Online Stock Trading Information for the Beginner Trader.

A Two-Bar Pattern that Points to Trade Setups

2010-06-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

June 14, 2010

By Elliott Wave International

Some people like to get outside on the weekends, maybe playing tennis or working in the yard. Some people like to visit their friends or cook a big meal or go out to see a movie. And some people who are passionate about their work -- such as Elliott Wave International's futures analyst Jeffrey Kennedy -- like to stare at hundreds of price charts on their computer screen to find patterns that point to trade setups. We used to worry for his health but not anymore, because he's been doing it for years and he comes up with some neat stuff. A case in point is his discovery of a two-bar pattern that he named the Popgun. Find out more in this excerpt from the Club EWI eBook, called How to Use Bar Patterns to Spot Trade Setups.

* * * * *Excerpted from How to Use Bar Patterns to Spot Trade Setups by Jeffrey Kennedy

The Popgun I’m no doubt dating myself, but when I was a kid, I had a popgun – the old-fashioned kind with a cork and string (no fake Star Wars light saber for me). You pulled the trigger, and the cork popped out of the barrel attached to a string. If you were like me, you immediately attached a longer string to improve the popgun’s reach. Why the reminiscing?

Because “Popgun” is the name of a bar pattern I would like to share with you this month. And it’s the path of the cork (out and back) that made me think of the name for this pattern.

The Popgun is a two-bar pattern composed of an outside bar preceded by an inside bar. (Quick refresher course: An outside bar occurs when the range of a bar encompasses the previous bar and an inside bar is a price bar whose range is encompassed by the previous bar.) In Chart 1 (Coffee), I have circled two Popguns.

So what’s so special about the Popgun? It introduces swift, tradable moves in price. More importantly, once the moves end, they are significantly retraced, just like the popgun cork going out and back. As you can see in Chart 2 [not shown], prices advance sharply following the Popgun, and then the move is significantly retraced. In Chart 3 [not shown], we see the same thing again but to the downside: prices fall dramatically after the Popgun, and then a sizable correction develops.

How can we incorporate this bar pattern into our Elliott wave analysis? The best way is to understand where Popguns show up in the wave patterns. I have noticed that Popguns tend to occur prior to impulse waves – waves one, three and five. But, remember, waves A and C of corrective wave patterns are also technically impulse waves. So Popguns can occur prior to those moves as well.

As with all my work, I rely on a pattern only if it applies across all time frames and markets. To illustrate, I have included two charts of Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI) that show this pattern works equally well on 60-minute and weekly charts. Notice that the Popgun on the 60-minute chart [not shown] preceded a small third wave advance. Now look at the weekly chart [not shown] to see what three Popguns introduced (from left to right), wave C of a flat correction, wave 5 of (3) and wave C of (4).

There’s only one more thing to know about using this Popgun trade setup: Just be careful and don’t shoot your eye out, as my mom would say.
In this comprehensive collection, Jeffrey provides each pattern with a definition, illustrations of its form, lessons on its application and how to incorporate it into Elliott wave analysis, historical examples of its occurrence in major commodity markets, and ultimately -- compelling proof of how it identified swift and sizable moves.

Best of all is, you can read the entire, 15-page report today at absolutely no cost. You read that right. The "How To Use Bar Patterns To Spot Trade Setups" is available with any free, Club EWI membership.

This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.

Beginner Tips on Stock Day Trading Online

2008-05-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

If you’re willing to invest your money in the financial markets, the stock market is an excellent place to make a good deal of cash in a short time- if you know how to pick the right stocks.

However, there are costs associated with making such large amounts of money. By keeping a sharp eye, using the best day trading tips, and focusing your workflow around excellent trading tools, you will be able to hone your stock picking skills to make money doing stock day trading online.

The first point you need to learn if you want to enter the field of stock day trading online is to master the art of picking stocks that will go up instead of down. Unfortunately, it seems much easier to find stocks that will lose you money than those that will make you money. However, the high paying stocks are out there, you just have to know where to look.

In order to find such high paying stocks, you will need to do a lot of market research. Frequenting blogs, news outlets, stock trading websites, and stock market advice magazines or websites can make a huge difference in your ability to select the stocks that will earn you money. While there is an element of luck involved, such sources will teach you a multitude of methods that you can use to turn the luck element to your benefit.

The second point that you need to learn before you go out and begin a day trading career is to know which tips to take and which to avoid. There are plenty of people out there who are looking to make a quick buck on would-be day traders. Don’t fall into that trap and buy the first product you see.

