Free Stock Charts - Top 10 Places to get Free Stock Charts

Why Use Stock Charts Whether you use fundamental analysis, technical analysis, astrology, or just darts on a board, every investor needs to use stock charts. Stock charts provide you, the investor, a visual depiction of a stock over "x" period of time. This allows you to assess if a stock is in an uptrend or downtrend, which levels are providing support and resistance, and a multitude of other on screen factors. In this article, I will provide you information on the Top 10 sites where you can get free stock charts. Remember, these sites provide free stock charts and the data is often delayed and may not provide all of the tools required to be a successful trader. These sites are simply intended to get you acclimated to the game, prior to taking the plunge. #10 - Prophet.com Prophet.net has a hip website design. You almost feel like you've landed on the homepage of a major broker. While Prophet's web page is attractive, the stock charts need work. The stock charts are small and often times you will find yourself squinting to see the price labels. The major positive with Prophet is the intra-day data (i.e. 1 minute, 5 minute, etc.) data going back a few weeks. #9 - Google Finance Google has designed a cool charting application in AJAX. The one thing that sets Google's stock charts apart form other charting applications is they have combined news events with the stock chart. So, when you scroll over the chart, you will see an associated news event labeled with a letter. This way you can quickly see how a news event affected the price. #8 - Yahoo Finance Like Google, Yahoo Finance has an AJAX application for their charts. But, Yahoo has a leg up on Google in the size of their message board community. Yahoo Finance has had the largest stock message board community on the web for as long as I can remember. Now, do not get carried away reading these posts, they are high in quantity, but low in quality. #7 - StockCharts.com StockCharts.com is primarily a paid service; however, they do have free stock charts. You have the ability to place up to three indicators above or below the stock chart. Charts can also be displayed as point and figure charts. There is an interactive stock chart feature that displays the charts in java, but the mouse over features are somewhat slow and choppy. #6 - Marketwatch.com Marketwatch.com has had the same stock charting service for the last 5. You can use basic charts, interactive and advanced. In order to use the java charts, it requires you to register with the site. The downside to Marketwatch is you are constantly bombarded with news, commentary, and paid advertisements. So, if you like news with your stock charts, Marketwatch is right for you; however, if you just want to look at stock charts, go elsewhere. #5 - BigCharts.com BigCharts.com is a true success story. BigCharts started out as a small company focusing on providing users with free stock charts. A few years later, BigCharts was acquired by Marketwatch and through this acquisition a ton of new features have been added to the site. For starters users are able to use three types of charts. Basic Charts - displays a simple price chart with volume below Advanced Charts - displays price chart, and allows users to select indicators, chart style and ability to compare symbols Interactive Charting - has everything in Basic and Advanced, but also allows users to draw trend lines directly on the chart BigCharts provides up to 10 years of data. Since BigCharts is now a part of Marketwatch, there is tons of free market information and news to go with the charts. Each sector is broken out separately under their markets tab, providing users the ability to quickly zone in a particular industry. Big Charts is so popular is because it does not require you to provide any information about yourself, nor try and lure you into paying for a premium charting service. It is truly free. #4 - BullChart.com BullChart.com does not have all the free technical indicators and java images for you to scroll over. But, what they do have is a tool that allows you to type in a stock symbol and then a chart will display showing the critical support and resistance levels. This is great for folks just starting in technical analysis, as it will show you the level of focus and accuracy required to analyze a stock chart. #3 - ADVFN.com Once you get pass the fact you have to register for the site, you will quickly see ADVFN is a powerful stock charting service. ADVFN is in another league, because they provide free streaming charts. This allows you to see how price action works on a stock chart, versus simply looking back at end of day data. #2 - StockConsultant.com StockConsultant.com has a unique stock charting service. Once you hit the homepage, you see a box to enter a ticker symbol; however, instead of seeing lookup next to the lookup box, it says "consult". StockConsultant then presents you a detailed diagnosis of the stock in question. Price & Volume Overall Summary - displays if the stock is bullish or bearish and the percent likely it will continue in that direction. Position Indicators Timing Indicators Resistance & Support Lines Upside Trade Downside Trade #1 - Quote.com Quote.com has a quick registration form that should take about two minutes to complete and then you can begin using the platform. Quote provides free streaming quotes and time & sales for stocks. If you don't know, this is kind of a big deal. The time & sales window shows a trader the types of orders that have been executed on a stock and their size. Time & sales is one, of if not the most critical indicators when swing or day trading. The item which separates Quote from the rest is free charts of not only the US markets, but Futures, Forex, ETFs, Mutual Funds, and the world stock exchanges. Normally this amount of data is restricted to traders with direct access brokers. Well, this rule no longer applies. You can now user your free stock charts to compete with the pros. See You at the Top, Al Hill About the Author Al Hill is the co-founder of mysmp.com (My Stock Market Power) which provides free trading articles to investors. Please visit http://mysmp.com/trading-articles.html for more free articles. Link to original article: http://www.mysmp.com/free-stock-charts.html Read More...>>

