Online Trading is Getting more Popular

By Shawn Buffet

Trading and investing in stocks is something you need to learn before taking actions. Nowadays, there are more people taking up the roles of financial planners upon themselves and empowering themselves when it comes to investing in the stock market. The prevalence of online trading companies has been instrumental in breaking the boundaries between the super wealthy, the only ones that could afford to regularly trade in the market, and the average man who now has the power to make the same trades for less than half the commissions that once would have been necessary for the equavalent amount of work on the part of broker.

Oddly enough you need to be careful when choosing your online trading source as different companies offers different types of services. One of the first things you need to check is the security with the company you are considering. In most cases, the bigger names will offer the better security. Bigger companies build their reputations by producing long term good results. They will not risk their reputations by risking your money.

Another thing you would want to check before deciding to sign up with any online trading firm is the cost per transaction and how those costs are determined. There are many kinds of ways that these little fees can hit you and become big headaches later on. You should find out what are the possible fees, when will they be charged, how will they be charged and what exactly do the fees cover. The more you clarify at the beginning, there will be lesser room for misunderstandings later on.

Make sure there is a way for you to discuss problems, ask questions and get answers from the company ensuring that they are reachable. It will never be safe if you are unable to reach someone from the company for direct support. You would not want to have most of your time wasted in trying to get support from them and leave your money on risk.

Next thing would be the companies website interface. As you are trading online, most of the time spent will be navigating around their website. Make sure you can get around with their website and understand the charts, bars and graphs shown on the website. Different companies would have different ways of presenting their services. It would be easier and safer to work on a website that isn't confusing to you. If navigating around the website is a hassle and time consuming, it would be a serious problem when it comes to trading when every seconds counts.

If you can find all these requirements in an online trading company, you've probably found a great company to begin your journey as a stock market investor. If the website also offers free professional training and advice, which most of them has nowadays, you should invest some of your time learning and hearing from them. Willing to learn is critical in trading, especially when you are still new to this industry. - 23196

About the Author:

Find more tips and information about Trading Stocks at my website. I gather great tips and information on Trading Stocks Online

Trading Systems (Part I)

By Ahmad Hassam

Using a mechanical trading system not only helps traders to make decisions and increase profits but it also provides great psychological comfort to the traders. At one point in your trading career that might come soon rather than later, you would want to switch over to a mechanical trading system.

You will also have to develop a systems approach to your trading. You will find most of the traders using a trading system approach to trading. You will realize the necessity of switching over to the system trade in order to lower the psychological pressure experienced when making every market transaction. Some of the traders may use a discrete trading system while others prefer a mechanical trading system. Trading without a system can be stressful.

Once you have a mechanical trading system you can easily develop it into an automated trading system. The mechanical trading system set of rules may be translated into a computer program for automated trading. However, the mechanical trading system lacks fundamental analysis capacity.

The creator of such a mechanical trading system then becomes just another user of the trading system monitoring the computer generated signals. The trading system then generates trading signals that can be used by traders having access to the trading system.

Many traders over their trading careers develop their own trading systems. Besides the traders using their own trading systems, there are now many actively developed trading systems for sale as computer programs. These trading systems may be taken as grey and black boxes. Their prices might vary from a few hundred dollars to hundred of thousands of dollars.

One way is to develop these forex trading systems and use the trading signals generated by them in your trading. The most significant thing about these programs is that the traders should be able to accomplish transactions in accordance with the signals generated by the trading system. The other solution is to completely automate these forex trading systems. Sometimes theses trading systems are developed for big banks and corporations.

Majority of the successful individual traders use self developed mechanical trading systems. However, it is very difficult for a mechanical trading system to cope with different market conditions.

Change of market behavior leads to negative results from a previously effective trading system which obviously would require replacement. For example, many trading systems that are satisfactory in trending conditions become highly ineffective in nontrending environment. How do you deal with the challenge of changing market situations? This is the most serious challenge that automated forex trading has to solve. One way is to use a diversified forex trading system.

The most common disadvantage of these trading systems is the negative balance between the profitable and unprofitable trades. Many trading systems now depend on complex mathematical formula which is not understandable by the trader if the trader is not the author of the trading system.

What you need is a forex trading system that is profitable in the long term. In other words, it gives more winner than losers. Obviously the trading system can only be profitable in the long run if the ratio of the profitable trades is higher than the non-profitable trades. In other words the average profit of each profitable transaction is greater than the average loss of each unprofitable transaction.

