Earning More Money by Stock Trading

By Bob Jones

Very few investors are successful at stock trading. There are various factors that can influence the success or failure of a stock market investor. If you want to keep on making big money, there are several things that you need to do. What are these things? First of all, you have to know more about money management. You will be making a certain sized investment for stock trading and so you must learn to handle it well.

Your trading funds must be managed effectively. All traders have to have rock-solid methods to guarantee success in stock trading. Without it, all your trading will be just fair to middling guesswork and you will probably suffer great loses. For successful trading, you have to determine the account size and answer questions like: Is your trading system profitable? By how much? How much is the risk for every share deal?

In order to make money, you will need to know your exit strategy? Your investment choice determines how long you can remain in the stock market to keep stock trading. Skilful investors don't really need huge investments because they already have adequate knowledge about how to trade wisely. It should be possible to enter the stock market with only a relatively small amount of investment capital, but you will need to control the risks involved in each deal.

Your system need to ensure that the risk is always lower than 3% for every trade you make. For example, if your account is $10,000, your loss per trade should be lower than $300. However, if the account grows, you still need to keep the risk at the same 3%. By sticking to this rule, you can minimize your loses per trade. The system you're using should be profitable, so you can not afford to lose lots of money per trade. You must be able to work out the 'edge' or your system's profit potential and if you make the estimated amount over a set amount of time, then your system is successful.

Your trading system should have a target percentage profit, so that you always know when you should enter and when you should leave the market. The correct placing of your instructions to the broker is also vital, in order to earn more profits. Your trading system is very important. Whenever you buy a certain share, the risk ought to be low. Your account will keep growing if you know when to enter and exit the market for a certain stock. You have to follow a trading plan with a rigid set of trading rules.

You need to make sure that you stick to your rules very strictly. It is important for you to try to learn which stocks will move to your advantage. Every stock investor has a favourite game plan or trading pattern and you must follow one too. When you're just starting out at stock trading, you should not be a rash investor. Take your time and study the state of the current market. You need to study everything, even the minutest details.

So get yourself a good broker and in that way you will have an expert guide on how to best go about the whole trading process. If you want to make more money in stocks trading, you should know how to handle money effectively. You must have a decent trading system and you should use the different kinds of orders. Stock trading is not that difficult to understand, but you should be ready to learn all the basic and some of the advanced methods of trading, so that you can guarantee continuous success. Take your time and study how the stock market is moving. Learn from the experts and their previous mistakes. In that way, you can better ensure your success. - 23196

About the Author:

If you are interested in How To Make Your Investments, please go along to our web-based resource Online Stock Investing for further information.

Does Your Trading System Have an Exit Strategy?

By Maclin Vestor

Many good trading systems use multiple exit strategies. In normal trading system, you need to know when to exit from a gain, and when to exit from a loss. Generally you want to be cutting your profits short, and letting your profits run. At a minimum, you generally want nearly a 3:1 gain to loss. This means you should take profits at 3 times the percentage amount as you cut your losses short. We will use this system and do the following

1) Exit stop at a 7% loss. This stop-loss should sell ALL of your shares. The simple method is to just set the stop and leave it. There are dangers of this because people may be able to see someone make the stop order on the floor, and if they have enough money, they can take advantage of that, selling lots of shares of the stock, pushing the stock price down below the stop, then forcing you and others who may have stops out, and then buying the stock below your price, so the stock will stop out, and then quickly rebound. The more advanced mode is to just watch it, and if it is going to CLOSE below your stop, only then will you exit 10 minutes or so before the markets close. The sophisticated way is to just not use stops, and instead buy puts. this increases the cost of the investment and thus limits your win, but you give up a fixed amount for protection against large losses.. This would insure that the stock doesn't drop overnight. A failed breakout is signaled if a stock drops 7% below breakout point. If you are buying stocks on the pullbacks, a 7% drop should signify a breaking of support.

2) Set a profit target at 20%. You can use a limit sell order to sell here if you would like, particularly for those who don't have the time to watch the stock. You should be willing to wait a full 4 months for it to hit it's target. If it hits the target, you should sell 1/2 to 2/3rds of your shares, and let the rest ride. Also, if your stock hits the price target within 8 weeks (2 months), this signals that your stock is a good one, and you want to hold onto your winners. There is a simple strategy and a sophisticated strategy. The simple strategy is to hold onto your stock until the entire 8 weeks is up. The sophisticated strategy is to sell most or all of your shares, and convert them to an option that you should own at strike price, or very close to it. You should ensure that this transaction is such that in a worst case scenario, you still will have a 5% gain. Generally, you will own say 100shares, sell 100, and buy 1 call contract at the same strike price the stock is at, and secure a profit, while still maintaining the same upside leverage minus the cost of the option and the transaction.

