| |
| |
|
|
Stocks & Mutual Funds Information |
|
|
|
Keep Your Profits
It looks like we have now entered a new bull phase in the stock market and I have a question for you. Will you give back the profits that you make this time as you did in 2000? You sure don't want to, but you are not going to get any help from your broker. The investors (Not really the right term. They were gamblers.) had bought stocks and mutual funds during the 90's and seen them have huge advances. They thought they were going to retire early, buy an island in the Caribbean and drink rum and coke all day with no hassels. All of a sudden the bull was attacked and eaten by a grizzly bear. Dreams of comfortable early retirement went up in smoke as the bull was barbequed. We saw the technology stocks and many mutual funds lose about 80% of their value. Many people did not want to open their monthly brokerage statements and I couldn't blame them. Were there any way those losses could have been avoided? You betcha, but you won't hear that from your broker. There is what I call portfolio insurance. It doesn't cost any thing and anyone can have it at no charge. Brokerage companies don't want you to use it much less even find out about it. It is a way of protecting your cash from being eaten by that nasty bear. While the market is going up you don't even think about any financial calamity, but history has shown as far back as you want to look that the stock market goes up and it also goes DOWN. Over long periods of time it does increase at about 6% per year (including dividends and the inflation factor). During the 90's everyone was a financial genius and saw their accounts going up about 12% per year or more. That is not a sustainable pattern. Those periods do occur and are followed by years of declining prices. You don't want to own stock then, do you? What you have to decide is how much are you willing to give up before you decide to sell. How much of your money are you willing to risk from here where you are right now. Is it 2%, 5%, 10%, 20% or more? In 2000 we saw $200 stocks go down to $5.00. You sure don't want to take that ride again. After you make your decision you call your broker and tell (not ask) him you want to place a trailing stop loss order of 7% (whatever) on your position. Most assuredly he will try to talk you out of doing it. That 7% (?) is your insurance that you won't have to sit through a 20%, 40% or more down draught. He will not "watch your account". That is your money not his. If you care about it you are the only one who will watch it. Place your open stop-loss order and keep your profits. Al Thomas' book, "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter at http://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he's the man that Wall Street does not want you to know. Copyright 2005 al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870
MORE RESOURCES:
Stocks-Mutual-Funds - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Time Out Are you paying any attention to your retirement savings? Do you have it in cash or an account with a broker? Maybe you have a professional manager who is investing your money as you add to it every month.Is your account increasing in value every year? If it isn't why are you letting anyone else invest for you? There is no point having a loser in charge of your money. Two for the Money Look back over the years and try to remember how many different stocks and mutual funds you have owned. Suppose you had owned only 2 different equities during that entire time. Does Japan Matter? For the last 12 years we have seen the Japanese stock market slowly sinking from a high of 38,000 to about 8,000, more than a 75% loss and very close to the price of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Why should we care about their stock market?Please understand that the stock market price is a reflection of the overall economy of a country. Economists #2 Economists know more about how the fragments of society work than anyone. In school they are taught to break down the economy into its tiniest parts and to quantify each minutiae so it can become part of a formula. How To Beat The Mutual Fund Companies At Their Own Game You'd have had to be living on a desert island with no TV, newspaper or internet connection to have missed hearing about the great mutual fund scandal of 2003.The issue was that some mutual fund companies allowed certain hedge funds to engage in after-hours trading, sometimes incorrectly referred to as market timing. The Stock Market Doesnt Care if You are a Beginner?. Get Prepared to Succeed at Trading Stock trading remains a very competitive field and the stock market doesn't care if you are an experienced stock trader or an aspiring one. The rules and the trading opportunities are the same for all of us, so either youre going to make money when you pick a stock and make a trade, or you are going to lose some of it in favor of the more seasoned traders. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Stock Market On the 40 year journey through the turmoil of a volatile stock market I've noticed "P/E Ratios," "Consensus Estimates," " Bull and Bear Markets," stock ratings of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, star ratings of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Also, stock ratings of "buy," "strong buy," "sell," "hold;" stock rankings of "market perform," "market outperform," "market underperform," "market underweight," "market overweight," "market equalweight," and "market neutral. Small-Cap Stocks: The Beginning of the Journey When an individual investor wants to roll up his sleeves and do some research in the pursuit of the next big winner in the stock market, the place many start is in the small cap sector.As with the other capitulation sizes (capitalization is a stock's market value), no one can completely agree on a precise definition, but corporations under $2 billion are often considered small caps. Never Lose Money Never lose money in the stock market again. Yeah, I know. No Load Mutual Funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)? If you are fed up with early redemption charges and ever increasing mutual fund management fees on top of bad-performing fund managers, read on. There is a quiet revolution going on in the no-load mutual fund industry and you, the individual investor, may benefit from it greatly. Trading Tips No 2: The Big Lie in the Stock Market It is commonly reported that the stock market averages about 10% per year return over the long term (decades). So the investor that buys and holds a diversified portfolio of stocks or mutual funds is led to believe that their portfolio will grow by 10% per year on average. Exchange Traded Funds Primer Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are a group of passive index funds that trade on an exchange like an individual stock. At the time of writing there are 162 ETFs with $220 billion in assets under management trading on U. Lies, Damn Lies and Mutual Fund Returns How many times has this happened to you? You're at a social function and the conversation turns to investing. Pretty soon, people are comparing how well their investments are doing. Hold Em and Fold Em When most analysts, financial planners, fund specialists and investors try to decide whether to buy a particular stock they immediately go to the financial statements to determine the growth potential of the company. Numbers and more numbers. Market Psychology Today we are inundated with tons of information about the economy, stocks, government agencies and foreign governments. They show us charts and graphs of the increase/decrease in oil production over the last 5 years, the amount of maple syrup produced in Vermont for the past century, the time it takes to bounce a signal off the moon and all kinds of other nonsense that we can live without. One Way Street Ever turn down a street, get half way and suddenly realize it is one way and you are going the wrong way? Is that the way you feel when you look at your stock brokerage statement?In either case don't panic. You can get out of that one way street by carefully backing out. Defining a Long-Term Investment in the Stock Market For some "long term" would mean holding a stock position over the weekend. For others, it may mean holding a security for at least 1 year for the purpose of declaring a long-term capital gain, thus saving on taxes. Choosing a Stock Broker If you were to find that you had some severe illness that required surgery, would you attempt to perform that surgery upon yourself? What if your car broke down and needed a valve job? Would you get out the Craftsman tool set you got for Christmas three years ago and start tinkering under the hood even though you know absolutely nothing about engines? Of course you wouldn't do either of these things because there are times in life when we know we must seek the assistance of a professional. So why is it that so many people try to make their own investment decisions without consulting a professional stock broker?A stock broker is a trained financial professional who knows how to watch the trends of the stock market, is kept up to date on financial developments by her brokerage firm, and knows how to make wise and sound investment decisions. Mutual Fund Honor Roll - Buy High, Sell Low by Chasing Performance Buy high and sell low -- It's not a typo.Millions of investors guarantee their failure by selecting mutual funds and stocks based on quarterly or annual performance records. Lights of the Stock Market There are red lights, green lights, blue lights and spot lights. There are orange lights, pink light and flash lights.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |