Is Your Retirement Slipping Away? How Are You Going To Rebuild Your Wealth?

By Marc Abrams

One step forward, five steps back. This seems to be the motto lately, especially when it comes to investing. Many people thought that 8% to 10% annual returns were just something to be expected. After all, how many of you used those returns in your retirement projections? Well, we have reluctantly entered a new age with new questions to be asked. What are you going to do?

You need to take control of your investments. You can no longer rely solely on the advise of your broker or financial advisor. After all, didn't they allow you to get into this position in the first place?

Are you waiting for those losing stocks to recover, you know, the ones that you have an emotional tie to? You as an investor must teach yourself to think differently. That is entirely alright. Who cares how those positive investment returns will come. What is important is that they do come.

The reality is that the average investor's thinking needs to be changed. We need to teach ourselves to invest with common sense, not emotion. I treat my investing like a business. If a particular trade is not working out as planned, I close it out and move on.

I have been told my real estate investor clients that the profit for a property is made at the time of purchase, not on the resale. Is it possible to apply that thinking to the stock market? Absolutely, I have clients that do that very thing.

Your change in thinking will shift your focus from emotion to common sense. Such as hoping for a particular trades increase in value to monitoring the trade during its expected life. You will know the trades expected life prior to entering into the trade. Yes, you will have an exit strategy!

You need to teach yourself to run your investing activities like a business, monitoring the trade through its life cycle. You will no longer be at the whim of the stock market. I can assure you that you will feel in control of your investments.

Surprisingly, there are stock market investing strategies that allow you significantly more control over the outcome. The stock markets most successful investors do not just hope things go their way. They have tools at their disposal and they use those tools to give them the best chance of success.

Successful investors use strategies that tip the odds in their favor, and they have learned to treat investing as a business. What are these strategies? Well, that is beyond the scope of this article. However, in order to find the success you are looking for you can start by changing the way you think. - 23223

About the Author:

About the Author: Marc Abrams is a Certified Public Accountant with over 15 years of financial and stock market investing experience. Visit Marc's website for more information on stock market investing strategies to help rebuild your wealth.

Fundamentals Of Forex Market

By Bart Icles

Forex is the acronym for Foreign Exchange Market. It's an investment marketplace, more or less the same with other investment markets like stock or commodities. It is uniquely different so for its geographical dispersion and absence of being controlled by any one specific entity, corporation or country. Shortened as FX, Forex is a potentially dynamic and volatile platform where currencies the world over are bought and sold in an effort to earn substantial profits from its fluctuating values.

Forex is open for anyone who wishes to invest his time and finances to it. It attracts investors from all business sectors and income structure. One can say that Forex is most suitable for someone with a knack and thirst for venturing into quick money making schemes, as also for someone who is well-equipped with having a natural business savvy and a sound knowledge of Forex market.

Forex trading and its transaction activities take place from any part of the world and at anytime of the day. The market is always hectic and populated by heavy currency trading, and remains open for 24 hours a day except for weekends. Trading can be done either by your own personal account or with a brokerage firm to do trading for you. Being an active a solo participant in Forex, its best have a personalized strategy that is tailored to your kind of trading style, and to keep daily tabs on the latest updates about Forex market. If you are connected with a broker, all you need and have to do is to wait and watch for news and message alerts that concern your account.

Forex traders, new and experienced alike, need to have a detailed analysis of the market to have a clear picture of risks involved. Market analysis involves two important factors, namely technical analysis and fundamental analysis. Technical analysis is done by reading market facts and data generated by the market. Fundamental analysis is the process in determining the factors and conditions which influence the market economy. Both aspects are used as basis for whatever trade decisions need to be arrived at. A country's currency status is influenced by its economic, political, social events, and the trader who understands and correctly interprets such factors, are the ones most likely to profit from it.

Forex is a beneficial industry to participate in as it can provide substantial profit within a relatively short time, more or less. If you are well prepared and properly equipped in mind and heart, then chances are you're going to do more profitable trading now and in the long run. - 23223

About the Author:

How do you become a professional forex trader? Visit our site to learn more about forex trading. Start with our free Jump Start strategy.

How To Chose Best Forex Trading Broker?

By Lukas Veselinov

You want to trade online and you are looking for a forex trading brokers? It can be difficult to find one , but it is not impossible. But lets take it step by step. You need to know what a forex trading broker is. A trading broker is a one person or company which will hold onto your money to sell and buy based on your decisions. Step two: How to find reliable broker?

You need to do a thorough research to find it. And here are three important tips that will help you decide on the forex broker you are going to use.

1.First thing you should know that if the forex trading broker is regulated.

Second : You need to find out if they provide a reliable and quality , 24/7 customer support? Try to find out what whether their operating hours align with the global forex market's hour of operations.

