Investment Losses

Ron Morefield asked:


The stock market has been fairly flat since the beginning of December, and that means its a good time to assess your relationship with your investments.This is a good time to look at your entire relationship with the market. It doesn’t matter whether you trade stocks, options, commodities, or even Forex. It’s a good time for a little self reflection.

The first thing to do is determine what your actual motivation for trading is. What is the reason behind your specific strategy? Maybe your strategy is to hand your money to a major broker like Smith Barney, AG Edwards, Fidelity, or any of the others. Does that mean that your main strategy is to not deal with investing… to just give your money to someone else and let them hopefully make money for you. Maybe your strategy is to put your money with a company like Scottrade, eTrade, or Ameritrade and actually make the trades yourself. Are you doing that for the thrill of winning and losing kind of like Las Vegas? Maybe you do it to have something to impress your friends and co-workers with. It’s importantthat you understand your underlying motivations. The ones beyond the automatic response of wanting to make riches.

With that bit of self analysis under your belt, it’s an excellent time to ensure that your trading mode is in order because the market will not stay flat forever. Now is the time to put together a winning trading methodology. Here are some ideas to help you be ready for the up swing in the market.

No matter why you trade, you’ve got to divorce your emotions from your investing. If you get excited when you win and sink into the pits of depression when you lose, then you will find out that you lose and lose and lose. Really, this emotion-based trading is a lot like a compulsive gambler. So act like an android and get your emotions out of the picture.

Now that you are clear about your motivations and have your emotions out of the picture, decide on your goals for trading. There are a few basic things to think about. How much time are you ready to spend on your investments? How much ROI are you looking for? How much risk will you assume on the money you invest… in other words, how much are you willing to lose? How much are you willing to spend on learning to invest? Come up with a statement of objectives in the form, “I am ready to invest ­­____ dollars and I am looking for a ____ percent annual return on my investment where I spend ____ hours per week/month managing my investments after spending _____ dollars and ______ hours learning how to invest.”

Next you need to do some reality checking on your goals. If you are looking for a risk free investment returning 100% annually, that is not likely to be found. This is also a great time to see how effective the investment techniques you have been using really worked.

Next, come up with your overall investment strategy for moving forward. Are you going to put your money in a bank? Are you going to put some money into guaranteed municipal bonds and some into mutual funds? Get specific about how you intend to reach your objectives.

Before you actually invest a dime, you’ve got to have an investment plan. The investment plan defines when you will actually put your money into an investment and when you will take your money out of an investment. If you are investing in a stock, then this plan will tell you when you should invest in the stock. What value should it be at? What should it’s recent history look like? Does the performance of the stock meet certain technical analysis criteria? Does the company meet some fundamental analysis criteria? Your plan should also tell you when to sell the stock. That tells you the risk you are taking. If you purchase 100 shares of a stock for $50 and are only willing to risk 100 dollars, then you must exit if the stock drops by $1. That’s not a very good plan, but it gets the idea across.

Many people don’t think they need a plan for things like mutual funds or 401K plans with their company. Frankly, those are the people that lost the most between June and December 2008. The plan that you make should get you the results that you seek in terms of ROI and risk. That’s why it’s called a plan.

Successful traders follow their investment plans to the letter… and this is where the android mind comes in. If you prepared your plan correctly, then if you follow it to the letter you will get the results that you seek. It’s really strange though, that most people stop following their plan. The winning technique consists of three steps. Follow the plan, follow the plan, and follow the plan.

After you exit the investment, then you need to do a de-briefing in your own mind. Take a look at what happened, how your plan served your objectives, and what you could have done better. With this simple analytical approach to investing you will be much more successful no matter what your overall investment strategy.



JOHNATHON

bruce jack asked:


Swing trading - a swing trader looks for short-term opportunities in the market to go long at a relative low, or get short at a relative high, with the expectation of closing their position in one to several days. Swing trading involves a longer time horizon than day trading, but avoid holding an open position beyond a week or two.

Swing trading can be effectively utilized on a part-time basis, allowing a trader to also have a day job. With the sophisticated conditional orders available through most online brokerages, it is not necessary to agonize over every market tick. A stop loss order will close your trade to limit losses, while a simultaneously placed order will capture the profits from your winning positions.