Browse around, check out a variety of websites and see which products are the best for you. When it comes to stock market advice, online stock trading sites, and online stock trading software, you can never be too careful in what you choose. Always check if the particular online trading company offers a trial period if the advice you are seeking, requires a payment or a registration fee.

Finally, in order to make money as a day trader, you need to be comfortable in your environment. You should have stock trading programs that work for you, not against you. You should invest in a comfortable chair and desk you could easily sit at for hours on end. And above all, find the stock trading system that feels right to you.

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2008-04-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

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You've heard them say, "Buy low, sell high." You've also heard, "The trend is your friend." Then there's, "Don't fight the Fed" and many other age-old trading principles.

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About the Publisher, Elliott Wave International
The Independent Trader Crash Course is a complimentary resource provided by the world’s largest market forecasting firm, Elliott Wave International. The firm’s 20-plus analysts provide around-the-clock forecasts of every major market in the world via the internet and proprietary web systems like Reuters and Bloomberg. EWI’s educational services include conferences, workshops, webinars, video tapes, special reports, books and one of the internet’s richest free content programs, Club EWI.
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What is an Initial Public Offering (IPO)

2008-03-20T04:05:00.000-07:00

An initial pubic offering is also called an IPO. In effect what an IPO does, is it takes a private company "public". It is also a means for an existing company listed on one of the exchanges to spin off or create a new company from its parent company.

Reasons for going public:
The most obvious reason for a private company to enter the public market is raising immediate liquid assets by way of offering shares in the company. Most private companies would prefer to avoid all of the burden of complying with reporting and other regulations, but sometimes a company needs to expand or generate large sums of money to keep up with competition. The reasons are the advantage of offering a chunk of the company without losing control of the company.

IPOs Past and Present:
Before the acts of a few bad apples like Enron, WorldCom and others IPOs flourished on Wall Street. From the mid 1990s to the early 2000s each day brought a new public offering to the market place. Some weeks two or three new IPOs were introduced to the public market place. There were necessary compliance issues to deal with and prices to set and then the IPO hit the market and the exchanges decided what to do with the new kid on the block. Millions and sometimes more could be generated on the first day of trading.

That was then and now there is Sarbanes-Oxley a piece of legislation that was supposed to prospectively cure the market place of cooked books, fraud and make the investor feel more secure. There are aspects of this curative piece of legislation that has provided for more transparency in corporate America. The auditor independence section makes perfect sense. It seems like common sense you want your auditor to not have a conflict of interest. The area of corporate responsibility for subordinate acts of fraud, errors and omissions makes perfect sense. Disclosure regarding debt and other adverse actions involving the company almost seems like a redundancy with other securities laws.

The effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley and other methods to cut out bad apples is that it costs a great deal of money to take a company public these days. There is the need to hire top notch consultants and extra staff to comply with the ever increasing paper work and internal structural changes. It is not a bad piece of legislation, but it is burdensome for a heretofore small private company to be able to afford. The net effect is that the IPO is an infrequent event on Wall Street. There may be other reasons in addition to Sarbanes-Oxley.

Recently, the Blackstone Group introduced an IPO to the market place. It was priced well, but overall the event was lackluster. It generated some 20 billion dollars, but all of the expectations were overstated from the hoopla that preceded the offering. Perhaps we have simply become jaded.

The IPO is a launch of a newbie. The era of "what's next," may be part of our gilded past. It could be a good thing for the market place or it could signify a final epitaph to the Horatio Alger story which was overblown in the first place.

Trading stocks online

2008-02-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

Trading Stocks online is becoming very popular between investors that want to invest and trade in the stock market.

Ordinary everyday citizens such as you and me can now trade stocks like the pros without paying the ridiculous broker fees that are often associated with trading on the stock market. This doesn't mean there are no fees involved or that you won't be discouraged from capriciously trading stocks. What it does mean is that you will be able to trade stocks, as you may have never been able to do before because the costs involved in trading were so high that only the wealthiest among us could really afford to work the market to any real advantage.

You will find quite a few companies that are going to compete for your business when it comes to empowering you to trade stocks online. It is best to go with a business that offers education and advice in addition to the ability to trade. There are many big names in the brokerage business that are getting in touch with the technology of today and offering full service brokers and financial advisors in addition to offering new online services that include Internet trading.

