All posts by Timmy Morre

Some Stock Tips to Look At If You Are Starting To Trade The Markets

Trading stocks isn’t as easy as simply following business people around and seeing what stocks they recommend. If you want to be successful as a trader you are going to have to learn as much as you can about how the market works and create a trading plan based off of what you learned.

The stock market is simply a place where you can buy and sell shares of a company with other traders from around the world.

If you want to learn stock trading then here are a few stock tips that should help you out with that.

1. Create a Trading Strategy

One common characteristic of great traders is that they all have their own trading plan that they stick with. You won’t see a long term investor suddenly start trading stock options. They don’t specialize in that and it would probably end up losing them money.

Likewise you won’t see professional option traders invest into something that has the potential to make a slow and steady return.

Anybody who has been successful in the stock market has found out what kind of a trader they are and then approached the markets from that perspective. If you would like to be good at it you need to do the same.

2. Paper Trade

Just because you have a strategy doesn’t mean it works. It could be that your trading strategy loses you money. In which case you want to know right away so that you stop using it.

That is why it is generally recommended that you paper trade your strategy for at least a few months before diving into the market with real money.

3. You Don’t Always Have to Be Right

A lot of people have the misconception that if you want to be a successful trader you have to be right all the time and never make any mistakes. Nothing can be further from the truth. Most traders are wrong on a consistent basis. The difference is they manage their risk and let their winners grow.

If you keep your losses small and your wins big then just a few big wins can last you throughout the year. This is one of the reasons it is important to manage your money wisely and keep your losses as small as possible.

For more tips for stock market traders visit Shaun’s site about the stock market basics. Unique version for reprint here: Some Stock Tips to Look At If You Are Starting To Trade The Markets.

A Few Different Trading Approaches

One way to grow your money faster is to start trading with it. But there really isn’t a one size fits all approach to trading the markets. Everybody is different, so it would make sense that there are different approaches to trading.

This is why some of the free stock tips that professional traders will give you involve helping you to find your own way. As humans we are all different and we should not all have the same exact investment plan.

Here are a few different types of strategies out there to give you an idea of how different people view the market.

1. Day Trading Stocks

Throughout the day stocks are constantly moving up and down because of supply and demand. If more people are buying a stock it goes up, if more people are selling it, the stock goes down.

Day Traders attempt to catch those short term ups and downs in hopes of making a lot of small gains consistently throughout the day. Just a small gain every day can really add up over the long term.

2. Swing Trading The Stock Market

Day trading can be a good concept, but for those who do not want to sit at a computer all day, there is another option. This other option is called swing trading, it is just like day trading, except it involves trading stocks over a period of days instead of minutes or hours.

3. Trend Trader

One other type of trader is called a trend trader. Stocks normally trend, if a stock has been going up for the last year it is more likely that it will continue to go up in the future. At least it is more likely that it will then it is that it will suddenly turn around.

In a similar way to how surfers try to catch a wave and ride it, trend traders try to catch a trend and ride it all the way up.

4. Selling Options

And finally there are traders who will sell options and make the premiums up front by doing trading strategies like covered calls.

The real advantage of this strategy is that you will make money on the trade up front. However you will have to risk being called out. Even with that risk it can still be a great way to make money if you put the odds in your favor.

For more on the stock market visit Shaun’s site which can help you learn stock trading. This article, A Few Different Trading Approaches is released under a creative commons attribution license.

Some Common Mistakes New Traders Make

Trading in the stock market can be a fun experience at times. It has its ups and downs and over the long term it can be a profitable adventure. So, what are some of the common mistakes that newbie’s make?

The first mistake that people make is paying too much attention to the news. If you could really take what the news is saying and use it to invest into the stock market wisely there would be a lot more millionaires out there because everyone listens to the news. Actually rumors and opinions that can be found on the news can even cause you to panic sell or make some other foolish mistake based on your emotions.

More often than not the news will act as a trigger to your emotions. Instead of making decisions based on how well the stock is doing or how strong the actual company getting random facts thrown at you can lead to you making decisions based on fear and greed. Fear of missing out on a hot tip will normally not work very well.

