All posts by Ahmad Hassam

Forex Trading

Short Interest Ratios And Short Selling Secret

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Short selling is a way to make money when a security price starts falling. When you expect a stock to fall in price, you borrow it from your broker and sell it. After sometimes buy it back in order to return it to your broker. The difference between the selling price and the buying price in this case is your capital gain.

Now for short selling to work, the stock price should go down otherwize, you will make a hefty loss in case the stock price starts to go up. Since, you are trading with a borrowed stock, you have to return that stock to your broker. In case the stock price goes up, you will have to buy it back at a much higher price with a loss. Now, when you go short and the market suddenly turns against you in the sense that it goes in the wrong direction, you are in trouble. You want to buy back the stock but the price is continously going up. The harder it becomes to buy back the required number of shares, the more desperate you will become and the higher the prices can go before you are able to buy back the required number of shares and return them to your broker. So in a way, short selling is tricky and must only be practiced by the experienced traders.

Now, in other markets like the currencies, futures or the options market, you don’t have to borrow the security in order to go short. You can straight away go short by selling that security or currency in the market. Now, short selling in stocks is done by investors with the expectation of a making a capital gain when they expect that stock price to go down in the near future. Short selling is also done by the fund managers to hedge their stock portfolios.

In the case of stocks, you need to monitor the rate of short selling in order to gauge investor expectation as well as the future market direction. Now, NYSE and NASDAQ report the short interest in stocks listed with them. Now this data is released on monthly basis as the brokerage firms may need a while to report how many shares have been shorted and then report that data to the exchange.

Now this number is known as the Short Interest Ratio. Short Interest Ratio is a very important number for short sellers as it can give important clues about the investor expectation to the short sellers.

So what is the Short Interest Ratio? Short Interest Ratio is the number of shares of a particular stock that has been shorted in the market. Plus the average daily volume for that stock in the same month and also the number of days of trading at the average volume that it would require the market to cover the short positions in that stock. It also reports the percentage change in the short positions from the previous month.

An increase in the short interest ratio means that the investors are becoming nervous about the stock. Now, this number is not calculated frequently. What this means is that the trader cannot get a lot of information out of it. But still a high short interest ratio means that the stock prices will go high soon as the investors with short positions become desperate to buy it back. High Short Interest Ratios along with bullish indicators is an indication that prices are going to go up soon rather than down.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done masters from Harvard University. Read this 49 page Quantum Swing Trading FREE Report. Get your FREE COPIES of the HVMM Ultimate Day Trading System and the Universal Risk & Money Management Tool.

Forex Trading

A Shockingly Simple Momentum Indicator For Stock Trading

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Following a trend is great. But if the trend is moving quickly, you want to know that so that you can get ahead of it. If the rate of change of the trend is going up, rising prices are going to follow quickly.

Momentum was the velocity multiplied by the mass of the object. Now first what is a momentum? You must have read about the momentum in high school physics.Velocity was the rate of change. Now. a simple way to calculate the momentum of any security price is to divide the closing price today by the closing price ten days back and then multiply it by 100! So when we talk of momentum in trading, we are talking of the rate of change of any security prices.

This gives you the momentum indicator. If the prices didn’t go anywhere momentum indicator will be 100. If the prices went up, the momentum indicator will be greater than 100 and the prices went down, the momentum indicator will be less than 100. Now, a trend is expected to continue if the momentum indicator is greater than 100.

How do you know that the security prices will continue to rise in the future? By looking at the business fundamentals like the sales or profits, if you find them to be rising and accelerating at the same time the security price is rising,there is momentum behind this move! This momentum indicator tells you what is most likely to happen in the future not what happened in the past. So it is a leading indicator. You must have heard about momentum investing or you can even call it momentum trading. In momentum investing , you buy a security at a high price and sell it even at a more higher price unlike ordinary investing where you buy low and sell high. The trick is to know that the price will continue to rise when you do momentum investing.

However, in momentum investing, you search for stocks that have rising prices that are expected to continue for sometime. So you buy high and sell even higher within a few weeks making a decent profit. You can use that profit to do more investing. As said before, instead of investing in a security or a stock you can do momentum investing. When you are doing ordinary investing, you are waiting for its price to appreciate to give you a capital gain. This price appreciation might take from a few months to even years tying down your capital in that investing.

