A colleague of mine just returned from a scuba diving trip in Cozumel, which just happens to be one of my favorite places to dive. Anyway, she was telling me about an unexpected difficulty she encountered while swimming around the corral reef down about 85 feet. It wasn’t anything serious but her story reminded me of something my scuba instructor used to say over and over again. "Plan your dive, and dive your plan".

When you’re down about 90 or 100 feet the nitrogen acts on your body in a way that’s not too dissimilar to having one dry martini on an empty stomach. It’s called Nitrogen Narcosis, Rapture of the Depths, or Martini’s Law. So the thing to do is get your planning done while you have a clear head, (i.e. on the surface). And then when you’re deep into it, and you’re feeling a bit euphoric, or nervous, you don’t have to make any decisions about ‘what’ to do. You just follow your plan.

This holds true for trading as well. When you’re feeling the euphoria or nervousness set in, remember to follow your plan. And, uhm yeah,, also have a plan to follow. Clear heads will prevail.

Years ago I had the good fortune of talking with a trading guru for several hours. This individual is world renowned for his trading saavy and skill. What he elaborated in that conversation had a tremendous impact on me. HE said that when he learned how to trade that his family enforced only one rule that he had to follow. KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING TO GET OUT BEFORE YOU GET IN. He felt that the problem that most traders had was that they felt that this simplicity did not apply to them. I remember sitting and speaking with him and thinking about my own mistakes, primarily letting hope take over in my decision making.

Many traders think that crying "UNCLE" on a trade and taking a loss is unacceptable. Since that conversation I have taken numerous losses on trades but it’s funny how they don’t have the STING that they used to because I PLAN MY DIVE and DIVED MY PLAN.

This is really simple and incredibly workable. Apply it to your own trading and investing.

-Downjonesfully,

Harald Anderson
http://www.eOptionsTrader.com

Harald Anderson is the founder and Chief Analyst of eOptionsTrader.com a leading online resource of Options Trading Information. He writes regularly for financial publications on Risk Management and Trading Strategies. His goal in life is to become the kind of person that his dog already thinks he is. http://www.eOptionsTrader.com.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are a group of passive index funds that trade on an exchange like an individual stock. At the time of writing there are 162 ETFs with $220 billion in assets under management trading on U.S. exchanges.

ETFs hold a basket of securities that mimic the results of various indices including broad stock and bond market, industry sectors, and international securities. New niche funds are being created regularly. Recent introductions include gold and China funds, and there are rumors that a silver ETF will soon be available.

The most popular ETF is the NASDAQ 100 Tracking Stock (QQQQ) trading 50 million shares a day on the NASDAQ Stock Market. The volume leaders on the American Stock Exchange are the SPDRS (SPY) tracking the S&P 500 trading 25 million shares per day, the Energy SPDR (XLE), Japan iShares (EWJ), Russell 2000 iShares (IWM), and the Financial SPDR (XLF).

ETFs are widely used by institutional and individual investors as a tool for diversification, risk reduction, hedging, and an efficient way to acquire a basket of securities providing partial ownership in all holdings with only a single commission and small administration fees. ETFs are also transparent, meaning that investors know at all times what securities they are invested in.

There are now also options and futures contracts trading on of ETFs. The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) lists 43 options on ETFs, while the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) offers futures contracts on the S&P 500 Depository Receipts, NASDAQ 100 Tracking Stock, and Russell 2000 Index Fund. And One Chicago, a joint venture between the CBOE, CME, and Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), offers an electronically traded futures contract on the DIAMONDS Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF.

There are also a number of web sites offering information on Exchange Traded Funds. Check out Amex.com, Yahoo! Finance’s ETF Center, ETFConnect, or ETFera.com. Meanwhile, investment research firm Morningstar compares the fair value estimates to market prices of exchange traded funds holdings to determine whether a fund is over or undervalued.

Exchange Traded Fund’s low costs, liquidity, and diversification make them an excellent alternative to mutual funds, broad based index investments, and individual stocks in niche sectors.

Mark Mahorney is the owner of Cofishop Media Group located in Keystone, CO. Cofishop is a diverse marketing services organization and online content syndicator of a suite of financial sites. Mark has been a contributing author to The Motley Fool and published in numerous leading financial publications.

Mark inks The Market Speculator newsletter, a hedged approach to market profits for individual investors. You can also read his scrawls, scribbles, rambles, and rants on the markets and whatever other ilk gets his ire at BlogginWallStreet.com and Marketblog.com.

