Stock Market Trading: A Disciplined And Organized Approach

A Winning Approach to Trading in the Stock Market

Many traders lose simply out of ignorance. They base their trades on hunches, news, or tips from friends, and do not define specific risk and profit objectives before placing trades.

Others have the merit of educating themselves but fall victims of their emotions. They hold on to losing positions hoping they will turn into winners and sell winners by fear of losing a small gain. They overtrade to fulfill a need for action or by fear of missing out.

The consistent winners follow a winning approach:

• They have a strategy to enter and exit trades
• They use good money management
• They take consistent actions, they follow a trading plan
• They keep good records so they can review their actions
• They avoid overtrading
• They have a winning attitude

A Strategy To Enter And Exit Trades

You need to a strategy to put the odds in your favor for each trade you take. Your strategy should be as objective as possible and include the following elements:

• Entry: conditions required before you can enter a trade - may include technical analysis, fundamental analysis, or both.
• Initial stop loss: price at which you will close the entire position if it does not go in your favor. The risk per share is the difference between the entry price and the initial stop.
• Initial price objective: price at which you will take some or all profits if the trade goes in your favor.
• Trade management: set of rules that dictates your actions while a trade is opened. It may include trailing stops, closing position, etc…

For every action you take, the reason should be clearly described in your strategy.

Money Management Rules To Keep Losses Small

The goal of money management is to ensure your survival by avoiding risks that could take you out of business. Your money management rules should include the following:

• Maximum amount at risk for each trade. The different between your entry price and your initial stop loss is your risk per share. Your maximum amount at risk for each trade determines the share size.
• Maximum amount at risk for all your opened positions.
• Maximum daily and weekly amount lost before you stop trading – avoid trying to trade your way out of a hole after a loosing streaks.

During your learning phase, your goal should be to survive, not to make money. Start with low limits and raise them as you become a consistent winner otherwise you will simply go broke faster.

Good Record Keeping

Although the process of gaining experience cannot be rushed, it can be made much more efficient by keeping good records of your actions. Good records will allow you to:

• Review your actions at the end of each day to make sure you followed you strategy, not your emotions.
• Learn from your losses – they cost you money, make sure you get the education in return.

You should also keep a journal of your observations.

A Trading Plan To Keep Emotions Out Of Your Decisions

During trading hours, emotions will turn smart people into idiots. Therefore you have to avoid having to make decisions during those hours. This requires a detailed trading plan that includes your strategy and your money management rules.

For every action you take during trading hours, the reason should not be greed or fear. The reason should be because it is in the plan. With a good plan, your task becomes one of patience and discipline.

You have to follow the plan without exception. Any valid reason for an exception - for example, correcting an oversight - should become part of the plan.

Overtrading

Sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing. Not trading on those bad days is key to becoming a consistent winner – in some situations it is very tempting to overtrade:

• If you trade to fulfill a need for action, to relieve boredom
• If you can’t find the proper setup but can’t wait
• If you fear you are missing out on a great trade or on a great market
• If you want to make up for losses (revenge)
• If you trade to feel like you are working instead of sitting around. Trading involves a lot of work other than the actual buying and selling.

You should not trade under the following conditions:

• You are not following my trading plan
• You have reached your daily or weekly maximum loss
• You are sick or very tired
• You are very emotional (upset, pressured to make money, self-esteem destroyed)
• You are using new tools you are not completely familiar with
• You need time to work on your trading plan

A Winning Attitude

Losing traders look for a “sure thing”, hang on hope, and avoid accepting small losses. Their trading is based on emotions. You must treat trading as a probability game in which you don’t need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money. All you need to know is that the odds are in your favor before you put a trade.

If you believe in your edge, which is you believe that the odds in your favor for each trade you enter, then you should have no expectation other than something will happen.

Your attitude will have a direct influence on your trading results:

• Take responsibility for all your actions – don’t blame the market or world events.
• Trade to trade well and for the love of trading, not to trade often and not for the money. The money will come as a result of trading well.
• Don’t be influenced by the opinions of others. Reach your own decisions and follow them.
• Never think that taking money from the market is easy and never assume that you know enough.
• Have no particular expectation when you place a trade because you know that anything can happen.
• Don’t try to guess the future – trading is a game of probabilities.
• Use your head and stay calm – don’t get excited or depressed.
• Handle trading as a serious intellectual pursuit.
• Don’t count how much money you have made or lost while you are in a trade - focus on trading well.

Trading Framework was designed to help you build those crucial elements into your trading.

Stock Trading - Is It Worth Your Time And Money?

Many companies are selling you the tools and services but it doesn't mean you are already guaranteed of your success. As long as the company get its fee for each transaction it doesn't care if you profit or lose you money.

Since you are considering going into the stock market, most likely you are planning to get a significant return on your investment which should also be better than what you would get buy investing your money into mutual funds (less risky than single stocks) or even no-risk certificate of deposits (CDs) where returns are guaranteed.