If you decide to go with some of the bigger names in the business you should understand that you will pay a little more than you would pay going with many of the lesser name firms and trading companies. The good news is that the bigger names have more to loose after working for decades to establish themselves and develop a good reputation among traders. This means that they are not going to be "fly by night" and are going to work to make sure you have the best possible service from them for your future in the stock market trade.

Many of these firms in addition to offering the ability to buy, sell, and trade online will also offer financial planning for retirement, future expenses, and advice on how to create a fixed income from your investments. They will offer many tips, hints, and advice free of charge on their website while also promoting the services they offer through discounts in hopes of gaining your business for some of the higher ticket transactions that really pay their bills.

Online investment services offer consumers the opportunity to invest with lower commissions and fees which means you bring more of the money home when all is said and done and spend far less on fees and expenses associated with investing. By saving these fees you may be doing yourself a huge service but keep in mind that the invaluable advice of a broker can often mean the difference between mild successes and wild successes. If you can manage the fees it is a good plan to at least consult with a broker or financial advisor or planner once or twice a year in order to get the most out of your investment money.

Online trading is great but you will find that it lacks the personal service you can expect from a financial advisor or a stockbroker. Very little has such a profound impact on your financial future than the ability to receive and follow expert advice. While there is much to read on the Internet by way of advice on investing in the stock market there is also a lot of conflicting information just as there is a great deal of misinformation. This is something that, when possible, is best left to the experts at least until you manage to learn the ropes and have a few successful trades under your belt.

If you are not spending more than you are willing to lose then there is no harm in trying your hand at investing through the various online brokerage services available today.

The Best Time To Start Trading

2007-12-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

I always get asked the question, "When is the best time to start Trading?" Just like any other skill, learning to trade Stocks successfully takes a little time. It can take weeks or even months to learn to profit from the stock market. And, it can take years to really understand the inner workings of the market.

Trading is not complicated at all. You only need to know 3 things to make money with trading: 1.What Stock to buy 2.When to buy it 3.When to sell it - But there is a definate learning curve to work through. That's what takes time (which varies depending on whom you learn from and how dedicated you are.)

Therefore, the best time to start trading is now, because the longer you wait, the longer it will take you to get good at it. So start now!

Don't rush things. Subscibe to a stock trading course, or even better, get yourself a trading mentor. You'll find that patience will become one of your most profitable assets.

The trading terms used in stock trading may seem complicated at first. They really aren't. Just spend a few minutes learning the terms and pretty soon, you'll get it.

Do take the time to learn the terms. It will definitely make your life easier… and more profitable!

Where your own money is concerned, you can't afford to learn by trial-and-error. Your best bet is to learn as much as you can about stock trading before you ever invest any money into it

To get the kind of results that few people are getting, you have to do the opposite of what most people are doing. It's really that simple - most people don't take the time to learn the trading game. That's one of the biggest mistakes they make. It's also one of the most costly mistakes they make.

There are many other mistakes beginner traders make - For more information visit Stock Trading Information, a website that provide helpful information for the beginner Trader.

Asian Stocks show big losses

2007-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

Penny Stocks Exploration

2007-04-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

Penny stocks, which only trade for $5.00 per share, are a high risk stock that most people are advised to avoid due to the fact that the companies that are selling this type of stock are either in great financial danger or on the verge of bankruptcy. Penny stocks tend to fluctuate rapidly in price but some penny stocks should a gain in days, possibly even in hours. So, basically, the decision to invest in penny stocks is strictly the choice of the investor because, according to statistics, you have more of a chance of losing money, but, there are those times when penny stocks seem to pay off rather quickly.

The main reason to buy a penny stock is because you hoping for a high return. Because they are cheap, most people are able to purchase quite a large number of penny stocks, thus, if you receive a high return on your investment, you will make a considerable amount of money. For example, you buy 100,000 penny stocks for at $0.10 each, which means you invested a total of $10,000. You decide to sell your penny stocks for $0.40 each, which means you just earned 4 times what you invested and gained a profit of $30,000. That is quite a return on your investment! Therefore, the key to purchasing penny stocks is get in and get ahead of other investors before they learn about the high returns that certain penny stocks are capable of producing.

In order to ensure that the penny stocks you are planning to buy virtually guarantee a high return of investment, be sure to look for companies in which their sales are steadily growing because this means that their profits are steadily rising, too. Also, invest in penny stocks only if the company has an honorable executive team in which expansion is one of their main priorities, that way, you can ensure that a certain company will stay in the stock market. With all these characteristics in place, a solid business foundation is established, therefore, an increase in the price per share of penny stocks is almost inevitably going to increase.