MarketSpectator.com: Profit in the calm, protect in the storm
BlogginWallStreet.com: What really moves the markets
MarketBlog.com: Market missives and more

One of the main reasons many of us get into investing is to become financially independent. Who isn’t trying to amass a portfolio with enough income to ensure that we don’t have to work when we should be playing golf or traveling the world. While there are several strategies to invest, is active trading one of the ways to become a millionaire?

For those investors who want to achieve that million dollar portfolio, you may want to read The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. While it wont help you identify great stock picks (but investorandtrader.com can help), it will help you to establish the difference between those who dream of having a million dollar net worth, and those who do it. You may be surprised at the answers.

While I won’t give away all the secrets, I will share one of the surprising findings which impact investors over the long term.

95% owned stocks

9% of investors held for less than 1 year

1% held for a few days

1% held for a few weeks

7% held for a few months

Less than 10%, less than 1 in 10 people with net worth of $1 millionaire or more actively trade their portfolios. Most definitions of active traders would mean that 1 in 100 are active traders. 99% of millionaires do not actively trade their positions. They hold for long periods of time. They find good companies and let the companies make them money.

The biggest problem with active trading is the commission, and the taxes. Your brokerage gets paid whether you make money or not. Making the presumption that you’re trading with a discount broker, you’re paying $20 ($10 to buy, $10 to sell) each time you trade. If you do make money, you’re paying taxes on that gain. At the end of the year, you get to keep a portion. Make 2 trades per week, and you will spend over $2000 a year in commission. If you lost money, add $2000 to your losses. If you made money, subtract tax, and then subtract $2000 more.

It takes a lot of successful trades to make money. While it can happen, sometimes, just finding a good quality stock and sticking to them, might just be your key to a million dollar portfolio.

That’s just one guys opinion.

Trading Penny Stocks | investment strategies for penny stocks

1source4stocks.com provides penny stock traders with online trading and investment tips, online trading strategies and penny stock picks.

So you’d like to earn your living DayTrading?

You have all heard the stories of losing DayTraders running down the streets shooting people?

During the heady .com days prior to 2001, (when Bush became president,) there were stocks, 3 or 4 times a week that went up from 30 to 200% a day.

It was possible, if you knew what you were doing, to check before the market opened to see which stocks were running in real time and why.

And, if you then had a fast electronic brokerage system you could dive into the market, buy a bunch and sell them the same day.

About 1% of people doing this consistently made money.

You could see one private individual make a million in one day shorting Corel. And then there was somebody who lost a bunch hanging on too long to the WWWF IPO.

As a matter of fact the bottom line is that if you take inflation into account you’d have been better off putting your money in an old sock since 2001.

So what to do?

Give up on the Stock Market let alone give up on DayTrading?

Don’t give up on the Stock Market, if you use the right system which is a simple set of formulas you can still make 30% or more on your money annually.

Using this simple system $11,000 left in the market for 17 years would be worth more than one million dollars today.

But it is not DayTrading and you still would need a strong stomach to sit out these 17 years, because some of those years would give you negative returns.

The bottom line is this; if you want to DayTrade there is only one way to do this today.

And that is with MINDBLOWING News.

MINDBLOWING News along the lines of:

XYZ corporation finds cure for cancer. ABC Inc invents Eternal Life Pill DreamCar Corp invents car that runs on water.

You get the idea.

And then you should use another qualifier:

You should get this news BEFORE most other people get it.

How to do this:

For about $10 a month you can get a subscription to real-time market news.

Get your Real Time Market News at about 6 AM Eastern Standard Time.

Say you find the real time news that a company has invented a car that runs on water.

Check the time the news was first released, making sure that news item was not available yesterday.

Buy the stock now with money that you can afford to burn ALWAYS USING A STOP LOSS.

Most electronic brokerage firms today allow you to buy stocks on NASDAQ only as early as 6 AM EST.

Sell the stock at 9.28 AM EST to all the traders that are waking up.

You could conceivably double your money.

So would you then trade again in this stock after the market opens officially?

No,you should not.

Too many mindgames will be played by market makers during the first day with the stock that produced the mindblowing news.

Remember the statement above:

"There have been very few days since 2001 that any stocks actually went up more than 30% in one day, the oomph has disappeared from both the Nasdaq and the Dow."

Never hold the mind blowing news stock overnight, because people in most cases will dump it on the second day.

One more tip:

Never buy IPO’s on the first day.

The most touted IPO(meaning almost all large brokerage houses were praising this IPO to the sky) cost people the most in decreased value on the second day after the IPO came out.

Who were the winners? The brokerage houses.

So, if you have money to burn, have a cast iron stomach and want to watch market news from 6 AM to 9.28 AM EST, DayTrading may be for you.

