Money, Cash & Finance

Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.

You only have to think back to recent stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quaterly reports they release gives you a very poor insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what are the secrets to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to become VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying much the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

You better check out share builder for yourself if you are currently interesting in starting selling and buying online stocks.

A lot of investors are appealed to this share builder because the website offers different way to buy online stocks and it is make sense and simple.

Share builder offers a different way than most online stock brokers, and compare with a traditional broker, this share builder is easier and much cheaper, too. It is actually much the same as an online option trading.

Share builder offers stock trade for only $4 for any publicly traded company and for any dollar amount you want to purchase. That means you don’t have a to buy a minimum number of shares at share builder.

With share builder you can start off at any level you feel comfortable with as they don’t require you a minimum investment to start.

Other online sites require you to put a minimum amount of money in your account when you open it. This means you have to save before you invest. With share builder you can start investing straight away. That is a good thing if you want to buy stock online with share builder.

Since the $4 fee is the same no matter how much you buy, however, it is worth buying larger amounts at one time if you can because then the fee is a lower percentage of the overall cost.

Share builder applies $4 to each different stocks, not to the total stocks you buy. So it really make sense if you consolidate your purchases of the same stocks all together.

Instead of buying $25 each of 4 different stocks each week for a month, it would be much cheaper if you bought $100 worth of one stock each week.

That way you will only pay $4 in a week fees instead of $16, which means you would’ve spent $48 more money by the end of the month. So, you’re interested in stock market, give share builder a try!

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to quickly buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a smaller spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered very liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to aviod stocks that are bellow $10 as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008/9 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between $5 and $10. Avoid buying a stock below $5 at anytime.

Another consideration to make is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option inorder to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings are released, stocks often drop significantly if they come out with a poor report. Earnings releases are 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.

You only have to think back to recent stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quaterly reports they release gives you a very poor insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what are the secrets to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to get VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

If you have ever considered online stocks trading, now is a great time to get involved. Everything will start to go up again and we’re getting close to turning point in this recession, however stocks are still down across the board. This is great news if you are just starting out because chances are any stock you pick is going to increase in value as the whole market ride a wave to recovery.

A Century of historical data shows that the stocks market always rises over the long run eventhough a lot of us learned over the past year and half that there’re never any guarantees with the market.

That expression, “the long term” is the real key to online stocks trading, by the way. So, you’ll actually make money if you hold on to a stock as long as you’re patient. It is usually the people betting on short term gains that get badly burned in the market.

If you’re serious about online stocks trading, you really need to have a budget first. Simply put, the money you can afford to lose is the money you can afford to invest in the stock market. If you need it to pay a bill next month, then it should be in the bank where it is safe.

That way, if you are never forced to pull money out of the market, then you will rarely lose any. Because if a stock goes down, all you have to do is hold on to it and wait. Unless the company has totally imploded, the stock will usually recover in time.

Create an account with a reputable online broker when you want to get started with online stock trading. Pick one that is well known as they will have the most secure websites. This is hugely important as you will be sharing your personal information and your banking and credit card information to set up the account and you certainly don’t want to risk identity theft. The stock market is risky enough!

You can start looking and picking stocks when you have a brokerage website that you like. Buy small amounts of cheap stocks to start if you’re just starting out with online stocks trading. This will allow you to spread your risk around and if any of your choices turns out to be a mistake it will not wipe out your whole portfolio.

Online stocks trade should fun and by investing small amounts you can get involved with more companies which increases the rate at which you will learn about the market. My advice is buy a few reliable stocks and then take a little more risk with those that are volatile. This gives you a chance of hitting it big while preventing you from losing it all.

Did you know you can discover historical Stock Market along with Yahoo? It’s real!

If you’re interested in various types of stocks, it’s somewhat likely that you have explored the finance website which is sponsored by Yahoo called “Yahoo! Finance”.

Once it comes to the points on this website, you are likely to be pretty pleased at all that they have to offer. There’s even a page which is applied to examining stock prices.

All you have to do, simply go directly to the Yahoo! Finance web site at: http://finance.yahoo.com. There you can get the newest stock prices of any company.

The major thing about this selective web site is that you can look for info connected to recent stocks, as well as stock prices which are considered to be archival.

The main thing that you shall must do to learn stock prices at Yahoo! Finance is to go to the page above which work with in the progress of researching various kinds of stocks. As soon as you get there, you may need to perform a simple “search”. For example, type the company name into the Yahoo! Finance text box – it will then display a list of all possible company matches!

You may make out that there’s a section that says “Set Date Range”. You need to decide the dates of the historical stock prices that you want to analyze, and then put this data in.

You can then make to note the prices for “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly” and even have the choice of “Dividends Only”. It is really simple to seek historical stock prices along with Yahoo! Finance! It’s really is the easiest way to obtain stock quotes for anyone, as long as they have internet access!

I had just finished posting an article named A Black Swan Named Swine Flu when I came across an insightful article by James Howard Kunsler that adds his always interesting view on the swine flu issue.

As James Kunsler and I both point out no one at this stage knows how the Swine Flu outbreak will develop. It may turn out to be a fairly minor public health concern, especially in Mexico, and then fade away, or it may turn into a world wide pandemic with terrifying consequences for all. With any viral outbreak the potential is there for it to become as serious as the 1918 flu pandemic that killed somewhere between 30 million to 100 people. That was out of a world population that at the time was about 1.7 billion.

Of course, we now have medicines and medical facilities that were non existent in 1918. But we also have about 6.5 billion people on this planet, many of them living in densely packed urban mega centers, like Mexico City. A viral infection spreading among a densely packed population could grow at an alarming rate. Especially if the virus is a new strain, as the swine flu virus is, and there are no vaccines really for immediate use.

Another danger in our modern highly mobile world is that international travel is frequent and fast. Airlines can transport you to just about any other spot on the planet within 30 hours. Air travel is a vital part of the world’s transportation system and huge numbers of people are moved about every day. If there is one infected person on an airplane there is a good chance that at least a few fellow passengers will become sick shortly after completing the flight. 

About ten years ago I flew to the Philippines on vacation and became seriously ill about two days after checking into the hotel in Cebu. I recovered just in time to catch my return flight two weeks later. What a vacation that was. Almost all of it was spent in bed at the hotel wondering if I would survive. I’m sure that I was exposed to the flu on the aircraft during the 13 hour leg of the flight to Manila. If this swine flu outbreak becomes a pandemic you do not want to fly anywhere. 

It is still too early to know how the swine flu is going to impact us and the world economy. Airline and travel related stocks, like hotels, are already taking a beating. If it becomes apparent that the swine flu will become widespread and is a deadly killer then the hope of an early recovery in the world economy and stock markets will be crushed.

Based upon research found so far on the Swine Flu outbreak since it is so late in the flu season it is likely the the outbreak will fizzle out as warmer wheather occurs and will then come back with a vengence in the fall and winter. This was the pattern of the 1918 pandemic and is the one that is most likely to occur this year. So the Swine Flu Black Swan may prove to be just as deceptive as the Bear Market. Just when once again you are feeling pretty good about the outlook it comes in for the kill.

Here are a few additional comments about the new Black Swan, A Black Swan Named Swine Flu