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Top Moving Average Secrets

Jan 27

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

One of the most popular technical analysis indicators is the simple moving average also known as SMA, if you learn how to use these correctly they can be a very useful tool to help you to make good trading decisions.

The 50 simple moving average, or 50 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 50 values for each period, divided by 50, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the term period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 15 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most commonly used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a much faster average that many traders like.

The reality is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The simple moving average is primarily used to determine what the current trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are really only useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to not trade.

The general rule is that if the chart price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to understand because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, actually this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages can often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mostly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, like the the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 SMA it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

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How To Buy The Best Stocks

Jan 27

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW 30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to easily buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered highly liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to avoid stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock below at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option in order to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings releases are 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

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Trading Options The Right Way?

Nov 25

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

The options marketplace presents market traders with many distinctive possibilities. Used in the correct means traders can considerably increase profitability, as well as hedge positions correctly, to protect profits and capital.

The problem is that options are still poorly understood and most folks don’t know the way to utilize them correctly and because they are a leverage instrument, they’ll actually cause issues for lots of traders.

The key to actually understanding options and how they’ll form a proper trading plan or business, is thru the right instruction and training.

Lots of options coaching organizations merely teach their clients established methods and then leave them to get on with things alone, in the markets.

This does not offer traders the correct information and ability to utilize the possible benefits of options. Traders really need to trade with profitable traders, who will teach them how to find opportunities within the marketplace that will really allow them to get the advantages that options will offer.

Once traders are ready to discover these opportunities in the marketplace, they can then learn the right methods to get the best out of every potential situation.

Following normal training ways, traders are actually taught to run before they are able to walk and this is often why many people run into problems, or merely don’t attain their full potential in the options market.

There are options firms that can provide traders the proper sort of education, along with permitting them to work and learn side by side with successful full time traders within the markets. If a trader is absolutely serious about being successful with options, using one of those organizations is totally vital to reaching these goals.

However, if you do decide to work with one of these organization it is completely vital that you keep focused on the course. It is simply not enough to only sign up and scan the material or follow along with the lessons.

If a trader is going to get to their full potential, then they must be ready to give  a hundred% effort and realize that their can be a learning period involved.

Having said that, the most effective coaching organizations can provide their traders all the support that they need to ensure that they are successful and attain their potential.

Using one of those organizations can allow anyone to get to their potential and to realize a full understanding, there are however, many companies that provide courses with some pretty amazing claims.

Any courses or organizations claiming enormous earnings or riches to be made with just a minimum of effort, or in just a few minutes each day, should invariably be looked at with a good deal of caution, because nothing good comes without putting in the proper amount of work.

To see an independent reports of best quality organizations to study Options Trading with, simply Go Here.

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A Review Of The Options University?

Nov 16

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

More and more folks in the marketplace are starting to appreciate that options are an excellent tool for maximizing profitability, and safeguarding capital and assets with proper hedging.

In fact Options are often known as the only true method of hedging. While this is correct, it’s just now that folks are really starting to appreciate the potential advantages of options, the problem is that they’re still badly understood and basically used the wrong way by traders within the marketplace.

The method to make sure that a trader totally understands how to use options in a way to ensure maximum profitability for their trading or business, is thru smart education and preparation. This can be the one most vital issue {that a} trader will do in their trading career.

But, there is a frequent issue with this, in that most of the options trading corporations teach options the wrong way round. This means that they teach basic options strategies to their students and then just leave them to get on with trading live in the marketplace.

This is the point where the Options Uni comes into its own. they teach the philosophy that the real way to be ready to trade options properly, is initially by having the ability to discover opportunities where Options can be used effectively.

They teach their clients to be able to find the opportunities and when a trader is capable of doing this, they then go on on to teach the effective methods and techniques for each different situation.

Options University offers a full vary of courses from the basic level thru to advanced and mastery courses.

The company is run by successful options traders who trade full time within the marketplace. This means they possess the skills and experience to effectively teach what they know. They also give live trading events and seminars, where traders will study and make trades in live markets with their coaches.

