Candlestick charting is a highly powerful tool in the trading arsenal of any trader. In the last two decades, candlestick charting has become highly popular. There are many candlestick patterns that give profitable trading signals. Some are simple while other are complex. Hammer, the Hanging Man and the Spinning Top are three simple candlestick patterns that can be easily spotted. All three are different!

How to spot the Hanging Man and the Hammer? These candlestick patterns are easy to spot on the chart. When you spot a very small candle body accompanied by a pretty long wick on the bottom, it is a Hanging Man if it appears at the top of the uptrend and it is a Hammer if it appears at the bottom of the downtrend.

In less than ideal cases, you might also find a small wick at the top of the candlestick. When the Hanging Man or the Hammer appears, you need to look for the confirmation on the next day.

If you think that you have spotted a Hanging Man appear on the top of an uptrend, wait for the next day’s opening price. If the opening day is lower than the last day’s close, you have spotted a true Hanging Man.

Similarly, if you spot a Hammer at the bottom of a downtrend, you need to confirm it with the opening price on the following day. If the opening price on the next day is higher than the closing price on the last day, the Hammer formed was a true Hammer.

The best chart for these candlestick patterns is the daily chart. Once, you get the confirmation, trade these patterns. They can be highly profitable. But in case, you don’t get the confirmation the next day with the price action, simply ignore the pattern as not true. Whenever, you trade candlestick patterns, first spot them correctly than wait for the confirmation on the following day.

A Spinning Top is another candlestick pattern that reveals a tight battle between the bulls and the bears. Whenever, the battle between the bulls and the bears ends in a draw on a trading day, the following day, one side has to give in. When this happens an explosive move in one direction is highly likely.

Spinning tops appear much more frequently and are very easy to spot with a very small body in the middle of the candlestick and almost equal wicks on the two sides. A spinning top is a nice indication that the trend is about to change direction. Knowing about a trend change early is a highly profitable trading signal.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Master Candlestick Patterns with this 82 page PDF FREE Candlestick Guide! Download your FREE COPIES of the HVMM Ultimate Day Trading System and the Universal Risk & Money Management Tool!

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Trend following indicators is a way that many people invest in stocks. It’s a strategy that is used which will use long-term moves on how markets have done in the past to figure out what to trade and what to keep.

Using this method will be a way that people will know how and when to invest in the right stocks. Which will offer the best chance at profits, and how well they have done in the past will be figured into that strategy.

Traders aren’t forecasting how the market is going to flow, but they will follow a set trend that has been going on. Looking into three components to figure out the strategy. Price of the stock currently, market volatility and equity levels. They will know before getting the stock how much will be bought and how much they will spend on it.

Trend following indicators will not be used on a new stock that has come to the market, but one that has been established. When using this method the price will always be the consideration that is put first. Plus when using this method they may use the indicators to guess which way the stock will head next.

It will need to be decided how much will be traded during the trend and how long it lasts. When the market is at a higher volatility level size of trading will be reduced in order to cut losses. With trend following indicators, time and price will always be of highest importance.

The following questions will be able to be answered when you use this type of method. Shares that will be traded during the trend, how to enter the market and at what time. Risk to be taken on each trade, cutting of unprofitable stocks, and how to get rid of profitable stocks.

Find more on ETF trading service and trend following systems.

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As an investor, I know that the right software can make a difference in my returns. I use a program in my trends following strategies that helps me decide which stocks to buy at what time and when to sell. It’s not perfect, but it works most of the time. I have done some trading in hot stocks with mixed results. When I came across the Today’s Hot Stocks newsletter, I was skeptical.

He insisted that he was skeptical about hot stocks trading too, but he found this newsletter that predicted stock trends with a software program and that he was actually getting a great return on hot stock investments by following their advice. I thought it was probably some kind of scam, so I looked it up. I just didn’t see how software could figure all the angles in the hot stock market.

Since the site offered a sixty day money back guarantee, I decided to see if my friend was right. That was three months ago and I have to admit, I am impressed. Using the Today’s Hot Stocks newsletter and email alerts, has helped me make good returns on my investments. Nothing’s perfect and I have had a couple of duds, but I really didn’t lose much since I was able to get out quickly.

Investing in hot stocks is a risky business and I’d never recommend it as a single strategy for investing. That said, as part of an overall investment strategy, hot stocks can be very profitable if you choose your issues carefully. Today’s Hot Stocks newsletter and email alerts help you do just that. In addition, it is crucial to know when to sell, and Today’s Hot Stocks takes away a lot of the guesswork. Intuition is great, but notoriously unreliable for most people.