Presenting With Impact

Excuse me for paraphrasing a cliché, but you are what you write and say. Your reputation with customers or colleagues often rests on a single interaction. Whether presenting in a boardroom or conducting daily business, you may only have one shot at communicating--not just your message, but who you are. Creating Your Message: So What's Your Point? You do have one, right? And a purpose? In any communication--whether a speech, e-mail, report, meeting, cafeteria poster, or trade show hospitality suite, identify your purpose: to inform, persuade, inspire, coach, commend, warn, entertain, introduce, overcome objections, respond to concerns, or answer questions. Once you've determined your real purpose, you can shape your one-sentence message as a road map. Take a Point of View Avoid hype as a form of persuasion. But remember that the absence of hype doesn't mean the absence of opinion. Hired to help an investment company develop and shape their message, I listened to four executive vice presidents as they presented their segments of the "official" company overview. The General Counsel presented his overview of real estate investing and new regulatory laws relating to such. When he finished, I asked him, "Do you think real estate is a good investment for high net-worth individuals today?" "Absolutely," he said. "The best. For several reasons." And he listed them for me. "Why didn't you include those reasons in your presentation?" I asked. "I did." "I missed them." "Maybe they didn't come across as reasons. But the facts were there. The investor could have drawn that conclusion." "But why would you leave it to the listener to draw that conclusion?" "Well, I'm a lawyer. I didn't want to come across as a used car salesman." For the next hour, we discussed the differences between hype and a persuasive presentation. After all, his organization spent several million dollars annually flying in estate planners, financial advisors, brokers, and potential clients to persuade them to invest in real estate. Why would he not want to lead them to a conclusion? Be clear about your purpose. If you're asked just to dump information, do it. But more often than not, you're expected to take a point of view about the information you provide. That point of view involves the four S's of persuasion to make sure all your listeners arrive at the same destination: solid facts, sound logic, straightforward language, and strong structure. Translate Concepts Like "Vision," "Strategy," and "Initiatives" to Specifics If you're writing or speaking to an audience larger than one and using these vague terms, people are going to have different tasks in mind for their next week's to-do list. Vision in Asian corporations often refers to plans to be executed 20 to 50 years into the future while vision in American companies may refer to next quarter. It's not just the lower-ranking employees you address who'll want more specifics. Political candidates receive as much criticism for vagueness on implementing their campaign promises as they do for their positions on controversial issues. People demand the particulars. Remember That Facts Aren't Reasons--Don't Just Show a Scoreboard Have you ever researched a "fact" on the Internet and found contradictory data? For example: What's the literacy rate in the United States? According to the United Nations Development Programme Report 2005, the U.S. literacy rate is 97 percent. The U.S. Department of Education says it's 90 percent. The latest National Adult Literacy Survey in the United States reports that the literacy rate is between 77 and 79 percent. How about holiday spending? Family Life Communications research firm says that the average U.S. household spends $490 each year on Christmas gifts. The National Retail Federation reports that the average consumer spends $738 on holiday gifts. MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) says that the average household spends over $1,000 for gifts during the holidays. The fact is that facts can be false, wrong, misleading, or misinterpreted--purposefully or accidentally. According to Mark Twain writing in his autobiography, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Even if a fact happens to be correct, it doesn't always double as a reason. For example, a salesperson may tell me that I can buy a caseload of off-brand PDA's for a special price of $99 each to give to key clients as a gift at the end of the year to express appreciation for their business. The salesperson may interpret that fact as a reason to make the purchase: a low price, a nice gift for clients. I may interpret that same fact as a reason not to make the purchase. No matter the special price, giving an off-brand to key clients may not create a good impression and instead may make my company look cheap. Facts are just facts, until you interpret them as reasons "for" or "against" something. Make Your Facts Tell a Story To be useful, facts need to serve some sort of strategy. The only thing worse than filling up your speech, slides, e-mails, or reports with fact after fact after fact ... is not shaping them to tell your story. What story do your facts tell? What trail do the facts leave? Tell how your division exploded with the introduction of the new widget, and your headcount climbed from 3 to 68 engineers in the first two years you were in business. Then tell how you grew lax in your quality control. Tell about your reject rates. Show how the customer satisfaction numbers plummeted. Show how orders started dropping off as fast as they were logged onto the computer. Then circle back to the layoff of 58 engineers three years later. Then out of the ashes came ... Well, you get the picture ... Drama. Dialogue. Climax. Denouement. Set the scene at the trade show. How many competitors were there? How many attendees? Of those, how many did your booth attract? Why? What was the attraction--or non-attraction? What did the competitor do to drive you nuts? What kind of lead follow-up/closing ratio do you have to do after the trade show to make your competitors eat dust? Music, lights, camera, action. Facts alone will never feed the mind--at least not for long. Analogy & Metaphor: Juicy Details Deliver Big Impact Analogies lead to a conclusion based on a specific comparison and add significant impact to a factual argument. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, used this analogy in a recent report to shareholders: "Long-term thinking is both a requirement and an outcome of true ownership. Owners are different from tenants. I know of a couple who rented out their house and the family who moved in nailed their Christmas tree to the hardwood floors instead of using a tree stand. Expedient, I suppose, and admittedly these were particularly bad tenants, but no owner would be so short-sighted. Similarly, many investors are effectively short-term tenants, turning their portfolios over so quickly they are really just renting the stocks that they temporarily 'own.''' We talk about "prime real estate" in referring to the home page of a Web site or placement above the fold in a newspaper or product catalog. Many Human Resource managers talk about "cafeteria" benefits to their employees. With just one word, this analogy implies that employees have a "menu" of benefits to select from, that a "parent" has agreed to cover the "total" invoice up to a certain amount, that employees select according to "taste or preferences" from that menu. Such comparisons as these don't exactly solicit an emotional response; they simply clarify a complex concept. Metaphors, on the other hand, imply a comparison and typically evoke an emotion and a mindset. Both types of comparisons can be succinct, yet powerful ways to manage how people think about an idea or situation. If you wanted to make the point that someone was not fully engaged with his or her colleagues in a mission, you might use a war metaphor: "John ducks into his cubicle as if it were a foxhole. He needs to stick his head out occasionally and help the rest of us fight the war. Otherwise, the parent company is going to take over the entire department." If you wanted to talk about how indifference to quality customer service could destroy your business, you might put it in these terms: "Our poor customer service has become a cancer eating away at our business. I see customers walk in here and wait 10 minutes before being greeted. Then once we do help them locate what they need in the store, they have to wait again at the checkout. Then they wait again at the loading dock. The longer a customer stays in our store, it's like our cancer metastasizes rather than goes into remission." If you were making a point to your colleagues about the importance of living a balanced life, you might use a sports metaphor. "Most of us would agree life has many dimensions or tracks, all important to our overall well-being: mental, physical, spiritual. But some of us are spending all our time on one track and ignoring the rest, thinking we're going to find satisfaction and fulfillment along the way. It's not going to happen. That's like entering a triathlon and practicing only the bicycling for the three months prior to the race." Or there is always the classic command to, "Keep your eyes on the goal!" Any basketball player knows that you won't score if your eyes stray even an inch off mark. It's a simple way to remind coworkers that they won't hit something that they're not aiming for. "Dear Catherine....You are my true north." Even when taken out of context, this famous line from the movie Message in a Bottle clearly describes a powerful love. Without knowing that they are written by a sailor who lost his life tragically and that that sailor is, in fact, Kevin Costner, reading them makes you want to know the guy. The analogy paints a picture of a deep relationship in two simple words. Author Malcolm Gladwell uses the metaphor of "contagious disease" in his bestseller The Tipping Point to describe how ideas gradually "catch on" and spread in the general population. Metaphors and analogies, by their very selection, create a powerful way of thinking about an issue and often evoke a strong accompanying emotion that makes ideas memorable. Truth that Tells, Truth that Sells Learning from mistakes. Growing through change. The value of experience. Life's greatest lessons are learned by living through memorable situations, whether good or bad, and not just talking about them. That's why your mom was able to "get through to you" with stories of her high school mistakes in ways that she never would have if she had just said, "Don't do it. You'll be sorry." When presenting an agenda, giving a speech, or trying to illustrate a point, actual experiences can be as strong as cold fact. Captain Charlie Plumb, a jet fighter pilot who was shot down, forced to parachute into enemy hands, and held as a prisoner of war for nearly six years during the Vietnam War, tells a fascinating story. Several years after he was released from the POW camp, Charlie accidentally ran into the man who had packed his parachute! His story makes the point that none of us ever knows the impact we are having on the lives of others. And the point is so powerful that audiences remember it for years--even recapping it to their friends on the Internet and calling him years later to tell their own tales. Whatever your message, stories will make it stronger: courage, determination, commitment, persistence, customer service, vision, caution, change. Consider all the stories that have created the rich cultures and legendary CEOs. There's the story about the employee who made a costly mistake at IBM that cost the company $10,000, then walked into CEO Tom Watson's office to offer his resignation. Watson's famous line: "Why would I want your resignation? I just paid $10,000 for your education." Then there's the Disney story of Walt himself walking through the theme park, picking up trash. There's the story of Sam Walton driving to work every day with his lunch in a brown bag. There's the story of the Marriott bell captain giving a hotel guest his own shoes to wear for an early morning job interview. As a teenager in my first job at Six Flags over Texas theme parks, I heard stories about hosts and hostesses being sent home from work if they got a drip of chocolate ice cream on their white tennis shoes. You can be sure we didn't show up with dirty shoes and disheveled hair if we wanted to be issued a uniform for the day and keep a summer job. Such culture-creating stories still surface during my consulting projects. Perry, a financial advisor and now regional manager of a large brokerage house, encourages his trainees to use more stories in their sales presentations with clients by telling his own story of an earlier lost account. He was competing with another brokerage house for the 401(k) funds at a large hospital system in the Northeast. The hospital invited him and a competitor in to make a presentation to the group of employees, after which the employees could choose where to invest their 401(k) funds. Perry walked in with all the facts on his side--better yields, better customer service ratings, wider fund choices, more flexibility in the plans. His competitor walked in with a better presentation. She focused on a few stories of how her company got involved in the lives of their clients, helping them to achieve their personal goals, particularly in times of crisis. She walked away with 92 percent of the employee accounts; Perry, 8 percent. He attributed the loss solely to his competitor's use of stories to make her points memorable. Two years ago I heard Colin Powell address an audience in Chicago, where he captivated the crowd--not with platitudes, statistics, and studies about leadership--but with stories of leadership and what makes America great. He ended with a story about a Chicago restaurant owner and a group of foreign exchange students who couldn't pay their dinner bill for the evening. Powell's point was that the generosity of America would best be demonstrated to the world individual by individual rather than through acts of government. Read More...>>

