If you think mutual fund performance is the whole story, watch out! You could make a very expensive mistake by not considering the costs of a mutual fund! The lower a fund’s costs, the higher percentage of your fund’s real return you receive. You can control what you pay to invest by selecting low cost mutual funds.

Mutual fund costs come in two flavors:

Shareholder Fees You pay these fees directly out of your own pocket to purchase, redeem, or exchange shares. The following shareholder fees will appear in the “Fee and Expenses” section of a mutual fund’s prospectus:

• Sales Charge on Purchases — Also called a “Load”, this fee is expressed as a percentage of the dollars invested

Annual Operating Expenses These expenses get deducted from the Fund’s assets before the management firm calculates return numbers.

• Management Fee -– This fee gets paid to the team that makes all the investment decisions. Out of this fee, the fund management pays for trading costs so you won’t see commissions detailed in the expense section of the prospectus.

How much you should expect to pay depends upon the mutual fund category. Each category has it’s own average annual expense ratio. For instance , it costs more to run an international fund than a domestic. Bond funds cost less to run than equity funds. To find out the category’s average expense ratio, go to Morningstar and view the report for the fund you’re considering purchasing (simply input the fund’s symbol in the “Quote” box and hit "enter") once the report appears, go to the “Fees and Expenses”. The category average expense ratio appears in the “Actual Fees” section on the right.

All things being equal (i.e., risk, performance, etc.), you want to select mutual funds that have low expense ratios relative to other funds in the same category. You can compare the cost of various funds for free by using Vanguard’s Cost Comparison tool or the Morningstar Fund Compare. If you have a membership at Morningstar, check out the Cost Analyzer found in the Morningstar Tools section (right side of the page).

Financially Savvy provides the information in this article for educational purposes only and it does not constitute investment advice either given or implied. Before making any investments or pursuing any money management technique, always consult your CPA for tax implications and your financial advisor to understand how such changes will impact your long-term plan.

About the Author:

Catie Fitzgerald is a 10+ years veteran of the money management profession and the founder of http://www.financiallysavvy.com. Financially Savvy provides investors with the education and resources necessary to gain confidence in making their own financial decisions. We offer a variety of educational venues including classroom sessions, one-on-one coaching, and online resources.

The bulls and bears of the stock market are both tempting and scary to the investors. Speculators are enchanted by the stock market’s potential to help them in making quick money with a big M. While those who tread with care and caution, often shy away for fear of losing. However, the stock market is not all about speculative gains or black Tuesdays. It is a place where committed companies look for raising money to fund their activities. Serious investors can actually create wealth not only for themselves, but also for the companies and the nation. A wise way to invest in the stock market is to empower your self with information. You have to know and learn about the company you invest in, from past records and future plans.

Irrespective of what the Wall Street Gurus predict or what the economic indicators like Dow Jones Average say, a simple and foolproof way of knowing that a company is doing well is to keep a track of how much dividend income does it pay to its share holders every year. If the dividend rates have been rising steadily every year, you know you have a safe bet. To benefit from the future prospects of such companies, it is a good idea to rollback the returns into the company. Which means, instead of adding the dividends to your savings, you can invest them in the shares of the same company. That way, you can ensure that the dividends you receive are always higher than what you got last, with a larger number of shares getting added to your investment portfolio every time.

With this kind of an assured investment plan in place, investors with a gambling streak begin to think beyond making a quick gain. While those who were afraid to take risks get wiser.

Let us find out why companies that give ever-increasing cash dividend income are a good choice for investment:

Your Share Holding Goes Up And So does Your Dividend Income.

Your income begins to escalate with your owning more shares every year and the dividend income rising correspondingly.

Your Dividend Income Increases Even If Stock Prices don’t.

You are no more at the mercy of the market. Irrespective of what your shares are worth, you keep earning additional cash dividends. In fact, even if the market price dips, you are still at an advantage, as that allows you to reinvest to purchase more shares.

You are not hit by Inflation.

