Selling Strategies - Setting a Stop Loss
Sometimes the best way of lowering exposure to risk is not to invest at all! However, when we make the decision to jump into the muddy waters of the stock market, its always a good idea to have a life jacket ready, just in case. We all have stories of that "must have" "can't lose" stock that looking back, we didn't really need to buy, and it definitely lost. So, how to best protect yourself when the markets disagree with your due diligence? Trailing stop loss. Its important to understand the psychology of investing. When we make money, there is instant euphoria. When we start to lose money, there is a sudden "deer caught in the headlights" type of emotion, which makes us unable to do the right thing. We fear that the moment we sell, will be the moment that it starts to rebound. Not only do we fear that we will be that guy who sold at the low of the day, but that we will miss out on untold fortunes because we got out too early. While this happens, more often than not, a small loss turns into a much bigger loss. Remember, a 40% loss started off as a 5% loss. So what is the best stop loss strategy? Well, we happen to have 2. One simple, one a little more complicated, but possibly more effective and capital saving. The first strategy is called a "trailing stop loss". Its simple and effective. We're going to add a small twist to it. A traditional trailing stop loss simply means that you set a percentage that you are willing to lose. For example, if you purchase 1000 shares of ABC at $5/share, you could set a stop loss at 10%. This means that if the stock dips below 10% of your purchase price ($5 - 10% = $4.50), you're out of the market and no longer risking capital. If the share price moves higher, you would set your stop loss at 10% below the closing price. If ABC moves to $5.50, you would set your stop loss at $4.95. If the stock drops below that price, you're out. By setting your stop loss at the time of your purchase, you are taking the emotion out of investing. Specifically, you are taking out the "deer caught in the headlights" emotion. This will save you grief and will save you money. If your stock moves like you think it will, you can lock in your gains automatically. Our twist to this strategy though, is to first establish the dollar amount that initial stop loss is worth, and let that dictate what your stop loss will be. Given the same example as above, your initial stop loss would be $4.50. You would only be risking $0.50 per share or $500. This represents the most you are willing to lose, regardless of which way the investment goes. If the share price moves to $7.00, instead of setting your stop loss at $6.30, (thus risking $0.70 or $700 of your money), you would set your stop loss at $6.50, which risks the same $500 you were initially willing to lose when you first started. This little twist helps you keep more of your profitable investments. Why put more profits at risk? The second stop loss strategy is, although a little more complicated, will protect more of your money. While we would love to take credit for this strategy, we found it when reading Chart Trading by Darryl Guppy. This strategy starts by looking at your overall capital, not the amount of the specific investment. For example, if you had $20 000 in your investment account, you could trade 51 times if each time you invested you put 2% of your total capital at risk. While 2% doesn't sound like a lot, lets have a look at an example. Given your investment account has $20 000 in it and you only want to put 2% of it at risk, you would be willing to risk $400 per trade. This ensures that you will have 51 chances to get it right before you run out of money. Where you set your stop loss is basically the point where you are risking $400. Given our initial example, your stop loss would be at $4.60. If the price moves from $5 to below $4.60, you have lost $400. What if you purchased 2000 shares at the same $5? Your stop loss would be then set to $4.80. Anything below that, and you have risked more than $400. If you think that you want a deeper stop loss, then you would purchase fewer shares. The idea is simple: you never risk more than the same amount per trade. As the price increases, you then change the amount of your stop loss accordingly. If the stock hits $7, you would set your stop loss at $6.60. Given our initial stop loss strategy, assuming you lost $500 each trade, you could lose approximately 40 times before you ran out of money. However, what if you purchased 2000 shares at $5 each? Your 10% stop loss would put $1000 at risk. This will lower the number of chances you have at getting it right. Its up to you how much money you are preparing to risk. Many investors think of the ways they are going to spend their profits before they are made. Its much better to think about the amount you are prepared to lose. This way, when your hard work pays off, you'll appreciate it more. On the other hand, if the market disagrees with you, you can still keep the majority of your money!