Writing Sales Copy: Creating Opening Copy that Sings and Soars

Dear Business Builder, You've stopped your prospect in his tracks with a powerful, emotionally-driven headline and deck ... Your deck copy supports and expands upon your headline structure, adding specificity, intrigue, irony and intensity - all wrapped around powerful reasons why reading your ad is the single most important thing he could possibly do now ... Now it's time to really get his juices flowing - with powerful, emotionally driven, opening copy that makes it impossible for him to look away. And so there you sit; staring at a blank page and wondering how in the hell you're going to get the conversation started. Good thing you clicked through to this article - isn't it, Sparky? Cause that's exactly what we're going to talk about today: Seven great ways to get your body copy started with a bang! First, though, let's lay a little groundwork - with four principles it pays to keep in mind as you create your opening copy ... FIRST, your lead does not exist in a vacuum. Your prospect has read your headline and your deck. Now, he expects you to deliver on the theme you led with or the promise you just made him. When you're writing sales copy, your first few paragraphs need to deliver on your headline theme or promise immediately. You do this, and you'll deepen his interest and convert that interest to readership of your sales message. But if you make him feel as though you're changing the subject - or worse - that this is some kind of a bait and switch scam designed to trick him into reading your copy - you will lose him. SECOND, it's essential that you make friends fast. Finding ways to signal that you and your reader are in the same boat ... are of the same persuasion ... have the same frustrations or aspirations ... or that you have heartfelt empathy for his situation ... instantly positions you as a trusted friend - not a salesman. THIRD, your opening copy should come out of the starting gate faster than a thoroughbred on Derby day. Everything in life is a transaction. Your headline and deck promise your copy will reveal certain specific things that will bring value to your prospect's life - IF he'll only spend a few minutes reading your copy. Your prospect, for his part, has agreed to give you a small piece of his life - IF you deliver the value you've promised. Put simply, your prospect is "buying" the information in your copy. He is paying you with minutes of his life. So long as you begin delivering on your part of the bargain immediately, he's likely to continue reading. But if at any time, he feels he's not getting his money's worth - good value for the time he's investing with you - you will lose him. FOURTH, credibility is everything. Unbelievable claims do much more than place everything you say under suspicion - they tell the prospect he's probably wasting his time reading this. Surprising facts or propositions are great - so long as you can prove them - or at least substantiate them - instantly. If you can't prove it logically - or at the very least, attribute it to a source he trusts - don't include it when writing your sales copy. SEVEN COMPELLING CONVERSATION STARTERS OK - got the basics? Great! Now, when it comes to crafting your opening copy, there is no right way and no wrong way. There are, in fact, as many ways to write the first few paragraphs of an ad as there are copywriters, products, media and markets. Nevertheless, I do have a few favorite opening strategies that have consistently worked well for me - and for a gaggle of other top writers - over the years ... OPENING STRATEGY #1: Try the "PDR" Formula This is, perhaps the most common way copywriters launch into sales copy. And it's effective, especially when you're writing shorter sales copy - a print ad, for example. When writing the sales copy, you simply name the Problem the reader suffers from ... Dimensionalize the problem - demonstrate how serious it really is ... then offer Resolution. Here's how I recently used this approach for a health product ... If you ... >>Can't help but notice that your eyeglass prescription gets stronger every year ... >>Constantly find yourself juggling a pair of regular glasses and reading spectacles ... >>Worry that your fading eyesight could ultimately rob you of your independence and force you to say "good-bye" to your active lifestyle ... >>And especially if a doctor has told you that you may need an operation for cloudy lenses - or worse: That your retina is degenerating - the #1 cause of age-related blindness ... ... this timely bulletin is going to be a godsend for you! My name is Dr. Michael Cutler - and in the next few minutes, I'm going to show you why fading vision is NOT inevitable as you age. AND, I'm going to reveal 17 common nutrients that medical scientists have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to not only protect your eyesight but actually help restore it! OPENING STRATEGY #2: Be a Name-Dropper Invoking a common enemy or a beloved figure accomplishes three wonderful things at once: 1. It can trigger strong, actionable emotions in your prospect almost instantly ... 2. It tells your prospect that the two of you are of the same mind on a particular issue, and ... 3. It can create a topical, newsy feel, signaling that the copy that follows is as fresh as tomorrow's headlines. Some name-dropping one-liners for example ... Has Fed Chief Bernanke lost his everlovin' MIND? Hillary Clinton has plans for your health, your wealth and your life ... Marcus Welby must be spinning in his grave ... Harry Houdini couldn't get out of this one - not in a million years ... Here's another example - I wrote this one for investment analyst Sharon Parker ... I honestly don't know whether to be mad at Alan Greenspan - or give him a big kiss! On the one hand, there's no doubt that his crazy interest rate hikes killed the greatest bull market of all time ... But they also created some of the greatest bargains Wall Street has ever seen - quality stocks that could easily double, triple or even quadruple your wealth this year ... IF your reflexes are quick enough ... OPENING STRATEGY #3: The Bobble-Head Approach Some of the most successful direct response promotions ever written began with a head-nodder. Kicking off your copy with an intriguing statement you're sure your prospect will agree with is yet another great way to signal that the two of you are on the same page. And it has the added charm of intrigue - you almost have to keep reading just to see where this is headed. Examples ... Every once-in-a-while, a quick call to a broker can change your life. I've rushed you this fascinating bulletin because I'm absolutely convinced that this is one of those times ... A surgeon will gladly cut a hole right through you just to get at your wallet. If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free! Probably my all-time favorite head-nodder was actually a headline my friend Jim Rutz wrote for Phillips Health (now Healthy Directions) ... For every illness, there is a country where it simply doesn't exist. This bulletin will tell you why. After you've read this bulletin, you probably won't die of cancer ... won't die of a stroke ... won't die from a heart attack ... won't die of diabetes ... or any common condition. And we're fairly certain you'll never suffer from arthritis, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, insomnia, cataracts, glaucoma, memory loss, Alzheimer's, impotence, depression, Candida or any long-term viral disease. OPENING STRATEGY #4: Offer a Shameless Bribe Sometimes, I like to use my opening copy to "tell 'em what I'm going to tell 'em" ... directly sell my prospect on reading the copy that follows. In a promotion for Bloomberg magazine for example, I once had Michael Bloomberg, (now that he's the mayor of New York City, more commonly known as "Hizzonner") - say ... In the next few moments, I'm going to give you a critical advantage over 99.9% of all other investors. Some might even say it's an "unfair" advantage. Specifically, I'm going to give you 27 tools to cut your risk, pump up your profits and simplify all of your investment decisions. Furthermore, I'm going to invite you to accept a valuable package of the investment world's most powerful money-making tools completely without cost or obligation. More than 75,000 brokers, money managers and top investors around the world pay up to $1,500 a month for these tools. But now you, too, can use them - FREE! OPENING STRATEGY #5: Cut to the Chase Nothing is more effective at convincing your prospect that this is going to be quick, entertaining and valuable (not to mention, painless) than diving right in. In a promotion for an investment newsletter that promised to help prospects grow rich with defense stocks, my opening copy went something like this ... The new Hyper-X Scramjet screams through the sky at ten times the speed of sound - fast enough to streak from New York to Central Asia in two hours, and completely around the world eight times in a single day ... An all new, super-high-tech radar sees "invisible" stealth fighters as clear as day - and faultlessly blows them out of the sky while they're still hundreds of miles away ... An airborne "laser cannon" blasts a speeding ICBM out of the sky before the missile can even get beyond its own borders - causing it to fall back upon the country that launched it ... The U.S. government is now pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the companies behind these products - and early-bird investors are already raking in windfall profits. Here's what you must do now to get your share ... One of my favorite copywriters - Eric Betuel - recently did this under his headline "The 6 Giants of Unstoppable Global Profits" in a promo for Safe Money Report ... My name is Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D. - and I won't keep you guessing ... ... The six giants I'm talking about are China, India, Japan, Brazil, Australia and Canada. There is nothing, I repeat nothing that you do every day that is not connected to, or dependent upon, these six countries. They make the clothes you wear. They answer the phones when you call customer service. They supply the gas for your car. They build your car. They make the paste in your toothpaste. Some of them even examine your CT scans instead of your doctor. Quietly, invisibly they have penetrated every corner of your daily life ... except one: Your portfolio. If you do not hold significant investments related to these six global giants, you are already missing out on an opportunity that comes along (maybe) once every 100 years. China's stock market, for example, rose 131% last year. Ten times more than ours. You're going to learn ALL about these investments in the pages of this report ... OPENING STRATEGY #6: Try a Crossroads OPEN I often encourage you to put your prospect at a crossroads at the end of your promotion. Giving him a vivid mental image of what will happen if he declines your offer - in contrast to what happens when he accepts - is a great way to help clarify his choice for him. But sometimes, it also pays to put your prospect at a crossroads right at the beginning of your copy - by contrasting what will happen if he reads what you have to say with what will happen if he ignores your message. I, for example, once began a magalog with the following ... Ignore this sober warning, and you may as well take your savings, your investments and your retirement and kiss them good-bye. On the other hand, if you HEED the warning in these pages and act on the advice I offer you in this report, not only will you have plenty of time to insulate your wealth ... you'll have the opportunity to reap up to 450% profits in the year ahead. Tough choice - right? You can either go broke or get 450% richer! In another promotion, I actually used the word "crossroads" in my crossroads open. It went something like this ... If you owned Enron when it went belly-up last December, you lost 100% of your money. But if you had owned the often-overlooked investments we're using now, your $25,000 investment would have handed you a $232,250 PROFIT in as little as 42 days. You are now standing at the most crucial crossroads of your entire investing lifetime. Twelve months from now, you will either be crying - or laughing all the way to the bank. The choice is now in your hands. OPENING STRATEGY #7: Ask a Question A few years ago, a client told me the story of one of his subscribers who followed his options trading advice and made a bundle in less than a month. Now, when writing the sales copy, I could have just quoted the testimonial. Or, I could have cobbled together a "case history" and told his story in the third person. Instead, I decided to open my letter with a note from my client's client. My opening copy went like this ... How did it feel to casually hand the astonished teller my $120,000 deposit? ... And to see the amazement on her face when I confided I'd made that money in just 29 days? How do you think it felt? It felt GREAT ... Then, there was this opening question - a huge winner I wrote for Weiss Research ... When was the last time YOU had advance knowledge of a future event that could turn a molehill of cash into a veritable mountain of money? When was the last time you not only foresaw the event but also had strong evidence of when it was going to occur, AND knew the investments and strategies most likely to turn the even into windfall profits? That's precisely the kind of priceless knowledge that's available to you now ... I hope this helps ... About the Author Clayton Makepeace is a working direct response marketing consultant and copywriter who has helped his clients attract more than 3 million new customers ... quadruple their profits ... and rake in more than $1 billion in direct mail and internet sales. His daily e-letter, The Total Package, shares his proven response-boosting techniques with younger writers, business owners, and marketing pros. Find out more at http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com. Read More...>>