With the dividend income rising every year, you offset the effects of a rising inflation. This particularly provides relief to people who have retired and depend on a regular cash inflow to help them meet their expenses. At this stage one need not rollback the investment into further shares, instead, the cash dividend can be used as a kind of regular pension money.

Start Young

The ingenuity behind this investment strategy is that it protects you from the fluctuations that generally occur in the market. A lower stock market rate only means you buy more to increase your dividends more. It is advisable to start this strategy early in life while you are still working, so that your wealth builds up gradually and constantly over the years. And you are assured of a regular income, as you grow older.

Remember, the success of this proven investment plan depends significantly on the track record of the company you invest in. It should be one that declares a higher dividend at the end of each financial period. A simple way to find that out would be to calculate the dividend yield. You can do that by dividing the annual dividend per share by the price per share. Of course, no investment can be totally free of risks, neither is this one. Keep an eye on the dividend yield, and if that dips, it’s a signal for you to opt out of the investment.

James Marriott is a finance writer with more than 15 years of experience in writing financial content, including those related to credit cards, mortgages, stocks, investments, and funds. He has been with RNCOS, a premier financial writing services company, for 2 years as head of financial writing. He is also a regular financial columnist with renowned business journals. For your comments on the article and further financial assistance, please contact our staff writer at info@rncos.com.

Pretend, for a moment, that you have a gut feeling the market will be falling. You think that oil, the hurricane, the economy, whatever, is going to ultimately bring down the market.

Should you get out of the market entirely?

Making a decision to “get out of the market” and sell all your stocks is an incredibly risky wager! You are essentially drawing a line in the sand and deciding the market will never again go higher. I say this is a risky bet because, historically, the market goes up two thirds of the time and down one third of the time.

Which would be the better direction to go?

Well, Step One would be to determine if we are currently on “offense” or “defense” in the market. Markets go up and down whether or not there is an oil crisis, a war, or economic hard times.

Knowing who has control of the football allows you to run the proper plays in your portfolio. You wouldn’t punt and give the ball away on first down in football; likewise you would not want to sell everything while on offense in the market either. When we are on offense, we want to run plays (use strategies) that will help build the value of our accounts.

Now, when the market is on defense, the play-calling changes. On defense, we’ll use strategies that will help us protect our investment. We do this so we can be ready to play when we regain control of the football.

Step Two would be to examine which sectors are currently in favor and where our investments stand in relation to this analysis.

These two steps are crucial to determining whether the odds (the risk) are with you or against you. They must not be skipped!

Let’s say the market is moving from offense to defense. What would be the next step? Sell everything? As we said earlier, we know the market goes up two thirds of the time and down one third of the time. Selling everything implies a doomsday scenario and is usually a bad idea.

If you’ve completed the first two steps, go to step three.

Step Three, sell any stocks (or mutual funds) that have poor relative strength. What is relative strength? How a stock (or fund) performs compared to the overall market.

Stocks are either on a relative strength BUY signal or a relative strength SELL signal. Did you know that relative strength signals (buy and sell) last, on average, for TWO YEARS? Meaning a stock that gives a relative strength buy signal today will usually outperform the overall market for (on average) two years. That’s a long time!

Next, Step Four. Examine the stocks or funds that have good relative strength. Stocks (and mutual funds) with good relative strength tend to snap back quickly when the market rebounds.

On the flipside, stocks with poor relative strength tend to fall with the market (and many times will fall further than the overall market).

Relative strength is a very important part of the decision process we use at Mullooly Asset Management. Knowing the relative strength of a stock or a fund will clue you in on its potential performance during rough times.

Let’s take relative strength two steps farther. We now know we can measure relative strength for an individual stock (or mutual fund) versus the market. But did you also know that we can measure a stock (or mutual fund’s) relative strength against its peer group too? That would help us decide if we should jump over to another horse in the race. Perhaps you have money in a stock that is in a favored sector; but the stock you own has poor relative strength. You want to stay in the sector. Moving within the sector to another stock in the group with better relative strength is a smart way to go.

