| |
| |
|
|
Stocks and Mutual Funds |
|
Why Technical Indicators
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
MORE RESOURCES:
Stocks-Mutual-Funds - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
The Stock Market Doesnt Care if You are a Beginner?. Get Prepared to Succeed at Trading Stock trading remains a very competitive field and the stock market doesn't care if you are an experienced stock trader or an aspiring one. The rules and the trading opportunities are the same for all of us, so either youre going to make money when you pick a stock and make a trade, or you are going to lose some of it in favor of the more seasoned traders. Hedge Fund Advertising Have you seen all those big full page ads for hedge funds in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Investors Business Daily? You haven't. Maybe they are being drowned out by the regular mutual funds who continually tell you how great they are. Some Good News for A Change Before we get into all the good news out there, let us first take a look at what the term "news" really means. By definition, the term "news" means the exception to the norm. Stock Market Diversification In one of my previous articles (Investing in the stock market -9 powerful tips), tip number one was:1. Do not spread your money too thin. Finding A Good Stock One of the things people are always asking me is how can I find a good stock. The answer I give does not please them. Mid-Cap Stocks: Asset Class with an Identity Crisis Much like the middle child, mid-cap stocks have long struggled to find their identity. Carved out from the upper echelons of the small caps and the lower end of the large caps, the mid-cap sector has a rough definition of stock with a market capitalization of greater than $2 billion, but less than $10 billion. The Big Bad Bear The big bad bear is stirring again. So far he has stretched, yawned and peaked out of his cave. Is Your Garage Full Of Junk? I have a 2-car garage. There are nice shelves on one side and a good practical workbench with a vice on the other side. Investment Capital Gains Have you bought any mutual funds this year or late last year while the market was doing its skyrocket thing? Last year it was hard to lose money. This year it has been easy. Online Broker Trade History Not Doing the Job Let me start by saying that.. Parachute Investing Ever jumped out of an airplane? It's OK if you have on a parachute. Pretty dumb if you don't. Stock Market Education; Day Trading for Beginnners; How to Pick Stocks The trading method you employ to approach the stock market can make a big difference in your results.Stock trading is a very competitive field and in order to succeed you need to FOCUS on a set of simple strategies that you can implement without hesitation. Successful Trading - Taking Profits - Part 1 So you're started trading, you bought some positions with your online broker, you've set some reasonable stop-losses to protect your account and all of a sudden one of your positions move strongly in your favor - so what do you do now? This my friend, is probably the hardest situation to deal with in trading the market - believe it or not.Do you take profits? Do you hold on for more profits? Do you take partial profits? There is no textbook answer to these questions as it depends on your trading objective. Diversification Wall Street's watchword has always been diversification, but what does it mean and why do they say it?The standard Wall Street definition is flexible because each broker or financial planner will vary the portfolio based on your age and income. They say that the younger you are the more risk you should take and the older you are the less risk. Why Change Funds? On November 17 I bought 7 different mutual funds and went to a 100% invested position. One of the funds I bought was Robertson Stevens Information Age (RSIFX) and it has made money as have the other six. Catnip of the Stock Market I have watched my cat play with a bag of catnip. At first he is having fun and slowly he becomes drunk with pleasure and then finally he becomes so tipsy he falls over to sleep it off. Price Targets Every day in any financial publication you will find the Wall Street mavens giving their predictions on many stocks. It was issued here and should go there. Stocks Options Trading Let's assume that you want to make some serious money and you have chosen to take things into your own hands rather than depend upon a "professional trader" to make your trading decisions. This is usually only recomended if you can afford to lose the money that you are trading with, and you appreciate the fact that there is much more upside potential with this added risk. Buy Low - Sell High Now where have I heard that before? I know. It was my broker. Learn to Calculate a Stock's Pivot Point Stocks breakout from properly formed bases everyday but many investors don't understand how to locate a pivot point or what patterns to study that may contain this very important buy signal. A pivot point can be described as the optimal buy point or the area at the end of a familiar base pattern where the stock breaks out into new high territory.
|
||||||||||||||