable morning, on the way to the same office you have sat in for too long to remember, and you?re thinking - there must be a better way ? life shouldn?t have to be like this.

Your mind starts to wander and you find yourself thinking back to that stock you bought only a week ago, and how it skyrocketed giving you enough profit to takes the kids to Disneyland in the summer, and you begin to consider if you couldn?t make a fulltime living at this trading game. The advantages are certainly tempting; no more pointless meetings with the manager, hours to suit, holidays whenever you feel like it, and with your home-office - no more traffic jams.

Heck, come to that you could even make home anywhere you want it to be! By the time the traffic starts moving again. you?re busily calculating how much cash you could make if all your trades went like that last one - you?re almost ready to write your notice letter there and then!

The Bad News

Time for a reality check. Certainly all of the above benefits are there to be enjoyed, but it?s a huge step from full time employee to full time trader. Are you really ready to give up that monthly pay-check just yet? Can you really cope not knowing how much money you?re going to make month to month? Are you prepared for the months when you actually lose money instead of make it? There are many things to consider before taking the leap of faith.

Considerations

Before you even think about trading for a living you have to know how much money you need to live on, that is, how much cash do you need to generate every month in order to survive. As a financially minded person you already have good home accounts, or are at the very least vaguely aware of where the money goes. So take the annual figure (monthly is no good, you need to account for annual recurring items like insurance premiums, car servicing, and vacations), add 50% and divide by 12. Why add 50%? Because there will always be unexpected expenses, and as traders we are always prepared to expect the unexpected.

Now you know how much money you need each month, you can look at your savings and work out how much buffer money you have, that is, how long you could survive without earning anything at all. You can?t expect to be an instantly profitable trader, and even the best and most experienced have periods of drawdown, so you need to be ready for the worst. If you can?t live for at least six months from your savings then you are probably under capitalised and are not ready to give up that pay-check just yet.

An important but often overlooked aspect of under capitalisation is the effect it will have on your trading; if you are trading because you need the money, then you are trading scared and you?re almost certainly going to lose. You cannot distance yourself from the money-aspect of the trade if you are relying on the money.

Living expenses are only one part of the financial equation. Next you must consider how much trading capital you need. This is the money actually facilitate trading, in other words your account balance for trading margin, and the money you will be spending on data feeds, software, and internet access. You must account for this separately, you cannot start eating into your daily living expenses money just because you took a bad trade and need some more margin.

The amount of trading capital you require will depend very much on your trading style. To day trade the US Stock Markets for example, you must have at least $25,000 in your account, so budget for $30,000 to allow for positions moving against you (if you fall below the $25k minimum even briefly, your account can be frozen for up to three months). If you are holding positions overnight you may manage with a lower balance but bear in mind your buying power and consequently returns will be reduced.

If all this is starting to sound expensive, well it is. There?s no two ways about it, you simply cannot survive long term as a trader if you are under funded.

This article will be concluded in part two.

About The Author

Geoff Turnbull is a full time day trader, and a contributor to http://www.stock-trading-world.com

The fight continues to rage among traders who use technical indicators and those who prefer fundamental information to establish new positions and to exit current positions.

The fundamentalist believe in knowing all the facts about a company such as price earnings ratios, sales growth, product margins, management capabilities, cost of production, cash flow, etc., etc. while the technicians could care less about the latter and want to see sector price trends and rank, the Relative Strength Index, MACD (moving average convergence divergence), stochastics, trend lines, chart patterns and many more esoterically evolved indicators.

Which method is the best?

There is no Holy Grail of trading and what critics of either method forget that it is the trader who adds the final nuance that results in profit or loss. The more years a professional investor has been working his plan the more successful he usually becomes. The unsuccessful ones have long since gone broke and are no longer in the game.

It is somewhat difficult for me to give great credence to fundamentalists as I am a technician and have a very long profitable track record to prove it; however, I do sometimes look at some of fundamentals. It seems that the longer term trader can do well with a fundamental approach because the timing to buy or sell has a lag time. He does not buy the bottom nor sell the top, but who does?

The technical trader will ignore the informational approach with the use of charts and other indicators. Short term traders must be technicians, especially day traders, as there are no fundamentals upon which they can assess their buys and sells.

Technical trading is based on the psychology of the mass of traders that ride upon the hidden values of the changing fundamentals. Charts and other indicators tell the of the long term health of a company, country or commodity as it is shown in the price action. The fundamentalist looks for the reason for a change to buy or sell whereas the technician tries to find the change in the price action to initiate buys and sells.

No matter what a fundamental trader?s position he must be very patient. He may have a position on for years. During that same period there will be waves of highs and lows during which he remains constant in his position. The technician may trade the same equity several times buying the low of the wave and selling the high (hopefully). In commodities it is astute trading, but when it is done in stocks and funds it is called timing.

A combination of technical and fundamental methods can give the best results. For the average guy occasional trader I can only caution him to be very careful. Very few intermittent traders ever make money.

A successful trading approach requires commitment. It is a business the same as owning a shoe store or trucking company. You must give it your all.

Like any business you have to work at it.

Al Thomas’ book, If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It! has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

Do you have a financial planner? Does one of your friends have a financial planner? Maybe you take your advice from your broker. As I have said countless times before a broker will make you broker. And a financial planner won?t do any better. I know. You thought they would.

Let?s look at the real reason investors choose to take advice from these so called ?experts?. Once they get you into their office or sitting with you at the dining room table or kitchen table you are doomed. Mr. F.P. has come prepared with beautiful slick color brochures and will have a presentation that will utterly confuse, bedazzle and befuddle. You will sit there and be afraid to ask a question because you know it is so dumb. You can?t say ?no? or you will be admitting how dumb you are. And he knows that.

It is not that he is a liar. (I hope.) It is that all financial planners and brokers are taught the Wall Street method of ?making money?. Unfortunately it doesn?t work.

The basic things that have been pounded into their heads are false. Let?s look at the big three: Do Research, Dollar Cost Average and Buy and Hold. There are others, but these you will hear from every broker and financial planner because that is what the big brokerage companies and mutual fund families want. They want your money and they want to keep it even when the stocks or funds you own go down. In fact, buy some more.

Research is like blowing in the wind. You will be inundated with green sheets, blue sheets, red sheets, slick full color glossies, videos, etc., etc. Think about this. If you can obtain this information then so can everyone else. Everything that is known about a particular stock is reflected in the last price. Morningstar will sell you a beautiful package about a company, but it is worthless. What you really want to know is will it go up after I buy it?

Of course, if it goes down you will be encouraged to buy more to average out your price so that when it heads up again you will make a fortune. Yes, and pigs can fly.

If it does go down your advisor may say to hold on as the market always comes back. He doesn?t tell you it may take 20 years or that the company might go out of business. Buy and Hold is the greatest myth of Wall Street. No one ever tells you to sell. Have you been told you don?t have a loss until you take it? Please!

You got that advisor because you have not admitted to your self that you cannot pull the trigger. When you have a stock or fund that is falling you don?t want to sell. You have to take charge of your money. Just you.

When you look back at the performance of most financial planners from 2000 to 2003 you know you can do a better job. Always ask to see what they did then. If they lost money you don?t want them. Don?t let them compare their performance to the S&P500. That?s smoke and mirrors.

You can do better. Just do it.

Al Thomas’ book, If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It! has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005