We can also plot the relative strength of a sector compared to the market as well. Knowing a sector’s relative strength versus the market is VERY important! Often times, when a sector turns up, it can be like watching a school of fish move…they all move at once. And today, you can instantly have money in that sector through buying an exchange traded fund (ETF).

Likewise, when a sector gives a relative strength sell signal versus the market overall, the whole group usually moves again. You’d want to reduce the amount of money in that sector as soon as possible, and perhaps get out of the group entirely.

Thomas P. Mullooly, President of Mullooly Asset Management, LLC (http://www.mullooly.net) has spent over twenty years in the investment industry, as a broker and as an investment advisor. Mullooly Asset Management is a fee-only registered investment advisory firm based in New Jersey, specializing in retirement plan accounts, particularly managing 401k, 403b, and deferred compensation accounts for individuals. Feel free to contact us to check out the relative strength of your portfolio by sending an email to tom@mullooly.net or visiting http://www.mullooly.net/403b-plan.html or sign up to receive the market report and tips on how you can soundly invest your money at http://www.mullooly.net

A Guide to Using Stop Loss Orders

Stop losses are market orders designed to allow you to limit your losses.

When you place a stop loss you are instructing the spread betting company or stock broker to cut your position when it reaches a certain loss level (or in some cases, profit level - more later).

Therefore, a stop loss will automatically close your trade if the market reaches a certain point.

For example: You have bought £1 a point of the German DAX at 4200. The most you are willing to risk is £150 on this trade so you place your stop at 4050. If the market trades at 4050 you are taken out immediately and you lose £150.

Normal Stop Losses

These are free but with this type of stop you can sometimes lose more than you specified when you placed the order.

Sometimes your stop loss order may not be filled at the level you wanted i.e. you may be taken out at 4046 instead of 4050.

The bookmaker will attempt to get you out of the trade at the price you specify but when the market is moving very quickly it may not be possible.

This is called "slippage" and tends to happen in a fast moving market.

You can also lose more than you wished if the market you are trading "gaps".

For example: You have opened a long trade on the Dow Jones for £1 a point at 10000. As you were willing to risk £200, you placed a stop at 9800. Over the next couple of days, the Dow moves down slightly to 9900 and at the end of trading on the third day it is sat at 9890.

The next day some very disappointing economic figures are released and the Dow opens well down at 9700. As this is past your stop loss, the bookmaker closes your bet at market price.

Your trade is closed at 9690, 110 points below your stop loss so your loss is now £310 rather than the £200 you were willing to lose.

Guaranteed Stop Losses

You can ensure you are closed out at the exact price you specify by using a Controlled Risk or Guaranteed stop loss order

These types of stops are designed as a type of insurance to guarantee that your stop loss order is filled at the exact price you specify.

Even if the market you are trading gaps 1000 points beyond your stop, if you are using a guaranteed stop loss you will still only lose what you have already decided is an acceptable loss.

You pay a little extra for a guaranteed stop. In the Dow example above, a guaranteed stop would cost roughly 4 times the stake (4 x £1 = £4). Usually the premium is taken from your account balance when setting the stop loss level or is added to the spread.

Although they do reduce your account balance, guaranteed stops can save you a great deal of money and are certainly recommended if you have a small capital base.

Some Pointers About Stop Losses

- Never move your stop if you think it may be hit. If you move the stop further down to try and avoid being taken out you will simply lose more money.

- You don’t have to close your entire position with a stop loss order. If you wish, you can set up 2 or more stops. For a £1 per point trade you could set a stop 100 points away which reduces you exposure by 50p a point. Another could be placed 200 points away to take you completely out of the trade.

- It is better to let the stop take you out of the market and preserve the rest of your capital than to try and stay in the trade by moving the stop.

- You can lock in profits by using a stop loss. If you were to enter a long trade on the Dow at 10000 with a stop at 9900 and the Dow moves up to 10200 you could then move your stop to 10100 to lock in 100 points profit.