No other options trading company currently uses this approach, or offers the same opportunities to trade and learn alongside successful skilled traders.

But, if a trader is committed to realizing all of the potential of options then they have to go further than simply signing up with the options university.

To become a profitable options trader an individual should be ready to be 100% committed to the program and training.

An example of what is potential when fully committed Options University was demonstrated two years ago when Ron Ianieri, one of the founders of the company and an extremely well thought of options trader in the marketplace, took a group of twelve inexperienced traders thru an intensive 12 week course that brought them by the hand and led them through to a complete options mastery level.

For additional information on thisOptions University Review, just Follow the Link.

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The 10 Minute Swing Trading Strategy

Nov 13

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

forex trading strategy

The question is whether or not you can really learn how to make profit consistently after studying a 10 minute swing trading strategy?Many traders will tell of their success story, of how they only had to work a few hours a week, yet still made a fortune trading. A weekly time frame is what swing traders go by to make profitable trades unlike day traders who work on a twenty four hour cycle. This makes it possible to have a daily 10 minute swing trading strategy.

Time saving is one of the many benefits that can occur when swing trading, which day trading does not offer. Traders who use the swing strategy need only spend a few minutes at the computer in relation to day traders who can spend hours each day. It is vital that when trading, you train yourself to be disciplined.Something that beginner traders must realise is that trading everyday could actually harm your trading success.

You can find many trading courses online that all claim to have the best strategy, but a new course is due for release in early November, called Ultimate Swing Trader, may well prove to be the best yet.

Before moving onto anything else we should look a bit more closely at swing trading

When you first start trading you should focus on the time you actually spend.  The single most common reason new traders fail to make consistent money is because they over trade. Too many traders want action constantly and so jump head first again and again into trades without thinking.There are many different ways it can go after this. Many people will keep on and on trying to win back their money, only to spend it all in the process, losing it. Or even worse case scenario, the just give up!

It is impressive that traders will get to learn self discipline through this.You can have a relatively free day when swing trading as you only need to check your charts every now and again, which is not the case with day trading.Some people find it harder then others to have the discipline to trade at only one time of day but really it is all about having the desire to learn the discipline.

For more information on swing trading and a closer look at the new 10 minute strategy please read my Ultimate Swing Trader review.

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The Basics of Futures Trading

Nov 6

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Have you heard of futures trading? From day trading to positions trading, many people trade in the futures markets. There are also futures options where traders trade an option contract which is directly related to the underlying futures market.

What exactly are they trading? Future commodity trading is not like the stock market where people buy shares of a stock. You do not actual own anything. You are just speculating on what the price will be of a commodity in the future.

When you want to put on a futures trade, you must first put up margin money. This is in case the market moves against you; you will have enough capital to pay the loss to the brokerage firm.

Although speculators make up the bulk of futures traders, the markets were intended to protect farmers from losing everything. A farmer can hedge in the futures and protect any loss he will have in the cash market. A farmer can sell the futures in wheat. He might do this if he thinks the wheat market will fall before harvest. A bread manufacturer might buy the futures if he thinks the price will rise before harvest. Whatever happens to the wheat market, both will guarantee their price.

A speculator is interested only in trading to make a profit. If he thinks the market will rise, he can purchase the futures. If he thinks the market will fall, he will sell a futures. You do not have to own the contract first to sell it. You can first sell the futures contract.

There is risk in any type of trading. That is why some traders only buy futures options, so they know their risk is limited to what they paid for the option. Others who trade futures contracts use technical analysis like fibonacci trading. They will only enter trades that have certain criteria from the chart analysis.

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Online Options Trading Basics

Nov 4

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Learn Options Trading

Trading options is both similar to and different from trading stocks. Trading stocks offers many strategic possibilities from buying and holding a stock for the long term to a day trader’s use of technical analysis to make quick buying and selling decisions.In this regard,options and stock trading, are similar.

