Money Management - The Focus Of Expert Investors

By Maclin Vestor

Many people have been through it all, they've lost money and made money in stocks, they've lost and made money in poker, and they've lost and made money in options, and they've even lost money and made money in gold. What separates the winners from the losers and the haves from the have-nots? What do people that go through those experiences ultimately learn from?

The rookies are always looking for the penny stock, the hot tip, the day trading, the options, or something that can make them rich quick. They are essentially looking for that lotto ticket in hopes they can put all their money in and have it pay off. The experts are focusing on protecting what they have, even if they're just starting and it's just a little bit. Although experts often use trading and investment systems, the fact is that it almost doesn't matter at all how good the method is, if you cannot manage your money well. In stocks although people who can read financial statements and charts, and understand if a stock is likely to go up, or do back testing on certain method and estimate a probability that stocks using that method went up in the past, it is difficult to pin point the exact odds. That makes managing your money more difficult. However, just because you can't know the exact probability, doesn't mean you can't use past results to estimate a probability range, and manage your money well. Lets just assume for a while that you could know the exact probabilities. If you know that you will win 3 times as much as you lose when you win, and you know that the win will take place half the time, do you know for sure that you will make money in the long run?

This is a trick question, you can never know with certainty that you will make money, but is it probable? Again, that still depends. How can this be? It's easy to say that if you invest $100, you will turn it into $200 (gaining $100) half the time, and you will lose $33 the other half, that in 100 one hundred dollar investments you can expect to make $5000, lose $1667 and net $3333. However, this fails to take into account how likely you are to be able to afford the $1667 in losses and maintain that $100 investment every time out of 100 times.

In other words, the $3333 net gain is theoretical, and takes absolute no consideration on how likely you are to be able to afford those 100 investments. What if you only had $100 and you bet it all, you have a 50% chance that you lose $33 of that 1000... what then? You can't simply make another $100 investment, So instead you have to make a $66 investment, now your win will be significantly less. If you lose yet again it will become even more difficult to get back to even. Although on paper this is a good investment, it is not a good investment without proper money management. You may have built a very safe car that drives straight, but if you are a bad driver you still could crash.

Unfortunately many people don't learn how to drive their financial investment vehicles, and instead rely on money managers, financial advisors, mutual fund owners, and company CEOs to do everything for them. This isn't a bad thing for those unable or unwilling to learn. However, the risk is not only that these people won't manage your money well, and not only that if they do, you still may pay them so much in fees and expenses that it's not profitable, but also that by handing the keys to your investment vehicle over to someone else, you lose control and you fail to learn anything. Although you may accomplish your goals with the help of these people, you also could do this yourself with a good trading system that uses good money management. - 23212

About the Author:

Maclin Vestor teaches about varioustrading systems and teaches you system trading skills that can make you a better trader.

How Day Traders Make Big Money - Their Secrets Revealed!

By Tim Hunt

A job as a day trader is a great way to make money in a very lucrative field. It is not, though, an easy way to get rich quick. You will need to put effort and work into it.

Day trading stocks and commodities is a great job and a quite profitable one as well. It requires certain traits for success, and certain habits will need to be internalized.

Time management is the first important habit. You must be able to wake up early and alert first thing in the morning and be ready to evaluate how you'll play the market that day. All of this must happen before the opening bell, which starts at 9:00 a.m. in New York, 6:00 a.m. in California, and 5:00 a.m. in Alaska and Hawaii. Getting out of bed early is only half the story; you'll also need to stay on schedule and have a good internal alarm clock. If you're the type who can't function before 11:00 a.m. or has to guzzle down multiple cups of coffee before facing the day, day trading may not be the job for you.

A second critical habit is a good set of numerical analysis skills. Making and losing money based on gut hunches is a given, but you'll also need to make educated choices based on what you've read, summarized, and synthesized so that you can make good judgments quickly with this background knowledge. All of this needs to be done fast, and you'll need to quickly judge trends in financial markets and apply these snap analyses to your trading decisions.

Although you'll need some good quantitative skills, you don't have to be a mathematician to be a successful day trader. You can cultivate your quantitative skills with just a bit of practice.

A Third habit of successful day traders is the ability to make sharp observations, and to be patient when things don't pan out. Observations must be made quickly and with good short term memory. Though it can be hard, you must train yourself to stay calm even when you lose a trade, and just as importantly, keep your cool even when you make a winning trade.

Dedication to research is a fourth important habit. You won't need to pore over accounting statements like professionals in long term investing, but you will need to analyze trends that appear in the constant influx of information. You'll need to take an active role in decision-making, and choose trades based on this background knowledge. You can't make good judgments without the right research; but don't let an obsessive need to research cripple your ability to think and act on your feet.

Remember that you don't have to do this analytical research on your own. High ranking day traders use a variety of tools and have different research and data services at the ready.

If you decide to pursue a career change in the field of day trading, you'll need to start by building a support team, including a broker, and some investors who can help you apply leverage to the market. Recognize that you will need to work, and it's a kind of work that requires focus, drive, and dedication.

If you think your skills are a good fit for day trading, this can be an incredible way to earn great money. It's an enjoyable profession that can "enrich" your life as well. - 23212

About the Author:

Hopefully this day trading advice motivates you to enter into this exciting venture. Click Here to discover a proven trading strategy that is making plenty of people great money!

A Case For A Financial Literacy Class

By Damian Papworth

One of my most enduring memories from high school is that in almost every class I attended, it didn't matter what the subject was, there was always some smarty pants who would say to the teacher "I just don't see how this will help me later in life". Its funny how the teachers never really gave them a satisfactory answer.

