Thursday, April 22, 2010

Retirement Income and Inflation Protection Strategy

Master limited partnerships (MLPs) are ongoing businesses which pay out most of the cash flow to investors. Master limited partnerships are like bonds in that they pay out regular cash to investors. However, they are unlike bonds in that the payout to investors has historically risen with inflation and through increasing profits. Master limited partnerships are also like stocks in that they are equities and trade on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. Unlike typical companies, the income of the MLP is not taxed at the corporate level. All the money that would have been taxed is passed along to the investors. The effect is that there is substantially more cash available to investors.

Investors seeking to build a MLP portfolio should consider the following:

• The balance sheet and income statements are reviewed for strength.
• Projections for distribution increases over the next three to five years are ascertained.
• Examine the ratio of cash flow paid out to investors with the amount that has been available to pay out.
• Divide the MLPs into three risk profiles which are as follows: Rock Solid, Secure and Other.
• Examine the percentage of the cash payment to investors that is tax deferred.
• Review research from a variety of companies and industry sources.

Unlike bonds, MLPs have a history of raising distributions at a faster rate than inflation. For example - Buckeye Pipeline, headquartered in Radnor PA, paid out $1.20 in 1991. Today, Buckeye pays out $3.71 per year, a 209 percent increase in nineteen years.

When people as me about the risks of MLPs compared to bonds, I ask them if they would be happy to be assured they would get their money back in a twenty year U.S. Treasury bond. If we look back over the last nineteen years, would you have been happy getting your money back from a triple A rated bond? A first class stamp was $.25 at the beginning of 1991.

If you invested $10,000 into a twenty year U.S. Treasury bond you would have received approximately $800 per year for twenty years. In January of 1991 you could have bought 3,200 first class stamps per year. Today you could only buy 1818 stamps per year. If you had invested the same $10,000 in Buckeye Pipeline, you would have received approximately $1000 per year and bought 4000 stamps. Today you could purchase 7026 stamps per year with the cash flow generated.

So, with Buckeye you could purchase 7026 stamps vs. 1818 stamps per year from the U.S. Treasury bond. The original investment was the same. When understanding risk, it is important to rank the risk. If you consider inflation as a risk over the next fifteen years, you need to own something that can raise prices and pay you an increasing return. Of course there is no guarantee that the future return from a portfolio of MLPs will grow at any particular rate. Just as there is no way to guarantee just how fast the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar will drop over the next fifteen years. I am willing to bet that you will buy fewer postage stamps in 2025 than you can today with the income you receive from U.S. Treasury bonds.

©DeWitt Capital Management

David T. DeWitt, CFP specializes in Creating Income for Life, Growth Stocks and IRAs. For our latest report, visit our website at http://www.incomingchecks.com

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Day Trading Techniques - How to Exploit the Open to Make Money

Quite often the open is unusually high or low in relationship to a normal trading range a particular day, so called gaps. One reason might be that the market is overreacted on special news.

There is an old adage saying that "the market abhors a vacuum", meaning that most gaps (not all) eventually will be filled. In this regards, many traders exploit these gaps in the open to make a quick profit in a short amount of time.

Here's how you can do it if you have gaps on the upside:

If the stock opens unusually high it is telling you that the buyers are so motivated and they are prepared to pay more for the stock that day than they did throughout yesterday's trading range.

In this case you'll enter the market at a point close to the lower part of the gap and place stop-loss a safe distance under your entry position.

Here's how you can do it if you have gaps on the downside:

If the stock is open unusually low, it is telling you that the sellers are so fearful and they are willing to liquidate at prices well below yesterday's trading range.

In this case you'll enter the market at a point close to the start of the gap and place stop-loss a safe distance over your entry position.

Such positioning as pointed above is often low risk because you soon find out whether you are right or not. If you are wrong, the market will tell you by moving quickly beyond the gap areas. So, exploit the gaps in the open can often be a great way to make money day trading.

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Day Trading, Buying and Selling Strategies

The term 'day trading' is used to define the act of buying and then selling a stock in the same day. A day trader tries to make a profit by taking advantage of small price changes in the market through leveraging a large amount of capital. There are a few common day trading strategies, and these have been listed below:

There are certain stocks that are great for day trading systems, and a trader may choose them depending on their price and availability. A trader will look for two qualities when daily trading a stock and those are its volatility and its liquidity. The volatility of a stock is its estimated price range for that day; this is the price range in which the trader will then operate. The more volatility a stock has the great the profit may be, and the greater the loss may be. The Liquidity is what allows you to exit and enter the stock at a quality price.

