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3 Simple Techniques

Once you sort through all the trading jargon and strategies, making a good stock trade is much easier than people tend to make it. In other words, most people make stock trading harder than it needs to be.

After all, when trading we are generally dealing with thousands of dollars per holding, so it can be easy for traders to continually second guess and put pressure on themselves before finally pulling the trigger.

Below are 3 simple techniques that will having you making good stock trades more often than not.

  1. Create an entry point – Where is a good spot to buy the stock? Based on your strategy, this could be after a breakout, after a pullback, and so on. Once you choose an entry style stick to it and use it every time.
  2. Create a failure point – This is also know as creating stop losses. Basically determine the eject button before entering the stock. Based on your analysis, this should be the price where the trade is considered a bust when it falls below that price.
  3. Create a price target – It is easy to say a stock will go up, but when do you know when to sell? Are you necessarily tying up your capital in a stock that already saw its boost? By creating a price target before entering a stock, you better utilize your capital as you collect gains and move on to the next stock.

That’s it! Yes, it is really that simple, by determining these 3 critical points, the hardest part of stock trading should be deciding how to spend all that money you made.

Continue to tweak and perfect your criteria for determining these critical points, and eventually you’ll master a surefire trading system.

15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind

1.) By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities.

2.) By 2030, China will add more new city-dwellers than the entire U.S. population.

3.) China already consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined.

4.) If the Chinese, one day, use as much oil per person as Americans, then the world will need seven more Saudi Arabia’s to meet their demand.

5.) There are already more Christians in China than Italy, and China is on track to become the largest center of Christianity in the world.

6.) Chinese are far more likely to believe in evolution than Americans.

7.) Chinese internet users are five times as likely to have blogs as Americans.

8.) China has 150% more soldiers than America does, plus a high tech ‘Kill Weapon’ the U.S. can’t deal with.

9.) China still hasn’t rid itself of Europe’s medieval plague.

10.) 40% of Chinese small businesses went bust or almost went bust during the world financial crisis.

11.) China executes three times as many people as the rest of the world COMBINED… and uses mobile execution vans for efficiency.

12.) China averages 274 protests PER DAY.

13.) When you buy Chinese stocks, you are basically financing the Chinese government. Eight of Shanghai’s top ten stocks are state-controlled arms of the government.

14.) 50% of counterfeit goods come from China.

15.) The majority of Chinese drink polluted water.

Is stock trading difficult? Depends on who you ask.


Is stock trading difficult?  Depends on who you ask.

A seasoned trader with the discipline to follow well honed principles will say “trading is not difficult.  See how I take losses and let my winners run?”  A battered and bruised, emotionally unstable trader will say “the market is difficult.  I am getting my @ss handed to me on a platter and it hurts!”  A breakeven trader will say, “compared to my broker I am not doing so bad.”

Our perspective makes all the difference in our success of failure.  If we can have the proper perspective then the market cannot hurt us.

The proper perspective includes, but is not limited to, the following:

The market will do what it wants to do when it wants to do it regardless of the technical games we play.

We win some lose some, in no particular order, on any given strategy.

The only trading mistake that matters is when future uncertainty is not properly considered an essential element of risk.

The long-term process, not short term outcomes, builds the consistency necessary to tackle market uncertainty.

Responsibility accepted before the trade becomes the disciple that carries us through the trade.

The best money is oftentimes made by being a non-participating, impartial observer.


 

So the next time someone asks if stock trading is difficult.  What will be our answer?  Will it be based on the proper perspective or on the last trade we made?  On emotions? On our reaction to price action? News? Compared to what?  A successful bust or a skinned knee?  The answer can make a difference.