When an options trader is first starting out, he or she  needs to understand the basic difference between an option and a stock. An option is a “right to purchase” a particular stock over a period of weeks or months,and it expires on a specific date.The price of the stock itself can fluctuate, as we all know,over the expiration interval so there’s the usual volatility factor in market prices.

Options, on the other hand, expire on a specific date, so you’ll need to exercise them on or before that date. And there’s no rule saying you have to exercise your option if you choose not to. Plus, you can purchase an option for a fraction of the actual price of the stock.Options traders can leverage their investment by being able to trade more stocks.They can acquire the option to buy a 0 stock for only a fraction of that price.This way you can purchase a stock for only a fraction of its market price,leaving you the money to purchase more stocks.This ability to leverage your investment makes options very attrative.

There are several different types of options. You can exercise an American option any time up to and including the expiration date, but European options can only be exercised on the expiration date.and to make matters more confusing, where you purchase the option has no bearing on whether it’s American or European.The “American” options tend to apply to stocks and bonds, while the “European” type applies more often to indexes. And most options expire the Saturday after the third Friday each month. But U.S. markets are closed on weekends, so “American” options expire on the third Friday of the month and ”European” options the following day.

An option is the right to either buy a stock (“call” option) or sell a stock (“put” option) either on or before its expiration date.You have several choices when you purchase an option. You can exercise it any time either before or on the expiration date.Or you decide not to exercise it and try to sell the option before the expiration date and recoup a portion of your investment. If you don’t exercise the option before it expires, you lose your investment.Let’s look at these situations more closely:

Let’s say you buy an option for Acme Chemicals Corp.for a share with a strike price of . Most options contracts require a minimum purchase of 100 shares, so your investment would be 0.Acme’s stock price rises to two weeks later and rather than waiting for the expiration date, you decide to take your profit and run. You exercise the option, acquire the stock for and turn around and sell the stock right away for .You deduct the  -per-share cost of the option and you’re left with a per share profit,or 0 less brokerage fees.That’s a conservative strategy, but a profitable one.And that’s a good thing!

But what happens if the stock goes down below the strike price. But what happens if Acme’s stock price declines. What if it goes below ? You could sell your options for less than the you paid for them–say per share–and you’d be out half of your 0, or 0. Bear in mind that owning an option does not require you to purchase the stock. In this case, you can sell your option and recoup a portion of your investment. This is better than acquiring 100 shares of Acme’s stock outright. You could exercise your option as soon as you can realize a profit or you could wait it out and try for a bigger profit any time before the expiration date. I personally think the more conservative approach is more likely to result in consistently positive returns, albeit perhaps lower than a more aggressive strategy. But that’s just the way I would do it. The higher the risk, the higher the return. Greater profits. And, of course,potentially larger losses.Just like most other investments.

This is just a simplified explanation of what trading options entails. It is more complicated than this and you should really educate yourself before you commit much of your capital to it. The best options trading trading tutorial I know is the one taught by David Vallieres, which you can review here and the video above from the free demo video series he provides. What make this course so good is not only will you learn all the nuts and bolts about trading options, but David also shares with you his strategies that resulted in his success trading options.

 

 

 

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Protect Your Stocks Using Put Options

Nov 4

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only salvation they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.

Statistics show that in a bull market approx 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 8 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.

But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a couple of tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the widely known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.

If you are going to trade options it is important that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and the theory then you should not be trading options. If the terms Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.

Selling call options against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in the stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.

Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save your account if the stock takes a 40% tumble.

The better solution to providing downside stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options will increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be a good fit with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.

The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:

1. The strike price of the option

2. The current stock price

3. Choice of options, in or out of the money

4. Put expiration time

Even though the married Put protection only has a limited life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.

The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of off-setting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.

The general idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.

The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.

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What You Need to Know About Trading Online

Nov 4

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

The process of stock trading has of course evolved a lot over the years as technology as developed. In the early part of the 20th century you had to visit a stock brokers office or trading room to buy and sell stocks.

When the postal mail became into common use you could then buy and sell stocks by mailing a letter to your broker, of course today nobody would think of doing either of these.