Remember the Dot Com Bubble that burst and hurt many people a decade back. Lot of people were doing momentum investing without doing fundamental research on the stocks that they were investing in. So you need to do some fundamental research as well to ascertain that the rise in prices of a stock are sustainable over the long haul or not. So when you are doing momentum investing, you are looking for a security or a stock that has a potential to move big. How long this big move might take to materialize? Well, the expectation is for the big move to happen in a few weeks to a few months. Just like in ordinary physics, when a ball is set in motion, it will continue moving unless stopped. This is what the Newton’s First Law says. You can expect a security price to keep on rising as long as something drastic doesn’t happen to stop that rise. So what can be that something drastic? It can be a sudden breaking news about the misdoings of the management that have not been known to the public before. I am just giving you one example. There can be more. So before you do your momentum investing, it is always better to do some fundamental research on the company.

Now just like price momentum that we have been talking about above, we can calculate the earnings momentum. Earning momentum is the province of the investors. The investor looks at the quarterly earnings of the company to see if it is going up at a faster pace say from a steady pace of 10% a year to 12% or 15% and so on. If the earnings growth rate is going up what this means is that the underlying price is also going to accelerate.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Get this 49 page Quantum Swing Trading Report plus the shocking Profit Button Report that applies no matter what you trade- stocks, forex, futures or options FREE. Read the story of Richard Samuels, a post office mailman with a head injury and how he made a fortune with these Neutrino Forex Signals.

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Know These Short Selling Shocking Facts

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Short Selling Stocks is one of the favorite day or swing trading strategy. Many traders short stocks. Now many stock brokers make it very easy for the investors and traders to short stocks. Now a days, most of the trading is being done online. When you sell a stock, a message will ask you whether you are selling stocks that you own or you are selling short. With one click, you tell the broker that you are short selling. The broker than goes about and arranges the shares for you to short sell. These shares are a loan to your account.

In some cases,a stock gets so much shorted that there are no more shares of that stock left for you or your broker to borrow anymore. Now, you cannot always short a stock instantly. Most of the investors work on rumors. In that case, you simple will have to cross your fingers and see how the other short sellers do on that stock while you search for another stock to short!

Day traders are not looking for long term fundamentals in order to go short. A day trader might go short on a stock that had go up for three consecutive days, figuring that they will go down on the fourth day. Day traders are only looking for stock that might go down in price for mundane reasons.

In simple words, once the stock starts to move down, you cannot short it. You will have to wait for its price to move up on the last trade, before your short selling order can be executed by the broker. Now, you cannot straight away short a stock as there are mechanisms in place employed by msot of the stock exchanges that don’t want a massive shorting attack on a stock. There is the famous Uptick Rule that has been put in place to prevent that from happening. What the Uptick Rule means is that you cannot short a stock unless it moves up on the last trade. This rule has been placed to prevent a stock from being driven down to almost zero by short sellers.

Now you have to be careful when shorting a stock as certain risks are involved. In theory, there is no limit on how high a stock price can go high. So when betting on something going wrong, if you yourself go wrong, the potential loss in case of a stock price going up can be immense.

Now, don’t get caught in the market with short selling when good news spreads about the stock that you had shorted driving its price up. This is known as Short Squeeze. Once that happens, almost all short sellers get desperate to dump their stocks and exit but when they try to buy back the stock, they get more hurt as the prices go even higher and higher on rising demand for the stock in the market.

Now many companies, brokers and investors hate short sellers and try tactics to bust them. Sometimes, they will issue good news or spread rumors of good news to create a squeeze. Other times, they can ask the stock holders collectively to tell their brokers not to loan out their shares. What this means is that short sellers have to buy back the shares and return them to the brokerage firm and close their short positions even if it does not make any sense.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Turn $200 into $100K in just 3 months with this Penny Stock Trading FREE Report!Read this 49 page Quantum Swing Trading FREE Report plus the shocking Profit Button Report that applies no matter what you trade-stocks,forex, futures or options!

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Trading Interest Rate Futures And Knowing The Yield Curve

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Interest rates play a pivotal role in all financial markets. No matter what market you trade whether it is stocks, forex, futures, options, ETFs, commodities, bonds etc, you need to keep an eye on the interest rates. A yield curve is a representation on the graph that compares the entire spectrum on interest rates available to investors.

When you look at a Yield Curve these interest rates are plotted on the vertical axis with the time to maturity of these financial instruments on the horizontal axis. There can be three different shapes of a Yield Curve. The Normal Curve, The Flat Curve and the Inverted Curve. Now as said before there are two types of interest rates in the economy; short term and long term. The return offered on the Treasury Bills is the short term interest rate while the return offered on the Treasury Notes and Bonds are long term interest rates. Let’s discuss these three different shapes now. On the Normal Curve, the short term interest rates are lower than the longer term interest rates as investors need a premium to invest long term. A Normal Curve represents normal economic activity where investors get rewarded for investing long term in the form of a higher long term interest rate on these financial instruments in the shape of a premium over the short term interest rates.