- Never trade without a stop loss, even if it is just a normal stop. To stay in the trading game you must preserve your capital and huge unexpected losses will certainly not help. See the Money Management section for more details.

Ben Catt is an active financial trader and runs a free website containing hints, tips and information about tax-free financial spread trading and betting in the UK. The site can be found at http://www.FinancialSpreadTrading.co.uk. He also runs a business opportunity information site - http://www.BizOppsUK.com

Like many stock market investors/traders, I too, lost my shirt in the nineties. High-tech stocks always seemed to offer such huge returns, and when you analyzed the charts they looked like can’t miss opportunities. But as the decade wore on my stock portfolio value went on a steady nose dive. Until it virtually became non-existent.

At the time I was looking for stocks to hold for a few months, and then sell. Stocks that were likely to increase in a short time. I read all the books, learned fundamental and technical analysis, created and back tested stock trading systems. Subscribed to all the newsletters, the services, the gurus, and jumped around in my opinions so much, that even when I was right, I didn’t allow my correctness time to pay off. Self-doubt, gut wrenching anxiety, not to mention unnecessary stress on an already dysfunctional marriage all added to my panicking. And the inevitable loss of my entire account.

Through it all I made right buys and short sells, but my convictions was never very strong, I couldn’t stand the fluctuation of hi-tech stocks, and had no idea when to keep my position and when to dump it. Usually I would dump winners at the exact worst time, and keep losers for way too long. I tried system trading, but grew weary of systems that worked when back testing but not in real time. In short, I went broke, lost my marriage, my house, and my confidence.

Around 2001, I began sniffing around the market again. Now, though I had no money to trade with. However I remembered a time right at the end of 1999. When I had traded GE, several times successfully, it was in a nice up trend, with enough timely dips that allowed buying opportunities, and timely spots to also sell. I began wondering if I could buy and sell large cap stocks, and make a profit. I began, again pouring over charts, it was easier now, with the Internet, you could do it for free. I studied household names, and not so household names but always stocks over 5 billion in capitalization. In 2002, I began paper trading, based on a few quick judgments I made about chart formations, and using a few basic indicators. I did this in real time

I had no money to trade, now going through an expensive divorce, that was to leave me virtually broke for 3 years. I, still was fascinated with the idea of using large cap stocks, and the fascination kept me paper trading. I found these advantages to large caps; one they had real value, not blue sky. So often, hi-tech and biotech’s only had future earnings to offer. Large caps had real worth, real property, real earning, etc. Information on them was readily available. I learned during the nineties, I will never have the latest information on stocks. But with large caps you don’t really need it. Large caps charts were also more predictable, more reliable, upturns and down turns were within parameters, that were almost always followed. High tech could drop like a rock from the sky on rumors, rumors that I wouldn’t even know about until the end of the day.

But was there enough volatility to trade in large caps. I was always bored with buy and hold and hope for a 7% return over the next ten years type strategy, I wanted some action. But what I found was there is enough volatility, if you can figure out how to predict it. Consider my first real trade of this year, I bought All-State Insurance ticker symbol ALL. I bought it in March of 2005, at that time its 52 week low was 43, and its high was 52. If you had bought it at the exact low and sold it at the exact high you would have made, 20% annual return. Not bad for such a safe investment. Of course it is impossible to do that. But what is very possible is to hold it for about 39 days, and make around 3%, in that time. That is almost a 30% annual return while holding a very safe stock for a very short time. And that is what I did.

I paper traded large cap stocks for 3 years, averaging over 50% return on investment for 3 years. While I scrimped and saved, and hid money until I had a whopping total of $3000, to open a stock account. And then I bought All State. This year I again hope to make over 50% return on investment, only in real dollars. Which let me tell you is much more exciting, than paper trading. Oh, I have started a successful side business, whose profts I place into my account. But more on this later. You can read my trades as they occur on my blog http://livingonlargecaps.blogspot.com/. And watch as in real time I attempt to prove you can make huge profits on large cap stocks.