One example day trader strategy favorite is Sun Microsystems. The reason why many day traders buy this stock is because it is very cheap to purchase and very liquid and volatile. Other stocks like this are very convenient for day traders.

One of the most popular trading strategies is called Scalping. This practice sells the stock immediate after profit can be made from selling it. This type of trading tends to move very fast, with the traders watching the moment the stock becomes profitable so they can sell it.

Daily Pivots is a strategy that allows profits from the volatility of the stock. This is accomplished by buying stocks during the low time of the day and when the high time of the day comes, the stocks are then sold. When traders short stocks after they have had a rapid upward move, the process is called Fading. This strategy uses the assumption that the stocks have been over bought, and earlier buyers are already making profits from and selling they're stocks. In addition, they also try to scare out any existing or potential share buyers. This strategy is very risk, but if all goes well it can generate a huge profit.

The Momentum strategy utilizes strong trend moves or trading on news releases. The day trader will buy when there has been news releases and then continue on with they're trend until there are signs of reversal.

Generally, daily trading requires the same tools that are used when trading normally. Buying shares is quite the same as normal trading, but the exits are very different. Most of the time, you will want to exit when interest of the stock has decreased. With day trading, investors are more vulnerable to quick price raises and drops, much more so than normal trading. Trading can be a very difficult thing to master, and there are many who try it and fail. But if you create one or more good day trading strategies, with practice and persistence you can stand to make a great amount of profit.

The author has spent a lot of time learning about stocks for cheap and how to find value stocks. Read more about stock trading investments at John Espinosa's website.

This article shows you one of the many techniques employed by professional traders when executing their trading strategies. There are many trading methods, systems, techniques and strategies used by professional traders -- from basic moving average-based methods to high-speed, high-frequency quantitative trading strategies. Trading is trading. Whether the instrument is futures, Forex, indices, commodities, interest rates or individual stocks that make up the stock market; there are common elements to all of them. One common element is how professional traders trade these separate instruments. Because of this it is possible to identify the techniques professional traders employ to boost your own success in trading. The most significant goal that every trader is continually aiming for is reduced risk and increased reward on every trade. This leads to the following... Professional Traders Trade COUNTER-TREND This may seemingly go against what you already know about trading -- that you "must" trade with-the-trend to have any chance of success. Now, trading just plain counter-trend would kill any traders' account in no time -- professional trader or not. This is known as picking-tops and picking-bottoms (link to another article perhaps). Professional traders will generally have a trading strategy, method or system that underlies the actual taking of trades -- they are not just rolling a dice or trading when they feel like it. There is structure. There are essentially two types of market scenario traders must deal with: #1 - Ranging #2 - Trending Professional traders treat #1 -- ranging markets -- in various ways. Some will aim to only trade ranging markets, some will aim to stay away from ranging markets and the rest will try to adapt to what the market is throwing at them. Figuring out when a market is likely to range, and likely to continue ranging, is larger in scope than is possible to talk about here. But simply put, if the market is ranging, and you're trading counter-trend, it is in fact very easy to make money. The focus of this article is #2 -- trending markets -- and the-how-and-the-why professional traders trade counter-trend when a market is trending. Going back to what is the common goal among traders -- reduced-risk and increased-reward on every trade -- this is the modus operandi, or underlying goal in-mind while trading. Markets don't trend in a straight line. They flow. They move, they come back a bit then they move again. Even when the trend is identified it is still about getting the risk down and the reward up. Going back to the original premise of, 'Professional traders trade counter-trend'. The risk is generally not worth it unless the trader gets a bargain price. In other words, the potential risk must be small and the potential gain must be large. If the market is in an uptrend, the trader will not try to fight it by selling it. He will trade, what can be regarded as counter-trend, by buying when the price goes down -- anticipating that the down-move is temporary before the trend resumes. The same goes for the market in a downtrend. He will trade this in a counter-trend manner by selling when the market makes a rise - anticipating the down-move to continue. This may sound very simple -- and it is. But there is something more to be read into it. So the professionals are essentially just buying 'dips' and selling 'rallies' -- that's old ancient trading "advice". Here Is The Secret... The professionals will never be caught buying-the-high or selling-the-low. The amateur trader is seduced by seeing charts where the market makes a new high, keeps going and never looks back; this looks like a no-risk trade. And it was -- on THAT trade. What the amateur misses is the many times a new high was made and the market came right back. The professional trader is reluctant to "pay-up". So he misses the one "no-risk" trade where the market makes a new-high and keeps going. So what? He never missed all the low-risk bargains each time the market pulled back. This article was not about a strategy in the typical sense. But to become a professional trader, you must start thinking like a professional trader. Most professional traders do not have "fancy", "secret" systems. They see the market for what it really is. Yes, they know things that amateurs do not know. Yes, they do things that amateurs don't do. And yes, these things can be learned. James Macdonald REAL Market Trading Learn how to trade at a professional level by going to http://realmarkettrading.com/REAL-Trading-Course.html