Electronic Daytrading - Free Interesting Article for Beginners

Is electronic daytrading the most dangerous form of trading? As of today, there are thousands of people who are doing quite well for themselves using electronic daytrading. Please note: The information presented in this article mainly applies to electronic daytrading. But these concepts can also be used for penny stock trading, swing trading and day trading online. What is Day Trading? Day trading is the practice of buying and selling stocks during the same day. Day trading relatively holds the stock for only the day. But don't be fooled by all the glory of day trading. Day trading is not a get-rich-quick scheme, even though some seminars do their best to sell it as one. The majority of traders fail, because they have no appreciation and they have unrealistic expectations of themselves. Day trading is like running any other kind of business. Trading is like most business: it requires commitment and perseverance. Here are some tips that will help you to succeed with electronic daytrading: No matter what the market is doing, you must demand that it moves in your favor right after you enter, otherwise you get out as close to break even as possible. Do not overtrade or be greedy. Be flexible. Go to seminars on electronic daytrading, use simulations if possible and practice reading market indicators. Pick a few classical chart patterns and specialize in trading with them. Characteristics of Successful Traders If you want to succeed with electronic daytrading, then you should do exactly what the professional traders do: Having "No Fear" to take the next and the next and the next trade no matter what. Novice traders spend all their time working on entries, while seasoned traders know that the really difficult decisions in trading involve exiting profitable positions. Winning traders understand that winning in the markets means "cash flow". Successful traders identify what type of trader they are and do not try to trade a methodology that does not fit their personality. Successful traders set tight stops to get out of losing positions quickly; and they let the winners ride out the trend. In Conclusion There is a lot of information out there for electronic daytrading. Learn exits and entries separately. If you lost, analyze the situation and identify where you have been wrong. If you are starting out as a trader with the intention of developing your discipline puts you way ahead of the average trader. Read More...>>

Investing Make Money Online-Start Profiting Today With Your Investing

If you're looking to start investing to make money online, you aren't alone. Many investors are turning to the internet to conduct their investing activity. However, before you get started with your investing, here are some important tips you need to know to not only know where you want to get, but to also know some common pitfalls to avoid. First of all, investing to make money online can be very dangerous, because your stock information is updated constantly. Why is this bad? Quite simply, the more easily you can access and check your stock information, the more likely you are to be tempted to become an active trader. Many people are enamored with the exciting, up and down world of active trading and investing to make money online, but the truth is, far more people lose in this game than win. Remember, every single time you make a transaction, you have to pay the broker a fee. That cuts at your profits (and losses) right there when investing to make money online. Therefore, the more transactions you make, the harder it becomes immediately to make money. Also, when you invest for the short term, it is extremely hard to make money for one simple reason: short term, the stock market is a voting machine. A stock price will react to many factors that often times don't reflect how the company is doing, such as whether the majority of investors are buying or selling. However, long term the market always values a company according to its overall profitability. Therefore, if you train yourself to get good at reading financial statements, determining the overall health of a company, and then mapping out its future profitability, you can virtually pick your return on investment over the long haul (it will vary slightly year to year). As Warren Buffet says, the key to investing is to find a well run company that has good future long term prospects, and invest for the long term. Of course, when you invest short term, you can't do this, because nobody knows what a stock price is going to do short term. The bottom line: if you are looking to start investing to make money online, be vary wary of active trading. Yes, it can work, but you are much more likely to make a significant profit when you invest and hold your money for the long term. Read More...>>

Stock Trading Tips

Making a profit in today's money market economy requires cautious calculation, knowledge of the financial environment, and a little luck. Even if you don't believe in the latter, online stock trading is a huge investment opportunity for many, and a daring endeavor for day traders. Before choosing a particular online stockbroker, it's imperative to consider these key points. Investment Options-Go with a site that provides multiple stock options, mutual funds, CDs, IRA rollovers and things of that nature. TD Ameritrade is a great source for stocks, bonds and all things finance. Trading Platform-Consider the usability and intuitiveness of the online stock trading platform you're signing up with. For example, Schwab Active Trader utilizes StreetSmart Pro® and gives traders streaming market data in a simple, yet sophisticated custom display view. Investment Outlooks-To trade successfully, you need continuously updated, extensive real-time stock charts and quotes. Zecco lets you customize 'Watch Lists' and even has their own 'Gainers,' 'Losers,' and 'Most Active's' to help you out. Ease of Use-Online stock trading isn't for the faint at heart, but doesn't require expert knowledge to acquire an understanding of it. Sharebuilder, for instance, targets both novice and professional traders with their user-friendly site and minimal investment requirements. While the market incessantly fluctuates, and one good day on Wall Street could turn into an investor's nightmare the next, trading online greatly assists those building their portfolios. TD Ameritrade offers extended hours trading for those working a longer day, and online stock trading services such as eTrade provide real-time streaming stock quotes. You may just become a Dow Jones junkie while having fun in the process. Read More...>>

5 Mental Conditioning Tips For Option Traders

Too many option traders fail because they load themselves with tons of option trading knowledge but do nothing to ensure that their emotions don't get in the way. Yes, more than 95% of the option traders out there fail because of a complete lack of discipline and ability to control their emotions. Nothing tests the emotions of traders more than trading stock options. Stock options move much more than its underlying stock in terms of percentage due to its leverage effect, frequently testing the emotional capacity of option traders, particularly those who follow a day trading methodology. If you find yourselves having a burning desire to get out of a trade the moment it turned red, if you find yourselves having sleepless nights worrying about your trades, if you have lost money doing all the wrong things at the wrong time only to regret later, then you definitely have an emotional problem. Here are 5 tips every option trader can use to ensure a healthier mindset and mental health while option trading: 1. 8 Hours Of Sleep A Day! Yes! This is the most basic of all mental conditioning! Have ample rest! Many option traders who trade the US markets from the other side of the globe at night and option traders who do their research at night are high risk groups. Over time, your mind and body grows weary and tired. You become hot tempered and do all the wrong things and say all the wrong things at the wrong time.... And lose money. 2. Set Aside Time Especially For Option Trading Nothing tests the patience of an option trader more than option trading while doing something else. Many option traders who trade during office hours secretly on their computer terminals frequently find themselves nervous. That nervousness dramatically increases the probability of doing something wrong. If you are a working adult, use long term option strategies which allow you to manage your positions only during after office hours. Go to http://www.optiontradingpedia.com/options_strategy_library.htm for a list of option strategies. 3. Understand Your Trading Style Every option trader has a dominant character trait. Your character trait determines what option strategies are suitable for you. Please visit http://psychometric.mastersoequity.com and find out what your trading style is. 4. Enjoy Your Weekends I cannot finish naming those option traders I know who spend all weekend staring at their computer monitor, going through the trades for the week, trying to find out what's wrong, reading charts and news. After a stressful weekend in front of the computer, an equally stressful option trading week starts. All professional option traders know that weekends are for taking your mind totally off the market and enjoy time with your loved ones. 5. Find Support Nothing helps an option trader maintain a healthy mindset more than the support of family, loved ones and a good mentor. Making sure your spouse supports you in option trading and understanding when money is lost is one of the most critical aspects of keeping a healthy mindset. A good mentor will also be able to counsel you and tell you where you went wrong so that you never have to spend endless stressful hours pondering. Read More...>>

Amazing price the Silencer delivers performance

The Worth Silencer combines a perimeter weighted plug, with a high performance 7050 Whiplash frame to produce 5 percent more inertia. Giving the hitter more of a whack to ball as it goes over fence. Combining these technologies produces a trampoline and whiplash effect. Gives beginners to pros a well investment for their money and time. Durability is the big plus for the Silencer. It is well designed to be put through the punishes of all hitters. Long lasting performance with durability is a win win situation with the Silencer. The leather Gripping the Silencer offers gives the batter a swing they will never forget. The comfortable grip allows the batter to sustained his hands after hitting a bad spot. With every swing there is a greater comfort. The Silencer delivers the winning run when the team needs one to win. Its enlarged sweet spot assures you the ball will have an effect that no one has seen before. Two toned paint job from Akzo gives the Silencer its masculant look that gives the competitors shaking in their cleats. Being approved with most major associations the Silencer is a great buy. You couldn't ask for a better price for the performance of the Silencer. Competitors sell high but we know how to sell them just right. Silencer has a two toned finish that scares the competitors away. Have you ever seen this kind of finish on a bat? Akzo is responsible for the design of the bat. The Silencer is well manufactured to give new players of the game a run for their money. Approved by most major associations. Read More...>>

