| |
| |
|
Stocks & Mutual Funds Information |
|
|
|
Buy Low - Sell High
Now where have I heard that before? I know. It was my broker. So I took his advice and bought some of the stocks he recommended. I am still waiting for the 'sell high' part of the equation. Everything he touted went up for a while and now it is lower than when I bought it. It is so low I can't bring myself to sell it. My capital has shrunk about 60% from where I started. That's a lot of money to me because it took a long time to save it. What happened? The brokerage company that your broker works for puts out recommendations almost very week for various companies listed on the major stock exchanges. They have simple things like Buy or Strong Buy. Then they have a complex group of words used when they downgrade a stock. It never goes from Buy to Sell. No, it becomes Accumulate, Underperform, Attractive, Market Perform, Neutral or some other meaningless term. If any stock is ever downgraded even one notch sell it immediately. Finally after a stock has lost 50% or more of its value it becomes a 'Hold". And you know where you are holding it. Last year the brokerage companies gave over 33,000 stock recommendations to their customers. Of those only 125 were Sell. On the NASDAQ exchange alone there were over 1,000 stocks that lost more than 90% of their value. The "experts", known as analysts, were all telling you to buy. Your kid could have thrown a dart at the Wall Street Journal in 1999 and done as good a job as almost any analyst. What I want to know (and I think you do too) is if they were smart enough to tell you to buy then why weren't they able to tell you to sell? I'll tell you why. Brokerage companies never give sell signals because they don't want to offend a company that might come out with a public offering on which they will make a killing. It is better to kill a few customers than miss out on several million dollars. You pay commission and ask for honest advice, but you are being fed disinformation. Is there any way you can protect yourself from this nonsense? Yes! It is called a stop-loss order. Brokers don't like them because then they have to watch your account. He will tell you you don't need it as he will watch your account. And pigs can fly. The average broker has 300 accounts and unless you have a large 6-figure account you will be on the bottom of the pile. Anyone can place a protective open stop-loss order for stocks. Most are about 8% to 15% below the highest closing price. I recommend that each Saturday morning you look in the paper for the Friday closing price of your stock and place your open stop each Monday morning with the broker. As your stock moves up keep raising the stop and you will sell near the high. Never lower it. This will lock in your profit or take you out of a losing position. I can assure you your broker will never call you to sell. Brokers are not taught to protect your capital. This is the only way to buy low, sell high, protect your capital and lock in your profits. Al Thomas' book, "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't BuyIt!" has helped thousands of people make moneyand keep their profits with his simple 2-stepmethod. Read the first chapter athttp://www.mutualfundmagic.com and discover why he's the man that Wall Streetdoes not want you to know. Copyright 2005 al@mutualfundstrategy.com; 1-888-345-7870
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
An Old Proverb for Investing "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."This very much applies to the your retirement plans especially if you are investing in the stock market. Wall Street Paradigm In 1960 an engineer working for a watch company in Switzerland discovered that a small crystal would vibrate at a constant rate. He found this was so accurate that it could be used to calibrate time so he took it to company management and said it would make an entirely new kind of watch that had no springs and no gears. Can't Stand The Heat It seems that every day I turn on the TV and find a Poker game. Texas No Limit seems to be all the rage these days. You Wont Like This Why? Because I am going to shatter your conventional wisdom as I have many times in previous columns about the lies that Wall Street continues to tell you. This time we are going to go deeper into the economy to unearth the truth about lies the politicians are telling you. Zero Sum Game Most people think the stock market is a zero sum game because there is a buyer for each seller and seller for each buyer so each cancels the other and everything is equal. Not quite. Boiler Room 7/17/00 On Friday or Saturday evening my wife gets a movie from Block Buster and after dinner we sit, hold hands and watch. This week she brought back one that I think every investor or anyone contemplating investing in the market should see. Successful Trading - Taking Profits - Part 1 So you're started trading, you bought some positions with your online broker, you've set some reasonable stop-losses to protect your account and all of a sudden one of your positions move strongly in your favor - so what do you do now? This my friend, is probably the hardest situation to deal with in trading the market - believe it or not.Do you take profits? Do you hold on for more profits? Do you take partial profits? There is no textbook answer to these questions as it depends on your trading objective. Lifestyle Funds Provide Greater Security? With the stock market stubbornly refusing to settle down and smooth out, Wall Street has been scrambling to come up with "product" they can sell to gun shy investors.One such new concept is the Lifestyle fund; an extremely diversified package designed to be the single fund in an investor's portfolio. Low Tide When you stand on the ocean shore and watch the waves breaking you might become aware that the tide is coming in or going out. It is a slow process to watch the water retreat and when it finally gets to its lowest point it is almost impossible to tell if it has stopped or will retreat further. Are You A Stockaholic? Today's society gives special recognition to alcoholics, sexaholics, binge-aholics, shopaholics, chocaholics and other "-aholics". What about stockaholics? Stockaholics are people who are overly obsessive about their stock market investments. Inverted Interest Rates Inverted interest rates? What's that? Who cares? Even if you don't understand what Mr. Greenspan is saying (and almost nobody does) it is important to you because it could mean you might lose you job next year or have to cut back on some of the things you want to acquire. True Investment Road Maps If you don't know where you are going any road will get there. After you get there you might not like where you ended up. Successful Trading - Taking Profits - Part 2 Suppose your position has made a big move and you moved your stop to your purchase price as recommended. Then let's say your stock continues to make a big move and now we're asking again the questions we asked back in the first paragraph. What is the Most Important Indicator of All? Most stock market traders have a favorite technical indicator.The one that they have the most confidence in. Staying Sane While Wall Street Crashes Everybody is riding the Wall Street Roller coaster. Even if you are not invested, the headlines scream out one word: PANIC!It's hard not to join in the panicking. Market Experience of a Nave Stock Operator Sometime in the third quarter of 1997, someone told me that I should play the stock market. Knowing nothing about the stock market, I turned to some colleagues to seem to know a lot about it. Dispelling Illusions of the Stock Market How can you dispel an illusion unless you look directly at it? The magician distracts the eye with one hand while he does his manipulation with the other. You are looking in the wrong place and not seeing what is actually happening. NASDAQ 800? In November of 2000 when the NASDAQ was trading at 3000 I wrote in this column that the NASDAQ Index would fall to 1500 and I got lots of heat for saying it. Microsoft had fallen from $129 to $60 per share. How to Maximize Your 401k Mutual Fund Returns When it comes to 401k's there is an overabundance of sad stories. Here is one that at least has a happy ending-and it's getting happier all the time. Emotional Trading The single most expensive stock market trades are those made with emotions, but, of course, you are not an emotional trader are you?Before you bought that stock, mutual fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) you did your research to be sure that what you were buying would return a good profit over the long haul. You bought it and over time you look at it less and less.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |