MIAMI (MarketWatch) — For years, people have been warning of an impending stock-market crash. Those who listened buried their money in short-term bonds or cash and missed out on one of the greatest comebacks in market history. The purpose of this article is to help traders and investors understand the clues and psychological characteristics that often precede a market crash. No one can predict the day or time, but if you pay attention, you can recognize the signals. Clue no. 1: Leading stocks fall This comes from “How To Make Money In Stocks” by Investor’s Business Daily founder and Chairman…
MIAMI, Fla. (MarketWatch) — If you ask many traders which market indicator they’d use if they could only choose one, it would be moving averages. Even if you don’t believe in technical analysis, take a look at moving averages, a powerful but simple indicator that gives important clues to market direction. The most popular are the 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages, although people use the 200-day measure as a guide to the long-term market trend. But in a recent article, MarketWatch columnist Mark Hulbert found that a portfolio following the 200-day moving average hadn’t produced such impressive results over…
MIAMI, Fla. (MarketWatch) — If you are going to day trade, it’s essential to have a set of rules to manage any possible scenario. Even more important, you must also have the discipline to follow these rules. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, traders will throw out their own rules and play it by ear — usually with disastrous results. Although there are many rules, the following are the 10 most important: 1. The three E’s: enter, exit, escape Rule No. 1 is having an enter price, an exit price, and an escape price in case of a worst-case scenario.…
Michael Sincere has helped thousands of beginning traders by way of his many books. In this interview, I ask him about getting started in daytrading today and what it takes to be successful and minimize risk to a new trading account. We discuss the best indicators for beginners and how sentiment can be used to gauge whether the market is near a top or bottom. We also discuss the amount of money a new trader should start with and how to use stops to limit the downside risk in any one trade. I also ask Michael about the realities of…
MIAMI, Fla. (MarketWatch) — With the huge advances in the stock market over the past year and heightened volatility, daytraders are back. Or maybe they never left. In the 1990’s, daytrading was all the rage, especially using risky strategies like scalping, where you’re in and out of hundreds of stocks in seconds or minutes, aiming to make small but quick profits. More recently, scalping is the strategy of choice of high-frequency traders (HFTs), the ultimate daytraders, who use high-speed computers to scalp for pennies in nanoseconds. Those pennies can add up to billions of dollars in trading profits every year.…
Commentary: Break out the Bollinger Bands, MACD and other trading tools
MIAMI, Fla. (MarketWatch) — Is it possible to predict what the stock market will do next?
After months of research and interviews with dozens of traders and investors, here are a few lessons worth sharing:Commentary: Stock operator’s reminiscences useful in today’s market
MIAMI, Fla. (MarketWatch) — If you ask traders to choose the most influential trading book, more than likely, they’ll mention Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin LeFevre. This book describes the experiences of one of the world’s greatest stock speculators, Jesse Livermore.Commentary: Gifts from the market, whether you’re naughty or nice
BOCA RATON, Fla. (MarketWatch) — After exposing the popular Hemline Index as an old-fashioned myth, I decided to take a closer look at a trio of well-known but misunderstood holiday indicators: The Santa Claus Rally, the January Effect, and the January Barometer.Commentary: Watch prices, not skirt lengths, to gauge the economy BOCA RATON, Fla. (MarketWatch) — Of the hundreds of market indicators used by traders and investors to help predict the market’s direction, one style never seems to fall out of fashion — but it should. The Hemline Index, first observed by economist George Taylor in 1926, predicts the market’s future by the way women dress. It works like this: when women’s hemlines (the line formed by the outside of a skirt) are shorter, women are taking more risks and spending, which is good for the economy and the stock market.…
Commentary: Understanding the mystery of implied volatility
By Michael Sincere and Mark Wolfinger
BOCA RATON, Fla. (MarketWatch) -- One reason why options have a reputation for being so difficult is a mysterious concept called "implied volatility." This is the unknown factor built into the price of an option.See how two trading systems use volume to better understand price changes.
For traders and investors, volume does more than measure how many shares are changing hands between market participants within a given time period. With the right interpretation, volume can be a way to read the mood and psychology of the market, discover the strategies of large investors, and put price changes in context.Enter too early or too late and you may lose money. That’s what trading reversals is all about—determining the correct entry point. With this strategy, you use specific technical indicators to recognize which stocks or markets are overbought or oversold, so you can trade in the opposite direction of everyone else. We talked to trading experts to gain some insight on when and why you may want to utilize this strategy.
What can you learn from four successful, self-directed, off-floor traders? Active Trader e-Newsletter selected independent traders, who employ distinct trading strategies: position, intraday, swing, and day trading. Then Mike Sincere, author of five books on trading, including Understanding Options (2006)
Did you know you can use options to make money every month or every quarter? And you can use options as insurance, for example, to protect your stock portfolio. And if, on occasion, you wanted to speculate, you could leverage your money to double or triple your profits. It will cost you a lot less than if you bought stocks. And finally, if you like to short stocks, it can be safer to use option strategies than to use the stock market.
A list of highly respected titles that one author believes should reside on the bookshelf of today’s informed active trader
Trading books have flooded the marketplace during the past 15 years, as new technology has made online securities trading a widespread enterprise for many individuals. Investors routinely trade directly from their homes, workplaces and even on the move with the latest wireless handset capabilities. Amid this burgeoning era of online securities trading, demand for information and education has exploded, a likely result of the growing recognition among novice and emerging traders that securing profits in ever-changing markets can require considerable due diligence. That’s why Fidelity Active Trader eNews asked author and trader Michael Sincere to compile a list of “must-have” trading books. To produce his list of recommendations, Sincere spoke with several trading professionals.