CT Larsen has been trading stocks since 1990. He now trades large caps stocks exclusively with wildly successful results. You can track actual trades in real time at http://livingonlargecaps.blogspot.com

The fight continues to rage among traders who use technical indicators and those who prefer fundamental information to establish new positions and to exit current positions.

The fundamentalist believe in knowing all the facts about a company such as price earnings ratios, sales growth, product margins, management capabilities, cost of production, cash flow, etc., etc. while the technicians could care less about the latter and want to see sector price trends and rank, the Relative Strength Index, MACD (moving average convergence divergence), stochastics, trend lines, chart patterns and many more esoterically evolved indicators.

Which method is the best?

There is no Holy Grail of trading and what critics of either method forget that it is the trader who adds the final nuance that results in profit or loss. The more years a professional investor has been working his plan the more successful he usually becomes. The unsuccessful ones have long since gone broke and are no longer in the game.

It is somewhat difficult for me to give great credence to fundamentalists as I am a technician and have a very long profitable track record to prove it; however, I do sometimes look at some of fundamentals. It seems that the longer term trader can do well with a fundamental approach because the timing to buy or sell has a lag time. He does not buy the bottom nor sell the top, but who does?

The technical trader will ignore the informational approach with the use of charts and other indicators. Short term traders must be technicians, especially day traders, as there are no fundamentals upon which they can assess their buys and sells.

Technical trading is based on the psychology of the mass of traders that ride upon the hidden values of the changing fundamentals. Charts and other indicators tell the of the long term health of a company, country or commodity as it is shown in the price action. The fundamentalist looks for the reason for a change to buy or sell whereas the technician tries to find the change in the price action to initiate buys and sells.

No matter what a fundamental trader’s position he must be very patient. He may have a position on for years. During that same period there will be waves of highs and lows during which he remains constant in his position. The technician may trade the same equity several times buying the low of the wave and selling the high (hopefully). In commodities it is astute trading, but when it is done in stocks and funds it is called timing.

A combination of technical and fundamental methods can give the best results. For the average guy occasional trader I can only caution him to be very careful. Very few intermittent traders ever make money.

A successful trading approach requires commitment. It is a business the same as owning a shoe store or trucking company. You must give it your all.

Like any business you have to work at it.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

This is an excellent question, if fact, it’s the toughest question that I face with every stock that I own.

If I own a stock and it immediately goes down, this is the easiest decision I must make – SELL and sell fast. I know how to cut my losses and have been doing it for years. Yes, it’s a blow to my self esteem but I always feel better when I see that particular stock several dollars lower a few weeks later. This is when I feel good about the insurance policy I have (sell rules) to protect my capital.

Take Accuride (ACW) for example: I recently purchased the stock on a “three weeks tight pattern”, a pattern that is familiar with O’Neil and CANSLIM. I placed a market order as the stock started to move towards the breakout level of $15.00 and was filled at $14.99.

For a lower priced stock such as ACW, I give it about 8% breathing room which brings my sell point to $13.79. I will not place a physical sell stop because I don’t want to be taken out of the position on false market maker moves. I reevaluate my position every night and decide if I need to sell “at the market” the next morning if it is below $13.79 or nearing the sell point that I established. Last week, the stock fell to $14.11 intraday giving most investors a scare but managed to close up at $15.18. This is the exact reason why I keep mental stops instead of physical stops. I only place physical stops when I will be away from a computer for an extended period of time or if my gains are sufficient and I want to protect them at a specific number, then I don’t care if the stop is triggered intraday.

I will not change my mental sell stop of $13.79 until ACW gains at least 20% from my buy point. If that time arrives, I will move my sell stop about 12% below the current levels. In this case, the numbers would read like this: ACW would be up 20% near $18 and my trailing mental stop would be $15.84. If the stock approaches this area or violates the number, I will sell “at the market” the following morning. Remember, circumstances play a big role in each decision. If outside events are influencing the stock, I must take that into consideration and base my decision on the additional information.