Today the most common form of trading uses either the telephone or stock trading online. When using the telephone to trade stocks you can still do it by speaking to a broker and giving them your clear instructions, or you can do it yourself by using some form of menu system using the digital key pad.

But by far the most common form of trading is done online, so what do you need to know about stock trading online?, much more than you may think!

Here are some points that you may not have considered:

1. Virtually every broker can do stock trading but what about options, Forex and futures?. While you may not be interested in trading either Forex, futures or bonds it is quite likely that at some time you will want to trade options online, even if it is just covered calls. Make sure that your chosen broker allows you to trade all the markets that you want to.

2. Of course the fee’s charged by your online broker is an obvious point to check, the fee’s can vary a lot and if you are doing hundreds or thousands of trades a day it can add up to quite a lot of money. Did you know that you can call up your online broker and ask for a reduced commission charge?, yes you can, I’ve done it. Of course they don’t advertise it but if you do a lot of trades they will want to keep your business.

3. Have you planned what you will do if you are in a trade and your internet connection goes down for any reason, it could be a power failure, problems with the internet or your PC crashing?. If you are day trading you will want to telephone your broker and manage your trade, probably you will just want to close it. How will your broker deal with your call, will they answer quickly, will they look at the charts for you and describe what is going on?. Make sure that your broker provides good telephone support.

4. Are your trading accounts safe?, make sure that your broker is a member of SIPC, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which protects against losses caused by the financial failure of the broker-dealer, but not against losses resulting from the decrease in a security’s value. Usually accounts are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), up to 0,000 (including up to 0,000 for cash claims).

Whatever you decide to do, before trading stocks, options or anything else make sure that you get a good trading education by reading the best trading books that you can.

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Top Moving Average Secrets For Trading

Nov 4

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

One of the most popular technical analysis indicators is the simple moving average also known as SMA, if you learn how to use these correctly they can be a very useful tool to help you to make good trading decisions.

The 200 simple moving average, or 200 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 200 values for each period, divided by 200, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the term period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 5 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most commonly used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a slightly faster average that many traders prefer.

The truth is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The SMA is oftern used to determine what the trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are most useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to not trade.

The general rule is that if the current price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to understand because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, actually this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages can often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mostly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A very useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

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How To Buy Top Stocks

Nov 4

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 contains almost all technical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to quickly buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered highly liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to aviod stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008/9 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock below at anytime.

Another consideration to make is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option inorder to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings are released 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

 

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Protect Your Stocks Using Put Options

Oct 27

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only good point they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.

Statistics show that in a bull market about 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 9 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.

But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a couple of tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the widely known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.

If you are going to trade options it is important that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and the theory then you should not be trading options. If Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.

Selling calls against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.

Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save you if the stock takes a 40% tumble.

The better solution to providing downside stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be very compatible with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.

The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:

1. The strike price of the option

2. The current stock price

3. Choice of options, in or out of the money

4. Put expiration time

Even though the married Put protection only has a short life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 90-95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.

The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of off-setting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.

The general idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your valuable stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.

The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.

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Are You A Short, Medium Or Long Term Investor?

Oct 27

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Did you know that there are 4 mains types of trader and depending on what type you are will determine many parts of your trading strategy and trading plan. The 4 types are generally referred to as: scalping, day trading, swing trading and position trading. When you determine the type of trader that you are it will also determine the time frame in which you will be making your trade. This will be a very important decision that you need to make when deciding how you want to learn to day trade.

1. Scalping Trader, if you scalp the markets this means that you are only looking for a few ticks profit per trade and you may only be in the trade for a few seconds or a minute at most. trading. Some people will also call this day trading but it’s really micro day trading, buying the bid and selling the offer, it’s fast trading and you might end up doing 10-50 trades a day. This can be quite a stressful way of trading.

2. Day Trader, the true day trader opens and closes their trade within the same trading session, usually this mean the same day, but unlike a scalper the trade may be held for a few minutes up to several hours. Usually day traders make about 2-6 trades a day and most of them will be in the 5-30 minutes range. This is a less stressful way of trading than scalping but it still requires much attention and quick decision making.

