Stock Market Money Management Skills
Let's start by saying: You can't be afraid to take a loss. The investors that are the most successful in the stock market are the people who are willing to lose money. Having a strategy and/or a specific philosophy is an excellent starting point to investing but it won't mean a thing if you can't manage your money. As I have said a million times: without cash, you can't invest. Most investors spend far too much time trying to figure out the exact pivot point or perfect entry strategy and too little time on money management. The most important aspect to investing is cutting your losses, 90% of the battle is won by protecting your capital, regardless of the strategy. Most successful money managers only make money 50-55% of time. This means that successful individual investors are going to be wrong about half the time. Since this is the case, you better be ready to accept your losses and cut them while they are small. By cutting losses quickly and allowing your winners to ride the up-trend, you will consistently finish the year with black ink. Here are some methods that can help you with money management: Set a predetermined stop loss (you must know where to cut the loss before it happens "this will help control emotions when the time comes)." A 7-10% stop loss insurance policy is best. Tighten the stop loss range in down markets and loosen the range in strong bull markets. Establish smaller positions if your account has had a recent losing streak (the losses may be telling you important information such as a critical turning point, it may be time to sell and get out). If you think you are wrong or if the market is moving against you, cut your position in half "this is the best insurance policy on Wall Street." If you cut your position in half two times, you will be left with only 25% of the original position "the remaining stock is no longer a big deal as your risk is very low." If you sell out of a trade prematurely based on a minor correction, you can always reestablish the position again. Initial position sizing plays a big part in money management "don't take on too big of a position relative to your portfolio size. Novice investors should never use their entire account on one trade no matter how small the account Know when you would like to get out of a position after a considerable profit has been made. Signs of topping could be a climax run, a spinning top or higher highs on lower volume. Finally, cut any trade that doesn't act the way you originally analyzed it to act. With these guidelines, you will be well on your way to solid money management skills that will help you profit in Wall Street year in and year out. Always remember, you are going to take-on losing trades at least half of the time. This is a tough concept to accept for most novice investors but it a fact. If you don't cut losses, you won't be investing for very long as you will run out of cash and the desire to continue to invest. Chris Perruna - http://www.marketstockwatch.com Chris is the founder and CEO of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We don't stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make you own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Caveat Emptor: You May Owe Taxes Despite 401(K) Losses!
One among many ways you lose money in non-indexed mutual funds is the tax trap. You may have to pay taxes even when your mutual fund loses money! To many people this is painfully unexpected. Here is how this counter intuitive event occurs. By law, mutual funds do not pay taxes. Instead, they pass on those taxes to you, the shareholder in the mutual fund. If the fund manager sells a stock for more than it cost the fund a profit is generated. This profit is called a capital gain and it is taxable. Capital gains are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate which is between 28% and 38.6% for most investors if the fund held the stock for less than a year. If the stock was held for more than a year, in other words long term, the tax is 20%.
Gold; What Type of Gold to Buy
Jewelry
Annuity Help
Many people today are looking for annuity help. The biggest challenge seems to be that most of the help is biased. What exactly do I mean? I mean that there is always a vested interest for the person who is helping you with your annuities. They are out to sell you something so you don't know if they are doing it for your best interest or for theirs.
Guru Focused: Robert Olstein?s Short Sells
While it is rather rare that value gurus sell stocks short, Robert Olstein has been selling short in his Financial Alert Fund. The accountant-turned fund manager spots values by looking behind the numbers. In the second quarter of 2004, Robert Olstein sold short American Italian Pasta Co. (PLB) at $31. After about 6 months he covered at $20, easily made more than $1 million for his fund. Currently he is shorting two stocks: Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc (FLE), although things do not always go that smoothly.
Makin The Sauce
Let's face it, you're on a roll. After getting down to your attorney's office to sign the new Living Trust and then diligently tracking down your assets to fund the trust, you should be congratulated. You're one of the responsible ones - 70% of the people who die each year in the United States haven't even bothered to get a will. Frankly, you're an inspiration to us all. But to seal the nomination for the financial Oscars, a little work on your investments could go a long way.