If ACW starts to use a moving average as support, my mental sell stop will always be slightly below the moving average, again giving it room to breathe. If any of my stocks gain 50%, I start to place a physical stop about 10%-12% below the current levels to protect the gains.

Finally, if I have not been sold out of a stock but I start to see the stock act in different ways than it was while up-trending, I will sell immediately (examples can be a climax run, slicing a major moving average, breaking a strong trend-line or possibly a string of weaker earnings reports). Use discretion and develop a feel for what works best for you.

If Accuride (ACW) tanks today and I am forced to sell even though I only purchased the stock in the past week, I will not allow it to hurt my emotional balance and I will move on to the next opportunity because I know investing is about percentages and NOT about being right on every trade.

Below are some basic sell rules that I follow:

Sell all stocks that fall 7-10% below your purchase price. Don’t ever allow a 10% loss double into a 20% loss because of stubbornness or the emotion of hope (hoping the stock will rebound). It is perfectly fine if the stock is sold out for a 7% loss and then it rebounds and you feel you would like to take another position in this stock.

If you feel something is wrong with your stock and the action looks odd but you are only down a few percent, sell anyway, why take a chance, especially in a bad market environment. This is the only form of insurance in the stock market.

When a stock has been is a solid up-trend and then it starts to move sideways, this is referred to as churning. This can be the first signal to the end of the run. This may serve as the perfect time to lock in your profits and watch from the sideline, remember, you can always get back in.

Learn to sell into strength; you can never go wrong by selling into strength before the stock peaks. No one and I mean NO ONE gets out at the top and if they do, they were lucky. No one and I mean NO ONE goes broke by taking a profit after an extended run or up-trend! Don’t allow the emotion of GREED to steer your ship, take profits when necessary, don’t get greedy.

Stop Loss, Trailing Stops and Market Makers:

Many investors try to lock in gains or prevent losses with a predetermined stop loss or trailing stop loss. This is an excellent tool but has become an easy target for market makers and program traders to manipulate.

For example: You buy XYZ stock at $50 and enter an automatic stop loss at $45 to protect your portfolio from extensive losses.

Market makers can see this entered stop loss and play the market in order to wipe out your shares and pick them up at cheaper prices. They can bid down the price to $44.50 or so and grab your shares and then bid up the price back to the $50 range – all in one day. I have personally seen intraday manipulation of stocks being bid down, only to close for minor losses or slight gains. Accuride is a great example from last Thursday as it was down over 6% intraday and then closed up over 1%.

A trailing stop is a feature that allows the investor to determine a % point at which their stock is sold.

Example: If you buy 100 shares of a stock at $50, you can select a percentage at which your stock is sold, this percentage follows the stock up in price. So if you bought 100 shares of XYZ at $50 and put your percentage at 8%, your stock will be sold at $46…BUT, if your stock advances to $60, then you will have a new sell point at $55.20 (8% below the high of $60). In other words, your sell stop trails or follows your stock without you having to cancel out and resetting a new sell stop each time your stock goes up in price.

How do you protect your portfolio without letting market makers trip your stop loss for a premature exit?

I use a predetermined mental stop loss that is only implemented after the market is closed for the day. I take a look at each holding and determine if it should be sold at the market or intraday the next trading day. I predetermined my sell level when I bought the stock, so most emotions are already taken out of the equation.

If you invest in quality stocks with solid fundamentals and technicals, there is no need to constantly worry about huge losses in the matter of one or two days, barring a tragic event within that particular company.

Finally, Post Trade Analysis:

Post trade analysis could possibly be the most important key to unlocking your investment potential. Every investor must analyze their past trades. By analyzing your past trades, you can focus in on your mistakes and pinpoint the downfalls in your methods.

Ask yourself:

How many stocks have you bought in the past 12 months?
How many went up?
How many went down?
How long did you hold these stocks?
Why did the stock work?
Where did it go wrong?
Did the fundamentals breakdown?
Did the stock send key technical red flags before a major collapse?

