Online Stock Trader

Archive for May, 2009

If you have ever considered online stocks trading, now is a great time to get involved. Stocks are still down across the board but we are getting close to the turning point in this recession where everything will start to go up. This is great news if you are just starting out because chances are any stock you pick is going to increase in value as the whole market ride a wave to recovery.

There are never any guarantees with the market, a painful lesson a lot of us learned over the past year and a half, but a century of historical data shows that even with its rises and dips, the stock market always rises over the long term.

Indeed, “The long term” is the key to online trading success. So, you’ll actually make money if you hold on to a stock as long as you’re patient. It is usually the people betting on short term gains that get badly burned in the market.

So if you have started to think seriously about online stocks trading, you need to first make yourself a budget. Simply put, the money you can afford to lose is the money you can afford to invest in the stock market. The money should be in the bank where it safe, if you need to pay some bills the next month.

That way, if you are never forced to pull money out of the market, then you will rarely lose any. Because if a stock goes down, all you have to do is hold on to it and wait. Unless the company has totally imploded, the stock will usually recover in time.

To get started with online stocks trading, you need to create an account with a reputable online broker. Pick one that is well known as they will have the most secure websites. You don’t want to rist yourself with identity theft, so this is very important for you since you will be sharing your personal banking info and credit card to set up an account. The stock market is risky enough!

Once you have found a brokerage site that you like, you can start researching and picking stocks. My advice to those just starting out with online stocks trading is to buy small amounts of inexpensive stocks to start. This will allow you to spread your risk around and if any of your choices turns out to be a mistake it will not wipe out your whole portfolio.

Online stocks trade should fun and by investing small amounts you can get involved with more companies which increases the rate at which you will learn about the market. My advice is buy a few reliable stocks and then take a little more risk with those that are volatile. It prevents you from losing it all while gives you a chance of hitting it big.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of different stock trading experts during my fifteen year career as a stock trader. Most are top notch, but there are others that give our profession a really bad reputation. Sadly, they are the ones that can greatly disappoint a new stock trader and turn them off from the profession forever. In the hopes of warning you away for some of the slime before you go through what I did, here are a few of my experiences, and a couple suggestions for avoiding the encounters yourself.

I’ll never forget my worst experience with a stock trading service, the ultimate in “slime” and an incident that changed my life. It, finally, taught me the important lesson that some people are just in it for themselves, regardless of who they hurt along the way. It also made clear to me that I would have to be different than that, and cemented my personal creed that if a business opportunity requires me to hurt someone else, I just pass it up.

This service, like many others, provided a daily listing of recommended stocks to buy or sell short each day. And, like many others, they had impressive statistics to prove that, in most cases, the stocks they chose would do what they said they would. I was impressed, and said “sign me up!”

But, unlike many others, this particular service had an ulterior motive I was not aware of at the start. Turns out, the folks running the service were making recommendations to their subscriber group for the sole purpose of manipulating the prices for their own profits.

Let me give you an example. The first step was for the top management to purchase IBM stock through their account. They would then send an alert to us subscribers, recommending we buy IBM. Once the 3000 + members started buying the stock, the stock price would rise as a result of the activity. When the cost of the stock accelerated to a level that the slime were happy, they sold their stock for a profit.

I couldn’t believe that this service was using its subscribers to front run their own orders. Their goal wasn’t to assist and help the subscribers as advertised, but rather to make their own profit and get out. Not only was this wrong, but the subscribers were paying them to make it happen!

I must admit, most stock services do not subscribe to that slimy form of business. But, less disagreeable, but more common are those that brainwash the new trader to believe that stock trading is way to risky to go it alone. But if you sign on for their monthly program (at a hefty fee, I might add), they will do all the work for you.

True, stock trading is complicated at first, until you have found a system that is right for you. However, if anyone tries to convince you that you can never gain enough knowledge to eventually go it alone, they are probably just in it for your monthly subscription fees. These types of programs are usually very plain vanilla and won’t take into account your individual risk tolerance or trading style.

Now granted, some people don’t want to bother with stock trading on their own, and are content to pay the monthly fee, be told what to trade, and be right some of the time. While the return is usually okay, I have found that finding a system that works and structuring it around your risk tolerance level will always result in higher returns and a more satisfactory trading experience.

It does take some upfront legwork to find someone to help you learn the ropes without taking control over from you. But there are plenty out there and you will be pleased with the result as they will take the slime out of the profession and help you help yourself become proficient at stock trading. I guarantee, you will enjoy the results for many years to come.

To read about other lessons I learned in my fifteen years as a day trader and coach, as well as tips and techniques for becoming successful at stock trading, read my free report “From Video Junkie to Day Trader,” and learn more about how you could be trading stocks profitably in as little as two weeks.

Did you know you can find historical Stock Market along with Yahoo? It’s real!

If you are interested in several examples of stocks, it is somewhat likely that you have discovered the finance website that is sponsored by Yahoo called “Yahoo! Finance”.

After it comes to the features on this website, you’re likely to be quite pleased at all that they have to offer. There is even a page that is applied to analyzing stock prices.

All you have to do, simply go directly to the Yahoo! Finance web site at: http://finance.yahoo.com. There you can get the latest stock prices of any company.

The great thing about this exact web site is that you can search for info related to recent stocks, along with stock prices that are considered to be important by many people, especially investors.

The major thing that you will should do to learn stock prices at Yahoo! Finance is to go to the page above which assists in the progress of examining many types of stocks. When you get there, you may intend to perform a basic “search”. For example, type the company name into the Yahoo! Finance text box – it will then display a list of all possible company matches! It’s really great and easy.

You can make out that there is a section that says “Set Date Range”. You must figure the dates of the historical stock prices that you would like to research, and then set this information in.

You can then select to get the prices for “Daily”, “Weekly”, “Monthly” and even have the selection of “Dividends Only”. It’s really simple to go through historical stock prices with Yahoo! Finance! It’s really is the easiest way to obtain stock quotes for anyone, as long as they have internet access!