J Shipper likes DayTrading. Check out these Sites: http://www.lazytrader.com http://www.stock-trading-now.info

Stock trading system software is getting increasingly popular among stock exchange traders. There are also handbooks and guides written by seasoned stock traders that can come in very handy. These are useful for professional traders as well as for amateurs looking to make some money in the stock market. A stock trading system is a software application that automates trade decisions. It is programmed with a certain set of rules and these rules govern trade decisions. A stock trading system takes the emotion out of trading. Traders do not need to speculate on a prospect. If the numbers are right, the stock trading system will prompt them to buy and sell. This prevents a trader from falling into greed or being swayed by misdirected instincts. Many traders have successfully adopted stock trading systems but you must consider the option carefully before purchasing a system of your own.

When buying one of the newer seats, people should look at the hardware package for two foam-and-epoxy washers. To fix the new toilet seat, they should turn the seat upside down, and center one on the bottom of each bolt-head housing. When the stage is set for the seat to be mounted, the protective tape must be peeled off to expose the bottom of the two washers. Once the epoxy is exposed on the bottom of each washer, turn the seat over, line up the holes, and set the hinge in place. Finally, the bolts may be pinned through the hinge and the bowl.

Trading Systems provides detailed information on Trading Systems, Forex Trading Systems, Stock Trading Systems, Future Trading Systems and more. Trading Systems is affiliated with Option Trading.

The stock market offers various opportunities for trading. Apart from the main securities, which one can trade on various exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, there are other forms of trading like forex trading, currency trading and ‘contracts for difference’ also known as CFDs.

Stock market trading normally involves opening a trade by going ‘Long’ (buying) or going ‘Short’ (selling). The later has been possible through the last few years. One can today ‘sell’ a stock with the aspiration that the stock goes down and buy it cheaper at a later time, thus making profit as a result of the diminishing of the stock value.

Greed and Fear Stock market trading can be very profitable but if not mastered correctly can lead to heavy losses and the loss of ones own capital. Various psychological factors can affect the way one trades. The most predominant ones are ‘greed’ and ‘fear’. Greed kicks in when your system directs you to exit a trade but rather than exiting, one remains in the trade with the hope of closing the trade at a better price. On the other hand, fear is also a very dangerous factor which can lead to exiting trades when the time is not right, or exiting trades too early.

The best way to keep these feelings away is only one – follow your system vigorously. In order to fully trust a system, it would first need to go through a lot of testing in order to seed in one’s mind the thought that the system works and is completely reliable. It is only when one is convinced of this that when the feelings of ‘greed’ and ‘fear’ rise, they are controlled and ignored.

CFD Trading
One very interesting way of trading is CFDs (contracts for difference). Rather than buying and selling the actual shares, one would enter into a contract with a broker to buy or sell a particular share at an agreed price. The price would still be the market price at the current time, and the speed of transactions is similar to the speed of actually trading the shares, i.e. a few seconds. One of the advantages of CFDs is ‘trading on margin’. Some brokers offer very competitive margins where, for example, with a capital of $20,000, one could trade shares for a total of $100,000. This can be very dangerous and is only advised to the professional market players.

Technical Analysis
Hundreds of technical tools exist for traders. Various software systems can display a stock’s chart in real time, enabling you to draw trending and trading lines, include calculations like moving averages and ratios, and some can even predict the price based on a combination of factors and previous training and testing cycles.

Charts
Charts are a must for most stock traders. A chart tells the story much more than words do. By looking at a chart, a professional trader can diagnose the condition of a particular stock, just like a doctor does with his patient. Adding some analysis tools to a chart can further help in understanding what is going on with a particular stock.

On charts one can determine whether a stock is overbought or oversold, whether a stock is reaching a support or resistance level, is heavily in demand and short of supply or vice versa. As a result of these factors and many others which one can include in a system, a decision to buy, sell or exit trades can be taken.

Stock market trading is a high return job for those who are serious about it. Various methods exist and some degree of research is required before one can start trading for a living.

Sandro Azzopardi is a professional author who writes several articles on various subjects on his web site and local newspapers and magazines. You can visit information about this article and others on: http://www.theinfopit.com/business/stockmarket/stockmarkettrading.php

Many people who have traded have heard how important your psychology, or mindset is to your trading success. Books have been written, entire seminars presented and numerous tea breaks at traders club meetings across the world are devoted to the subject of the ‘psychology of trading’. Many traders would argue, I included, that your mind is the largest part of your overall trading success.

I always wonder however, how many people truly understand what it is they mean when they talk about it and its relationship with trading. In reality, your mindset controls anything you do and consequently, any endeavour you undertake. Trading is no different and it could be argued that it is even more applicable in trading as your money is involved, and that triggers many other emotions inside of us.