3. Swing Traders, swing trading usually means that a position is held for between 1 to 5-10 days, although some swing traders may keep a trade on for longer most are within this time period. For many this is the idea way to trade because it allows you to review your trade overnight, at the very least you have several hours to make your trading decisions.

4. Position Traders, this just means that you are going to hold onto your trade for longer than 5-10 days, maybe even as long as a few months.

If you are still working out how to day trade then it may be better to go with the longer time frames as it gives you more time to think.

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How To Buy Top Stocks

Oct 26

Posted by ArtQ in Finance, Forex | No Comments

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These stock indexes generally only contain major blue chip stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to quickly buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered very liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to avoid stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock below at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option in order to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings are released, stocks often drop significantly if they come out with a poor report. Earnings are released 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

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How To Buy The Best Stocks

Oct 23

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Although it may seem obvious to most stock market swing traders there are a number of simple rules that you can follow which will ensure that you have more success when buying stocks:

In the USA stock market there are 3 major indexes which are each made up of a basket of stocks, they are the S and P 500 (also known as the S&P500), the DOW 30 and the Nadaq 100. These indexes generally only contain major blue chip  stocks, as long as you buy from these 3 groups you will at least know that you are getting a well known solid stock.

For example the DOW 30 contains major industrials and large multinational stocks such as Home Depot (HD) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) whereas the Nasdaq 100 mainly contains techical companies such as Apple (AAPL) and Miscrosoft (MSFT).

Always buy a stock that is liquid, this means that it is a highly traded stock, this will enable you to easily buy and sell at the price you want without having a delay. You will also get a lower spread, thats the difference between the BID and ASK price of the stock. For a stock to be considered highly liquid it should trade at least 500,000 shares per day, ideally even more.

It is best to avoid stocks that are bellow as this usually means the company is in trouble, although with the bear market of 2008 there have been a lot of good stocks at bargin prices between and . Avoid buying a stock that is below at anytime.

Another consideration is options, does the stock has options?, this will be important if you want to trade options around your stock, such as a covered call, or you may want to buy a PUT option inorder to protect your stock.

Be very cautious about buying a stock just before it’s earnings release, stocks often drop significantly if you come out with a poor report. Earnings are released 4 times a year with one of them being the annual report.

If you are going to trade options make sure that you learn how to trade by getting some good education. There are many swing trading strategies that work well with stocks in todays volatile markets.

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What You Need to Know About Trading Online

Oct 23

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

The process of stock trading has of course evolved a lot over the years as technology as developed. In the early part of the 20th century you had to visit a stock brokers office or trading room to buy and sell stocks.

When the postal mail became into common use you could then buy and sell stocks by mailing a letter to your broker, of course today nobody would dream of doing either of these.

Today the most common form of trading uses either the telephone or stock trading online. When using the telephone to trade stocks you can still do it by speaking to a broker and giving them your clear instructions, or you can do it yourself by using some form of menu system using the digital key pad.

But by far the most common form of trading is done online, so what do you need to know about stock trading online?, much more than you may think!

Here are some points that you may not have considered:

1. Virtually all brokers can do stock trading but what about options, Forex and futures?. While you may not be interested in trading either Forex or futures it is quite likely that at some time you will want to trade options online, even if it is just covered calls. Make sure that your chosen broker allows you to trade all the markets that you want to.

2. Of course the fee’s charged by your online broker is an obvious point to check, the fee’s can vary a lot and if you are doing hundreds or thousands of trades a day it can add up to quite a lot of money. Did you know that you can just call up your online broker and ask for a reduced commission charge?, yes you can, I’ve done it. Of course they don’t advertise it but if you do a lot of trades they will want to keep your business.

3. Have you planned what you will do if you are in a trade and your internet connection goes down for any reason, it could be a power failure, problems with the internet or your PC crashing?. If you are in a day trade you will want to telephone your broker and manage your trade, probably you will just want to close it. How will your broker deal with your call, will they answer quickly, will they look at charts for you and describe what is going on?. Make sure that your broker provides good telephone support.