The most important rule concerning day trading of stocks in the United States is called the Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule. Approved by the SEC, this rule states that you can only perform three day trades within a rolling five-business-day period if you have less than $25,000 in a cash or margin account. However, if you have more than $25,000 in a margin account, there is no legal limit on the number of day trades you may make.

Definition of Day Trading
A day trade is the buying and selling (or shorting and covering) of the same security on the same day.

Penalty for Violating the Rule
You will be flagged as a Pattern Day Trader by the brokerage for that account. Your account will be frozen (no new positions can be added) for 90 days or until you deposit enough cash to get your account value above the $25,000 minimum level, whichever comes sooner. Some brokerages will warn you ahead of time when you are about to be flagged as a PDT, while others will not, so be careful if you trade a lot!

If you violated this rule accidentally and you have no intentions of being a day trader, you have the option of informing your brokerage of the situation and they have the ability to remove the PDT flag from your account.

Why Do They Have This Rule?
The goal of this rule is to protect beginners and those with little cash from participating in risky trading activities that could lead to significant losses in a small amount of time.

Example 1: Safe from PDT Rule
1. Monday: Buy and Sell MSFT
2. Tuesday: Buy and Sell GOOG
3. Wednesday: Buy and Sell F
4. Next Monday: Buy and Sell GM
Result: 3 trades in a 5-day period

Example 2: Violation of PDT Rule
1. Thursday: Buy and Sell MSFT
2. Friday: Buy and Sell GOOG
3. Monday: Buy and Sell F
4. Tuesday: Buy and Sell GM
Result: 4 trades in a 5-day period

Three Days for Settlement
There are several other federal regulations that affect day trading, and the settlement period is one of them. Whenever you buy or sell a position, it takes up to three days for the trade to "settle." This is similar to a check taking a few days to clear at your bank. In the first three days after a sale, your brokerage may or may not allow you to trade using the money from that sale, since it has not settled yet. This restriction only applies to cash accounts though. The way to get around this problem is to not spend all of your money on one trade. This will make sure you always have some settled cash to trade with. If you have a margin account, your brokerage will lend you the money during the settlement period so that you don't have to wait before you trade again.

Nicholas Swezey is the creator of the free stock market game on his site, http://www.HowTheMarketWorks.com.

Trading Strategies of the Professionals

This article shows you one of the many techniques employed by professional traders when executing their trading strategies.

There are many trading methods, systems, techniques and strategies used by professional traders -- from basic moving average-based methods to high-speed, high-frequency quantitative trading strategies.

Trading is trading. Whether the instrument is futures, Forex, indices, commodities, interest rates or individual stocks that make up the stock market; there are common elements to all of them. One common element is how professional traders trade these separate instruments.

Because of this it is possible to identify the techniques professional traders employ to boost your own success in trading.

The most significant goal that every trader is continually aiming for is reduced risk and increased reward on every trade.

This leads to the following...

Professional Traders Trade COUNTER-TREND

This may seemingly go against what you already know about trading -- that you "must" trade with-the-trend to have any chance of success.

Now, trading just plain counter-trend would kill any traders' account in no time -- professional trader or not. This is known as picking-tops and picking-bottoms (link to another article perhaps).

Professional traders will generally have a trading strategy, method or system that underlies the actual taking of trades -- they are not just rolling a dice or trading when they feel like it. There is structure.

There are essentially two types of market scenario traders must deal with:

#1 - Ranging

#2 - Trending

Professional traders treat #1 -- ranging markets -- in various ways. Some will aim to only trade ranging markets, some will aim to stay away from ranging markets and the rest will try to adapt to what the market is throwing at them.

Figuring out when a market is likely to range, and likely to continue ranging, is larger in scope than is possible to talk about here. But simply put, if the market is ranging, and you're trading counter-trend, it is in fact very easy to make money.

The focus of this article is #2 -- trending markets -- and the-how-and-the-why professional traders trade counter-trend when a market is trending.

Going back to what is the common goal among traders -- reduced-risk and increased-reward on every trade -- this is the modus operandi, or underlying goal in-mind while trading.