Numerous examples that confront the mind and our natural emotions include wanting to be right all the time and getting our own way, having our opinion matter and having some influence and control over what happens. In trading, these natural thoughts within many of us will place us in a position of disadvantage. These are just some examples of why our mindset and preparing our mind is so important to our overall success.

Furthermore, you would have thought previously about why some people are so successful in life and others are not. How many books have been written about having a positive attitude and taking action towards your goals? There is, and always has been, a single ingredient that separates people who are successful in life from people who are not. It is the mind and how we use it. Many people live their lives with an endless series of "what if" questions that they ask themselves.

An activity I will perform when I speak to a large group of traders about the mindset involves asking for a volunteer. I would have spent the last 10 minutes or so explaining how traders must often ‘think outside the box’. In other words, don’t think and act upon natural thoughts … think beyond normal thought. I say to the group, “OK, for my next session, I need the assistance of a volunteer from the audience just for a few minutes. Can someone come up here and join me please?” When I say this, I make sure that I look down at the floor and don’t make eye contact with anyone.

After asking, I continue to avoid eye contact with the audience as I pretend to fiddle with my notes or have a drink of water. About 15 seconds pass and no one has made a move. I then look up at the audience and again, I ask for a volunteer for my next session. The atmosphere begins to become slightly awkward as the people in the audience begin to wonder whether my next session will go ahead without a volunteer presenting themselves. I stand there and wait, not saying anything but still determined to wait long enough until someone volunteers. Almost out of pity, someone will inevitably stand up and declare themselves the volunteer and make their way to the front to join me.

As they join me and I introduce myself to them, I provide them a copy of my book with my compliments, thank them for volunteering and then ask them to return to their seat. Often the person will then receive a round of applause as he makes his way back to his seat. This simple activity illustrates how the vast majority of us are perfectly happy in our comfort zone. When I ask for someone to come up in front of everybody else and therefore expose themselves to the possibility of embarrassing themselves, everyone feels uncomfortable and hopes that I don’t look directly at them. Therefore, nobody wants to take action. Yet, to trade successfully and master the trader’s mind, we need to be prepared to think beyond natural thoughts and subsequently take action based on those thoughts.

Stuart McPhee is recognized as a leading trading coach and expert when it comes to developing solid and profitable trading plans.

Discover what most traders never realise which leads to their downfall. Learn about the importance of having the right trading mindset, sound money management and a solid method - The 3 Ms! Click Here ==> http://www.trading-plan.com

Receive Stuart’s free trading tips by signing up for his ezine at: ==> http://www.trading-plan.com/ezine_registration.html

In his book, ‘Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom’, the renowned American psychologist Dr Van Tharp discusses in several parts how important your psychology or mindset is to your trading success. He graphically depicts the significance of your psychology using a pie chart and explaining that it is the most essential ingredient to trading.

To many who have traded for an extended period of time, they would agree with the fact that traders can experience a wide range of emotions and often one straight after another. Traders can experience the exultation of a winning trade that went very well to the despair of the string of losses where ‘giving up trading’ is a prominent thought in one’s mind.

Books like ‘Market Wizards’ by Jack Schwager and other similar texts illustrate how successful traders have found a trading methodology that they are very comfortable with. None of them have found any magic solution to trading but they all clearly possess an inner confidence in their own ability to follow rules and their own trading plan.

Undoubtedly however, trading can be a taxing experience on your mental health. You are constantly faced with decisions that need to be made and can easily go through the swing of emotions described earlier. For some people, in all honesty you may also lack confidence in your own ability to trade well or lack courage of your own conviction and therefore experience another array of emotions when trading.

Sometimes trading can be quite stressful and other times it may appear as if you can do no wrong. These emotional swings and emotional stresses do impact on your mental state and can ultimately affect your trading decisions.

It may be prudent sometimes to schedule a break from trading. Therefore, close all positions before your break, or a few weeks out from the break commencing, open no new positions and allow your open positions to take their course in the time leading up to your break. The time you schedule your break may coincide with the school holidays or your Christmas break from work. This may end up being the best trading decision you make as you are able to separate yourself from some of the emotions you have experienced, and recharge the mental batteries. The requirement for a break will obviously significantly vary from trader to trader and will depend largely on your trading frequency.

One of the things stopping people thinking about taking a break is that they may miss out on some good trading opportunities. Rest assured that the market you trade is a vital part of the corporate world and will always be open for trading. This means that when you finish your two week break for example, the market will be open as if you didn’t even have your break.

