Does Your Trading System Have an Exit Strategy?

By Maclin Vestor

Many good trading systems use multiple exit strategies. In normal trading system, you need to know when to exit from a gain, and when to exit from a loss. Generally you want to be cutting your profits short, and letting your profits run. At a minimum, you generally want nearly a 3:1 gain to loss. This means you should take profits at 3 times the percentage amount as you cut your losses short. We will use this system and do the following

1) Exit stop at a 7% loss. This stop-loss should sell ALL of your shares. The simple method is to just set the stop and leave it. There are dangers of this because people may be able to see someone make the stop order on the floor, and if they have enough money, they can take advantage of that, selling lots of shares of the stock, pushing the stock price down below the stop, then forcing you and others who may have stops out, and then buying the stock below your price, so the stock will stop out, and then quickly rebound. The more advanced mode is to just watch it, and if it is going to CLOSE below your stop, only then will you exit 10 minutes or so before the markets close. The sophisticated way is to just not use stops, and instead buy puts. this increases the cost of the investment and thus limits your win, but you give up a fixed amount for protection against large losses.. This would insure that the stock doesn't drop overnight. A failed breakout is signaled if a stock drops 7% below breakout point. If you are buying stocks on the pullbacks, a 7% drop should signify a breaking of support.

2) Set a profit target at 20%. You can use a limit sell order to sell here if you would like, particularly for those who don't have the time to watch the stock. You should be willing to wait a full 4 months for it to hit it's target. If it hits the target, you should sell 1/2 to 2/3rds of your shares, and let the rest ride. Also, if your stock hits the price target within 8 weeks (2 months), this signals that your stock is a good one, and you want to hold onto your winners. There is a simple strategy and a sophisticated strategy. The simple strategy is to hold onto your stock until the entire 8 weeks is up. The sophisticated strategy is to sell most or all of your shares, and convert them to an option that you should own at strike price, or very close to it. You should ensure that this transaction is such that in a worst case scenario, you still will have a 5% gain. Generally, you will own say 100shares, sell 100, and buy 1 call contract at the same strike price the stock is at, and secure a profit, while still maintaining the same upside leverage minus the cost of the option and the transaction.

3) Set a trailing stop of 25%. This should serve as a function primarily to exit the remaining 1/3rd to 1/2 of shares that you let ride after you hit your price target of 20%. It is possible that the stock goes up near your target, which will raise this stop to 5% below where you bought it, or if you aren't using a limit sell, it could spike way up to up 35% from where you buy it, and then quickly come down, and sell out a small portion of your shares for a small gain. This is fine. In this case, either the stock will then proceed to drop below your buy point and go and hit the 7% stop-loss, or it will then bounce and gain until it hits your 20% target. In either case, you will sell the rest of your shares. Of course, if this all happens in a short amount of time, you may attempt a swap as a sophisticated strategy, but generally you should be done with it.

4) You should always keep records. Record how many you bought at what price and which exit(s) were triggered. You want to check all these stocks in a year, or so, and see if you could have made more by adjusting your stops, or adjusting the size of which you sell.

5) Enjoy the profits.

If you are a good system trader, you will make sure that they trading system you use has an excellent exit strategy. At System Trading|Stocks Trading Systems you will learn that an exit strategy will allow you make sure that you have a trading system with greater returns on your average gains than you have losses on your average losses. This is only one small aspect of a trading system but it is a very important one. In fact, your exit strategy will be vital in determining how much capital you allocate when managing your money in a trading system.

In addition, if you can find a stock selection vehicle in combination with a good exit strategy, it will insure that any given investment has a positive expected value. In other words, with a good exit strategy and stock selection that picks winners often enough, you will win more than you lose, provided you manage your money right. Learn these tips as a system trader, and you stand a much better chance at being a profitable trader than someone who does not understand the importance of a good exit strategy within a trading system. - 23218

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about varioustrading systems and teaches you system trading skills that can make you a better trader.