Most investors skip post analysis and consider it a waste of time to look at the past. Many investors are scared to look at past trades; they don’t want to see the extent of the damage. An investor will never be able to take a step forward without looking over the past success and failures in their portfolio. In order to focus on weak areas in your investing methods, post analysis is the place to start. Post analysis with the aid of charts will show you if you bought too soon, sold too late, sold too early or bought the wrong stock all together. Print out a chart of all stocks that you sold and plot your key entry and exit points. Look for base building, accumulation, distribution or any other components that help shape your final decisions. Compare your stocks to sister stocks and see if similar patterns occurred. Did any sister stocks start to rise or fall before your stock? Post analysis is like looking in the mirror; you have no where to hide and only the truth to seek.

After several post analysis sessions, you will notice similarities in your buying and selling patterns. Similar mistakes or successes will become apparent. Focus on both the good and the bad. This post analysis allows the educated investor to suck in their pride and take responsibility for their own actions.

This is the starting point to correcting mistakes and growing your strengths!

Chris Perruna - http://www.marketstockwatch.com

Chris is the founder and president of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We offer an extended no obligation monthly trial period starting immediately with two free weeks. We don’t stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make you own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.

Ever jumped out of an airplane? It’s OK if you have on a parachute. Pretty dumb if you don’t.

Every buy any stocks, mutual funds or Exchange Traded Funds? It’s OK if you know how much you are willing to risk. Pretty dumb if you don’t.

Parachute investing is buying an equity with a parachute so you won’t risk all your money or, better yet, give back the profit you have made as the stock or fund went up and then goes down. If you bought that hummer at $12 per share and during the past couple of years seen it go up to $52 you don’t want to give back that nice profit, do you? With a parachute you can save most of it. How?

When you invest in any stock of fund you must know how much you will risk before you buy it and how much of the profit you are willing to give back when it turns down. Take that beauty at $12. Instead of going up it went down. Are you willing to agonize as it drops to $5? If you had a parachute you would have jumped out of the plane before it crashed. If you had an exit strategy for your stock you would have sold it before you lost a big chunk of your cash.

The secret of a safe investment is an exit strategy. When you bought Mr. Twelve Dollars you shook hands and told him I’d like to be your friend, but if you change your name to Ten Dollars I am leaving. Maybe that that is not very nice, but nice doesn’t cut it in the investment world.

Mr. Twelve Dollars said I am going up and I want you for my friend. Please follow me and if I falter you can leave and we will part friends. Now that makes sense. You trail along and after it goes to $52 it does falter. Do you know where you are going to leave or are you going to ride it go back down to $12? In other words do you have your parachute on?

That parachute is your continuing exit strategy that is in place every day. In the investment community it is called an open trailing stop loss order. Any broker can put this in place for you. You might be lucky enough to have a broker who knows where to place stops, but unfortunately there are not many of them.

The brokerage industry does not teach its employees (brokers) how to protect customers’ money. If that is the case you might want to use the old standard 10% rule. Have the broker place an open stop every Friday at 10% of the closing price of that day as it closes higher. Never lower the stop loss. Brokers hate this as it makes them work, but that is what they are there for and that is how they earn their commissions.

With your parachute you can always protect your original cash purchase from a big loss and as your stock advances you can lock in profit as the stock advances.

Every investment should have a parachute.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005

When the market is a bit funky, it is obvious that the last thing you want to do is release bad news, but the rules are the rules and when someone announces they have missed earnings or revenues the punishment is quick and severe. But its usually overdone! For instance is it right to cut a stock in half when the worst thing they said is that sales were off by 10%? More times than not the market overreacts to everything and this can be a great buying opportunity for you. If you see enough charts for enough years it is quite clear that the initial reaction to a bad news report is often overdone and the stock pops back a bit on a rebound. This is called a "dead cat bounce" in market language. But what we are focusing on isn’t really a dead cat bounce, its bottom fishing and that is a bit different.