Markets don't trend in a straight line. They flow. They move, they come back a bit then they move again. Even when the trend is identified it is still about getting the risk down and the reward up.

Going back to the original premise of, 'Professional traders trade counter-trend'. The risk is generally not worth it unless the trader gets a bargain price. In other words, the potential risk must be small and the potential gain must be large.

If the market is in an uptrend, the trader will not try to fight it by selling it. He will trade, what can be regarded as counter-trend, by buying when the price goes down -- anticipating that the down-move is temporary before the trend resumes.

The same goes for the market in a downtrend. He will trade this in a counter-trend manner by selling when the market makes a rise - anticipating the down-move to continue.

This may sound very simple -- and it is. But there is something more to be read into it. So the professionals are essentially just buying 'dips' and selling 'rallies' -- that's old ancient trading "advice".

Here Is The Secret...

The professionals will never be caught buying-the-high or selling-the-low.

The amateur trader is seduced by seeing charts where the market makes a new high, keeps going and never looks back; this looks like a no-risk trade. And it was -- on THAT trade. What the amateur misses is the many times a new high was made and the market came right back.

The professional trader is reluctant to "pay-up". So he misses the one "no-risk" trade where the market makes a new-high and keeps going. So what? He never missed all the low-risk bargains each time the market pulled back.

This article was not about a strategy in the typical sense. But to become a professional trader, you must start thinking like a professional trader. Most professional traders do not have "fancy", "secret" systems. They see the market for what it really is.

Yes, they know things that amateurs do not know.

Yes, they do things that amateurs don't do.

And yes, these things can be learned.

James Macdonald
REAL Market Trading

Learn how to trade at a professional level by going to http://realmarkettrading.com/REAL-Trading-Course.html

Forex Trading Software - How it Can Significantly Boost Your Earning Potential

The most successful Forex traders today are generally using Forex trading software when doing trades at the foreign currency market. This is due to the fact that most of these robots are able to generate more reliable and credible analysis that can significantly boost the earning potentials of several investors in foreign currency trade.

Most Forex trading software is generally programmed to read complex algorithms and data that allow them to generate excellent reports and analysis based on market trends over the years; as well as on other factors that affect the performances of each currency. It can significantly save you a lot of time and efforts in digging through heaping piles of relevant information and come up with credible analysis.

Another positive side of using these Forex robots is that they are devoid of emotional influences and personal preferences; it simply generates reports based on facts and trends, and possible outcome. However, on the negative side of using the program, you cannot purely on it to do the trade for you. Your expertise and skills, as well as your Forex trading strategies, are still required for complete success in this venture.

Bear in mind that the Forex trading software is an excellent tool for you to improve your success rate; and boosts your earnings in just little time compared to investors doing the trade without using one of these products to aid them. Hence, having one of these robots to support you in your investments in foreign currency market gives you significant edge over other traders who are not using the product.

Therefore, if you are harbouring some thoughts on investing some of your extra money in foreign currency market, make sure to get Forex trading software like the FAP turbo robot to support you in your venture if you want to have some gains from your investments.

Get more advice on how to get more gains in foreign currency trade at Foreign Currency Trading and start generous income from this business.

Penny Stock Investing Vs Trading

When most people think of getting rich with Penny Stocks, they are actually thinking of investing in Penny Stocks, NOT trading them. They are actually very different.

When you invest you are generally investing for a reason, you may like the companies' fundamentals, you may like the technology, the management, there could be a multitude of reasons which you want to invest in the company.

When you are looking to trade, you have an idea of what you are going for. You can make a certain percent on the move, you generally set a stop and a target. You have a defined time period, whether it is 5 minutes, the end of the day, a month, etc. There are many different types of trading that one can do, fundamental, swing, position, pairs, etc.

When trading penny stocks you generally look at it a bit differently. You will not ask yourself, "how will this company do in 10 years?", instead you will most likely say something like "this company is breaking out, what's going on?", you then look up the news and find out whether it's something which you would like to get into or not. You make your move, or you get stopped out, and then you continue. You do not hold it hoping that it turns into the next Microsoft, which it may very well do.

Penny Stocks can work well both as an investor, or as a trader. One is certainly not better than the other, investing is longer term, without a finite life, your risk is usually higher, but you will be able to make it big. When you trade, you will make a large percentage much faster, but you will usually never be able to catch the stock that most people only dream of, which is actually fine for me. I do not need 100000% my return, a much lower percentage will make me a very happy man.

Milton Matthews is a trader who spent his free time writing articles for http://pennystockfinds.com on his free time. For more information on this, please check out http://pennystockfinds.com/penny-stock-investing.php