As a user of a mechanical trading system your options are limited. The trader must accurately and unconditionally follow the trading system without making any attempt to adjust it to the market conditions. Making correction in any mechanical trading system in the process of the trade is almost impossible until and unless you are the developer of that trading system. This is one of the reasons why you need to develop your own trading system. - 23196

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Discover a Revolutionary Forex Robot Trading System. Read about a Forex Trading System with an ROI of 3000% per month.

High-end Investments

By Samatha East

In some ways, high-end investments are not much different than traditional investments: You invest your money in stocks or bonds or mutual funds or ETFs and make all the same decisions that an average investor does. The difference is the amount of capital in play (typically a lot) or the risk exposure (typically high).

In other ways, high-end investing is an almost completely different beast. Its not so much investing (buying and holding on) as it is trading or speculating assuming a business risk with the hope of profiting from market fluctuations.

Successfully speculating (or guessing) requires analyzing situations, predicting outcomes, and putting your money on one side of a trade based on those predictions. Speculating also involves an appreciation of the fact that you can be wrong 75 percent of the time and still be successful. High-end investing means you have to chuck all your preconceptions about buy-and-hold investing and asset allocation, and all the strategies that stock brokerages put out for the public consumption. The following sections outline the high-end investment vehicles you can find out about in this book.

Futures and options

Futures and options, by their very nature, are complex financial instruments. Its not like investing in a mutual fund, where you mail your check and wait for quarterly statements and dividends. If you invest in futures and options contracts, you need to monitor your positions on a daily basis, often even on an hourly basis. You have to keep track of the expiration date, the premium paid, the strike price, margin requirements, and a number of other shifting variables.

That being said, understanding futures and options can be very beneficial because they are powerful tools. They provide you with leverage and risk management opportunities that your average financial instruments dont offer. You can dramatically increase your leverage and performance in the markets.

Commodities

Commodities are the raw materials humans use to create a livable world: the agricultural products, mineral ore, and energy that are the essential building blocks of the global economy. The commodities markets are broad and deep, presenting both challenges and opportunities. For example, how do you decide whether to trade crude oil or gold, sugar or palladium, natural gas or frozen concentrated orange juice, soybeans or aluminum? What about corn, feeder cattle, and silver should you trade these commodities as well? And if you do, what is the best way to invest in them? Should you go through the futures markets, through the equity markets, or buy the physical stuff (such as silver coins or gold bullion)? And do all commodities move in tandem, or do they perform independently of each other?

Many folks equate commodities exclusively with the futures markets. There is no doubt that the two are linked: The futures markets offer a way for commercial users to hedge against commodity price risks and a means for investors and traders to profit from this price risk. Equity markets are also deeply involved in commodities, as are a number of investment choices, such as master limited partnerships, exchange traded funds, and commodity mutual funds.

Foreign currency trading

When you get involved in foreign currency trading (also called forex trading), youre essentially speculating on the value of one currency versus another. You buy a currency just as youd buy an individual stock, or any other financial security, hoping that it will make a profitable return. But the value of your security is particularly volatile because of the many factors that can affect a currencies value and the amazingly quick timeframe in which these values can change. If youre an very active trader and looking for alternatives to trading stocks or futures, the forex market is hard to beat. Online trading innovations have made it accessible both technologically and financially.

Trading foreign currencies is a challenging and potentially profitable opportunity for well educated and experienced investors. If you decide to participate in the forex market, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. Most important, never invest money you cant afford to lose (Investing can be a type of gambling). The leveraged nature of forex trading means that any market movement will have an equally proportional effect on your deposited funds; this can work for or against you.

Hedge funds

In a nutshell, hedge funds are lightly regulated private partnerships that pursue high returns through multiple strategies. A hedge fund manager may invest in almost any opportunity in the market where he or she foresees favorable risk to reward. Through hedge funds, you can get some high returns for your portfolio if you dont mind the risk and have a lot of money to invest.

Because of the risk and the investment criteria, hedge funds arent open to most investors. In fact, to participate, you have to meet strict limits put in place by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding your worth (a net worth of at least $1 million and/or an annual income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years).

A hedge fund differs from the so-called real money " traditional investment accounts like mutual funds, pensions, and endowments " because it has more freedom (read: little to no regulatory oversight) to pursue aggressive investment strategies, which can lead to huge gains or huge losses. - 23196

About the Author:

How to Invest is a free website dedicated to helping investors from beginner to advance invest in today's market. How to Invest is a free website dedicated to helping with personal finances and retirement.

