One of the major stock tips that professional investors will give you is to diversify your holdings when you invest into the stock market. For a long term investor this is easy to do, you simply buy 20-30 stocks in different industry groups.
But for traders who are in the market for only in the market for a short period of time do you still need to diversify? And how would you go about it?
Well, yes, diversifying is still important. Just think what would happen if you where wrong and lost a lot of money on 1 trade with nothing else to balance it out. If you are trading here are a few things that you can do to diversify.
1. Have Many Different Trading Positions Open At The Same Time
A lot of great traders will have 5 or 10 positions open at one time. This way they know if one of their positions does not make them money then another one will.
2. Keep Losses Small
If you keep your loses short two things will happen. First of all you are less likely to lose all of your money because you will have to lose a lot of trades in a row to get to that point. The next thing that will happen is that your losses will be easily neglected by wins. If you lose $100 on 3 different trades but make $500 on the fourth you have made money despite having only a 25% success ratio.
3. Learn To Short The Market
Short selling stocks is essential for diversification for a short term trader. With long term investors it doesn’t matter as much because they can lose half of their account in a month and still be ok just as long as everything works out in the long run.
With short term trading you are more susceptible to the short term movements in the market. So, holding onto long and short term positions at the same time can help you to get more out of the stock market and really get some more consistency through the good times and the bad.
For more on stock trading visit Shaun’s site which can help you learn stock trading. Also published at How Stock Traders Can Diversify.