Are you attracted to the idea of being in control of your financial future, but confused about how to start investing in the stock or share market, while avoiding costly mistakes?
Or maybe you're disappointed with your performance so far?
Does it sometimes feel like every time you take the plunge and buy into the market, the price goes down?
That's understandable...
You've probably attended seminars, read other newsletters or broker reports telling you to buy this or buy that ..... you've probably heard or read a lot of confusing and sometimes conflicting information?
The real surprising facts are that very few online investors actually make money long term.
You've worked hard in your life to get your investment nest egg together so far - but now where to from here?
Maybe you want to develop some extra income or even manage your own superannuation retirement fund? For instance, from 1 July 2005, as a result of new rules on ‘choice of superannuation fund’, for the first time millions more Australian employees will be able to choose a fund for their future superannuation guarantee contributions.
Maybe you're attracted to the charts you've seen showing the power of compounding investments & have worked out the benefits to you of having a higher percentage return?
If you don't want to be saddled with a "do-nothing" portfolio that adds nothing to your bottom line or even worse, goes backwards, then please take a moment to read on.....
The reality is that only the very few achieve long term success by online trading or investing in the stock or share markets around the world. Even less for those who are online trading in the highly leveraged CFD’s, futures, options, FX & other commodities markets.
The good news is that the skills can be learned from expert investors and traders who have gone before you and can lead you across the minefield. You will still lose - and may lose regularly sometimes - but the key difference between those who win or those who lose overall is to keep the value of your total losses low compared with your profits gained.
In his definitive book ‘Trade Your way to Financial Freedom’, Dr Van Tharp calls this ‘expectancy’.
Improving your own online investing or trading performance in the stock or share market & developing your own home based business requires investors and traders to learn how to strengthen each of the three legs of your investing or trading stool, as first described by Dr Alexander Elder in his books 'Trading for a Living' & 'Come Into my Trading Room':
• Technical Analysis
• Money & Risk Management and
• Your own personal Psychology
At the very least, you need all three legs to be very strong - in order to survive, then thrive to successfully make money & outperform in the stock or share market. As Dr Elder says, the stool will not stand on just two legs.
Very experienced online traders and investors John Atkinson and Jim Berg, authors of the soon to be released Investing Online Newsletter© and the Online Trading Report©, prefer to add a fourth leg when they invest in the stock & share markets - that of fundamental analysis.
This allows them to find the most fundamentally sound and the technically strongest up trending stocks and shares to increase the odds in their favour.
As part of his overall money & risk management, John Atkinson has designed and developed his own Portfolio Management tools to plan and track individual stock selection, optimization and portfolio growth.
John Atkinson knows first hand what it means to lose enormously, both financially and emotionally in the stock or share market. He lost his Sydney Harbour waterfront home in the technology stock crash of 2000 and beyond. He was set back fifteen years financially and had to start almost over again.
John then searched the finance education world for the best investing online & online trading information to learn how to trade and invest online successfully.
With his experience learnt from the school of very hard knocks, John Atkinson now aims to help online investors and traders avoid the pitfalls that await unsuspecting novices and teach them some of the methods he’s since learnt to trade profitably and with much better risk control.
In direct contrast, John’s partner, Jim Berg is a former broker, private trader and lecturer with over 20 years experience in the investment industry. He has appeared on CNBC Asia and Market Wrap and is a regular guest speaker at the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE), Australian Technical Analysts Association (ATAA) & Traders Expos in capital cities. The first edition of his book 'The Share Traders Handbook, Fundamental & Technical Analysis Combined' has literally been a sell-out success.
Using the tools and trading strategies from his workshops and seminars, Jim Berg won the 2002 Personal Investor Magazine Trading Competition.
The first step is to protect your capital and survive in the market long enough before you can profit. Instead of giving you a fish (e.g. stock tips), Jim Berg and John Atkinson teach online stock & share investors and traders how to fish (invest) for life. With the knowledge gained, you will know where the ledge is - to be able to protect yourself initially from the pitfalls of the markets that lay ahead to trap unprepared investors.
The second step is learning how you can grow your portfolio and thrive in the stock or share market. Jim Berg’s investment strategies have achieved breakthrough results and are very different to the way the majority of investors operate.
Jim has also recently been invited to write regular articles for the ASX own newsletter.
Author Jim Berg says:
“We heard from several people who came out of investing & online trading seminars with some education but wondered what to do next? Others contacted us wondering where to begin or how to improve their current portfolio performance.
We realised many online stock and share market investors and traders are looking for on-going support to help lead them through the stock or share market minefield, dodge the pitfalls and actually profit long term. That’s why John and I decided to team up together to provide weekly guidance, with easy to follow step-by-step investment strategies for everyone who is looking to invest in any of the stock or share markets around the world today.
Our aim is to help people from all walks of life develop into the best online investor or trader that you can become and to generate the returns from your investments that you deserve.”
John Atkinson is the co-editor of the world famous 'Investing & Online Trading' stock market newsletter, featuring weekly stock trading education for novices & experienced traders & investors by high profile trader authors Jim Berg, Daryl Guppy, Dr Brett Steenbarger & Dr van Tharp.
His previous ebooks include '7 Secrets to Profitable Online Stock & Share Trading' and the 'Atkinson -Guppy Articles' - a series of articles written for Daryl Guppy's newsletter 'Tutorials in Applied Technical Analysis', previously voted no 1 trading newsletter in Australia by 'Shares' & no 4 in the world by 'Stocks and Commodities.'
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Making Money Share Trading
Australians own more shares per capita then any other nation on the planet, with more than 54% of our population owning shares.