Another mistake made by new traders is switching game plans. If you did something stupid like put all your money into 1 risky penny stock then switching game plans and exiting out of your position and calling your losses short might actually be a good thing.

But if you actually have a plan that is another story. If you bought a stock at $50 and planed to exit out at $65 or cut your losses short at $45 there is no point in getting out at $49 just because you are scared that you might actually lose more money. Create a plan and stick with it.

The final reason people have trouble in the web is that they do not have a plan to limit their losses. Whether your plan is to use stop losses to cut your losses short or your plan is to diversify between 20 or 30 different stocks you do need to limit your losses somehow. This way you do not lose everything on one trade.

By working hard at it and learning from your past mistakes anyone can make money in the stock market.

For more free stock tips visit Shaun’s site on trading stocks. Also published at Some Common Mistakes New Traders Make.

Misconceptions About the Stock Market

The stock market has become a very popular place that is supposed to help you grow your money. And just like anything else there are a lot of common misconceptions that emerge with it. Here are just a few to look out for.

1. Traders Need to be a Genus

It is actually a common misunderstanding in all areas of life. People seem to think that in order to be successful at anything that has a lot of potential you have to have an IQ of like 200. That isn’t true, the average person can accomplish a lot more then you think.

IQ is not the major factor for success in this world. You can be a millionaire with a below average IQ and you can be a bum on the street with an above average IQ. The difference is vision and determination.

2. You Should Watch the News and Know Everything

Another common misconception is that if you want to be successful you need to watch the news and learn as much as you can about a company before you even consider buying it. This is simply not true, first of all it is impossible to know everything about a company.

Second there are a lot of false rumors when it comes to trading. There have been a lot of very successful traders who have made money without watching the news. Many traders even avoid watching the news because it harms their trading.

Successful traders instead create their own system of rules and then follow it. This way they know that it works and do not have to analyses random data and rumors and try to make sense of it all.

3. Buy Stocks Low and Sell Them High

Buy low sell high doesn’t work because it does not clarify what is low and what is high. Is a stock low when it drops from $40 to $30? Is it low when it drops to $20 after that? Stocks can fall for a long time, so if all you have to go on is “buy low” you can easily get in during the middle of a storm and lose money.

You can also make money by buying stocks high and selling them higher, and in many cases that is the most profitable thing to do.

For some stock trading tips on trading visit Shaun’s site on the stock market basics. This article, Misconceptions About the Stock Market is available for free reprint.

Successful Vs Unsuccessful Traders

There is a fine line between becoming a successful trader and becoming a trader who knows a lot, but can’t make money in the stock market. There are a few key differences that define these two.

Successful traders make their own decisions on how they want to approach the stock market and what qualifies as a good buy. This allows them to try out different strategies and work out a strategy that fits them best.

Traders who are not successful may learn a little bit about the stock market, but when it comes to trading they generally look for free stock tips on what to buy then invest their money into them hoping to get rich quick. And of course get rich quick hardly ever works.

The traders that are successful will create their own systems of trading and how they want to approach the stock market. They can then learn from any failures that they do have and try to stop them from happening again in the future. In this way they are constantly improving and becoming better.

Unsuccessful traders search the net for winning systems and switch strategies whenever they hit a rough patch. This stops them from learning anything new because they are constantly looking for the “holy grail” of trading systems that is never wrong. That system just doesn’t exist.

Successful traders will look for ways that they can control their emotions so that they do not start to panic when bad things happen or start to get greedy when good things happen. Emotions can interfere with logic and cause you to lose a lot of money.

Unsuccessful traders panic when they lose money and are swept up with greed when they make money. This causes them to make foolish mistakes just to satisfy their “fight or flight” instincts which makes them lose more money.

The traders that are successful are the ones that are always learning. They are learning how to improve themselves and their systems and over the long term this leads to some great performance.

Traders who are not successful do not want to work to become successful. They do not think about all of the preparation that it takes to get rich, they just want to be rich.

For more on the stock market visit Shaun’s aite which can help you learn stock market trading. Unique version for reprint here: Successful vs Unsuccessful Traders.