4. Are your trading accounts safe?, make sure that your broker is a member of SIPC, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, which protects against losses caused by the financial failure of the broker-dealer, but not against losses resulting from the decrease in a security’s value. Usually trading accounts are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), up to 0,000 (including up to 0,000 for cash claims).

Whatever you decide to do, before trading stocks, options or anything else make sure that you get a good trading education by reading the best trading books that you can.

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Can You Make A Killing With Trading Pro System?

Oct 22

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Recession proof Trading!  Trading Pro System Review.

It’s a fact that most of the automated trading platforms have gone into Chapter 11 in the last one year.  When the present is smooth, you do not want a complex algorithm to guess the stocks that will do well – even pure luck will suffice.

However  in times like these, real programs come to the fore, and the Trading Pro System is one of those programs.

The Trading Pro System comes with a series of 41 videos that take us from the first to the last step of the trading system, and when we are done, we will certainly feel ready to take on the biggest challenges.  Even if you have been in trading for several years, you may still notice that there are such a lot of things that were not on our radar all of these years!

There are 2 levels of memberships offered on the Trading Pro System, and depending on the level at which you consider yourself to be, you can select.  The 1st one is a $ 37 per month membership, and the second one is a $ 197 life time membership with no repeat billings.  What we’d recommend is that you start with the monthly membership, and if you are feeling the program is working for you, move on to a higher level so you save cash.  If you’re feeling the Trading Pro System isn’t working for you, you can request a 100% refund, which is in place for a period of sixty days.  It is indeed rare a monetary product ( particularly one that is an e-book ) includes a refund.  That is often because even if you ask for a refund, you still have access to the book and the videos, right?  But the religion the founders Vallieres and Holmund have on this system shows thru this.

Try it out if you are serious about earning money in these times of recession.

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Should You Become An Options Trader?

Oct 22

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

There is a lot of hype surrounding trading options, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of cash trading options, but of course you can also lose just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go full out on margin you get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not quite as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that the reverse can happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk management plan is.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much lower dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you trades options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very good skill to have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

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Traders Moving Average Secrets

Oct 22

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

One of the most popular technical analysis indicators is the simple moving average also known as SMA, if you learn how to use these correctly they can be a very useful tool to help you to make good trading decisions.

The 50 simple moving average, or 50 SMA, is simply the sum of the last 50 readings for each period, divided by 50, this is a moving window, as time moves on so does the average. Notice that I used the word period because this indicator works on any time period in exactly the same way.

It can be used on monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, 30 minutes, 15 minute and on whatever time period you want to monitor and trade. Although the SMA is the most widley used there is also the exponential moving average or EMA. This is a weighted version of the formula using the mathematical exponent function to give more weight to the more recent values, this has the effect of making it a slightly faster average that many traders prefer.

The truth is that it probably does not matter if you used the SMA or the EMA, what does matter however is that you use one or the other and then be very consistent with it. Do not switch between them, it is more important that you trust your chosen indicator then a slight difference in its value.

The SMA is oftern used to determine what the trend of the stock is, depending on the value used it could be a short term, medium term or long term trend. An important point to note is that moving averages are most useful when the stock is trending, if the moving average is flat, i.e. horizontal on your chart it can become very choppy, this is a good time to stay out of the market.

The general rule is that if the current price is above the SMA the trend is up, if below the trend is down. This is very important to know because it forms the basics of trend trading and trading with the trend.

For the short term trend many traders like using a 5-8 SMA or EMA, here is a trading secret, never trade again the direction of the short term tend, this is really just common sense when you think about it.

Moving averages often act as support or resistance, many traders use the 15, 21 or 30 SMA for this purpose.

There are a number of other very important moving averages that you need to know about, these are the 50, 100 and 200 SMA, and this mainly applies to the daily and weekly charts. A lot of big players in the markets, the mutual funds, investment banks etc use the 50 and 200 SMA as support and resistance, if they decide to buy or sell based on these you need to follow suite, the 100 to a lesser extent. These are very useful averages to watch if you trade EFT’s like an Oil ETF.