Until recently, most share investors bought shares and let them sit in the bottom drawer. With improvements in technology and an increased awareness and responsibility for financial planning, thousands of people are becoming share traders, buying and selling shares on a regular basis. And you can see why!
Over the past couple of years, certain company share prices have risen well over a 1000%, some over 5000%! So the temptation is extremely strong to start trading shares, rather then just sitting on them, especially when most of our blue chip companies have recently fallen in value.
Well, what goes up, must come down and most of those companies that skyrocketed over the past 18 months have not only run out of steam, but have come screaming back down, producing staggering losses for investors who have held on.
Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you something you don't already know. However, it is amazing the number of people who still view the market as a free lunch, and do not practice safe trading strategies. They expect every share trade they do to provide excellent returns and then panic when their trades go against them.
Successful share traders all around the world have different trading strategies and systems, however they all agree on one basic principle, keep your losses small and let your profits run!
Throwing darts at a dart board as a share selection technique might sound a ridiculous way to choose share investments, but highlights the fact that choosing shares to buy is not as important as managing each trade once you've entered the market. Most traders enter trades based on rumours, tips and chat lines, which are really no better than using the dart board. However you choose to enter the market, be sure to adopt a strict STOP-LOSS strategy.
STOP-LOSS
A stop-loss is a predetermined point at which you will exit the trade, even if you are in a losing position. Many traders place a stop-loss 5% below the value of the shares when they purchase them. This means that they should not lose anymore than 5% (excluding slippage and volatile market movements) of the value of their share trade.
As the share price rises, ratchet up the stop-loss so that it is always 5% below the value of the shares. The 5% level is indicative only. You must determine your own level of risk for each share trade you make.
The best traders in the world know the power of a disciplined trading approach that incorporates stop-losses into every trade. For example, if you made 20 trades, and out of those 20 trades, 10 were losses, you can still make money. How can you make any money when 50% of your trades are losses? Well consider this. Let's say, as an example:
10 trades lose the maximum of 5%
3 trades make a profit of 5%
2 trades make a profit of 10%
2 trades make a profit of 15%
2 trades make a profit of 20%
1 trade makes a profit of 30%
Overall, our portfolio would rise 4.25%, as the higher returning shares cancel out the losses, leaving the balance as profit. This is the reality of trading. Accepting losses AND wins, but keeping the losses small, and letting the profits run.
The other aspect to successful share trading is excepting reasonable returns. As most share trades last between two weeks and two months, our 4-5% return is pretty good. It certainly beats bank interest rates, when considered over a yearly period. However, many novice traders try to make every trade the BIG score. In fact, one popular technique is to place all the available investment capital onto one or two different shares.
This is gambling. In this case, you're much better off at the casino, as you won't pay tax on any winnings. This is not a sensible or recommended trading approach. Successful traders spread their capital over 10-20 separate trades to minimise the risk and allow for losing trades.
Until recently, most share investors bought shares and let them sit in the bottom drawer. With improvements in technology and an increased awareness and responsibility for financial planning, thousands of people are becoming share traders, buying and selling shares on a regular basis. And you can see why!
Over the past couple of years, certain company share prices have risen well over a 1000%, some over 5000%! So the temptation is extremely strong to start trading shares, rather then just sitting on them, especially when most of our blue chip companies have recently fallen in value.
Well, what goes up, must come down and most of those companies that skyrocketed over the past 18 months have not only run out of steam, but have come screaming back down, producing staggering losses for investors who have held on.
Now, I'm sure I'm not telling you something you don't already know. However, it is amazing the number of people who still view the market as a free lunch, and do not practice safe trading strategies. They expect every share trade they do to provide excellent returns and then panic when their trades go against them.
Successful share traders all around the world have different trading strategies and systems, however they all agree on one basic principle, keep your losses small and let your profits run!
Throwing darts at a dart board as a share selection technique might sound a ridiculous way to choose share investments, but highlights the fact that choosing shares to buy is not as important as managing each trade once you've entered the market. Most traders enter trades based on rumours, tips and chat lines, which are really no better than using the dart board. However you choose to enter the market, be sure to adopt a strict STOP-LOSS strategy.
STOP-LOSS
A stop-loss is a predetermined point at which you will exit the trade, even if you are in a losing position. Many traders place a stop-loss 5% below the value of the shares when they purchase them. This means that they should not lose anymore than 5% (excluding slippage and volatile market movements) of the value of their share trade.
As the share price rises, ratchet up the stop-loss so that it is always 5% below the value of the shares. The 5% level is indicative only. You must determine your own level of risk for each share trade you make.
The best traders in the world know the power of a disciplined trading approach that incorporates stop-losses into every trade. For example, if you made 20 trades, and out of those 20 trades, 10 were losses, you can still make money. How can you make any money when 50% of your trades are losses? Well consider this. Let's say, as an example:
10 trades lose the maximum of 5%
3 trades make a profit of 5%
2 trades make a profit of 10%
2 trades make a profit of 15%
2 trades make a profit of 20%
1 trade makes a profit of 30%
Overall, our portfolio would rise 4.25%, as the higher returning shares cancel out the losses, leaving the balance as profit. This is the reality of trading. Accepting losses AND wins, but keeping the losses small, and letting the profits run.
The other aspect to successful share trading is excepting reasonable returns. As most share trades last between two weeks and two months, our 4-5% return is pretty good. It certainly beats bank interest rates, when considered over a yearly period. However, many novice traders try to make every trade the BIG score. In fact, one popular technique is to place all the available investment capital onto one or two different shares.
This is gambling. In this case, you're much better off at the casino, as you won't pay tax on any winnings. This is not a sensible or recommended trading approach. Successful traders spread their capital over 10-20 separate trades to minimise the risk and allow for losing trades.
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