Short ETFs

By Ahmad Hassam

The ProShares Short Dow 30 ETF (DOG) will return the inverse of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on daily basis. If the DJIA falls by 2%, DOG rises by 2% and if the DJIA rises by 2%, DOG will fall by 2%. Short ETF returns the inverse of the index it is linked to.

During the past few years, the number of Short ETFs has risen dramatically. Short ETFs not only cover the major stock indices like the S&P 500 or the DJIA but also different sectors like the energy, utilities or technology. You will even find Inverse ETFs on currencies now. Short ETFs are also known as Inverse ETFs or Bear ETFs.

Most of the ETFs are designed around some market index. ETF shares trade like ordinary stock shares. You can buy them. You can sell them unlike the mutual funds that can only be sold at the end of the day. The ProShares UltraShort Dow 30 ETF (DXD) rises 2% when the DJIA falls by 1%. So you can even find leverage short ETFs. A leveraged short ETF gives the trader leverage without the use of margins.

Short ETFs give you an excellent opportunity to profit from the volatility in the market and the major indices. Over the years, short ETFs have risen in popularity with the investors and hedge funds.

Short ETFs are a great product as they have created new opportunities for traders. A trader had to actually short sell stocks to take advantage of a market drop before the introduction of short ETFs.

In the past if the market was dropping, the trader had to go against the trend and buy or else move into cash or fixed income. Traders are not allowed to sell short stocks or ETFs in their retirement accounts. Short and leveraged ETFs provide traders with new opportunities.

ETFs also provide you with the opportunity to take advantage of the global market swings. China is one example that garners a lot of attention. The Shanghai Index in China rose 100% in 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, the Shanghai Index was down 35%.

In the past, traders who wanted to benefit from the fall of Chinese stocks could only short Chinese stocks that were traded in US Stock Exchanges. The ProShares family of ETFs introduced the Ultrashort FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ETF (FXP). Now if you want to trade the fall of Chinese stocks, you can trade FXP ETF.

Assume you have a portfolio of $100,000 composed of 75% stocks and 25% money market fixed income. As a long term investor you can take advantage of short ETFs to hedge your portfolio position.

Suppose the market falls by 10%. Your stock portfolio falls by 7.5% assuming the same ratio between the market and your portfolio. The forecast of the market for the next six months is not good. But you are reluctant to sell your stocks due to tax reasons. - 23196

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This Cash Printing Forex Signal Service From Heaven! Learn Swing Trading!

Things To Know About Etf Trading

By Patrick Deaton

The stock market is something that people have been involved with for many, many years. Now we see that etf trading is rising in popularity, and this can be due to a variety of reasons. The options that people have with this are one of the reasons for its rise to fame as of late.

When you want to start etf trading you will need to find a good stockbroker to help you. There are a lot of people that are in the stockbroker position these days, but this does not mean that they are good. Investigate the options to make sure that you find someone that satisfies all of the questions that you have, as well as have your best interests at heart.

When you open up an account in order to start trading, you will need to make an investment of some sort. This can vary from place to place and it is a good idea to look at various options before making a decision on a company to deal with. There are costs that you will need to pay but they will depend on what all you are allowed to do when it comes to etf trading.

Talking to people that have been involved with etf trading already can be very helpful when it comes to deciding on a company to deal with. They will be able to help you figure out what types of services that you want included. People that are experienced with this type of trading know all of these things and are excellent resources for helping newcomers getting started.

The most popular thing with etf trading that people like is that it costs far less than other forms of trading that are available. Many people have made a good profit from a fairly small investment, which explains the rise in popularity that it has seen. This is something that more and more people are looking at with the economy being in such a poor state at the present time.

Reading about etf trading can be one of the best things for a person to do if they are thinking of becoming involved in it. There are a lot of websites around that offer a lot of information that can help a person learn some valuable tips and tricks.

Forums and other websites that have information from people that have been involved with etf trading can also be a huge bonus when it comes to learning the way the system works. There mistakes are something that they have felt others can learn from and they have offered to share this information with all that want to learn from it.

You need to remember that this is something that you need to look at seriously. If you cannot afford to lose money than the best thing to do is not become involved in it. There are many people that have gotten in over their heads because they did not look at it in a serious manner. - 23196

About the Author:

Learn how it's very possible to make 6% per month in your investment accounts using etf trading! "Big A" is a recognized expert in the world of etf trading system and reveals etf secrets that have been kept under wraps by hedge traders for years. Get his free report and webinar today!