Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Stock Market's Best-Kept Inside Secret - The E-Mini

I received an interesting magazine (or, maybe better described as a catalog) in the mail the other morning entitled "Home Business Connection". It was apparently sent to me because my name is on some mailing list. Beautifully designed and bearing a price tag of $5.95 per copy, I was tempted to open and read what it was all about. It is mostly full-page ads of 'home business' ideas...one after another, covering every possibility from the proverbial stuffing envelopes to much more sophisticated endeavors. Of course, each was headlined with bold declarations of being the "world's greatest home business" with promises of getting fabulously rich quick "absolutely guaranteed"! As I read through some of the ads (many were actually feature articles about certain types of home businesses), I couldn't help but compare all of them to my 'home business'.

Most were of the conventional type: find a product (usually made by someone else) then set up a way to promote, advertise and market it. Most were centered mainly on MLM or the Internet as the way to get fabulously rich. None bothered though, to explain how difficult it is to build and keep a good MLM downline, or, to get traffic to a web site. Made me wonder if those ads were directed to people who've never been 'round the block' at all, those whom it would be easy to put stars in their eyes with a little talk about making fabulous money in very short order? But, it is a good collection of home business ideas ...for anyone to peruse.

My home business is so simple I still have difficulty sometimes believing it myself. I sit down at my home computer each morning, turn on my e-mini trading charts and start watching for a good trade signal. What? You've never heard of an "E-mini"? Well, don't feel bad; I hadn't either ....until early 2002, even though I had been an active trader of stock options for over twenty years by that time. You see.... the 'e-mini' was introduced into the stock market when the Internet and personal computer were really coming into their own...back in 1997, as a trading instrument that average folks could afford to learn to trade, and take active roles in the stock market.

Most folks don't know much about trading; they think you just invest in stocks. That's all that the mutual funds and stock brokers have ever talked about (in their TV commercials and all of their advertising), but, in reality, those guys are not investors themselves...they are traders. But, they convince the rest of us that the smart thing for the public to do is turn all of our 'retirement dreams' over to them and let them manage our 'investments' for us...because they are the "professionals". Meanwhile, they are trading everyday...with their clients' money, but the account managers and the mutual fund company pockets all of the profits. Their clients (in those mutual funds) only get a mutual scr*****!

Oh, the typical mutual fund does realize [on average] about 10-15% appreciation growth of each portfolio per year, but the stock market [itself] -on its own, has historically done that, even through all of the Wars, Great Depression and even with 9-11 thrown in! Makes you wonder if brokers and mutual fund managers are, in reality, worth anything at all!

Anyway, back to the home business I found in trading E-mini's: I trade a couple of hours each morning, making 3 or 4 trades on my computer and put as my daily average goal about $500 dollars into my pocket. I never get greedy and try to stretch it....even though many days the market easily would let me. Just a nice little daily cash flow generator...that lets me grind out $500 a day, $10 grand a month and $125,000 a year. Not bad, eh? It really is that simple. The market is always there for me...every morning. I don't care whether it is going up (bullish) or down (bearish), I can make money either direction. (Something else those brokers and mutual fund managers will never tell you, or explain to you!) They'll just tell you to bring them as much money as you can and be prepared to invest with them for the long haul. 'Hold...and Hope' - that's the best the mutual fund investor has going for him or her.

If you've been thinking about or looking for a little home business idea that can generate a little extra cash flow for yourself, you'll enjoy checking out trading "E-mini's". You're invited to visit my web site where I provide 2-3 hours (a 'road map' for you) of free information on how you can get started trading e-mini's.

Don't bother to call up a mutual fund manager and ask him or her about it, though. They'll just laugh at you.

Mel Hardman
http://www.melhardman.com

A man monitors stock market prices in Taipei October 20, 2008. (Nicky Loh/Reuters)Reuters - Asian stocks slumped to their lowest since December 2004 on Wednesday as poor U.S. corporate results and falling commodity prices fanned worries of a protracted global economic slowdown.

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Monday, October 20, 2008

Forex Trading Tutorial - Learn the Basics of Winning and Successful Forex Trading

Forex trading tutorial - one of these can be very helpful in giving you the basic knowledge from which to launch a successful forex trading career. In this article, I want to give you a few beginner basics to start you on the right path.