Some folks may not be happy paying for advice on stocks figuring they are already paying their broker for that service. If you aren’t making a 30% return on your investments, maybe your broker’s advice isn’t as good as the advice from Today’s Hot Stocks.

For me, the money back guarantee was an incentive to try the newsletter. You really have nothing to lose, and if the information is good, the newsletter pays for itself and you have more money than before you started following the advice. I’m happy to pay for the information now because I’m making a lot more on hot stocks than I did before.

You can get free advice from your broker, but chances are he got the information from someone else and you’re getting it second or third hand. How valuable do you think this information is likely to be? The cost of the Today’s Hot Stock newsletter is a worthwhile investment to get accurate, unbiased information on the best hot stocks.

I can only say that I am definitely getting my money’s worth and more from the Today’s Hot Stocks newsletter. If you are in the hot stocks market, i strongly suggest you try it, even if only for the sixty day trial. You won’t lose anything, and like me, you may decide that your subscription is worth every cent.

Find more on best stocks to buy right now and hot stocks to buy.

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Leverage is simply investment jargon for borrowing. Its called “leverage” because you use the value of an existing investment to underwrite, or as security for, the borrowing.

This article covers the general principles of leveraging your investments. If it is something you are considering but have never done before, discuss your ideas with a licensed financial adviser. They will ensure you are structured correctly and can minimise your risk and exposure.

10 years ago, my borrowing habits were what I would call “typical” in today’s society. I had a credit card, which ranged between $0.00 to about $4,000.00 in debt. I had a small personal loan which I bought some furniture with and I had a larger personal loan which I financed a car purchase with.

There are 2 problems with this type of borrowing. Firstly, all the assets I bought with the borrowed money were depreciating assets. This means that as I paid off the debt, the value of the things I bought decreased. Secondly, as I purchased “consumables”, the interest I paid on these loans was not tax deductible. This makes for a very expensive borrowing.

My debt profile today is very different to the one I had when I started learning about money. Today I use my credit card merely as a float which I pay off each month and all my personal loans are paid off. Despite this I carry much more debt than I did back then. I have a massive debt on a rental property I purchased. I have a reasonable sized margin loan for stock trading and I have an ever growing FOREX trading account. Most of my debt now funds investments, practically no debt funds consumables.

Why is it more efficient to use your borrowings for investing then?

When you borrow to invest, you increase your investment earnings potential. As you borrow money, you have more to invest. Therefore, the returns on your investments increase by the net returns on the borrowed money. Obviously the basic key here is to ensure your investment return rate is higher than the interest rates on the loan. If this is the case, you will always make money with the money you have borrowed.

Also, as you are borrowing with the intention of generating an income, there is a direct nexus between the borrowing costs (Ie. interest liabilities) and making money. Therefore, in many cases, the interest payments on these types of borrowed funds are tax deductible. You’ll need to speak to your adviser to confirm this, bt typically this holds true. That means you basically get a discount on your loan. This in itself makes borrowing to invest more financially efficient than borrowing to buy consumer items.

This works exactly the same in the margin loan I am using to help with my stock market investments. I have borrowed some money in a margin loan (I usuall try and keep the leverage here at about 1:1, so every dollar of my own I invest gives me another to invest) and pay interest every month on that loan. My stock market strategy pays me my consistent income every month, which is more than the interest on the margin loan. And then, at the end of the tax year, I deduct the interest payments from the money I earned, gaining a tax advantage.

So there are definite advantages you can gain from leveraging your investments. There are risks also though, which is why you should seek proper financial advice prior to moving down this path.

So what are the risks associated with borrowing for investment purposes? One of the obvious risks relates to your financial capacity. There is the risk you over-extend yourself and cannot meet the repayment obligations on your loans. When taking out a loan, you need to be sure you can pay the loan repayments.

Margin loans are a little bit different. They are set up so you are allowed to borrow a certain proportion of the value of the stocks held in the margin loan. The risk here is that if the value of your stock decreases rapidly and pushes your margin loan outside those boundaries, you will receive a margin call. The margin call will force you to repay a significant part of your margin loan debt, to ensure it is again within the stipulated proportion of your stock values. This can often be difficult as it requires you to fund the debt when you had not budgeted money to do so.

Finally there is the investment risk. When you borrow to invest, you do so with the intention that the income earned from the money you invest, exceeds the interest the borrowing accrues. If the interest is higher than the investment earnings, you are losing money.

All risks with investing can be mitigated with strategy. That is why it is so important to speak to a licensed financial adviser before you invest and especially before you borrow to invest. So if you are considering leverage, speak to an adviser about risk mitigation. Leveraging your investments can definitely be financially rewarding, but only when you properly understand and manage your risk and when it is backed up by a consistently high performing investment strategy.