Next time you open your diary, consider scheduling a break from trading.

Stuart McPhee is recognized as a leading trading coach and expert when it comes to developing solid and profitable trading plans.

Discover what most traders never realise which leads to their downfall. Learn about the importance of having the right trading mindset, sound money management and a solid method - The 3 Ms! Click Here ==> http://www.trading-plan.com

Receive Stuart’s free trading tips by signing up for his ezine at: ==> http://www.trading-plan.com/ezine_registration.html

One general asserted truth is that profit is a goal for many of the men and women who populate this planet. Profit is the more desirable in the case of those who actually invest money because they want to extract even more financial benefits out of these particular investments. One popular way of giving a fertile employment to your money is making them circulate through stock market trading. Share owners can sell, hold their shares or even buy some more, if a series of rules (based either on well-established commonsense practices or on mere intuition) tell them the moment is just ripe for this or that strategy.

As a matter of fact, strategy is one of the terms often heard of in stock market trading. But can anyone talk about a strategy that never failed in this area? This is a frequently raised question, since it is widely acknowledged that the stock market can be tricky. The stock market may easily lead to a downfall in stock market trading. This process takes place, obviously, to the disadvantage of the investor. However, stock market trading doesn’t always end with a loss. Should loss be a certainty, people would no longer invest in the stock market.

Whether we are talking about time-honored stock market trading – taking place within the ‘real’ here and now, on the floors of stock exchange rooms – or about online stock market trading one of the regularly advised strategies is to stick to the trend. Online stock market trading has acquired, in its turn, a value over the past ten years so it can be taken into consideration also. Every stock market undergoes certain (longer) intervals of development manifest in the evolution of stock price. Terms like bull market or bear market are recurrent in stock market trading reflecting either the continuously rising stock prices or the reverse situation. Both online stock market trading as well as its longer-established relative go hand in hand with the progress of the national economy. One example at hand is provided by the extent of a bullish market during the 1990s, determined by the robust national economy of the USA – a genuine initiator of investment confidence. When the situation changed, at the beginning of the year 2000, the market turned bearish and stock prices began falling. In both situations, the advised approach was not to go against the tendency of the market.

Circumstances have long proven it is wise to be consistent with the general trend. Indeed, there is ‘fashion’ within stock market trading as well. And if you don’t want to be outdated – being outmoded in stock market trading may have damaging consequences – you go with the flow. Nevertheless, when someone trustworthy or when some reliable conditions offer you a ‘hot’ suggestion, you may want to act in its direction. Nonetheless, caution, shrewdness and wisdom must be in your proximal reach. This means that you are not to instantly trust any ‘good old pal’ who, out of good-will, provides you with a tip. You must be able to make your own research targeting the tip you received or else request the services of a stockbroker.

The latter may turn out to be a wise stratagem. Stockbrokers, even in online stock market trading, are generally certified and skilled authorities whom you can easily employ for you to take full advantage of your capital investing. Notice however that their expertise is not available free of charge. There is nothing ‘on the house’ in stock market trading. Basically, brokers get involved in stock market trading for you, making use of their fuller comprehension of the stock market status quo so as to trigger gains that will proceed to your pocket or to some further investment. Should the commission basis on which the relationship between you and your broker is built (as a general rule) not be appropriate for you, there are other possibilities as well. In online stock market trading it is less costly to supervise your own deals.

Additionally, in online stock market trading, the useful, instructive material you may need is obtainable day-and-night. Moreover, in case you take particular content in looking into your private stocks, you cannot find a richer source of information than the Internet. Online stock market trading allows you to research websites designed by investment companies so the client and the virtual investor can be aware of previous operations. By accessing reports and descriptions offered even by the companies themselves, one may even notice the excellent performance of key institutions. Even more, online stock market trading sites offer the investor support in the shape of online stock market trading tools, services and instruments that allow the investor to place an order beforehand and, should the client not be present at the moment when the market reaches the condition opted for by him or her, enter the order automatically.

Certainly, both online stock market trading and its ‘next of kin’ have their own advantages. Whereas online stock market trading provides more accessible assistance for dealing with stocks, what was the initial, fundamental stock market trading still goes on. Even if not following a time schedule as generous as that of online services, the traditional ways do not disappear. However, they both involve taking risks which is why prudence is the most often heard of strategy. In other words, it’s better to “hold for a while the bird in the hand than quickly grab two in the bush”.

For all those interested in traditional Stock Market Trading or in Online Stock Market Trading , visiting these web resources and finding out more on the subject is the right thing to do. It’s not wise to risk investments without an attempt to inform yourselves first.