Never Trade On Instinct

Never make a trade based on instinct. Always use logic. Think "Spok" in Star Trek. He would have made an incredible trader!

I had a friend who made lots of trades based on gut feeling. He did well for a couple of months and then he blew it all in a single day. His wife is still not happy about that!

Learn As Much As You Can

The forex market is not for lazy people. Sure, you don't need to know much to start trading. But you owe it to yourself to continually learn.

Don't worry - the great thing about learning forex is that it is so interesting. You learn about the world and it's politics and economics and about the psychology of people in general. You'll love it, I'm telling you!

Always Have An Exit Strategy

Let's say you place a trade because you think the price will go up. So, how long will you ride this trend? What if it goes higher than you expected? What if the price suddenly turns around?

Always have an exit strategy before placing a trade. Either bail out if the price falls against you by a fixed percentage or make a decision as to how long you will hold on if the price goes even further in your favour.

Never Risk More Than You Can Afford To Lose

I'll give you an example of this. I once lost 20% of my trading balance. I decided to go on what I thought was a sure thing and trade the remaining 80%.

You can never get it right all the time and on this occasion I lost that remaining 80%! That taught me a big lesson - never let emotions get the better of you and trade more than you can afford to lose.

Are you a beginner to forex or just know a little about it? Get yourself a solid foundation of basic forex knowledge with my free report and easy forex lessons here: Forex Trading Tutorial.

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Forex Basics - What You Need to Know Before You Start Trading Forex

Forex is an abbreviation of Foreign Exchange, also referred to simply as FX. Forex can also be referred to as the largest financial market in the world because that's what it really is. The volume of transactions that take place on Forex dwarfs the volume of transactions of the US stock markets quite considerably.

The Forex market is the place where currencies are being traded, meaning it is the place where currencies are being sold and bought. Currencies are money that is used as an exchange medium. They can be thought of not only as the goods you are buying, but also as the method with which you're paying for these goods.

Trading currencies means that there are always two simultaneous transactions taking place. If one currency is being bought, another one is also being sold. In the Forex market all transactions occur in real time.

The Forex market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week. Nowadays trading takes place electronically, its activity being centered in four major cities: New York, London, Sydney, and Tokyo. The Forex market is open to individuals over the age of eighteen.

People trade one currency for another in order to make a profit off of this transaction. Profits are made when one is able to predict which currency's value will increase by the end of a set time period. Such periods may be short or long, lasting from minutes to hours to days to months.

While Forex trading may be daunting at first, it really isn't any more challenging than trading in stocks. It can be easily comprehended without any prior knowledge of finance or economy. Before you start trading it, you need to learn its basics, the most rudimentary of which are provided below.

1. Trading in Forex means trading in currency pairs and takes place by exchanging one element of the pair for another.
For this reason, currencies are quoted in pairs. For example, the pair of U.S. Dollar and Japanese Yen can be quoted as USD/JPY equals 105.53, which means that 1 USD can buy 105.53 JPY.

2. The first currency listed in a currency pair is called the base currency. The base currency is usually the U.S. Dollar. Traders generally trade the U.S. Dollar against another currency, which is called the counter currency.

3. When the quote increases, it implies that the base currency has risen in value and the counter currency has weakened in value. For example, if the USD/JPY quote used to be equal to 100.33 but is now equal to 105.53, then this means that the dollar has strengthened because 1 USD can now buy 105.53 JPY as opposed to the mere 100.33 JPY it could buy beforehand.

For more information on Forex, including a review of an ebook that, in our opinion, is the best introduction to trading in Forex please see this page: http://www.eminimethods.com/bird_watching.html

Waldemar Puszkarz, Ph.D., is a web veteran with 15 years of web surfing under his belt. By training, he is a theoretical physicist, but his interests are much broader than science and include trading financial markets, sports betting, poker, and researching online business opportunities. He is also an avid book reader and sports afficionado. Currently he is making his living mostly as a day trader. He has been in the trading trenches for almost a decade during which he has traded a variety of financial instruments. He is the owner and webmaster of Eminimethods.com (http://www.eminimethods.com) which provides free common sense trading education and simple trading systems for e-mini and stock markets as well as reviews of honest online business opportunities in Meet HOBO section of his site.