Here is the scenario: A company announces that they beat estimates but revenues were a bit soft. That causes a huge panic and they sell off the stock in a big way. So a stock that was 30 on Tuesday morning closes at 18 that night! Then Wed. comes and it pops back up a bit (the dead cat bounce), maybe getting to 21 or so. But very often that dead cat bounce is met with some more selling as the market moves on to slaughter some other poor company. Finally the stock settles in somewhere around 20 dollars and sits there for quite a while. This is where it gets interesting to watch it. A lot of times that thing will sit and crawl along that 20 dollar line for a long time, just wiggling up a 1/2 and down a 1/2 for a week or two. But in todays market, CEO’s and CFO’s can’t afford to have their stock just sitting because shareholders are so well informed and so interested. (shareholders are very quick to start lawsuits today) So the company will generally go out of its way to release "good" news in hopes of getting the stock back in favor. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t but it rarely causes any additional selling, so buying these "bottom dwellers" is generally pretty safe. If the company was doing well before it released its "poor numbers", it will often pick up about half of what they originally lost in a matter of a few more weeks.

So watch for these "big slams" and jot them down. If you are really fast, you can day trade the "dead cat bounce", but if you are a position player, ignore the bounce, and wait for the "settle in". Once its clear that the bulk of the selling is gone and the stock has bottomed, taking a nibble is often a good way to pick up a few points. One important note here is that you MUST wait for at least 3 to 5 trading days after it seems to have "bottomed". You have to be sure the bottom is really set, or you can get trapped in a bounce. Another good idea is to do this type of bottom fishing on good, well known companies. Don’t try this on the "blah blah" company, because they may never come back. But when a leading tech stumbles, its often just a gift to us! So watch for these opportunities, they can pay off big.

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You have heard about a particular mutual fund from a friend, saw it advertised on TV or read about it in some publication thought it would be a good buy. Next you call your broker to get his advice before you buy because he is an expert and is there to help you make money.

“Hello, Billy Sol (see Billy Sol Estes on Google), this is Joe Mushroom and I want to buy some XYZ mutual fund. What do you think?”

“Joe, I was just thinking about you and was going to call you, but first let me look up XYZ for you. Uh oh! Joe it has a high expense ratio of about 1 ½ per cent. I would not recommend that for you.”

Billy Sol fails to mention that XYZ has no load (that’s commission) so he would not make any money if you bought it. There are thousands of excellent no-load funds that outperform the load funds. Billy Sol says the fund his brokerage company recommends is ABC and again fails to mention it has a 5% load (commission) and goes on to paint a beautiful picture of ABC and how well it has done in the past 5 and 10 year period. Furthermore the expense ratio is only one per cent which is savings of 33%.

WOW! Joe thinks that sounds pretty good so he lets Bill Sol buy ABC instead of XYZ. Let’s see what really happened.

Joe saves ½ percent per year on the expense ratio, but pays and extra 5% up front. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you divide ½% in 5% that goes 10 time. In other words it is going to take Joe Mushroom 10 years to makeup that 5% commission charge not counting what that 5% charge would have made if it had been working in Joe’s account for that 10 year period.

What it boils down to is never pay commission for any mutual fund. If the broker will not sell you a no-load fund then get another broker. He is not trying to help you make money. He is trying to make money for himself and his company and may tell you his company does not carry a particular fund because they don’t think it is a good. Hog wash. Another broker lie. It is your money and you are entitled to buy any fund. Go to a discount broker who handles that fund and open an account. It will save you a bundle over the years and they are as safe an any big-name broker.

Advice from a financial planner is no better if he is making commissions. The smart method is to have a fee based broker who has a winning track record. Have any financial planner show you his model account. He should have one or maybe several model portfolios. Unless they make money every year he is not a successful money advisor. Don’t let them hoodwink you about their performance “is better than the S&P500”. That’s nonsense. You want to see a cash increase every year.

The first and basic rule is never pay commissions for any mutual fund.

Al Thomas’ book, "If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he’s the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

Copyright 2005