When you find the Yield Curve to be Flat, it means that all the interest rates in the economy are equal. What this indicates is that economic activity is slowing down. Now, most of the time you will come accross the Normal Yield Curve. But sometimes, you will find the Yield Curve to be Flat.

An Inverted Yield Curve is a leading indicator of an economy doing down into a recession. When there is a financial crisis like that happened in the early part of 2008, you will find the Yield Curve to be Inverted. Investors are shying away from investing in long term projects in the economy. When the economy starts to go into a recession, you will suddenly find an Inverted Yield Curve. On an Inverted Yield Curve, the longer term interest rates are lower than the short term interest rates.What this mean is that the economy is slowing down and investors are reluctant to invest long term thinking it to be risky.

Eurodollars have a highly liquid market meaning you can get in and get out without paying a large spread due to the large market in them. They also have less volatility. However, you can also trade the 10 year Treasury Notes (T Notes) and the Treasury Bonds (T Bond) that have a maturity period of higher than 10 years. However, T Notes and T Bonds have a much higher volatility as compared to Eurodollars.You can also trade options on these interest rate futures contracts. Some people trade the volatility. So, you have to know what you want before you trade these instruments! Many investors and traders trade interest rates by investing in Eurodollars. Eurodollars are short term futures contracts that have a low margin requirement meaning retail traders and investors can also trade Eurodollars.

Now, when you trade these interest rate futures contracts, you need to keep an eye on the market constantly. Futures trading can be risky and in a matter of few minutes you might get wiped out in the market and get a margin call from your broker. Trading interest rate futures is no different than trading anyother futures contract. If you haven’t traded futures before, a good idea would be to first paper trade these contracts for at least two months so that you get a feel of how these futures contracts gets traded and how the market behaves!

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Know this shocking Dow Futures secret that can make you rich. Read the story of Richard Samuels, a post office mailman with a head injury and how he made a fortune with these Neutrino Forex Signals

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Candlestick Patterns-Bullish Necklines, the Bearish Meeting Lines And the Bearish Piercing Line

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Bullish necklines candlestick pattern is a two stick trend confirming pattern. When this pattern appears during the uptrend, it is a signal that the uptrend is still in force and is expected to continue for sometime in the future. Now, there are two type of neckline patterns, the in neck and the out neck pattern.

On the first day, there will be a long bullish candle indicating that heavy buying took place during the day. On the second day or what you call the signal day, there will be a bearish candle that can be long or short with a closing price almost close to the first day. Necklines pattern is a two stick pattern. What this means is that it takes two days on the daily chart for this pattern to form.

Now,there can be two types of Neckline Patterns depending on the closing prices on the signal and the setup days. If the closing price on the signal day is almost near the closing price on the setup day, it is an On Neck Pattern. In case, if the closing price on the first day is little lower than the closing price on the signal day, it is a In Neck Pattern.

You might be thinking that this is not much of a difference. Well, this is true but nevertheless, you should be aware of this slight difference between the In Neck and the On Neck Patterns. Both these patterns are telling the same thing that the uptrend is going to continue in the near future. So even if you are not able to differentiate between the In Neck and the On Neck, don’t worry much. You must at least be able to identify that a Neckline Pattern has been formed.

Now, let’s talk about a trend reversal candlestick pattern; The Bearish Meeting Line. On the first day or what you call the setup day, you will find a long bullish candle.What this means is that heavy buying took place throughout the day. On the second day or what you call the signal day, you will find a gap opening. This is a Bearish Meeting Line Trend Reversal Pattern. What is means is that the trend is about to reverse itself soon! This gap entices the sellers to start selling that continues throughout the day. This will result in a long bearish candle on the second or what you call the signal day. This long bearish candle should have a close very near the open of the low of the day as well as the close should be very near to the close on the first or what you call the setup day.

Another trend reversal pattern is the Bearish Piercing Ling Pattern. This candlestick pattern is formed when on the first or the setup day, a bullish long candle is formed meaning that the bulls have been in control of the market throughout the day. The second day or what you call the signal day, there will be a bearish candle formed. This means that on the second day or what you call the signal day, the sellers started selling pushing the price action down past the opening price to the midpoint of the first day candle. This bearish candle should have an opening higher than the first day’s high.

When this Bearish Piercing Line Candlestick Pattern is formed, it means that the price action has lost it’s momentum. This pattern usually occurs in the last stages of an uptrend and when it happens, it means that the trend is about to reverse itself.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Get this 49 page Quantum Swing Trading Report FREE! Master these Candlestick Patterns with this 82 page PDF FREE Candlestick Guide!