3) Set a trailing stop of 25%. This should serve as a function primarily to exit the remaining 1/3rd to 1/2 of shares that you let ride after you hit your price target of 20%. It is possible that the stock goes up near your target, which will raise this stop to 5% below where you bought it, or if you aren't using a limit sell, it could spike way up to up 35% from where you buy it, and then quickly come down, and sell out a small portion of your shares for a small gain. This is fine. In this case, either the stock will then proceed to drop below your buy point and go and hit the 7% stop-loss, or it will then bounce and gain until it hits your 20% target. In either case, you will sell the rest of your shares. Of course, if this all happens in a short amount of time, you may attempt a swap as a sophisticated strategy, but generally you should be done with it.

4) You should always keep records. Record how many you bought at what price and which exit(s) were triggered. You want to check all these stocks in a year, or so, and see if you could have made more by adjusting your stops, or adjusting the size of which you sell.

5) Enjoy the profits.

If you are a good system trader, you will make sure that they trading system you use has an excellent exit strategy. At System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems you will learn that an exit strategy will allow you make sure that you have a trading system with greater returns on your average gains than you have losses on your average losses. This is only one small aspect of a trading system but it is a very important one. In fact, your exit strategy will be vital in determining how much capital you allocate when managing your money in a trading system.

In addition, if you can find a stock selection vehicle in combination with a good exit strategy, it will insure that any given investment has a positive expected value. In other words, with a good exit strategy and stock selection that picks winners often enough, you will win more than you lose, provided you manage your money right. Learn these tips as a system trader, and you stand a much better chance at being a profitable trader than someone who does not understand the importance of a good exit strategy within a trading system. - 23196

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about varioustrading systems and teaches you system trading skills that can make you a better trader.

Start With a Practice Account (Part I)

By Ahmad Hassam

Almost every forex broker offers a free practice account to new clients. This is used as a marketing gimmick by most of the brokers in order to entice new people to forex trading. All you need to do is to sign up with any good forex broker. The best way for new traders to get a handle on what currency trading is all about is to open a practice account.

Practice accounts give you the great chance to experience the forex market. You can see how the price changes at different times of the day. Practice accounts are funded with virtual money. So you are able to make trades with no real money at stake and gain experience in how margin trading works.

You can trade your practice account with real market conditions without any fear of losing money. How various currency pairs may differ from each other? How the forex market reacts to new information when major news and economic data is released.

You can experiment with different trading strategies and see how they work out in the real market conditions without any fear of losing your money. You will also learn using different market orders. How to manage an open position? Improve your understanding of how margin trading and leverage works and start analyzing charts and following technical indicators.

You can also test drive all the features and functionality of a brokers platform. However, one thing you will never be able to simulate on your practice account is the emotions involved in trading. Emotions will only come into play once you put your real money on the line. Controlling emotions is the thing to become a successful trader. Practice accounts are a great way to experience real forex markets.

You can use market orders like the limit orders or the one cancels the other orders. However, you can also trade the current price of the market using the click and deal feature of your brokers platform. There are many ways to pull the trigger in the forex market. Pulling the trigger means how to enter or exit a position.

Many traders like the idea of opening a position by trading at the market. Most prefer the certainty of knowing that they are in the market. They dont want to leave an order that may or may not get executed.

You just need to specify the amount that you want to trade. Then click on the buy or sell button to execute the trade. The forex trading platform will respond back within a second or two with a pop-up message either confirming or not confirming that the position was opened. Most forex brokers provide live streaming prices. You can deal with these live price feeds with a simple click of your computer mouse.

Attempts to trade at the market can sometimes fail in very fast moving markets when prices are adjusting quickly like after a data release or break of a key technical level or price point. - 23196

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. He is interested in day trading stocks and currencies. First Trade Your Forex Demo Account. Learn Forex Trading!

Let The Stock Market Spit Money At You Like A Broken ATM Machine!