Well, how can you get such returns? The answer of course is simple and well known: buy low, sell high. If you do it most of the time you’ll be a successful stock trader. Now the first problem comes: how do you know when to buy? There are probably several ways to do that, we do not discuss this here, let’s assume that you know somehow or think you do know. Lets say you got lucky and the stock after you bought it is going up, just as you planned.

Now another problem comes: when to sell? After the stock is up 20%, what do you do? Sell now, or wait until it is up 50%, 100% or 200%? Do you listen to investor news and do what everybody else does: selling, buying more, or continue holding the stock? If you choose one of the first two options, how much of the stock you should buy or sell? Or if you hold the stock, are you sure it will continue to go up, or you may end up waiting until the stock price is back to the original and than lose it’s value resulting in your losses.

The truth is some people actually do know the answers to those questions most of the time and actually make profit. The question is, are you as good as those people? Most people are losing money guessing and trying to time the market. If you’re new in this game and not planning to spend much time on research, chances are you will lose. You will be competing with professional traders, big players and insiders who profit mostly because many others keep losing. Plus what are the chances that you can predict the market? The chances are very slim.

Some may argue: “I had that stock, I sold it when it was up 20%, but if I did not sell it at that time, now it would be up 300%. How stupid I was when I sold it, if I did not I’d made a lot of money. I have to do this again. It really proves that I can make a lot of money there and it’s easy!” That is right you can make a lot of money, but it is not that easy as it looks. Lets assume you did not sell the stock at the time it was up 20%. Then what makes you think you would wait until it is up 300%? You may have sold it when it was up only 25%. Or it may go down several times below 20% increase, you could have thought it was going down forever and sold it even with a lower than 20% profit.

The bottom line is that it is easy to look at the past and see all the mistakes you’ve made. However it is very difficult to do right things for the future. Unless you know market trends well, understand related industries and stock company financials, most likely you will not be able to make profitable trades. Even professional traders do mistakes and lose money. If you are not one of them or not planning to become one, your best bet would be investing into CDs, mutual funds or your own business.

Stock Trading: Buy To Cover Orders

This article has all the information on this topic that you can handle. So if you are really eager to know more about it, better get ready!

Within the buy to cover orders, there are four options in which to place against your stock purchases. When you buy to cover on a stock order, you are in agreement that you will buy the stock at the latest share price; however, because there is a lag between the time you approve to buy the stock and the actual transaction, a price difference may occur. You could end up paying more than anticipated for each stock, or a considerably lesser amount per stock, which is what you are eager for. You can also buy to cover limit orders, which guarantees that you pay no more than the set limit price. However, if stock prices hold above the limit buy price, this type of buy to cover order will never be executed.

This type of transaction is mainly used by investors who want to get into a certain market. You may also want to buy, to cover stop orders in which case the stop orders become simple stock orders as soon as the value is at or above the stop price. This type of order is used to get you out of an unfavourable stock so that you will not have lost any profits. And, finally, you may want to buy to cover a limit order that converts to limit order only when the share value is at or above the stop price. You have to know each of the buy to cover orders so that you can make educated decisions about your investments.

From one decision period to the next in the stock market game, the markets can move up and down non-stop, which means that prices of shares are at a frequent changing point. You may think about purchasing a certain stock that is at $5 per share, and in the next day, the value per share has risen to $15 per share.

This is where the betting of the stock market comes into play. By erudition the advantages of the buy to cover orders, you can multiply your odds of earning money on the stock exchange rather than of losing money. The most obvious benefit to the entire buy to cover options is that they are in place to make you money, when executed properly. For example, you would not perform a stop loss on a stock that has steadily increased over a 5 month period. If you did this, you would force yourself to squander money to buy the stock in order to cover your mistake. You choose to buy 175 shares of stocks from Albertson's, a grocery store chain, at $75 each, for an entire investment of $13,125. Over a four month period, you observe that the stocks have gained in profit, and you would like to do something to guarantee that you keep this earned profit. Not knowing better, you put a stop loss of $45 per stock without consulting with your stockbroker. From that position forward, if your stock decreases to $45 per stock, you have to sell it, and any earlier earned profit is null and void. The only chance you have in getting back that profit is if you are swift enough in the non-stop stock market game, to buy the Albertson's stocks before somebody else does. However, even if you are able to do this, you have still suffered a great loss monetarily.

Educate yourself in the stock market game.
As with any game, there is some form of jeopardy involved, however, when you play the stock market game, you can avert a great deal of distress by simply taking the time to acquire knowledge about all types of orders you are able to place on your stocks. If you require help educating yourself about the types of orders to place on your stocks, you should consult your stockbroker in order to take professional advice before taking matters into your own hands, inevitably forcing yourself to lose some of your invested money's profit. Thus, it is absurd to invest your hard earned money into any program before you know all the data necessary to make a well-informed, educated judgment.

If you could take the main ideas from this article and put them into a list, you would a great overview of what we have learned.