Three: You need to make sure you know what services they offer. Do they offer the currencies that are the most important, (AUD, CAD, CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY AND USD)? Find out what whether their operating hours align with the Global Forex market's hour of operations.

If you follow these three steps you will be able to find a good forex trading broker with less difficulties.To decide which one to use,the important thing is to research each trading broker that you find.

Also, considering they all offer free practice accounts, the best thing to do is: Simply join them all! By doing that you will be able to get an "inside look" for free and than compare them for real.

Finally, when you find couple of them which you like you can easily join them all because you have nothing to lose as they offer free accounts and if they are all free then sign up with everyone of them. After that, just start to trade with the broker and online platform you like best. - 23223

About the Author:

You can visit Smart Product Reviews for online forex broker comparison . Compare different top rated products and chose the best one. Lukas Veselinov, Smart-Product-Reviews-team.To Your success

Intro To Trading Systems

By Maclin Vestor

A good trading system is about much more than just selecting stocks. Certainly that is important as well. However, a good trading system will provide the ability for you to protect against losses, manage your money, add proper leverage when necessary, and also select a stock selection maximizing your reward and minimizing your risk.

The guess work is taken out of the way for you. The stock is purchased when criteria is met, the amount of stock purchased is also based on certain criteria. The stock is sold when criteria met, and there are protective measures against a stock's demise, and where possible and appropriate leverage is created to maximize the returns without taking on more risk than you can handle.

This trading system will be talked about in 5 additional parts in addition to this intro. This post is designed to explain the trading system, its functions and how it operates.

1) Exit strategy. Every good system trader will first know the exit strategy. It doesn't matter what vehicle selection you use, if you have no exit strategy, you're stuck. The trick is to understand that unless you want to get trapped in an investment you have to know when you're getting out.

A good exit strategy has both loss protection, and profit taking, and sometimes even a 3rd stop. The first 2 might be a maximum loss, and a maximum gain before taking profits, while the 3rd one will be a trailing stop that rides the gains up, and will sell the remaining shares. There are other exit strategies such as hold forever and write covered calls against it to collect income, or protective puts in place of a stop-loss.

2) Protection. Although #1 covers most of the protection, there are several other ways to protect yourself. Protection is vital to allow you to stay in the game. Many people know that if you lose 20% you need a 25% gain to make up for it. Losses not only can result in a series of losses that wipe you out, but they also hinder your ability to gain in the future. a 95% loss for example requires a 2000% nearly impossible goal to make up for this loss. So even if you flip a coin and have a 50% chance of gaining 200% or 50% chance of losing 95% of it, you should probably not take it if all your money is at risk, because it doesn't have the downside protection A series of wins followed by 1 loss would prevent your ability to stay in the game. Even though those odds SEEM fair, they are not without proper protection. Protection ensures that you won't have that 95% loss, and it absolutely restricts that loss to a fixed amount, rather than take 100% risk.

Such forms of protections are writing calls, in this situation you are given a premium so if the stock tanks to zero in a worst case scenario you'd still end up with the premium, this is minimal protection, and only protects a marginal amount of decline before the losses continue. The other form of protection would be buying a protective put. This actually in fact does protect against catastrophic losses. The lower your stock goes if/when it crashes, the more you make from your put or puts. You are the one paying a small amount in order to protect against any sort of decline below the designated price. The lower this price, the cheaper the option. If a stock is at $50 and you buy a protective put at a strike price of 40, you will NOT be protected against losses from 50 to 40, but beyond that you will be protected to the downside.

These are somewhat more sophisticated forms of protection. Basic forms of protection are diversifying, and perhaps being short. If you buy a stock at $100, and you short one in the same sector at $100, if the whole sector goes up, you are betting not that the market will go up, not that the sector will go up, but that stock A that you are long will outperform stock B in a bull market, and stock B will under perform stock A in a down market. This offers protection although it may limit the gains as well, Plus, you actually have to be right in your thesis.

In addition, if you are short, and the stock market booms, you may get a margin call and be forced to sell. Also, if you do not use money management, you are at risk of a short term swing requiring you to sell all of your shares of the stock that went up, in order to pay for those that you were short that went up, and if you can't cover your short, your entire account is in jeopardy of being wiped out.

So rather than being short, I recommend replacing it with buying put options, although this has lots of risks involving time decay as well that you must understand before investing. Using a business entity such as a C Corp or a LLC is another form of protection that can protect you potentially against higher taxes, and personal financial trouble such as a bankruptcy on your record if you intend on using forms of leverage such as loans.