Where To Invest Money Is Important, Here Are Some Tips

By Mr Christopher Latter

Many people these days want to invest their own money, so that it can grow and multiply at a faster pace and earn profits in a short period of time. Investing financially is very important these days as our financial requirements for the future are unknown. It is very unwise to totally depend on the social security benefits. The million dollar question is where to invest money. First let's just quickly see where not to invest money, as this will clearly develop our perception on where to invest money. There are many worst ways of investing your money; the worst of all is investing in various life insurance policies and other annuities, saving accounts with bank brokerages, banks, small cap stocks and middle class brokerages are the next worst option.

So now let us discuss about the answer to the question where to invest money. The advice would really depend on the expectation you have on the end result. The advice depends on the financial goals you would like to achieve and the amount of money you would like to make. Many beginners make a mistake by rushing in to investments with out planning for their desired accomplishments. If you are a beginner, mark your goals and design plans to reach them. Remember you would be left in the middle of the desert if you do not know what your final goals are. You can plan by having the right investment education. Investment education is quite essential for everything in the process of making investments. It helps you to learn the decisiveness required for handling tough situations. It helps you to think when every one else is panicking. You would learn to see the underlying opportunities in the crisis scenarios. There are numerous ways to have a good investment education. My personal suggestion is online investment education. Paper-practicing training platforms supplied by brokers, dailies, weeklies, magazines and news channels can be termed as the other modes of learning.

Orthodox traditional schemes like pension, social security supplements, and retirement benefits are very less profitable. Today these things are replaced by the IRA investment account. You have a great list of IRA's to make a choice from. Choose the best one that is in accordance with your plans. The IRA types can be categorized mainly in to 3 varieties. Education IRA, Roth IRA and Traditional IRA are the traditional IRA's. If you want to choose some thing which has great prospect for investments then choose the non traditional type of IRA i.e. Self Directed IRA. These accounts give you the unorthodox option of investing the deposited money of your account. If you are sure on where to invest money then you can do it easily with the Self Directed IRA's.

Real estate sector is another profitable way of earning money. It is one of the better answers to the question where to invest money. Many people are investing in this sector. The ever growing population and urbanization of the world has increased the demand for more land and houses. If you have the ability to judge and good timing you can even earn 10 times profit in very less time.

You can also look out to invest in stocks, cash funds, mutual funds etc. if you follow the right approach you can make merry with stocks. You should be able to judge the right timing and also be sure about where to invest money to make huge and easy profits.

So after saying all these you are the one to choose where to invest money based on your financial priorities. - 23218

About the Author:

Learn more on the subject of where to invest money by visiting an archive of articles on this subject and other sources closely related to where to invest money.

Rollovers & Currency Trading

By Ahmad Hassam

Rollovers represent the intersection of interest rate markets and forex markets. When an open position from one value date or settlement date is rolled over to the next value date or settlement date, this is known as Rollover in currency trading. Rollovers are unique to the currency markets.

Keep this in mind what you are trading is in fact the good old cash. Currency is money after all. So when you talk of money, interest rates naturally come into play. Rollover rates depend on the difference between the interest rates of the two currencies in the pair that you are trading.

It is like having a deposit in a bank account when you are long on a currency. Its like take a loan from the bank if you are short. You should expect an interest gain or an interest expense on holding a currency position over time just as you would expect to earn interest on a bank deposit and pay interest on a loan.

Think of the open currency position as one currency with the positive balance (the currency you are long) and one with negative balance (the currency you are short). The difference between the interest rates between the two currencies is called the interest rate differential.

You should look for the base or benchmark lending rates in each country. The interest rates of two different countries apply because your accounts are in two different currencies. You can find the benchmark lending interest rates of different countries from any good financial website like the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, CNBC etc.

If you hold an open position past the settlement date or value date, rollovers are usually carried out by your forex broker. The smaller the impact of the rollovers, the narrower the interest rate differential! The larger the impact from rollovers, the larger the interest rate differential!