Investing tips - the stock market should present you with a wide variety of NEW stocks in 2009. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the financial, energy, & communications sectors. Investing tips - mostly seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities could be extremely risky, while others are simply not as good as they look. That’s why it’s very important to know how to choose among the best especially if you want to day trade them.

Why do so many investments fall through cracks? Experts blame everything from lack of information to wrong strategy and over-confidence about the swings in the market. Here, some tips that may get you find the tracks of investments.

1. Be consistent and organized. Make thorough efforts in whatever you do.

2. Be open to all the new thoughts and get out the myths of your bag.

3. Develop your own plans and play your own games.

4. Access quality investment information available at internet.

5. Diversify your knowledge and investments plans to various channels.

Investing Journal - this newspaper company has a price – to – earnings ratio of 11.3, a price – to – sales ratio of 0.93, a 5 year average return on capital of 17.6%, and a five year average pre-tax profit margin of 27.4%. Investing Journal - the Journal Register Company has an enterprise value – to – EBITDA ratio of 9.07 and an enterprise value – to – revenue ratio of 2.24. Obviously, this company is carrying a lot of debt. So, perhaps the multiples on the common stock price are deceptive.

Investing the stock market - Stock is a share in the ownership of a company. When a private company decides to divide its business and allows the public to be a part of the firm, then it sells shares of ownership through stock offerings. For example, if a company sells one million stocks and you buy one share, then you own one-millionth of that company and vice versa.

When a company sells stocks to the public for the first time, then it is called initial public offering or new issue. One of the major reasons of selling stocks is to meet the financial needs of the company for its growth and expansion. If a company plans for expansion and if the bankers of the company feel that borrowing money would be a heavy burden, they look to investors and/or shareholders to finance the growth of the company.

Investing commodities - now, brokerage firms offer a variety of investments, including equities, bonds, CDs, REITs, mutual funds, money market funds, government treasuries, real estate, options, futures, and other derivatives. The Internet, so crucial in relaying information, is an important source of data for today’s investors. The links herein relate specifically to investments and ventures.

Charts Candlestick patterns are used by each and every kind of trader. Day trading and swing trading utilize Charts candlestick as a way to read chart patterns quickly and efficiently, while getting the same data offered charts. Professional traders love charts candlestick because they can be read much quicker than a bar chart, while also allowing a different kind of technical analysis known as charts candlestick reading.

new investors - Investing is one of the most important decisions we must take. If you are new to investing then this is the best place to start. Investment is a learning process that requires one to implement their knowledge in a proper way. It is very simple to lose money and very tough to generate money. If you want to make your first investment you should get your capital in proper order. Once you started handling you expenditures, it will be must easier to start investment.

oil etf - all of the commodity ETFs (exchange traded funds) oil is probably the most exciting, as well as the most frustrating. Until very recently, the market price of oil ETFs has been steadily rising for quite some time. Is this a direct result of the increasing price of crude oil? In many ways it is. If you had invested in oil, in any capacity, a year or more ago, you are probably quite satisfied with your returns to date.

energy etf - This means that they watch the future prices and resources of the energies. For example, oil and gasoline are futures. These energy ETFs depend on the future prices of a barrel of oil as well as how much oil is being made and stored. In other words, will there be enough supply to meet the demand. If the prediction is that there won’t be enough, then the obvious follow up is that gas prices will continue to rise. Therefore, anybody owning these energy exchange traded funds are likely to make money on them.

10000 dollars - Some of the simplest strategies work the best but having 10000 dollars today to invest can be a daunting thing to do. Most investors start at the risk profile of any potential investment and doing this is the first step in making sure your investment not only pays off, but that your seed capital stays intact and is returned to you.

invest 10000 - Some of the simplest strategies work the best but having invest 10000 dollars today to invest can be a daunting thing to do. Most investors start at the risk profile of any potential investment and doing this is the first step in making sure your investment not only pays off, but that your seed capital stays intact and is returned to you.

investing 10000 - If each share costs ten cents then you can buy 10,000 shares with $1000. And if a share rises to $12 then you can easily earn $2000 by selling those 10,000 shares. You can sell the shares for $12,000 immediately after investing $10,000. That means you have not made 20% profit but its 100% gain.



ANTOINE