One of the most interesting things in the stock market, is watching people trade stocks and engage in crowd behavior. This has been very evident in the recent market decline. When the market was going down, the crowd was selling into at any price, causing the stock market crash. In the media, at the same time, all the voices were discussing selling, selling, selling in a uniform chorus. As you can see from the market action, the herd suddenly stampeded, almost without warning into a 13% market decline in only five weeks until the end was reached and even then extreme volatility prevailed. What should your stock trading strategy be?
My experience as an OTC market maker gives me a unique perspective on these types of stock market trading and stock market crashes. Imagine being a professional stock trader, a market maker. You have a certain amount of capital. If you do are loaded up with inventory and do not anticipate a stock market crash like the one we just had, you are doomed. If you have, say, $1 million in inventory, to pick a round number, and you are 80% long, in a 15% market decline, you lose on average $120,000 in a matter of weeks. If you had to repay your losses, you were not a happy stock trading professional. On the other hand, if you were net short 50%, you made $75,000 in only a few weeks. As you can see, being a market maker you will either learn to anticipate and profit from the crowd, or you will find yourself serving chopped liver as a clerk in a Wall Street delicatessen in short order. Getting carried away with the crowd is a sure ticket to the deli.
At one point, I even turned to penny stocks thinking they were the way to make big money in the market. After all, 5,000 shares of a stock made you feel like a pretty big investor. But in the end, even a $1.50 stock could become a .75 stock overnight, on some little ripple in the company's game plan, and poof! Half your grubstake...gone! And, since penny stocks are usually so thinly traded, it took a "month of Sundays" just to execute a sell order. Meanwhile you watched as your sell order single-handedly brought the stock's value down far below what you were hoping to get for it. The shortcomings of many of the stock trading strategies I tried only made me more determined to find a more predictable way to make money in the stock market. My epiphany came while turning the first few pages of a book on stock charts that had been sent to our television station by the publisher. The book had been sitting on a bookshelf in a corner of my office for some time collecting dust. The book? Analyzing Bar Charts For Profit by John Magee.
Traders have multiple tools to use when it comes to financial market analysis. They can use well-developed patterns, or use what is called support and resistance. Support is when they track the level from which lower stock prices are predicted to go up from and resistance is the height the stock is predicted to get to before it may go down in price again. The theory is that most stocks can be predicted to rise or fall after they get to a support or resistance amount.
When it comes to tracking stocks one of the methods is through charts and patterns. A system of bar charts is normally used that represent periods of time (like daily, weekly, etc). The top of this chart for stock market analysis would list the high price while the smaller bar chart to the right lists the opening and the other one lists the closing prices. Another chart sometimes used is called a candlestick chart. It uses a slightly different system of markings to show the highs and lows and prices of the stock it is following. It also uses a color system, with red or black if the stock's closing cost was lower than the one prior to this one or white and green if it was more. A particular pattern that is often seen in stock market analysis is known as the Cup and Handle. This is when a stock starts off with a high price and then dips in cost and eventually returns to a higher price. When that stock levels out in costs, it is called the handle of the stock, and this can be a good place to buy so the trader makes good profits when it goes back up, which is the cup part of the pattern.
Head and Shoulders is yet another stock pattern. It means that the stock first comes to a peak (a shoulder), then gets lower and then forms another even higher peak (the head), and then goes up again, (another shoulder). A very popular stock analysis tool, this one reveals the stock's median cost within a certain timeframe. It is plotted on a chart so that traders can see what the stock's pattern is. This market analysis tool looks at a comparison of the amount of days a stock ends on a positive note and the amount of days it ends on a negative note. It is used over a specified amount of time, normally nine to 15 days. In order to use it, the traders divide the median amount of days the stock goes up by the median amount of days it goes down. The result is added to one and employed to divide 100. Then you subtract that result from 100 to get the stock's relative strength index. Depending on that amount, a trader can tell if a stock is strong or weak. This process uses the amount of shares that were traded plus the cost of the stock. If this number is high, you should sell your stock, but if it is below 30 you should buy more.