Other Online Trading Articles
The Difference Between Full Service and Discount When it comes to choosing a brokerage, you will have to decide between full service or discount.The difference is basically in the amount of money you pay and the amount of help you receive in making decisions. A full-service brokerage firm will offer you every imaginable financial service. You will find everything from professional advic ...Currency Trading Seminars – The Best Way To Learn and They Can Be FREE The best way to learn to trade currencies is to attend a currency trading seminar, as you will gain a far greater insight into trading than by simply reading books.Many currency trading seminars not only allow you to learn theory, but also to apply what you have learned in practice in real trading situations, so you can test what you have ...Barnes and Noble: A Buy or Sell? As Amazon recently reported its quarterly results, which, not only did I predict right on, but surprised many other experts and analysts awaiting a more negative outcome, one of its competitors, Barnes and Noble (BKS), which typically utilizes similar methods in achieving its respective businesses will be reporting earnings shortly as well. With ...Discount Online Futures Trading Futures are contracts that obligate sellers to provide buyers a commodity or other asset at an agreed-upon price and date in the future. Futures are widely traded for commodities such as coffee, sugar, oil, and wheat. Futures are also traded for financial instruments such as stock market indexes, government bonds. and foreign currencies. Futures ...B2B Connections With One of the Planet's Biggest Markets Alibaba.com is a Hong Kong based online business-to-business commerce and auction company that has developed into a substantial resource for both Asian businesses and Western corporations. Originally designed to connect Chinese businessmen with Western buyers, Alibaba manages a bilingual format that both Chinese businessmen and English speaking ...Order Types There many different order types used to buy and sell stock. There three primary ones are market orders, limit orders, and stop orders.A market order is an order to buy or sell a stock at the current market price. The trader is not guaranteed to get the exact price they want, but he can be sure the order will take place.A limit ord ...Is Your Autoresponder Truly Promoting Your Company? Getting other people to promote your web site is one of the most popular Internet marketing methods around, today. Affiliate relationships are all the rave with people who have web sites. Web marketers worldwide are trading links everyday, in hopes of driving each other's traffic to their respective sites. This is certainly something any hard ...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. They could not imagine wh ...Automatic Link Exchange Factors Automatic link exchange is the method of links being instantaneously switched over with other Internet websites. There are assorted ways of arranging an automatic link exchange with webmasters. The quickest and most effective way to forward emails to another website owner is to perform an automatic link exchange. Many computer users visit web ...A Look at Online Forex Brokers An online forex broker is a firm that facilitates retail trading using Internet technologies. Global Forex Trading (GFT), one of the popular online forex brokers. It provides retail traders with a free demo trading account, allows users to open a live account, gives live help, provides software called DealBook FX 2, and allows viewing of accoun ...Day Trading Futures Day trading used to be the sole domain of the floor traders. They always have the advantage of bargains on commodities. They have the advantage of being able to judge the market breath, and thereby make the proper predictions with the correct price for a stock. However they don’t get any commission or pay any commission.The trend has chan ...Stock Portfolios Stock portfolio is a complete combination of securities as well as investments that are held by an individual or institution. A portfolio comprises of an array of government and company bonds, common stocks from various business establishments and many other forms of securities and assets. There are many different stocks available in the market ...What Are Some Of The Factors That Make Forex Markets Different? There are a number of factors that make the Forex market unique. Many of these factors can have tremendous benefits for traders worldwide. Two of the most important are the high level of leverage and the extremely high liquidity.Forex markets have some unique features that provide an incomparable potential for profitable currency trading ...Forex Currency Trading Systems Everybody wants to make quick money, and there is no other legitimate market like forex trading, where you can build a fortune, if you are lucky enough, in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Also, forex trading is a legitimate business, and there is no stigma attached with as there is with gambling, though practically speaking, trading in curr ...Your Guide to Learning a Forex Trading System There are a great number of people in America that are interested in investing in order to make a tidy profit. There are many ways to invest and many ways to make profits by investing. One method that has been gaining in popularity is