Gnifrus Urquart has enjoyed significant success investing over the years. As such, he likes discussing investment strategies and offering trading tips to anyone who enjoys investing

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When you start looking for good stocks, you often come across these terms like large cap, mid cap, small cap, growth and value. Let’s discuss these terms for a moment. Capitalization or cap refers to the combined value of all the share of a company’s stocks. The division between large cap, mid cap and small cap are often blurry and not sharp.

Mid caps are companies with $1 to $5 Billion in capitalization and small caps are companies with $250 million to $1 Billion in capitalization. Anything below $250 million can be considered as micro cap. However the following divisions are generally accepted: Large caps are companies with over $5 Billion in capitalization.

You must have often heard of the P/E ratio of a stock being talked about the analyst on CNBC or Bloomberg. Perhaps the most important ratio is the Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E). Now the most important term that you come across is growth stocks and value stocks. How do you determine this is a growth stock or a value stock?

Now the higher the P/E ratio, the more growth the company is supposed to have. So it can be either the company is growing real fast of the investor have high hopes of its growth. Now these hopes can be realistic or foolish, you never know! Now, if you follow financial news than you must know that the large growth companies always grab the headlines. But do the growth stocks really make best investment? The lower the P/E ratio, the more value the company has. Low P/E ratio companies are not considered to be the movers and shakers in the market.

Eugene Fama did seminal research on stocks and stock market s in’70s. Most of his results were startling and broke many myths. According to Fama and French, two famous researchers who did ground breaking research on stocks, over the last 77 years, large growth stocks have only seen 9.9% annualized rate of return as compared to 11.5% for the large value stocks.

Now intuitively you might have thought that growth stocks are better. What can be the reason for their lower performance over the years? The most probable cause seems to be their immense popularity. Since most of the headlines are captures by high growth companies, investors seem to think that they are the best investments.

Let’s go back to the IPO of Google. Think about Google, how its stock price shot up within a matter of weeks after it hit the market. Weeks after that it began to cool off. In 2007, Google stock was selling something around $500. So large growth stocks tend to get overpriced before you are able to buy them!

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System!

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Are you aware of the fact that the peak of the global oil production (all liquids, including unconventional oil) will peak in the next few years. Do you know China is the largest producer of coal? Coal production n China would peak somewhere around 2010-2020.

You must be thinking what to do every available source of energy seems to be peaking in the near future? The global peak of uranium production lies somewhere around2025-2050. The global peak of natural gas production lies somewhere around 2025!

But there are many safe and environmentally friendly methods to generate the energy required. Uptill now these methods had been ignored maybe because they were a bit expensive. They were expensive in the sense that these methods factor in the external costs that were previously being ignored. Do you know this fact that the US Department of Energy has estimated that there is enough available offshore wind energy of the coasts of US that can nearly cover the current US electricity capacity? So what will fill this void in energy production in the coming decades?

If all the care in US were hybrids by 2025 that would roughly reduce 80% of the US oil import. IF every bulb in the US was replaced with an energy efficient fluorescent lamp, enough energy could be saved to shut down around 100 power plants.

So the solution is already there but it requires investments which are right now not forth coming. This will soon change as the global supply of oil starts to dwindle. The solution is already there and as the end of fossil fuel nears which is only a decade away, more and more alternative energy solutions will be used to generate cheap energy. Enough power could be generated for the entire US by covering only 9% of Nevada desert with parabolic trough systems. This is something like a plot of land 100 by 100 miles.

This is something that is bound to happen. The supplies of fossil fuel are finite and will be exhausted in the near future. You might have seen only a glimpse of that last year in 2008 when crude oil prices jumped to around $150 per barrel.

Oil deposits are being depleted at a fast pace and these resources once finished cannot be replenished. This prediction is based on our insatiable energy consumption and the lack of conventional supplies to meet the growing energy demand. This is most probably the safest long term bet that you can make in the long term. There is little doubt that companies operating in the green energy sector will ultimately become the major players in the overall energy generation and transportation mix of tomorrow.

Imagine Henry Ford in’09 asking you to invest in his Ford Motor Company that is about to mass produce a horseless carriage. Keeping in view the above facts, investing in green energy stocks in the best long term investment that you can make!

Right now the world is standing at another threshold. But many folks in that year of’09 were skeptical about Model T success. This is now 2009, exactly a century has passed. Do you think investing in green energy stocks is a bad idea? He tells you that this invention could change the entire landscape of the country. Knowing everything that you know right now with the power of hind sight with you, you will definitely say yes. Green Energy stocks may turn out to be your best investment decision of your life. A massive investment frenzy is about to take place in the green energy technologies.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System!