The Logic Of Investing

One of the things I have noticed during the 20 years I have spent either actively investing in various strategies, or trialling them, is that the ones which make logical sense usually are the ones which work best in real life. Lets face it, you could spend 2 life times trialling all the investment strategies people offer you. There are so many out there, and I am sure most of them have merit. What I have found though (and this in no way passes judgement on the merits of any investment strategy) is that if I really think logically about many of the investment strategies which have come my way, there often are holes in them... big ones at that too. Its quite possible that these strategies, in their wholeness work quite well. But the problem is that if you are trading a strategy which has holes in the logic, at some stage you'll come up against a real life situation where the strategy has no answer. Then you'll be on your own and you'll need to make a decision. When I am in this situation, where I have to make a decision about a strategy I am trading, because the strategy does not offer me guidance, I believe I am gambling. This is not good. I may make the right decision, but then again, I may lose my money. In all good investment strategies, you should not have to do this. You should simply plan the trade, and then trade the plan. There should not be room for guess work. At TheOnlyWay.com.au, we have found 2 investment strategies, the logic of which is as close to flawless as you are likely to find. This is why we like these strategies, this is why we trade these strategies successfully, and this is why we recommend these strategies. Here is a summary of what they offer: Foreign Exchange Trading: Our FX Trading Strategy can be summarised by the following points: - Our holdings are always counter-active. Therefore, our overall position is insulated against short term adverse swings in the market, in any particular currency. - We admit to not knowing for sure, whether our currencies will go up or down, so we set our trades to take advantage of both directional swings - we ensure we make large positive interest income on our positions, everytime we enter the market, on our entire leveraged holdings. This is additional income to our trading proifits. Here is some more detail on our Foreign Exchange Trading strategy: Foreign Exchange Trading Strategy Stock Market Trading - We choose only the top 150 companies in the stock market, as these tend to be the more safe and stable companies. - Every month, we place a trade which will pay us some additional cash, just because we own those stocks (No, this cash is not a dividend payment, and it happens monthly) - As we get paid this cash, per stock we own, every month, we actually reduce the risk of our holding, while earning more money (Ie. if we buy some stocks at $20.00, and get paid $0.50 per share in the first month, we have a lower risk on this blue chip stock as our "break even" point is now $19.50. Here is some more detail on our Stock Market Trading strategy: Stock Market Trading Strategy Remember, at TheOnlyWay.com.au, we are actively trading these strategies today. Its all in our promise to you which is detailed here: Our Promise To You So if you have any real life questions about these strategies, or any other on our website, contact us today. Read More...>>

Simple Moving Average (SMA) - Technical Indicator

How to Calculate the Simple Moving Average - SMA The Simple Moving Average is the most basic of the moving averages used for trading. The Simple Moving Average is calculated by taking the average closing price of a stock over the last "x" periods. For example, the last five closing prices of MSFT over the last 5 days are: 28.93+28.48+28.44+28.91+28.48 = 143.24 5-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) = 143.24/5 = 28.65 How to Make Money Trading with the SMA Most traders will tell you to simply trade the crossover of the Simple Moving Average and the profits will drop from the heavens. Well, unfortunately this is not accurate. Often time's stocks will wick over or under moving averages to only continue in the primary direction. This will leave you on the wrong side of the market and down on your positions. Below are a few ways to make money trading the SMA. Going with the Primary Trend Look for stocks that are trending up or down strongly Apply the following SMAs 5,10,20,40,200 to see which setting is containing price the best Once you have identified the correct SMA, wait for the price to test the SMA successfully and look for price confirmation that the stock is resuming the direction of the primary trend Enter the trade on the next bar Fade the Primary Trend Using Two Simple Moving Averages Locate stocks that are trending up or down strongly Select two Simple Moving Averages to apply to the chart (ex. 5 and 10) Make sure the price has not been touching the 5 SMA or 10 SMA excessively in the last 10 bars Wait for the price to close above or below both moving averages in the counter direction of the primary trend on the same bar Enter the trade on the next bar Cons of Using Simple Moving Average The Simple Moving Average takes the raw average of the last "x" closing prices. The SMA does not weight recent price movements any differently then the first price move in the series. Hence, the Simple Moving Average will lag the price quite often and should never be used to make trading decisions independently of other technical analysis indicators. See You at the Top, Al Hil Read More...>>

TradeStation - review of the powerful TradeStation Platform

I am currently using the TradeStation platform to day trade. The ability to back test-trading strategies is what first attracted me to TradeStation. Another benefit of TradeStation is the ability to trade equities, futures, options, and forex from one trading platform. So, if you are interested in TradeStation, please read my review before you make any final decisions. Strategy Testing Easy Language TradeStation gives you the power to right code in Easy Language in order to back test your trading strategies. Now, while the name of the code is Easy Language, it is far from easy. If you have previous coding experience, then Easy Language will remind you a lot of C++, but if you have no previous coding experience, do not waste your time on trying to learn the syntax. Simply look to their third-party programmers for assistance. These developers are backed by TradeStation and they do not charge and obscene amount of money. Better yet, if you have a friend or relative that knows how to write code, they will quickly be able to write basic strategies for you. TradeStation provides some basic literature on Easy Language, but if you want to really get your feet wet, you will have to purchase their home study course, which will run you a cool $149. Again, if you are here to trade, trade, and leave the developing to the programmers. Historical Market Data TradeStation has over 25 years of historical data. When you look a little closer, the amount of data is dependent upon which investment vehicle you are using: 4 years of intra-day Forex data 8 years of Eurex Futures and Index Data 16 years of intra-day Equities 25 years on intra-day Futures data So, the real question is do you need all this data from TradeStation. Well, of course, if you are serious about testing your trading strategies. This amount of market data will allow you to back test your strategies in bull, bear and flat markets. You will quickly see how you would have faired in the bull market of the late 90's, or the slippery slope down in '01 and '02. Most importantly, you can see how you would have done since the market recently bottomed in the spring of '03. Automated Trading I do not endorse mechanical trading, as I feel every trader should be responsible for his or her own trading decisions, but I have to admit, having the option of setting up automatic trading is impressive. In order to activate this feature, you should be certain that your strategy is working properly and has clear stop rules. The last thing you want is to take lunch and come back to realize you just bought a 10 thousand dollar hotdog. TradeStation also has a new feature that allows you to execute orders based on fundamental analysis. TradeStation is the first platform capable of scanning and executing orders based on fundamental factors. Back testing Strategies There is one part of back testing that TradeStation does not tell you about and that is slippage. When you write your Easy Language code, you can tell the code to exit a trade on the close of the current bar, or ext at market on the open of the next bar. The problem is you may want to write the code to get out at a specific price. Now, all of you Easy Language experts out there, please relax, I know that you can write code to get out at any particular price, but the average trader will not know how to write such detailed code. So, in summary remember that if you write your own code, the canned functions in Easy Language will not allow you to easily code your exits. Just make sure you verify in your performance report that your results have not been inflated or deflated due to slippage. TradeStation will display a report of your hypothetical trading results. The TradeStation performance report lists everything from average time in trade, average gain, total commission, annual rate of return to name a few. Only problem, you cannot export the data to excel. So, one is forced to manually type in stats into your friendly worksheet processor. Depending on how much information you want to analyze, this exercise could prove to be time consuming. Trade Execution TradeStation has the quick order button execution of every other active brokerage firm. But the cool thing with TradeStation is the Order Cancels Order (OCO) and Order Stages Order (OSO) order types. For Order Cancels Order, you can instruct TradeStation to enter a position if the price breaks up or down. This works well when you have identified two levels on a stock as potential long or short entries depending on how the price breaks. The Order Stage Order allows you to stage multiple orders for an existing position. So, if you are long MSFT and want to exit in 3 increments, you can create an OSO order which will stage the orders and when a certain price is hit, it will exit a part of your position at a specific limit. I often hear traders say that they do not want to put a stop in, because if there limit is hit, they will have to cancel their open stop order, to then put in a limit order to exit the trade. Well, with OSO in you can place both a stop and up to 3 limit orders in TradeStation, so there is no longer any excuse as to why you can not protect your capital, the second you get in the trade. Shorting TradeStation does not have the books to short some of the more obscure stocks. So, if you want to short stocks that are not well known, you may encounter some trouble with TradeStation. This does not happen often, but it happens enough that it is noticeable. Charting The charts in TradeStation are in real-time and there are over a hundred indicators, show me, paint bars, etc. which can be displayed on the chart. The only negative is that you cannot execute trades by clicking directly on the chart. There are multiple screens in TradeStation that will allow you to close a position; unfortunately, the chart is not one of them. Ability to Link Accounts TradeStation has the ability to link all of your accounts. Therefore, you can trade futures, one minute and then put on a trade in your equities account the next. This is extremely convenient, since you do not have to open another application or go through the tedious process of logging into another account. Commission Structure If you are an active trader and you trade under 1k shares per lot, TradeStation makes sense. TradeStation has a per share cost up to 500 shares. The first 500 shares are $.01. So you can buy 100 shares for a $1 and up to 500 shares for $5. Over 500 shares, it is $.006 per share. So, if you trade 3k shares, TradeStation can become costly. The first 500 shares will cost 5 bucks and then the last 2.5k shares will run you another 15 bucks. The total cost would be 20 dollars one-way for the trade. In this example, it of course would be much cheaper to trade with a brokerage firm that has a flat charge for all trades. In summary, if you are going to trade in big lots, 1k or more, go with a flat fee brokerage firm, but if you're going to trade under 1k lots, TradeStation is the place for you. Support Center TradeStation has a support and discussions forums, where traders share ideas, stories and Easy Language code. Unlike many forums, where there are only a few users, the TradeStation forum has hundreds of quality posts. I have been able to pickup tons of ideas as well as free Easy Language code for some of my strategies. Each post is grouped in categories and the users are quick to respond to your questions. TradeStation has also recently started a Wiki for both their platform as well as Easy Language. The Wiki is expanded daily. TradeStation also has a dependable phone support staff. I have yet to call and not be able to get someone on the line with in 15 - 30 seconds. The staff is always attentive and willing to help on any issue. There is a sales desk, equities desk, futures desk, and forex desk. Each department specializes in their respective areas, which prevents you, the client, from ever talking to someone who is unknowledgeable on how to address your issue. Radar Screen TradeStation is the only trading platform, which has a radar screen that can scan the market based on your own market criteria. Now this is not your standard, scan that can display stocks with an RSI under 30. The scan in Radar Screen can be as simple or as complicated as your Easy Language abilities will permit. So, if you want to look at stocks at 2-day highs, with 25k shares per minute, that are up a minimum of 2%, you can scan the market for this information in real-time. The only negative regarding Radar Screen is TradeStation only allows you to scan the market for 1k stocks. But, who needs to monitor more than 1k stocks? See You At The Top, Al Hill About the Author Al Hill is the co-founder of mysmp.com (My Stock Market Power) which provides free trading articles to investors. Please visit http://mysmp.com/trading-articles.html for more free articles. Read More...>>

Commercial Real Estate: What's the Optimum Acquisition Strategy?