3) Money Management and Control. A good trading system will have a form of control. it will allow you to not give up that control when things go bad. In other words, it allows you to manage your money. Money management is very important. Perhaps one of the most important things is position sizing. If you buy $10,00 of stock for one stock when you only have $10,000 in your account this is very poor money management. Continue to do this, and eventually you will suffer a large loss which will be great, and it will be very difficult to gain enough to make up for it. In addition, if the price goes lower depending on your system, you may want to give yourself flexibility. Extra cash on the sides is another form of money management. It doesn't have to be cash per say, but some form of safety. Various forms of currency, sometimes some gold, bonds, and money market accounts that are all fairly liquid would be a few examples.

4) Leverage Leverage is about using your abilities to gain, the strength of your trading system and various tools to minimize risk, and increase gain. When you take on leverage, you should be able to reduce your position size in comparison to your capital, and still have a similar reward or gain.

Forms of leverage include options, the further out of money option you purchase, the more leverage you have if that stock does make a strong move. You can also sell options to raise capital to invest in some cases.

Another from of leverage is a loan. Whether it's a credit card, a home equity loan, going on margin, or a business loan for an asset holding company, or even taking a company public and using the capital to invest, the idea is to gain money at x% and to invest it and make a greater return than x%. if you can do this, and manage money well, and protect yourself, Your gain is only limited to the amount of capital you can borrow at the maximum of slightly less than what you expect to gain. Generally however, if you use a loan, you should have a form of cash flow or income that will cover the costs of the loan just in case your investment goes wrong. That's another form of money management while using leverage. Money management should be treated much differently under different forms of leverage.

5) Finally, the stock selection vehicle. You need some method to select your vehicle, based on this and your other factors you will determine time horizon and a methodology of trading. The system will help you choose your trading stocks, and exactly what to do with them. You can play around with different trading systems, but generally you should first attempt a good exit strategy and make sure your controls on parts 1-4 of your trading system are sound, and try tweaking them

Stock Trading Systems that are well defined will leave very little room for error. If you learn to use a trading system, you can choose to enhance the essential skills it takes to making your trading system better.

Unfortunately, many day traders are slaves to the computer screen and can miss a moment. Focus on building the better trading system, and not placing the better trade, and you will give yourself some valuable time. If you are really using a system, you don't need to be the one to place the trades, and can instead higher someone to do the work for you. You can use that extra time to improve your system, or find new ways to invest, or learn how to become a better trader.

You can learn other tips like this at the System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems blog, which is full of tips for day trading, options, swing trading, momentum trading, and advice on building a trading system. - 23223

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about varioustrading systems and has a course coming soon on finding futures trading systems that may work for you.

Learn Technical Analysis Terminology

By Ahmad Hassam

As a currency trader, you need to understand the various terms that are frequently used in Technical Analysis. By definition, Technical Analysis is the study of historical and ongoing price data through charts, price patterns and chart indicators. Charts display price action in time intervals using bars and candlesticks.

Technical Analysis is based on the following assumptions. The most important is that all available information is already impounded in the market prices of the currencies. The second assumption says that prices always move in trends or patterns. The third assumption says that history repeats itself meaning you can predict the future market by studying the past market prices.

Studies have shown that once a trend is in motion, it is most likely to continue rather than reverse it. The more one studies chart patterns in technical analysis, the clearer it becomes that reading and interpreting chart patterns and technical analysis are more an art form than a skill.

Charts come in two types. Bar charts and Candlesticks charts. Bar charts display price data in vertical lines. These vertical lines represents price action during a given time period. The tip at the top is the high for the period. The tip at the bottom is the low for the period. The open and close are represented by small horizontal dashes called tics. The tic to the left of the line is the open. The tic to the right of the line is the close.

Candlestick charts are similar to bar charts. Like the bar charts, the top of the vertical line represent the high and the bottom of the vertical line represents the low. However, the price action between the open and the close is represented differently by the use of candlestick bodies. A shaded body represents a lower closing below a higher opening. A hollow body represents a higher closing above a lower opening.

The price action that takes place above and below the body is referred to as tails or wicks. As a forex day trader, you may use any one of the 3, 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 and 180 minutes charts for technical analysis. As a swing and position trader, you may use a daily, weekly or a monthly chart. These charts all use the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or the Eastern Standard Time (EST) depending on the software that your broker platform uses. But you can always adjust these times according to your local time.

You need to understand what are markets patterns? What are Uptrends? What are downtrends? And what are sideway trends? Markets expand and retrace constantly. It is the nature of the market to surge and then pause and retrace. Market prices may continue to expand for sometimes either upward or downward.

Trends in markets make a series of peaks and troughs as they move. An uptrend consists of a series of ascending peaks and troughs, each peak higher than the last peak and each trough lower than the last trough. A downtrend consists of a series of descending peaks and troughs. A sidways trend consists of a series of horizontal peaks and troughs meaning all peaks and all troughs are almost on the same level. - 23223

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. He is interested in day trading and swing trading stocks and currencies. Trade Dow Futures. Learn Forex Trading.