Some online forex brokers apply the rollover rates by adjusting the average rate of your open position. Other forex brokers apply the rollover rates by applying the rollover credit or debit directly to your margin balance. Rollovers are applied to your open currency position by two offsetting trades that result in the same open position.

Rollovers are applied to open position after 5.00 PM EST change in value date. Rollovers are not applied if you dont carry a position over the change in the value date. For day traders, who usually close their positions at the end of each trading day, rollovers do not apply. Rollovers only apply to your over night open position carried over to the next day.

Rollovers can earn you interest income if you are long the currency with the higher interest rate and short the currency with the lower interest rate. Rollovers will cost you money if you are short the currency with the higher interest rate and long the currency with the low interest rates. - 23218

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. He is insterested in day trading stocks and currencies. Develop your own Forex Trading System. Learn Forex Trading !

Can The Volt Save The General?

By Dino P Delellis

Amongst GM employees, aside from the fear of getting a pink paper next week ( or the week after ) speculation is high as to whether the concept vehicle, being called the Volt, is going to be as revolutionary as the hype suggests.

GM, Ford and Chrysler arrayed a huge number of lawyers and much cherished Washington lobbyists to go after California after it decided to introduce a zero emissions rule on part of all car fleets. While GM was fighting California, it was also building an electric car, 10 years ago called the EV1. The state lost, GM breathed a sigh of relief and promptly destroyed all EV1's and sold the patents.

Yep, sold the patents to a MIT. Just kidding. If the patents had been sold to MIT, the car would have been rebuilt and the Toyota Prius hybrid would never have been created. Whoever bought the patents wasn't interested in building an electric car. There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest the battery patents were purchased by Texaco who has done tremendous work with them since ( NOT ).

Balancing the books, one might claim. Lots of Research and Development costs, nothing to show for it, so sell the technology. It wasn't an objective decision. After an acrimonious battle with the state of California, GM management couldn't get rid of the technology fast enough. A billion dollars later, GM executives didn't stop to think that perhaps core elements could play a critical roll in future transportation technology. They had to wait for the Japanese to prove that similar technology could and would be a huge element in the future of transportation.

So much for the history lesson, this week, we are back at square one watching a video interview with GM's Chief Designer as he discusses the new GM Chevy Volt.

GM has almost entirely "bet the boat" on the new technologies going to market in the electric Chevy Volt. We are sure that GM Detroit Management exactly didn't plan it this way, but their European operations must have seen the writing on the wall many years ago as gas hit 3+ dollars per gallon in europe and continued on through the equivalent $4 dollar mark. With the global credit crunch, increased gas prices and declining sales of the big cash SUV's GM is feeling the pinch like never before. The Volt must become iconic.

GM's response to public outcry shortly after co-jointly winning the lawsuit against California on the grounds that only the federal government had the right to determine zero emission, was to go on a publicity campaign extolling the virtues of their own version of Zero emissions - Hydrogen gas by 2010. Which probably prompted BMW to wake up and create a wonderful Hydrogen Gas vehicle which is already 4-5 years old and in its fourth or fifth refinement. So zip forward to 2008 and GM has backtracked on its Hydrogen promises and is now attempting to leap frog the Toyota Prius with technology that will get a commuter 40 miles of gas free driving on a nightly electrical charge.

According to GM research, many drivers will not need to switch to the gas engine because simply recharging the vehicle via a regular outlet at home overnight will satisfy most of their driving needs. When I first heard this, I thought - What a useless car. Who wants a car that does only 40 miles per charge, but in truth, the car simply switches to the small gas engine at that point and continues its merry way.

On the surface, unless you have significant shareholder shares in an oil company, we all want a Volt. The dream of being able to cross Europe or United States basically on plain cheap electricity without having to pay between 3 and 5 dollars a gallon for gas is a like a dream come true.

So will or can the dream car Volt save the General?

To answer that question, perhaps we should ask - Does GM need saving?