My experience as an OTC market maker gives me a unique perspective on these types of stock market trading and stock market crashes. Imagine being a professional stock trader, a market maker. You have a certain amount of capital. If you do are loaded up with inventory and do not anticipate a stock market crash like the one we just had, you are doomed. If you have, say, $1 million in inventory, to pick a round number, and you are 80% long, in a 15% market decline, you lose on average $120,000 in a matter of weeks. If you had to repay your losses, you were not a happy stock trading professional. On the other hand, if you were net short 50%, you made $75,000 in only a few weeks. As you can see, being a market maker you will either learn to anticipate and profit from the crowd, or you will find yourself serving chopped liver as a clerk in a Wall Street delicatessen in short order. Getting carried away with the crowd is a sure ticket to the deli.
At one point, I even turned to penny stocks thinking they were the way to make big money in the market. After all, 5,000 shares of a stock made you feel like a pretty big investor. But in the end, even a $1.50 stock could become a .75 stock overnight, on some little ripple in the company's game plan, and poof! Half your grubstake...gone! And, since penny stocks are usually so thinly traded, it took a "month of Sundays" just to execute a sell order. Meanwhile you watched as your sell order single-handedly brought the stock's value down far below what you were hoping to get for it. The shortcomings of many of the stock trading strategies I tried only made me more determined to find a more predictable way to make money in the stock market. My epiphany came while turning the first few pages of a book on stock charts that had been sent to our television station by the publisher. The book had been sitting on a bookshelf in a corner of my office for some time collecting dust. The book? Analyzing Bar Charts For Profit by John Magee.
Traders have multiple tools to use when it comes to financial market analysis. They can use well-developed patterns, or use what is called support and resistance. Support is when they track the level from which lower stock prices are predicted to go up from and resistance is the height the stock is predicted to get to before it may go down in price again. The theory is that most stocks can be predicted to rise or fall after they get to a support or resistance amount.
When it comes to tracking stocks one of the methods is through charts and patterns. A system of bar charts is normally used that represent periods of time (like daily, weekly, etc). The top of this chart for stock market analysis would list the high price while the smaller bar chart to the right lists the opening and the other one lists the closing prices. Another chart sometimes used is called a candlestick chart. It uses a slightly different system of markings to show the highs and lows and prices of the stock it is following. It also uses a color system, with red or black if the stock's closing cost was lower than the one prior to this one or white and green if it was more. A particular pattern that is often seen in stock market analysis is known as the Cup and Handle. This is when a stock starts off with a high price and then dips in cost and eventually returns to a higher price. When that stock levels out in costs, it is called the handle of the stock, and this can be a good place to buy so the trader makes good profits when it goes back up, which is the cup part of the pattern.
Head and Shoulders is yet another stock pattern. It means that the stock first comes to a peak (a shoulder), then gets lower and then forms another even higher peak (the head), and then goes up again, (another shoulder). A very popular stock analysis tool, this one reveals the stock's median cost within a certain timeframe. It is plotted on a chart so that traders can see what the stock's pattern is. This market analysis tool looks at a comparison of the amount of days a stock ends on a positive note and the amount of days it ends on a negative note. It is used over a specified amount of time, normally nine to 15 days. In order to use it, the traders divide the median amount of days the stock goes up by the median amount of days it goes down. The result is added to one and employed to divide 100. Then you subtract that result from 100 to get the stock's relative strength index. Depending on that amount, a trader can tell if a stock is strong or weak. This process uses the amount of shares that were traded plus the cost of the stock. If this number is high, you should sell your stock, but if it is below 30 you should buy more.
About the Author:
Frank Miller has a Debt Consolidation Blog & Finance, these are some of the articles: There May Be Many Advantages Awaiting You Should You Consider A Gold IRA Retirement Plan You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.