In our line of work, doing consulting for different high net worth real estate investors, we come across all types all types of commercial real estate acquisition strategies. Some commercial real estate investors want to invest in only apartment buildings. Some investors wouldn't touch apartment building if their life depended upon it because they think, as a whole, apartment buildings are over priced at this point in time. Some commercial real estate investors want to invest in low-income housing. Others wouldn't touch low income housing with a ten-foot pole, because they don't want the headaches of collecting the rent and the abuse the property receives. Some commercial real estate investors want to invest only in real estate where there's an existing tenant to create cashflow. Others would prefer not have an existing tenant because they don't want to pay the premium for the property. As you can imagine, we could go on and on. What's fascinating is the seeming contradiction between the different strategies. One investor's ceiling is another investor's floor. But after reviewing the detailed business plans of literally hundreds of commercial real estate investors, there IS a common denominator to the strategy for their real estate ambitions. Here it is in a nutshell: First, they have a long-term plan. They are NOT opportunistic, looking at every single deal that crosses their path. They know their exact acquisition strategy. Whatever acquisition strategy they have, it fits into their overall wealth building strategy. Yes, that may be common sense on paper, but in reality most commercial real estate investors, especially new ones, tend to shoe horn in whatever deal they are contemplating into their long-term plans. They first key is that the strategy must drive the acquisitions, not the other way around. That's why you see some people sell off their entire portfolios of hodge podge properties. It's a pain in the neck to corral them and so they try to get an unsuspecting person to take the winners and with the losers. The second key strategy is they do their market research. Stated differently, they know the market or area they want to make an acquisition in. It's common knowledge for instance, that the major retailers know where the best locations are in the country. They just don't put a store where think it will do well. They put it up where they KNOW it will do well. How do they know? They do their own research. They understand what PRIME retail space is to them based upon their needs down to the traffic patterns, congestion, local merchants and the specific growth areas within a community. Now, some people think market research is ONLY for big companies; that it doesn't apply to them. If market research is one of the things you have a challenge doing, then you should look at it this way: · Do you want to get the best deal on a piece of real estate? · Do you want to be able to charge the highest amounts for rent or get the best price when it comes time to sell? · Do you want to eliminate the risk of making an inappropriate acquisition? Well, then you should become an expert at doing your research. The third key strategy we've noticed is that commercial real estate investors rarely make an outright offer, unless it is a sweetheart deal. They prefer to submit to the seller a document called a Letter of Intent. It's an informal offer. It's an offer, which usually carries no penalty to either party if the deal doesn't go through. The purpose of the letter of intent is to allow the seller time to do specific due diligence on the property in regards to zoning, entitlement, infrastructure, etc. Unlike residential real estate, the commercial real estate market is "buyer beware". The due diligence process is performed so that the acquisition will allow the buyer to submit a formal offer with full knowledge of what he or she is buying. The fourth key strategy is that they want to understand the math of a deal. Does the deal make sense? Is it doable? You can execute the other three strategies flawlessly, but if the math won't work, you'll make a huge blunder. There are dozens of different strategies for commercial real estate. Obviously, one size does not fit all. But hopefully, implementing these four acquisition strategies can make a profound difference in your commercial real estate wealth building success. About the Author Anthony Seruga and Yolly Bishop of Maverick Real Estate Investments, Inc. work with builders, developers and other players in the commercial real estate industry to acquire and develop properties. They use progressive investment strategies that have proved extremely profitable. In addition to their own deals, they teach both seasoned and inexperienced investors how to be big players in the game. Visit the website for more info. Read More...>>

Make or Break Your Options Trade

There are 2 factors that experienced options traders believe affects the success of any option trader - the strike price and the time to expiration. Most beginners prefer to choose to buy the least expensive and out-of-the-money options (I will explain in a bit what this means), which expire one month later. The reason they prefer to do so is because of the low cost of this type of options. However, this is probably the worst way to trade an options because the majority of these type of options become "worthless" at expiration. Out-of-the-money (OTM) options are options that are further away from the current market stock price. Let's use Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) again as an example. If MSFT is trading today at $30, a $40 strike price of a call option is OTM (remember a call option? If not, read my blog here: http://lazyguyoptiontrader.com/learning_to_trade_options). A $25 strike price is in-the-money (ITM), and a $30 strike price is at-the-money (ATM). Basically these terms represent how far the strike price is from the current market price. When buying cheap, out-of-the-money calls, time is our fiercest enemy. Every day, even if the underlying stock is unchanged or up a fraction, the time premium is slowly slipping away. As time goes by, our fear of losing more money increases. That fear can cause sleepless nights and make us do odd things, such as selling the option to salvage what we have left just before it becomes profitable. Being right but losing money is one of the worst feelings an option trader can experience. Almost all beginners, including myself, make similar mistakes. Novices usually end up losing money and sleep. Or they will act under pressure to sell some put options for a slight loss two days before the options reverses direction and could have handed us beginners a nice profit. The hard knocked education of losing money has changed the way I now play the options market. I started learning from the professionals simple technical analysis of the underlying stock. Some of the simpler analysis includes determining the overall trend of the stock using 50- and/or 200-day moving averages, along with support and resistance levels (previous highs or lows, moving averages, retracement levels, etc.). I will talk more about these in future blogs. The essence is to buy a call as close to support as possible, or buy a put as close to resistance as possible. That way, your risk is minimal because a break below support or above resistance gets you out of the trade with a reasonable loss. Once I've declared my option strategy, choosing the strike price and time to expiration are paramount. Time erosion is one of my main concerns. So, I look at the options chain to determine which in-the-money-option with little or no time premium is closest to the price of the underlying stock. Here's an example taken from one of the newsletters that I subscribed to which perfectly illustrates the above example: In late January, Safeco (ticker symbol: SAFC) triggered a sell signal and the RSI (relative strength) fell below 50. It then dropped below its 50- and 200-day moving averages. The stock could not make much headway after reaching its February lows, despite a strong showing by the Dow and S&P. So, I looked for a spot to buy some puts. On March 19, SAFC traded up to its 50-day moving average and the RSI was close to the 50 line (bullish above, bearish below). The stock was trading at $52.70 and the April $55 put was $2.30-$2.60. Although I did pay a 30-cent time premium, the leverage was much better than buying the April $60 put. The only problem with playing in-the-money options more than one month out is that the liquidity can be low. That can mean a large spread between the bid and ask. In cases like that, you may have to choose an option that is not ideal. All we can do is use the best strategy available. Your exit point would be a break above $53.50, which would produce about a $1 loss. But if it reaches the target of about $49.40, it should produce more than a 100% gain. Losing sleep over my trades is now a thing of the past. Patrick Lim Up, up, and away! About the Author Patrick Lim operates www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com, a blog about his personal journey to take $50,000 to turn it into $1,000,000 in 5 years. He likes to share the strategies he uses to try to accomplish his goal and is now giving away a FREE article he wrote about how to make a quick profit during times of market volatility. Join him on his journey and get FREE tips and strategies at: http://www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com Read More...>>