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Every investor wants stock prices in his/her portfolio to go up. What would make a stock rise so much? The whole point of investing in stocks is to choose one that has the greatest chance of a rising share value. Don’t we all look for a stock that we could buy for $10 and later on sell for $300 per share? Well, how can we proceed to accomplish such a feat?

So if the company does well, its stock will go up in price and if the company does poorly its stock will go down in price. Buying a stock is essentially buying a small piece of the company and its future potential for growth and profits.

The marketplace is in fact buyers and sellers, individuals and organizations that want to buy stocks or sell them. Now why does the stock goes up and down with the performance of the company. Actually the real force behind the stock rise and fall is the market place.

If there are more buyers of the stock, its value will go up and if there are more sellers in the market, the stock price goes down. This buying and selling of stocks can only take place in exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and over the counter markets like NASDAQ.

Sometimes you will find that the company does well and is posting good quarterly earnings but still its stock price goes down. What’s the reason behind this? Now it doesn’t mean that if the company does well and is showing good profits and earnings, its stock price will go up.

Everything in the markets is based on the expectations. Stock price goes up and down because of what the buyers and sellers expect will happen with the company in the near future. In reality the price of stock depends on the investor’s expectations. The price of a stock goes down because there are more sellers than buyers. So why is it so? The stock price does not go up or down just based on the company’s present performance. What can be the reason behind this unexpected stock price plunge?

However, the performance of the stock and the performance of the company over the long term have a logical relationship. In the short term, the behavior of the stock price is irrational and it can behave in crazy and illogical ways.

Stock investing is all about doing good research before you make your final decision to invest in a particular stock. Focus on finding companies that are strong, well positioned in the right industries and have solid fundamentals like a good management, good product, good service, growing industry, rising sales, increasing profits and so on. The bottom line is don’t worry about the short term gyrations of the stock price. Sometimes the industry and the economy matters more than the company. Picking a stock doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Understanding the company’s industry and the overall economic environment is critical to stock picking process. It would be interesting for you to know that Warren Buffet, the world’s greatest stock investor has over the years been a value investor. His famous investments were in insurance and manufacturing. He buys companies that have fallen on bad times but inherently their business model is sound, just maybe need a good management.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System!

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The options market has caught the fancy of many investors and this is not surprising. The beauty of options is embedded in its very name. You have the options but not the obligation to buy or sell stocks at a given price by a given time. Now for options buyers this option unlike futures limits their maximum liability to the option premium they had paid at the time of buying the options contract.

You must have come across the term Index Options. So what are index options? In’78, Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began options trading on popular stock indexes such as the S&P 500 Stock Index. The CBOE options trades in multiples of $100 per index point. This is much cheaper than the $250 multiple per index point for the S&P futures contract.

Let’s take an example. Suppose the S&P 500 Index is at 1100 points. You have a bullish opinion of the market and are of the opinion that the S&P 500 Index will go further up. An index option allows the investor to buy the stock index at a set point within the given time period.

So you decide to purchase a call option at 1150 for three months for 50 points. In other words you paid an option premium of $5000. Now what this means is that if any time for the next three months you decide to exercise your call option, you will get $100 for each point the index is above 1150.

So when an options contract loses value, you only lose the premium that you had paid while buying that contract. In that case you will only lose the premium of $5000 that you had paid to buy the call index option. Now, 1150 is the strike price of the index option. In case the S&P 500 Index does not rise above 1150, you can simply decide to not exercise your call option.

Contrast this with S&P futures. In case of S&P futures, the downside risk is unlimited whereas in index options the downside risk is limited to only the premium that you had paid for the options contract. Call options are considered to be bullish. So for you to make a profit with this call option, the S&P 500 Index will have to rise above 1200 point within the next three months otherwise you will lose your premium.

In case the S&P Index had fallen to 1100 point, you would have recouped your options premium. Put options are considered to be bearish. A Put Index Option works in exactly the same way as a Call Index Option except that you make profit when the stock index goes down. If you had bought the put index options instead of the call index option in our example above, every point below the strike price of 1150 would have given you a profit of $100.

Options are highly dependent on the volatility of the market as well as time to expiry. As the options contract nears expiry, its premium starts decreasing. The more the options contract is away from expiry, the higher the premium you will have to pay. But the most important factor is the expected volatility of the market. Now the option premium that you pay is determined by the market and it depends on many factors like interest rates and dividend yield.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System!

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The more volatile the market, the higher then index option premium! The duller the market, the lower the index options premium. Well it depends on the expectations of the traders whether the market will move sufficiently in the near future for them to exercise their buy or sell rights.