Shopper on Chicago's Magnificent Mile in a file photo. (John Gress/Reuters)Reuters - Consumer confidence suffered its steepest monthly drop on record in October and construction starts on new homes fell to a 17-1/2 year low the previous month, as the financial crisis sent shock waves through the economy.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Basic Understanding About Options Trading

Many people dare not trade option, and the major hindrance to them is that they feel that options trading is complicated with lots of strategy involved. Besides, option price is not as straight forward as stock price, it involves a series of calculation and formula. In fact, the one that come out with the option premium formula had gotten the Nobel Price for economic, they are no other than Myron Scholes and Robert Merton.

Though I agree that there is certain level of complication, but the advantages of option would have motivated us to learn more about options trading.

Basically, option is just a contract, this contract is the right for you to buy or sell the stock at certain price within certain time frame, but without obligation. You can imagine that option is just like an agreement between you and the seller of a house, this agreement is for you to purchase the house at certain price, but it has expiry date, and no body can be sure about the future price of that house.

The house price is $100k, it cost you $5k in order to draft out an agreement, and it said that from now until 6 months later, you can buy this house at $100k. You believe that the house price will go up within 6 months. 2 months later, the house price has gone up to $110k, some one (let's call him A) approach you to buy your contract because he does not want to buy the house with the total sum, therefore he will pay you $15k to purchase your agreement and he think that the house price will go up further within the next 4 months. 2 months has passed and the house price stabilized at $110k, A decided to sell his contract to some one (let's say B) at $15k. 2 month later, the house price has dropped from $110K to $80K. Instead of losing $30k, B made a loss of only $15K (which is the contract price) and the contract expired worthlessly by now.

Option to buy a stock is call option, and put option is to sell the stock. The benefit of option is the power of leverage, you have the right to buy or sell within that period of time without paying for the full amount. This helps you to minimize the risk.

The targeted stock price in option is strike price, it is also known as exercise price. If the stock is above the strike price, your call option is in the money, otherwise, your option is out of money. For put option to be in the money, the stock has to be below the strike price. The premium of the option is total sum of intrinsic and time value.

To learn more about option premium, please find out from Options Trading Academy. Always trade with your passion!

I love options trading and I am here to share my humble experiences so that you can be benefited from it. You can find out more from http://optionstradingacademy.blogspot.com/ Always trade with your passion! Cheers!

Tourists visit the AFP - As stock markets sink and fears grow of a global recession, Latin America is banking on gains as well as losses from tourists tightening their purse strings.

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2 Ways To Learn Currency Trading

Trading on the Forex market is a tricky and risky business. There are so many factors that influence the price of one currency in relations to another that it's very difficult to predict where the market will go. Add to that the fact that this is a global market which operates around the clock and sees 3 trillion dollars change hands on and you get a picture as to how complex this market is.

The truth about Currency Trading

The truth is that over 90% of all currency traders lose most if not all of the money they trade within a short time. The market is simply too tough on the little guys. But being a small trader isn't the reason why so many people fail. The reason is that most traders are simply ignorant. They don't know how to trade, how to read market data, and how to increase their chances of predicting where the market is heading.

Learn Currency Trading

The solution is to learn currency trading. It's worth it since the money making possibilities are remarkable. It's easier to make money on the Forex market fast than in any other way. But you need to know what you're doing.

2 Ways To Learn Forex Currency Trading

1. Go to a course - There are many courses which can teach you currency trading. They usually cost a few hundreds or thousands of dollars. This is still worth it because you can earn it all back when you're successful. However, these courses require you to go to class, learn with other people, and they usually spread over a few months.

2. Learn currency trading online - There are many online forex trading courses which can teach you all you need to know and do it at a fraction of what a live course would cost. These courses allow you to learn at your own pace and often contain detailed video tutorials and trading strategies.

Personally, I prefer online courses, but that is entirely up to you.

To read more about an excellent video online course, go to this webpage: Forex Power Strategies

To read more about currency course click here: Currency Trading Courses. John Drummond works from home. He writes often on business, trading, and finances. To read John Drummond's review of the 2 best Forex trading courses, click here: Automatic Forex Trading Software.

AP - With October auto sales expected to fall short of September's 15-year low, General Motors Corp. is launching a campaign this week to reach people who have stopped looking for cars out of fear that they can't get a loan.

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