BusinessWeek estimated GM's Liquidity position to be 45 Billion in May of 2005 with a burn rate this year of over a Billion a month here in 2008 ( Boston Herald ). Estimated reserves now stand at about 25 Billion and analysts say that even with the 10 Billion in future cost cutting, GM may need another 10-12 Billion in cash to see their way through to 2010.

Detroit News writes in an article on Oct 14th 2008

GM had access to about $21 billion cash, $5 billion in available credit lines and is raising $5 billion through asset sales and borrowing.

Those cost-cutting moves intensified Monday when GM announced it was closing plants in Grand Rapids and Janesville, Wis. The moves affect about 2,500 hourly workers at plants that produce sport-utility vehicles and parts for pickups and SUVs.

So, since 2005 to 2008, GM and it's fat cat, top heavy management burned thru 25 Billion in cash and part of that was during 2 years of strong sales. The rumour is, that GM is eyeing the cash reserves of Chrysler ( estimated 11 Billion ) to help it through to 2010 when the Chevy Volt and Cruz are expected to help effect a rescue

In an interview given to Business week in the last week of Oct 2008, GM says its expecting to sell about 10,000 Chevy Volts at between 30-40,000 USD each in 2010. So, that's about 3-4 Billion dollars in gross sales with a net of about a 800 Million dollars annually at an estimated 20% profit per vehicle ( my own estimate not theirs )

So, is this innovative car of the 2010 year - Volt just a little, just too late?

I leave that answer up to you, but if I had to make a serious bet with odds, I know which way I would be betting. - 23218

About the Author:

Dino Delellis writes on a number of interesting topics. To see more of the Dino personal journals hop on over to musings of Dino P. Delellis and catch his odd views on the globe at large.

What Happens To OTC Stocks

By Sam Nielson

Over the years, I've been asked a lot of questions. More than I can count. One question that keeps coming up is from traders who want to know what will happen to their OTCBB stock if it uplists to a major exchange like the Nasdaq.

Your brokerage firm (Scottrade, Etrade, etc.) or your post office will keep you informed of any special changes or actions you must take but usually, no action is needed on your part. Your shares will automatically convert into the new ticker symbol traded on the Nasdaq or major exchange.

Investors call this a jumper stock. The odds are that your stock will increase in value once it starts trading on a major exchange because it's open to a whole new pool of investors.

If there is a change in the ticker symbol, the company will contact you about it by standard mail or through a brokerage firm like Scottrade.

But let me be clear about something. You are stupid if you think you can pick jumpers and make money at doing this.

Tom Cruise Crazy publishers will try and sell you an expensive subscription for stocks that go from the OTC to the Nasdaq. Jumpers that you can make 1,000%...3,500%, even 10,000% and more! Don't believe it. It's a scam.

In the thousands of traders I've known over the years, not one of them made money at picking jumpers.

Reality check. If the company was such a good company selling such a hot product, they never would have been listed on the OTCBB in the first place. They would have opted for an original listing on the Nasdaq in the first place. The cost for a listing on a major exchange is hardly more than a listing on the OTCBB. The only difference is the reporting requirements. The disclosure that the company must provide investors on a timely and regular basis.

There's the dark truth. The only reason a company lists on the OTCBB is precisely because they do not want to meet the stricter reporting requirements of a major exchange. They do not want to disclose to investors the truth about what's really going on.

The pink sheets is the only worse exchange on the planet. The OTCBB is one giant wanna be system set to favor scammers and bleed investors dry. More tomb stones exist in the Graveyard of Traders from the OTCBB market than any other market. Gambling in the OTCBB market is stupetarded. I should know, I had my life savings completely destroyed doing it by a company that was liquidated, and the CEO who is now in jail. This happens on major exchanges to but not nearly as much as the OTCBB.

Here's something to think about. The main reason people gamble in the OTCBB market is to get really cheap stocks. Now that we are at a market bottom, many good companies listed on major exchanges are at very low OTCBB like prices! - 23218

About the Author:

By Sam Nielson. To find more expert trader articles go to what happens to my stock when it goes from otc to nasdaq