Process Versus Outcome in Trading

248823-2163-0This concept of process versus outcome was first introduced to me when I read the book, “More Than You Know”, by Michael Mauboussin. It was also discussed in the books written by the brilliant authors Michael Covel and Mark Douglas.
The best way to explain the concept is using the following examples, which involves the game black jack (the only card game I know).
1) Good Process/Good Outcome
The cards you are dealt add up to 12. You have the choice to stay or hit. You chose to hit and receive a 9-blackjack.
The equivalent scenario, in my view, in the stock market is that you see a stock in a downtrend, so, following your rules, you short it. The stock ends up falling another 40% before turning around.
2) Good Process/Bad Outcome
The cards you are dealt add up to 12. You have the choice to stay or hit. You chose to hit and you get a 10 -bust.
In the stock market this is comparable to buying a stock that is in an uptrend, (more…)

Marc Faber: Euro Oversold, If S&P Above 1150 Could See 20% Correction

Market: “I’m not so sure that we’ll make new highs but if we make a new high above 1,150, I don’t think it will be that far above the 1,150 level, maybe 1,200, and that thereafter we have a bigger kind of correction on the downside.  I think if we make a new high then I wouldn’t rule out a correction of at least around 20% and don’t forget many shares in America and globally have already corrected 20%, so for them to make a new high isn’t going to be all that easy in the first place. So what we could see is a new high in the S&P and the Dow Jones that is not confirmed by the new high list. In other words you will make a new high with fewer stocks making a new high than in January.”

Currencies:  Euro: “Now the Euro is very oversold and the news has been horrible. Everything you’ve read has been a disaster for the Eurozone and I think the Euro now can rebound to around 1.40 before it goes lower. I think there’s nothing good about the US Dollar, but I don’t think there is much good about the Euro either…”

US Dollar: “When investors realize that the fiscal deficits aren’t going to come down, that they’ll stay very high. When they also see that one state after another is essentially bust like California and Illinois. And when they see that monetization will become inevitable in the long run, I think at that point the Dollar will be weak. But don’t forget it may not necessarily have to be weak against the Euro.  Both currencies are sick and so both could go down and then ultimately you just have one or two sound currencies, notably precious metals and I think the Asian currencies will then probably also appreciate against the Euro and the US Dollar but notably precious metals will then be strong”.

Asset Class Right Now:  “Right now as of today I would probably go long the Euro and probably be long US Treasury Bonds but only as a trade for the next say 5-10 days and then we’ll have to see further.  In general, I would say better be in stocks than in bonds because we’ll get more inflation in due course”.

Dear Traders ,Just see ..What I had forecasted/Written about S&P 500 on 19th ,28th Jan’10 and on 3rd Feb’10

Technically Yours

The Greatest Trader Who Ever Lived: Jesse Livermore?

Seventy one years ago, on Thursday, November 28, 1940, Jesse Lauriston Livermore, entered the Sherry Netherland Hotel where he took a seat near the bar and enjoyed a couple of old-fashioned. After an hour Jesse Livermore got up and went in the cloakroom, seated himself on a stool, and then shot himself in the head with a .32 Colt automatic. How could the man who is still regarded by many as the greatest trader who ever lived go out this way by taking his own life? It just doesn’t match the rest of his life.

In his youth Jesse was know as the “Boy Plunger” because he looked younger than his years and he would take big positions when he traded against the bucket shops of his day. The bucket shops let traders bet on a stock price, but no trade was executed, the house covered if you were right. How good was he? He was banned from the bucket shops one by one, it was like getting kicked out of a casino because you beat the house so badly with outsized gains. He went on to trade in stocks and commodities and did very well becoming a millionaire many times. Unfortunately he also went bust many times. He made his biggest money in the market crashes of 1907 and 1929,  it is said that J.P. Morgan himself sent word asking for Jesse to please quit shorting stocks. In 1929 the day of one of the biggest market meltdowns he returned home and his wife was scared that he had lost everything, he surprised her by making the biggest money of his trading career. He ended up with the nickname “The Great Bear of Wall Street” because of his shorting activity.

Here are some of his most insightful quotes from his book  “How to Trade in Stocks”

“All through time, people have basically acted and re-acted the same way in the market as a result of: greed, fear, ignorance, and hope – that is why the numerical formations and patterns recur on a constant basis”

“Successful traders always follow the line of least resistance – follow the trend – the trend is your friend”

“Wall Street never changes, the pockets change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes, because hu (more…)

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