Inflation Proof Your Investment Portfolio with ETF?s
Even though inflation has been relatively quiet in the U.S. since the late 1980's, there now appears to be some strong evidence that it may be starting to heat up again with an expanding economy, combined with skyrocketing oil and housing prices in certain key regions of the country. While the Federal Reserve has been raising key interest rates citing the threat of rising inflation, the cautious message coming out from the Feds are that, inflation is still benign and not yet a threat. Inflation is benign? Excuse me, but the cheapest gas I can find anywhere in this area is $2.23 a gallon, which is up almost 50% from last year and housing prices in my Howard County, MD neighborhood have more than doubled in the past five years.
Playing With Money - And Making More
Ready to start playing with your money? Not interested in complicated businesses or boring bank C.D.'s? Here are some methods that aren't quite a business because you can do them once, or just whenever you feel like it. Start small and the risk is small.
Pros & Cons of Investing in Bonds
What are Bonds?
Tyranosaurus Rex
Everyone knows T Rex was the most fearsome of all dinosaurs. He could and did kill everything in his path for food or maybe stupid meanness. His brain was very small and he did not survive.
Trading Tips No 4: Technical Analysis The Holy Grail Syndrome
Everyone knows that the Holy Grail of investing and trading is a myth. Finding a good technical analysis tool that will give you a trading system that wins all the time is called the holy grail of trading. This means that one would never have a losing trade, not to mention consecutive losing trades, never have an equity curve drawdown, and after five winning trades in a row will just keep on delivering winning trades forever! There is simply no technical analysis or system that wins on every trade.
The 8 Biggest Mistakes When Designing Portfolios - and How To Avoid Them
Are you as good an investor as you think? Do you consider yourself a well-informed investor able to anticipate and avoid nearly all pitfalls associated with investing? Chances are, you are making one of the common errors that could cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars, or worse yet, your financial independence, control and security.
The Power of Small Numbers: Trading Success is Based on Consistency, Not Home Runs
Online trading is so seductive - just sit, click, and rake in the profits! But as anyone who has ever seriously attempted online trading will probably tell you, it's just not as easy as it sounds.
Why You Need To Buy and Sell Gold Coins (Part 2)
How to Collect Rare Coins
For Fun and Profit
Finding the Perfect Company
The perfect company - it's the holy grail of the investment world. The company that will make its initial investment hundreds of times over. It's what everyone shoots for. To have bought Microsoft when it first went public... It's how fortunes are made. What does make "the perfect company"?
Going Against the Conventional Investment Wisdom
First of all, I want to give everyone the disclaimer that I am not a registered financial advisor and I don't play one on TV. Therefore, I cannot legally provide financial advice and I will not do so. This is for informational purposes only and I'm not recommending any of my personal investment strategies to anyone else. Now, with that being said, I will outline some techniques I use for my personal investment strategy, without going into a whole lot of specifics. I generally go against the conventional investment wisdom that you are accustomed to hearing, although I do use both a conservative and a not-so-conservative strategy.
Chinas Inscrutable Currency Strategy
Purpose: Expose Opportunities for Smart Investors
Before You Invest You Must Read This
It is important to answer the following questions before you begin to invest any of your money. The answers to these questions will help to guide you to when, what, where, and how much to invest. Do not skip these questions and make sure you write it all down. You will need to look over and re-examine these answers many of times.
Shop More, Save More for College Gimmick or Reality?
The man sat in a chair beside a dressing room at a Tampa, Fla. maternity store. "That one looks great," he says to his pregnant wife. "I really like that one."
A Gadfly On A Dinosaurs Butt, Or The Hood-winking Of The American Investor
Have you ever noticed how some words in the English language are so perfectly named for what they describe? And how some words seem to be, I guess you could say, backwards? For instance, the word sunflower! How wonderfully aptly named is the sunflower, that beautiful yellow flower that follows the sun from sunrise to sunset.
Index Trading Weekly Update
Here is a sample of the last newsletter:
|