that of the Forex trading system. If you are unsure of what this is, let me explain. Forex stands for foreig ...Choosing a Stock Market Analyst With so many different companies offering such a wide variety of stocks and bonds, it can be difficult to keep track of which ones are good investments and which ones will cause you to lose money. If you aren't sure how to tell the good stocks from those that aren't so great, or simply don't have the time that you'd need to keep track of all of ...Forex Trading Tips Foreign Exchange Trading better known as FOREX trading is the buying and selling of currencies from different nations. With different factors involved in this trading and its fast paced nature, it is best that you find simple ways to give you a head start in the industry.The main purpose of getting involve in FOREX trading, just like ever ...Forex Investment - Making The Decision Is The Hardest Part When investing in the Forex market, making a Forex investment can be the best decision and can definitely earn you the best profits. Because there is very little in the way of barring entrance to the Forex market making a Forex investment is an excellent opportunity. Especially for those individuals who have low investments to start with, this c ...Forex Mini Account Forex market has many advantages over other foreign exchange markets and due to its very high profitability potential most of the people around the world are looking for entering into the world of Forex trading. But one of the main worries of the new forex trader is if he needs lots of money in order to get accessed t ...New High in DOW is Meaningless There was dancing in the streets, well, at least on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week when the Dow Jones Industrial Index closed at an all time high. The many cheerleaders on CNBC-TV were ecstatic screaming, “I told you so”. But what did it really tell us.The DJIA or DOW as it is also called is composed of 30 stocks that ...Is It A Buy Inside J C Penney? Until this morning (November 3, 2006) I believed that much of the retail industry was overbought, and that any capital gains accumulated during the industry’s incredible run should be taken off the market into other areas. However, after seeing that the unemployment level of 4.4% is the lowest amount in over five years, I foresee a tremendous op ...Customer Service Call Centers A call center is a centralized office of a company that answers incoming telephone calls from customers. A call center may be an office that makes outgoing telephone calls to customers by the means of telemarketing. Such an office may also responds to letters, faxes, e-mails and similar written correspondence.Customer service has always s ...About the Spanish Stock Market - Still the Place to Be The Ibex 35 is outperforming other stock exchanges in Europe. To date the ibex 35 has gained 23 % over 2006. In comparison, the Dutch stock exchange (AEX) has gained only 11% this year.One of the factors that has contributed to the rise of the Spanish stock exchange index (the IBEX 35) is the (expected) takeover premium that is prized in ...Consistency in Day Trading If there is a single goal that a trader should have, novice and experienced alike, it should be consistency.Studies have shown that over 80% of traders do not have a trading plan.The most successful traders have a methodology or system that they use in a very consistent manner.Even a bad plan that is used consistently will f ...Beginning Forex - How Are Lots Traded & What The Heck is a PIP? If you are new to Forex, no doubt you are confused by all of the strange and unfamiliar terminology. For example, what is a pip? Also, you are probably already aware that Forex trading can be risky. How can you limit your loss and best protect your funds? This article briefly covers how currency lots are traded to help you better understand how ...The Truth Behind Stock Market Trading If you happen to watch a business show or business news on TV, you’d probably hear words or phrases like “stock market,” ‘trading,” “stocks” or “stock market trading.” What are these things and what is their significance? To answer your questions, here’s an overview on what stock market trading is.DefinitionIn simple terms, stock m ...Futures Options Trading A forward contract is a customized contract between two parties to buy or sell a specified quantity of a particular commodity at a specified price on a specified future date. Futures are exchange-traded forward contracts, i.e., forward contracts done in organized exchanges like stock or commodity exchanges.A futures contract is standardiz ...Dividends--Stocks' Secret Weapon During the 1990’s bull market, interest in stock dividends dropped to near zero. But with the collapse of the tech bubble, there has been a growing appreciation for stocks which pay dividends. Nevertheless, dividends are still often undervalued by many stock investors.Dividends are stocks’ secret weapon. Studies show that dividends accoun ...Is it Viable to Buy Shares of Viacom? With earnings results just a little more than a week away, many traders are anxiously awaiting how the television giant, Viacom (VIA), will perform. Recently put into the publicly exchanged market, Viacom has not done that well relative to many of its competitors, year to date. However, if there is any indication of how powerful earnings are thi ...
|