A useful tip is that when a stock breaks through one moving average it will often move all the way to the next, for example, if a stock breaks the 30 SMA it may move to the 50 before finding some support or resistance.

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Protect Your Stocks Using Put Options

Oct 20

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only good point they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.

Statistics show that in a bull market about 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 9 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.

But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a couple of tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the widely known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.

If you are going to trade options it is essential that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and the theory then you should not be trading options. If the terms Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.

Selling calls against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.

Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save your account if the stock takes a 40% tumble.

The better solution to providing downside stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options will increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be very compatible with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.

The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:

1. The strike price of the option

2. The current stock price

3. Choice of options, in or out of the money

4. Put expiration time

Even though the married Put protection only has a limited life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 90-95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.

The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of off-setting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.

The general idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.

The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.

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How To Trade Options Correctly

Oct 14

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options trading and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of money trading options, but of course you can also lose money just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go full out on margin you get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not quite as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that a big loss can also happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk.

What I’ve described above is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non-directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much less dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you trades options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very good skill to have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

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Secrets Of Technical Analysis

Oct 14

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.

You only have to think back to recent stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quaterly reports they release gives you a very poor insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what is the secret to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to get VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying much the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

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Stock Trading Technical Analysis Secrets

Oct 14

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Technical analysis of the stock market, or any other market such as Forex, Bonds, Futures, is how most traders and investors make their trading decisions. This is as opposed to fundamental analysis which most people more agree is pretty much done as a way of making trading decisions, unless of course you are Warren Buffet!.

You only have to think back to recent stock market scams like Enron to know that it is almost impossible for the average, and even very sophisticated fund manager or hedge fund trader to really know what the real financial state of a company is.

Just by reading the balance sheet and other quaterly reports they release gives you a very poor insight into the real health of the company. Whereas the technical analysis charts of the company tend to give the real picture of what the market thinks of the value of the company. In the case of Enron even simple technical analysis told you to SELL when the stock was in the $80-90 range, this is why technical analysis of stocks is so popular.

So what are the secrets to technical analysis?, I’m about to tell you, here are my golden rules:

* Only use 3-5 simple technical analysis indicators

* Make sure that you understand how the indicators that you have selected work, what the parameter settings are and in what market conditions they are effective

* After selecting your indicators and parameter settings don’t mess with them.

The real secret to technical analysis is to get VERY familiar with your choosen indicators, and really this can only be done by watching and studying the market, so that you get to the point that you TRUST them.

The fact is that in any market, for each bar period, there are only 5 pieces of information, the open, close, high, low and volume, yet there are now hundreds of indicators. Most of these indicators are displaying much the same information and so are redundant.

For the record my set of indicators are:

* 4 Simple Moving Averages

* Bollinger Bands

* MACD

* Stochastics

But the way I use them is quite special, to learn more about how to become an expert at technical analysis visit:

Top Dog Trading Review

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Should You Trade Options?

Oct 14

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

There is a lot of hype surrounding options trading, and for good reason, it’s a good way make a lot of money fast, or can be used to grow your capital consistently month after month.

There’s also a lot of hype about how complicated it is to learn and why you need to spend thousands of dollars on options trading education before you get started. Needless to say this last statement usually comes from trading seminar companies trying to sell your their trading course on options.

Lets cover a few of the basics about options trading and set you straight about a few important points. Firstly yes it is true that you can make a lot of money trading options, but of course you can also lose money just as fast.

When trading stocks your leverage is 1:1, if you go on margin you can get get 1:2 leverage, but thats about it. With options it is not as straight forward to calculate the leverage but generally speaking you can get between 1:5 and 1:10 when you buy an option on a stock, or ETF.

So with 1:10 leverage, when the stock increases by 5% your option can increase by approx 50%, and this can happen in just a few days, this is why swing trading strategies using options on stocks is so popular.