By Lance Jepsen

The closing price is not equal to the opening price when it comes to trading in the stock market. You need to know that the closing price is much more important than the opening price. You are about to discover a little known truth that will have the stock market shooting out money like a broken ATM!

Let's begin.

The closing price is the value set for a given stock by all market participants trading that stock. It is the final consensus of value assigned to a stock on any given day by the crowd. It is the price everyone sees after work. It is the final price displayed on all daily stock charts people research at the end of a given trading day. In the futures market, the closing price is very important because trading accounts are settled based on it.

Professional and institutional traders will trade all during the day. At market open, they take advantage of opening prices by fading gaps. They will buy low openings and sell high openings. They will then unwind those positions as the day progresses. They routinely trade against market extremes and bet on a return to normalcy for any given stock. When a stock hits a new high and then volume drops off, professional traders will sell which pushes the market lower. When a stock hits a new low and then volume begins to drop off on the sell side, professional traders buy which pushes the market higher.

Amateur traders like you and I behave very differently. Amateurs like us usually trade at market open and then drop off as the day progresses. Most amateurs have to go to work and so they trade on the west coast at market open before work. They don't check the trade again until after work when they get home. Even traders on the east coast will sneak in a buy or sell at market open while at work and then not check their trading account again until the end of the day. At market close, the participants who are still trading are mostly professional traders.

Knowing what time of day the amateurs trade and what time of day the professionals trade gives you a huge advantage in the market place! Think about it for a minute. Closing prices reflect the opinions of the professional and institutional traders while opening prices reflect the opinion of amateur traders. Look at almost any stock chart and you will see how often the closing and the opening ticks are at opposite ends of a stock's daily candlestick. This tells you that professional and institutional traders are usually on the opposite side of the trade as amateurs are. So which group should YOU trade with? Why the group that has the most money to invest in the stock market because they can move the stock the most. This means that you want to be on the side of the trade that professionals are on. Trade with the professionals, not against them.

Let's say a stock you are long in goes up to its day's high at market open and then drops the rest of the day and finally closes near its day's low. You need to close out of your short term position. Why? Because this gives you a signal that professional traders are fading against your long position. - 23196

About the Author:

May you make a lot of money in stock trading after reading this article. For more of Lance Jepsen's free stock trading advice go to stock market

Jumpstart to Learn Forex Trading

By Zita Von Snyder

When swimming with sharks, you need to keep your teeth sharp, learn forex trading and swim with the best of them. To learn forex trading you need to have an understanding of the current market trends, know which currency you are trading, know what triggers change in that currency as well as having a good trading strategy. You can have an edge in forex trading by being prepared, minimizing your risks, and investing the time and research to learn forex trading.

A forex trading course can be fundamental to learn forex trading.A couple of reasons to look at a forex trading course would be:

Why do you need a forex trading course? To really learn forex you need to understand charting, forex terminology, and some of the common processes pertaining to forex trading. A forex trading course will provide all of this and more so you can learn forex.

A good forex trading course not only provides the technical tools to learn forex but it will also teach you to control your emotions and stress when trading forex. Forex trading demands discipline, which you can get if you will invest in a good forex trading course to learn forex.

To learn forex trading you should invest in a forex trading course that includes the following:

*Basics- the course should define and discuss some of the basic terms used in forex trading. It should include such terms as margins, types of orders, how to leverage trades as well as a basic overview of charting and indicators.

*Analysis-the forex trading course should teach you how to do both technical and fundamental analysis and which tools or software to use and which to avoid. This will help you minimize your risks and maximize your profits.

*Values-A very important attribute of trading is the ability to manage not only your money but the emotions or psychology of forex trading. To learn forex trading a trader should develop good values such as discipline, patience and commitment.

Experience can only be gained by trading forex in either real time or a simulated environment. This should be offered as part of your forex trading course. Some courses have live demo accounts or trading rooms that offer a great learning experience. Being able to discuss your lessons and what you have learned either one-on-one or in a forum also helps to learn forex trading.

Give yourself the edge for this fast paced, volatile market, invest in a good forex trading course. Study the basics, learn how to interpret the market conditions,and manage your risks when trading forex.Becoming successful at forex trading involves a good forex trading course, discipline and a commitment to learn forex trading. - 23196

About the Author:

Zita Von Snyder, a forex trader and financial advisor for many years, has shared some helpful tips to Learn Forex Trading. Zita offers tips on finding a good Forex Trading Course as well as the benefits it provides.