What a great exercise it would be, to find out what exactly turned out to be useful from each class, and in which cases those troublemakers were right. In other words, what have I actually used to get ahead in life and which class did it come from? However, that exploration will be left for another time. There is one subject which would obviously be useful for anyone in any career or vocation, one that should be taught in every school, but for some reason never is. The subject is Financial Literacy, something we could all put to excellent use.

Financial Literacy class would prepare students with the basics, giving students the opportunity to examine their possibilities and have some basis for making decisions regarding their finances. You want to give students a chance, as many make the most foolish mistakes and ended up mired in debt they are unable to service. Financial Literacy would try to counteract that; here is the way the class would progress.

Week 1. Is that a scam? How to recognize scams and not get involved in them. All they are, are people stealing your money.

Week 2. How to determine if you can take on a loan. Most young people have no conception of what it means to pay back a debt. The second phase of class would lay out the problems of taking on debt and when it should be done. Personal and business loans would be discussed, along with examining credit card statements and taking on mortgages. The positive aspects (tax-wise) will also be covered.

Week 3. What type of assets do you own? In this lesson, different assets would be explained. For example, an appreciating asset would be compared to a depreciating asset. Similarly a consumable would be compared to an earning asset. These assets would be compared over time, so you can see the impact purchasing different items has to your net wealth over time.

Week 4. How should you invest? The different types of risk involved with any investment would be explored. With so many possibilities for going right and wrong with an investment, students would get an idea about how to spot a dangerous move as opposed to a promising opportunity. Making investments that work can lead to success, and vice versa.

Week 5. Should you leverage your investments. This lesson would run through the advantages and risks associated with leveraging investment portfolios. Tax would have to be covered to some extent in this lesson also as there are some definite tax advantages when borrowing to invest.

Final module. Coming to the end of Financial Literacy class, students would try and see the big picture. Laying out the biggest mistakes made by the young would be an excellent closing statement. Along with any cautionary tales, there would be a way to approach finances proactively. For the young, the advice given would be to work with what you have, and line up ways to increase your earnings without taking on high risks. - 23212

About the Author:

Damian Papworth understands that you do not need mutual fund investments. Having learned some easy investment strategies, you can be your own investment manager.

Foreign Stock Investing For A Diversified Portfolio

By Riz Goodman

Foreign stock markets are now within your reach and the best thing is that there are several brokerage houses which now offer the facility of buying the stocks listed elsewhere. You need not do anything extra to buy these stocks apart from the extra research.

That said it used to be not so easy to buy shares of a non-US company but now that has become very simple and can be done with just a simple click. The first thing that you have to do is to check with your online brokerage house if they have the facility to trade in other countries stock exchanges. And also check if they will allow you to trade in the foreign stocks via your US dollar denominated account. Another option is to make sure that you invest in the ADR of the non-US companies listed. These ADR's reflect the underlying stocks as they are listed in the home stock exchange of the country.

Foreign stocks denominated mutual funds and the country specific mutual funds is another way to invest in the stocks of emerging market countries. The best part of the whole deal is that then you can avoid any foreign stocks analysis and any other regulatory challenges and hurdles.

Currency devaluations and exchange rate fluctuations are the main risks which can impact your foreign investments. You will need to closely monitor them. Do proper research before investing in the emerging market stocks. The foreign markets can be challenging and risky but the fact is that they also provide better returns

Research is the key here and that will mean accessing information about foreign companies. There are specific brokerage houses that provide research on foreign companies. You can do your own research by looking up for the foreign companies on the internet. Invest wisely and invest for the long term in these markets. - 23212

About the Author:

The author writes about how to buy foreign stocks and also suggests top 10 stocks to buy

Real Estate Agents Getting The Shaft?

By Adam Moore

You could have dealt with a lot of estate agents but did you wonder how your real estate agent gets paid? You certainly know of that all of the talk about commission, pc.s, charges, closing costs etc . Are broken down at closing. what are his exact earnings? The truth is that you aren't the person that is paying your agent a commission.

It is interesting to grasp that the the guy who slogged so tough to trade or find your house isn't getting as much as you suspect.

The fact is that the estate agent you are interacting with either works for a brokerage house or an established licensed broker. Whether it is purchasing or selling the agent brings a customer to the table, and a deal is signed between the brokerage house and the client.

When the consultation is materialized into a sale, the broker gets an average of 6% of the sale price as a commission. The commission is then divided up between the houses, and after the brokers decide how much to pass on to the agent who really did the all leg work. Various factors are taken into consideration while finalizing the amount. The total experience he has in this field or in that market, the time the agent has spent with the company and the level of his productiveness decide the amount he is getting.

As an example a green representative may only get 30 % of the cut where as a veteran who brings in heaps of business, could get half or even more of the proceeds.

There's another strategy too. Here the agent can get the whole commission provided he pays charges each month to the brokerage house. You can consider this a a costs or a rent for using the office and using the name of the organization to back his name.

Some representatives find this deal extraordinarily advantageous because regardless of how much they make at the end of the month the amount they should pay remains fixed. But the members who are new to the business may not have a good client list and thus may not get the advantage of word-of-mouth. For such brand spanking new agents, the standard split is more preferable as they may not be able enough to make that fixed payment a month.

Also there are some factors that gobble the ultimate profit manufactured by the brokerage house and the representative. In case the brokerage house is a franchise, after every commission there's a charge fee that must be paid.

And then a certain percentage that comes out of the commission which is often paid by the seller at closing. However, this is can be negotiable depending on the sort of market. Another point open to debate is the way in which the commission can be divided. So, as you can see, it isn't just the 6 % but a load more things that count. Your agent gets the cash only after everyone else gets the money. - 23212

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Finding the best information about how a real estate agent makes their money can be overwhelming at times. One of the best places we found online to get the straight facts is real estate agent wildwood nj