The ABC's of options trading

Well, we have to start somewhere on our journey. So forgive me if I'm going to assume that we are all beginners to the world of stock and options trading. Options can be very confusing for a beginner. There are terms that are foreign to many investors who are only familiar with stocks - such as call and puts, beta, theta, gamma, strike, covered call, etc. Let's start from the beginning. I think one of the easiest way to start learning is go to the Finance section of www.yahoo.com and let's use Microsoft Corporation (Ticker Symbol: MSFT) as a guide to our options education. On the left hand menu, select Options. Now you should see the option page for Call Options and Put Options. Call Options is defined as the right, but not the obligation, to buy the stock at the strike price prior to expiration. Put Options is defined as the right, but not the obligation, to sell the stock at the strike price prior to expiration. Now we have to define "Strike Price". A strike price is the price that you can exercise the stock irregardless of the current market price. Say for example the current market value of a Microsoft stock is $30.00. You purchase one call option at a strike price of $35 with an expiration date of September 2007 which is two months away. Let's say for example the stock price of Microsoft rose to $40 after one month. Now you are ready to profit from the call option you purchased one month ago. Your call option gives you the right to buy the Microsoft stock at $35.00 and turn it around to sell the stock at the market value of $40.00, which gives you a profit of $5 per stock (not taking into account fees incurred). So in a nutshell, when you buy a call option, there is another person out there who is selling that call option. So if the call option increase in value due to the rise of the stock price, you would exercise that call option by one of 2 ways to profit - 1. Exercise the call option by purchasing the shares from the seller at the strike price and turn around and sell it to the market at the market price, thus pocketing the difference, 2. Sell the call options itself, not the stock. The intrinsic value of the options has risen up due to the rise in the stock price. This way you do not need to come up with funds to purchase the stocks from the seller. All you need to do is sell the call options contract using the same brokerage firm that you bought the call options contract. Of course, the example provided above are just simplistic scenario. Many other factors can come into play to affect the profitability and loss of investing in options, such as volatility, and greeks such as beta, gamma, theta, etc. I will provide more education on these other factors but today, you just learned the ABCs of options. About the Author Patrick Lim operates www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com, a blog about his personal journey to take $50,000 to turn it into $1,000,000 in 5 years. He likes to share the strategies he uses to try to accomplish his goal and is now giving away a FREE article he wrote about how to make a quick profit during times of market volatility. Join him on his journey and get FREE tips and strategies at: http://www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com Read More...>>

The Lazy Guy Road to Riches using Options Trading

I was not always a lazy guy. In fact, I have come a long way (ok, maybe 4 years is not that long for some of you) learning to analyze stocks and trade options, with bumps and failures along the way, to finally earn a consistent second income and achieve an average of 78% winning rate month by month. So why do I call myself the lazy guy options trader? Like most folks reading this, I have a full time job not related to options trading, I have a wonderful family to spend my precious time with, I have a religion to worship, and I have other hobbies. How can I afford the short precious time allocated to people to learn to trade options, study technical charts, read financial news, study companies' financial reports, etc, etc, and etc? That's why I had to figure out how to successfully trade options the fast and the furious way - the lazy guy way! So do I consider myself a successful options trader? Well, the quick answer is it depends. Success is in the eye of the beholder. I would consider myself relatively successful because I have been able to keep the probability of my successful trades (meaning profitable trades) at about 78% with about 22% unsuccessful trades (meaning it sucks to lose money). This has been a consistent track record in the last year plus. My trading strategies are meant to keep my losses to a minimum (meaning I know what is the most I can lose even before I get into the trade) while my gains are unlimited (I had one gain of close to 140% return in less than 2 weeks. Too good to be true? That's exactly what I have been saying to myself too ;). I also make sure that I don't risk more than 10% of my trading money in any one trade. Lastly, I diversify my trading. I use different strategies such as bull-call spread, iron condor, bear-put spread, or straight calls or put options. On good months, I bring home a high 4 figures profit (I made more in my options trading during those good months than my full time job!!). Most likely, my profits average between the high 3 to mid 4 figures monthly (no bad considering that I still keep a full time job that is quite demanding of my time). The key here is to win more than you lose, and win bigger than your losses. And to think that I only started with $100 to invest in the stock market 7 years ago (yup, I got burned during the dotcom bust too, but only for a couple thousand dollars. I've heard horror stories of people losing 6 or 7 figures). I thought long and hard over why I want to create this blog for anyone that wants to learn how to trade options. I guess the biggest reason is because I feel like I have something worthy to share. At my workplace, I realize that none of my colleagues have any real knowledge about options trading. The reason they gave me is that options trading are too risky and that you lose more than you win. When I ask them about their experience with options trading, well guess what, they either don't have any or they lost some money in their one and only option trade and concluded that options trading is too risky. What bothers me the most is people approaches their trades like teenagers finding a date. They don't bother to do their research first and it's a hit or miss type of game. Enough is enough. There are so many misconceptions about options trading and I am on a quest to dispel these myths. Yes, it is true options trading can be risky. However, it is only as risky as the trader's knowledge, skills, and discipline. A lot of beginners place huge bets on an option, or they borrow on margin, and when things don't go well, they lost everything. I don't call that options trading, I call that gambling. Sign up for my newsletter and I will take you on my own personal journey of stock and options trading. I will share the strategies that I am using, the lessons I've learnt, and I'll even talk about the trades that I'm currently in or about to do. Part of the reason I'm doing this is for my own selfish reason, and that is to talk myself into not making the mistakes I've made before. However, my main goal is for all my readers to realize that option trading can be profitable and fun to learn. I do want to add a word of caution and disclaimer (in case someone thought they'll sue me because they misunderstood my blogs and plunk their entire savings in a penny stock option and lose their shirt). I am not a licensed investment advisor. I do not claim to have the holy grail of investing, so please invest at your own risk. I do not, and would not, claim responsibility if you chose to act upon my advice or suggestions or follow my trades and lost money in your trades. Of course, I do not claim responsibility for your profitable trades too, because you really owe it to yourself to do your own due diligence and any gain or loss is your own responsibility. I do, however, take responsibility in providing you a factual and quality content in my blogs. Option trading is not a get rich quick scheme. If you expect it to be so, then please don't sign up. You will learn to trade options the lazy guy way, but that doesn't mean that there are no action on your part to be a successful option trader. Let our journey begin..... Patrick a.k.a PJ Up, up, and away! About the Author Patrick Lim operates www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com, a blog about his personal journey to take $50,000 to turn it into $1,000,000 in 5 years. He likes to share the strategies he uses to try to accomplish his goal and is now giving away a FREE article he wrote about how to make a quick profit during times of market volatility. Join him on his journey and get FREE tips and strategies at: http://www.LazyGuyOptionTrader.com Read More...>>

Forex Trading: An Investors Dream?

Forex trading has become one of the most popular tools for traders and investors today. In this market, forex trading has given many the opportunity to trade a market that was once dominated by large banks, multinational corporations, central banks and governments. The average retail trader now has the tools and leverage to allow them to make a move in the currency market. Forex trading is done in the world's largest financial market. $2.5 trillion dollars are exchanged each day and there is no time restriction for when a trader or investor can place an order. The forex market is also unregulated unlike the New York Stock Exchange. Market hours for the forex start from Sunday 7:00 pm EST and close Friday at 5:00 pm EST. There are four major sessions that have the most volatility. These sessions are the London session, US session, Tokyo session and Singapore session. This constant availability of the market gives the forex trader a huge advantage of being able to open and close positions without the worry of markets closing and after hour trading to take place. Also leverage plays a huge part for forex trading. Most people would like to invest in certain markets but are not able to, due to the lack of capital they have to be able to open positions. Forex offers such leverages as 1:400 where you can hold positions that would normally cost you your whole life's earnings. Now the small retail trader can start trading at some places with as much as $250. Now is this a smart idea? Not really, because like any investment there is risk and starting with small capital leaves you very little room for a mistake. Many people are tapping into this market to gain them the wealth they have always desired. Now the small guys can get into the game and make something of it. About the Author To learn more about Forex Trading and what this market could do for your investment portfolio try visiting http://www.forextrading101.info/ . Here we show you what the forex market is all about in a simple to understand way. Read More...>>

Taking Trading Responsibility

Do you find yourself blaming the markets? The trading system that you've purchased online that promises you profits from trading? Do you blame everyone and everything for your trading results? If you can identify with the above scenario, I can tell you're probably in a world of hurt and losses. It's always easier to blame the markets, people and systems for your trading failures. After all, it's always someone else's fault but your own. However, if you don't take responsibility for your trading results, the truth of the matter is that you'll never get anywhere closer to being a consistently profitable trader. Why? Taking Responsibility For Your Results If it's always someone else's fault for your losses, but always your intelligence and ability for your wins, the truth is you're going always have your trading accounts blown out of the water sooner or later. Why? Because by avoiding taking responsibility for the losing as well as the winning trades, it makes it difficult to manage and reduce trading errors that result in the losing trades. If you look at it, who's in charge of pulling the trigger on the entries and exits of your trade? Your broker, or you? The trading system that you're studying, or you? Who else has access and enters the trades in your account other than you? If the answer is you, and only you, then it's the smart thing to do by taking responsibility for the results in your trading account. Why is it the smart thing? By taking responsibility for your trading results, you are in essence telling yourself that everything that happens to your trading account is a result of the decisions you made and actions that you took. The bad side of it is that if your account statements have been nothing but dropping every month, you realize that you're a terrible trader. The good side of it is, since the state of your trading account is a result of your decisions and actions, by changing your decisions and actions you will change the future state of your trading account. By taking responsibility, you are taking back control of your trading. When you take back control of your trading, you can do something about the results. Start examining the trades that you took, the reasons why you entered, why you exited, and overall how you managed your trading account. You'll start to see the blind spots in your trading behavior that you've never noticed before. That's great, because now you can do something about them. When you find out the real reasons for your trading results, you can do something about them to take you one step closer to being a consistently successful trader. Once you take responsibility for your trading results, and realize that you and only you are in control of your trades, you are starting the journey towards becoming a consistently profitable and successful trader. And as you examine yourself as a trader, sooner or later down this path you will become a successful, and really really smart trader. So if you really want to be a consistently profitable trader, don't give up. Just get smarter. About the Author Ryan Lee Daniels runs a website dedicated to Forex Trading Education. Read More...>>