Another important aspect of penny stocks is to buy them when the company is new and in the early stages of business development, especially if you feel the company is going to have great success. Think about when Microsoft was just starting out and they sold penny stocks for $2.50 per share. What if you had bought 100 if those penny stocks? The money that you used to purchase your penny stocks was actually used by the Microsoft corporation to help them expand their business. Thus, due to the fact that Microsoft has exploded into a large, corporate entity, your penny stocks would probably be worth thousands.

With penny stocks, it is all about timing and the expansion of the business in which you purchase your stocks.

Please remember that penny stocks are a major high-risk investment, meaning that the chances of you earning a return on your investment are slim to none.

There are four main reasons for this high risk. First, information about companies who are selling penny stocks is hard to locate, and when information does arise, the sources are usually very unreliable. Penny stocks also do not fulfill the minimum requirements to remain the stock exchange. This is the reason penny stocks are offered by less reliable sources than the stock market, because such a large financial entity does not want the responsibility of liability.

Because many of the companies who sell penny stocks are brand new companies, they do not have a history of investment in which an investor can review. Plus, penny stocks have no value, unless by chance the business becomes a large, expanded company that is able to issue a huge return on investment. Therefore, it is vitally important to review both the positives and negatives in the case of penny stocks before making the decision to purchase them.

Penny stocks offer the ultimate gamble when it comes to stock trading. Penny stocks are extremely cheap to purchase and they have a small chance of delivering an extremely high return on investment. But, more than likely, penny stocks simply are a high risk investment gamble in which you lose money.

Bracketed Orders in Stock Trading

2007-04-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

If you are planning to buy stocks as a long term investment you might want to consider placing a bracketed order on it. A bracketed order goes one step further than a trailing stop order. Remembering that a trailing stop order, you are in control of your investments because you are able to limit the amount of your losses by setting stop price. With a bracketed order, you are able to not only set a limit on your losses, but you are able to set a limit on your profit, that when reached, your stock will be sold.

This type of order is best illustrated with an example. Your broker places a bracketed order for 100 shares from Linens-n-Things, a department store, priced at $50 per stock, placing a sell limit order at $100 and a sell stop order at $45. If the price per stock moves down to $45 or up to $100, the stock will be sold. Therefore, the investor will either earn a $5,000 dollar profit, or take a $500 loss in profits.

The main advantage of bracketed orders is that you, the investor, determine how much you will earn or lose when getting involved in stock trading. If you have a total investment amount of $150,000 and you determine that you do not want to lose more that 20%, then your total losses should not be set below $30,000.

However, if you invest $150,000 into the stock market and you would like to earn a 15% profit, then you should set your profit margin to equal $172,500. With bracketed orders you, the investor, are in total control of your investment.

The two main disadvantages with bracketed orders you must place a limit on how much profit that you will make and you could possibly lose a large sum of money. First of all, when an individual decides to invest in the stock market, he or she probably wants to make as much money as possible. By setting a bracketed order on stocks that the investor purchases, the investor is placing a limit on how much profit is able to be earned. Also, to be noticed, by placing a bracketed order on your stock you run the risk of losing money. For example, you decide to buy 1500 shares from Company N, a new and upcoming business, at $625 each, for a total investment of $937,500. You decided to purchase such a large amount of shares after consulting with your stockbroker because your broker was confident that Company N would be able to expand into a big business in which would create massive profits for your stock trading investment. You placed a limit on your profit at $5 million, however, you did not place a limit on your losses because your stockbroker was so sure of Company N's success. However, after only 3 months, Company N was forced to claim bankruptcy, where Company N is seeking a court order to discharge all of their incurred debt. Obviously, you can kiss your $5 million profit good-bye along with your initial $937,500 investment. Unfortunately, as an investor, you were willing to take a risk based on the expertise of your stockbroker, however, with this risk; you lost a large lump sum of money.

As with any type of order, you must become educated in order to determine what orders are right for your risk tolerance. Due to the fact that the bracketed order is mostly successful, this is actually a low risk order even though some detrimental risks are involved. Seeking the professional advice of you stockbroker definitely has the possibility of earning you, the investor, an ensured, set profit. However, for some reason, if the company in which you purchase stocks from is forced into bankruptcy, not only do you lose your initial investment, but, you also lose your hoped for profit in which you set. Again, it is highly recommended to shop around for a stockbroker in whom you feel will genuinely put your needs ahead of his or her desire to make a profit.