However the downside is that a big loss can also happen, if the stock drops by 5% your option can also drop by 50%, at which point you may want to close the trade and save some of your option value, it really depends on what your stop loss and risk.

What I’ve just described is called directional option trading where you are betting on the getting the direction of the stock movement correct, this is highly speculative. Options can also be used in option strategies which are much more non directional, such as covered call trades, credit spreads and Iron Condors. In these trades there is much less dependance on getting the stock direction correct, but it still matters.

So should you learn to trade options?, in my opinion you should not do directional option trades until you become an expert stock trader 1st. This is because you really need to be very precise with your entry and exit strategy and trading plan, and be very good at technical analysis.

Whereas if you want to do non-directional option trades you don’t need to be such an experianced stock trader to be successful, but of course it does not hurt either.

Learning how to trade options is a very useful skill you have, but don’t rush into it and blow out your account. Make sure that you get a good options trading education before you start, and also make sure that you have a very solid stock trading education as well, such one from Top Dog Trading Review.

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Put Options Used In The Collar Strategy Can Protect Your Stocks

Oct 14

Posted by ArtQ in Finance | No Comments

Hoping and praying that the stocks that you just bought will go up is not the best strategy to use, however it is the one very often used by the average Joe stock trader who is stock trading internet. The only salvation they have is that in bull markets most stocks will go up.

Statistics show that in a bull market approx 75% of the stocks will follow the general trend and go up, and in a bear market 75% will also go down. Trading with the trend is the best way to trade as 9 out of 12 stocks will follow the trend and give you the best chance of making gains on your stock purchases.

But what if you own some good stocks and don’t want to sell when the market is clearly going down, or about to go down?. There are a few tactics that you can consider, both of which involve the use of options, CALL options and PUT options. There is the well known strategy called Covered Calls, and the much lesser known one called the Married Put.

If you are going to trade options it is essential that before you start trading you get the best option trading education that you can. You should also practice stock trading until you are comfortable with the process. This is a very important point that must be taken seriously, if you don’t understand the terminology and theory then you should not be trading options. If Put option, Call option, Married Put and Covered Call are new to you then don’t trade until you have studied sufficiently.

Selling calls against your stock in 100 share increments is the basis of the covered call strategy and it can provide about a 2-7% buffer against the loss in stock price. However a bigger drop in stock price will not be compensated for using the covered call strategy, in general.

Stocks in a bear market, and even in a bull market, can drop quickly on news or earnings releases, as much as 15 to 40% within a month. Using covered calls to protect your stocks will only provide limited protection of less than 7% at best and so will not save you if the stock takes a 40% tumble.

The better solution to providing down-side stock protection is the option strategy called the Married Put. As the name suggests the PUT that you buy is used to provide protection when the stock goes down because Put options will increase in value when the stock decreases in value. The term married is used because the option that is selected has to be very compatible with the stock, in other words a good match, if the strategy is to work.

The selection of the best Put option is not straight forward and involves several criteria which are listed below:

1. The strike price of the option

2. The current stock price

3. Choice of options, in or out of the money

4. Put expiration time

Even though the married Put protection only has a short life span if offers much more protection than the covered call. It can provide as much as 90-95% loss recovery in the event of a significant drop in the stock price.

The downside of the good protection is that you have buy the Put which is a cash debit whereas the covered call is a credit. But there are ways of off-setting this expense and there is much more to this strategy when executed correctly. The Married Put can be made to pay for itself and used to generate very good gains if the market, or stock to be specific, moves a lot.

The basic idea of the Collar Trade is to combine the covered call and married Put strategy into one, this is what is called the Collar Trade. In effect you put a collar around the stock, you sell a call and buy a PUT. If you do this correctly most of the cost of the Put can be offset by the credit from the covered call so you can protect your valuable stock at almost no cost. Yes this is a great strategy which the general public is unfortunately ignorant of, and most brokers don’t understand.

The strategy that I have outlined above is unknown to the average stock market trader but is one of the best trading systems you could have.

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