Trading Penny Stocks - High Risk Equals Big Profits

The definition of a penny stock is any stock that is trading under the price of $5.00 per share. These stocks are high risk to trade and usually move based on speculation. However, if you can find the right ones to trade they can be very profitable. The best penny stocks to trade are the OTCBB (Over the Counter Big Board) and the Pinksheet stocks. This is because stocks that trade in the major markets (NYSE, NASDAQ, etc.) are most likely stocks from companies that are losing money or have little growth potential. Also, OTCBB and Pinksheet stocks are most likely newer companies developing a product and once they are established they will move to one of the major markets. When screening for a good penny stock to trade you should look for positive single day movers with higher than average volume. Make a list of 10-20 socks you find like this and than start looking at what the company does. Look for companies that are developing new technology or a product that is innovative such that their competition will be minimal, if any, when their product is lunched or implemented. Besides looking for good companies to trade you can also look for good charts to trade. Look at short-term (1-month to 3-month) and long-term (1-year to all data) charts to find the overall direction that the stock is trading. Do not try to fight the overall trend; a stock that is in a long-term downtrend is likely to continue down. You are looking for steady uptrends and predictable patterns. Steady uptrends are the easiest and best ones to trade. Draw two straight lines that go through most of the peaks and valleys to find the trading cannel. Buy the next time the price hits the bottom line and sell when it nears the top line. A nice predictable pattern is the "N" pattern. Trade this pattern when you find an indicator that it is about to move back up. A good indicator is a Doji candlestick, which is a trading day with a tight range and opens and closes at, if not exactly at, the same price. Another good indicator is after a big down day the price closes at or near its low and than opens there or higher the next day and close higher. Because penny stocks are high speculation plays you should be getting in and out as soon as you realize some good profits. If you get lucky and can take a 30-40% profit in one day you should take it. After a move like this the stock is liable to comeback 15-20% the next day. If you still like the stock you can get back in and make an even bigger profit than if you were to just hold it and it moved back up. Trading Penny stocks can be exciting and profitable. Always remember that these are high risk stocks to trade and never put all your money into just one stock. Do your research into the company after you find interesting charts to trade to save time. Search penny stock blogs and forums to find ones with a lot of chatter and never rely on someone else's pick, do your own research. To find more information about trading stocks including secrets to finding explosive moves before they happen, go to http://www.ideal-investing.com. Here you can get all the tools needed to become a successful independent investor. About the Author About the author: Clint Chapman is the President of Ideal Investing & Consulting, LLC and is a active trader in the stock and currency markets with 8 years experience. Read More...>>

Trading Perfection - An Illusion?

Are you driven to succeed? Do you feel the need for everything to be perfect? Do you have to be perfect every single time before you trade? If you're an overachiever, driven to success at all costs, it's also likely that you might be striving for perfection all the time. While the drive for being successful and getting the details in place is important, sometimes this need for perfection can be taken too far. In business, the businessman cannot wait for perfect conditions to launch his business. If he did, the business would never be started as things are hardly ever perfect in all areas and aspects. The same goes for trading. Perfection in the trading markets will hardly ever be achieved. Signs of Perfectionism in Trading This need to be perfect seems to be a problem for many traders. Many traders spend the entire day looking for the "perfect" trade set-up, or perpetually wait for the "ideal" market conditions. This can result in traders compulsively looking at as many indicators as possible, hoping to find new information from the same information already available to them. This leads to traders over-complicating things with several overlays of different indicators, trading systems, charts and so on. In the end, the entire analysis becomes a confusion of colors and lines which are unintelligible. Which results in what is commonly known as "analysis paralysis", where one analyzes beyond what is necessary to the point of being paralyzed. Another sign of perfectionism in trading is the need to be on a winning streak all the time. If they are not on a winning streak, they feel something is wrong either with the system or themselves. And when they try to fix something that isn't really "broken", the irony is they end up breaking it. Handling Perfectionism Experienced traders who have been trading profitably in the markets over long periods of time will understand that while some trading systems can be complex, usually the simpler is better. And at the same time, they realize that the markets will always fluctuate up and down. Sometimes going in their favor, and other times not. Statistically, you don't have to win all the time to be a winning trader. In fact, from a mathematical standpoint an extremely profitable trader can be wrong more times than right. The issue lies with the ability of traders to handle losses and losing streaks. From the perspective of trading psychology, children are taught from young that making money is "hard", losing money is "wrong", and other psychological imprints that make money seem more valuable than life itself. And when they start trading in the markets and realize that losses are inevitable, it creates an inner struggle within. And when they make a losing trade traders tend to beat themselves up over it, thinking the more guilty they feel about it and the more they "punish" themselves, the better things will be. It's hardly rational thinking in the markets, but people usually aren't that rational when it comes to things like money. It's vital for a trader to forgive themselves when they make a losing trade. This helps them to clear up their mind, so they can view the trade with a clear perspective in order to review the trade for errors. Errors not just in their following of their trading rules, but to review if the system has somehow "broken" down. In most cases, if a trader already has a decent trading system based on sound market principles, it's usually because it's one of those losing trades that inevitably come along with any system. That's why having a solid trading education and system is so invaluable to the long term success of any trader. Conclusion The fact is, trading is a tough business. Few make it, and statistics show that the majority of traders won't survive even the first few years in trading. While this can be daunting, if you allow yourself to become pessimistic and give up, you'll never make profits. You don't have to be absolutely perfect as a trader, so long as you have a robust, solid trading system which you follow. You don't have to hit winners every time to be profitable over a period of time. Sometimes you will be right, sometimes you will make mistakes. The thing is not to allow your mistakes to pull you down. Learn from them, improve yourself as a trader both in education and psychology, and you will very likely end up profitable. Which is the entire point, isn't it? About the Author Ryan Lee Daniels runs a website dedicated to Forex Trading Education. Read More...>>

The Goal of Consistent Trading Improvement

Do you find yourself wanting to be a successful trader immediately? Are you envious of how some traders you know seem to be making money week in and week out? Do you get frustrated with yourself at your seeming inability to consistently pull profits from the markets? When you see how some traders can be consistently successful, you know that it can be done. The challenge that you face then is how you can be consistently profitable as well. And even if you were given the methodology, you may be uncertain at your personal ability to accomplish consistent trading profitability. What you probably don't fully realize is that any consistently successful and profitable trader took time to get to where they are. They went through the ups and downs, took their beatings from the markets time and again, learnt about themselves and the markets, picked themselves up and licked their wounds before carrying on. And eventually, they reached their level of trading skills that they have today. To realize this is what most traders go through before they accomplish their consistent profitability can be quite daunting, and seemingly impossible for the "normal" category of people. But when you realize that what you are going through is very likely the same journey they took, it helps to know that you're on the path towards trading success. Why Consistent Trading Improvement As The Goal? To learn about the markets takes time. It takes time because the markets go through various phases which don't happen all at the same time. The markets go through bullish up trends, bearish down trends, consolidating phases, and volatile jerky movements. And in between these phases, they exhibit trends of varying speed and strength. To fully master the markets, experience in the various market phases are required. And not only experience, but various skills are required to navigate successfully in each market phase. Which, of course, takes practice. Rather than jumping in, and trying to learn everything all at once, it is far more conducive and useful to pick a few strategies for specific market conditions and master them first. Pick a strategy, identify the optimal market conditions for trading it, and then trade only this strategy when the optimal market condition comes along. By doing this, it helps build confidence and your skill in trading. As you start to experience trading success, you master this particular trading strategy. Instead of trying to be the master of everything at once and ending up a jack of all trades, pick one or two strategies so that you can become a master of at least one. Mastery of Specific Trading Strategies There's value in taking it slow to learning how to trade. When you master one particular trading strategy, you build your confidence in being able to trade a specific market condition. Even if you are not able to trade all market conditions well, you have built that confidence and ability to trade that one specific market condition. Even if market conditions change and your currently available trading strategy no longer becomes relevant in that new market phase, you know that if market conditions were ever to return (which it will, eventually) you would be able to trade profitably again. The key to mastering the markets then lies in learning new trading strategies and skills for different market conditions. And that's why it's important for you to reach mastery of the first one. If a trader attempts to learn everything at the same time, all they will get is a confusing jumble of information and concepts that apply to trading at different times. By gaining mastery of one specific strategy first, the trader can then move on to the next with the knowledge, experience and confidence that mastery is possible. Long Term Benefits When you are able to master one, you build the confidence that you will be able to master the next. And when you master two, your ability and confidence to master the third grows. Over a period of time, you might start setting more challenging goals, and your ability to handle stress which comes with changing market conditions starts to grow. When you begin your trading day, you can start with using the trading methods that you have already mastered, which helps to build your confidence for the rest of the trading day. And if you have identified and taken your quota of successful trades for the day, it's easier to handle the rest of the trading day even if market conditions were to change. When you set consistent trading improvement as your goal, the more mastery and trading success you are likely to achieve, and the more trading profits you will make in the long run. Read More...>>