Options are a far more basic instrument than the ETFs and futures. You can easily replicate any ETF or futures contract with an option but the reverse is not true. Options offer investors far more trading strategies as compared to futures. Such strategies can range from highly speculative to highly conservative. Suppose, you are afraid that the market is going to go down in the near future! You can protect yourself from this decline in the market by buying a out index option. When the market declines, the put increases in value. In case, the market does not decline, you only lose the premium that you had paid for the put option.

Of course for anyone who buys an options contract there should be someone to sell the options contract to make a complete transaction. Now the seller of a call options believes that the market will not move sufficiently up in the near future so he/she can make money by writing a call options contract and selling it to someone who believes the maker will move up.

The buyers of the put options are in a way insuring their portfolio against possible market decline but who are the sellers of the put options. They are primarily those investors who are willing to buy those stocks but only at lower prices. So in a way, buying and selling of options contracts make options trading a zero sum game. Either the market will move up or it will not. Either the option seller will win or the options buyer will win. The development of the stock index futures and the index options was a major development in’80s for investors and money managers.

So in a way, buying and selling of options contracts make options trading a zero sum game. Either the market will move up or it will not. Either the option seller will win or the options buyer will win. The development of the stock index futures and the index options was a major development in’80s for investors and money managers. The buyers of the put options are in a way insuring their portfolio against possible market decline but who are the sellers of the put options. They are primarily those investors who are willing to buy those stocks but only at lower prices. Options are an important component of any money manager portfolio. Many hedging strategies now depend on options.

The Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) gave the investor still more ways to diversify across all market with very low costs. ETFs give you the familiarity of the stocks but like index futures much higher liquidity and superior tax efficiency.

Index options give the investors the ability to insure the value of their portfolios at the lowest possible prices and save on the transaction costs and taxes.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try these cash printing Forex Signals from heaven. Discover a revolutionary Forex Robot System!

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If you have been following the breaking news that you might have come across the news that gold prices have reached historically the highest level! Recently gold broke the price barrier of $1000 per ounce. This might be the best time to invest in commodities. Some expert of the opinion that the secular bull market started in the commodity market a few years back and may continue for the coming decade! If you want to invest in commodities than you have many options like trading commodity futures, commodity ETF, commodity stocks or commodity mutual funds. A mutual fund is a fund managed by an investment professional on behalf of the fund investors. Now, mutual funds by law are constrained to follow conservative trading methods. Mutual funds cannot engage themselves in such sophisticated and risky trading techniques like arbitrage trades, long short strategies and distressed asset investing.

There are many different mutual funds like stock funds, bond funds, currency funds and even country specific mutual funds. But there are a number of mutual funds that specialize in investing in commodities or commodity related products. If you want to have a low risk investment in commodities than you should think about buying shares of a commodity mutual fund.

These commodity mutual funds use different investment strategies. Some of these commodity mutual funds invest in derivates based on commodities such as futures contracts and options based on futures contracts traded on the major exchanges in New York, Chicago and so on.

So how can you invest in these commodity mutual funds? After doing your research on these commodity mutual funds, you can select one that you consider to fit your investment objectives, simply write a check and purchase the shares of that commodity mutual fund either through your broker or directly through the fund providers. There are commodity mutual funds that may invest in companies that process these raw commodities such as energy companies and mining companies. So you will have to do your research in find the right commodity mutual fund for your objectives.

Now I said, after doing your research. The first step in your research should be to compile a list of questions like what is the fund’s investment objective, what securities does the fund invest in, who manages the fund, what kind of strategy does the fund uses, what type of people invest in this fund, what are the risks involved in investing in this fund, what is the funds track record, what is the funds fees and expenses and so on.

Now the two main commodity mutual funds are the PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund and the Oppenhiemer Real Asset Fund. Now PIMCO Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund (PCRAX) is the largest commodity mutual fund in the market with $12 Billion of assets under its management. PCRAX tries to mimic the performance of Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index by investing directly in commodity linked instruments like futures contracts, forwards contracts and options on futures. Once you have your list of questions, see if the fund prospectus answers these questions satisfactorily. The good thing is that most of the mutual funds send their fund prospectus free!

When you talk of mutual funds than you talk about Morningstar ratings of that mutual fund! Morningstar also have got a five star rating system that can be really helpful to you in picking the best commodity mutual fund. Now as always Morningstar website is a very good resource for doing your research on commodity mutual funds. It can give you a lot of information about these commodity mutual funds such as the latest news, updates, load charges, expense ratios and other useful key data.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Trade Dow Futures . Learn Commodity Trading !

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