How to Avoid Losing Money on Bad Investments

Bad investment strategies not only lead to devastating losses of income, they can cause stress, feelings of failure and excessive worry and regret. Become educated about financial planning and learn the basics of how to avoid losing money on bad investments before giving your money away.

Steps

1. Set financial goals. Finding out how much money you want, and when you expect to get it, is the first step in financial planning and deciding on investment strategies.
   
2. Decide how much risk you can afford to take. Most of the opportunities that can make the most money are also risky; it's possible to lose all if not most of the investment and to have to worry regularly about how the investment is performing. If you are a nervous person, high risk investments may not be a good

How to Decide When to Sell a Stock

Many investors are unable to sell a stock; either they 'fall in love' with an investment, or are unwilling to admit a failed investment. Sell decisions should be made at the time of an investment.

Steps

1. Concentrate on selling stocks within your portfolio that are doing poorly, particularly if you cannot satisfactorily explain the loss as mere market emotion or an overreaction to a particular problem. William O'Neill compares a portfolio to a garden, you need to pull your weeds and not your flowers in order to have a profitable 'garden'. But do not allow growth in particular kind of investments that have done well in the past to unbalance your portfolio; rebalance it among companies and asset classes from time to time.
   

Investment Advice: Exchange Traded Funds As Part Of Your Investment Portfolio

'What should I invest in?' This is the most pertinent question for most individuals striving to formulate a financial plan. Zillions of books and millions of web pages are not sufficient to answer this question. This is because investment advice is not universal and one size does not fit all. It changes as per the unique situation and specific requirements of every individual. Thus, it is essential to consult an investment expert personally to devise a customised financial plan.

For their investment and retirement plans, many people do not want an actively managed portfolio but would rather invest in the lower cost option of passive funds, which will just track the selected market index. There are currently two main options available for passive investment: tracker funds or ETFs.

Investment Advice: Understanding ETFs

How to Create an Investment Plan

Creating a viable investment plan requires a little more than simply establishing a savings account and buying a few random shares of stocks. In order to structure a plan that is right, it is important to understand what you want to accomplish with the investments, define how to reach those goals and evaluate different types of investment options to decide which ones will aid in the achievement of those goals. The good news is that it is never too late to create and implement a personal investment plan and begin creating a nest egg for the future.

Steps

1. Determine your goals for the future. A carefully structured investment plan can be a means of achieving long-term or short-term goals. For example, one goal may be to generate funds for a child's college education, using returns from certain types of investments. Alternatively, another goal may be to create a portfolio that generates income for use during retirement. Knowing what you want to accomplish will

How to Invest Like an Index Fund

Investing is thought to be a very demanding task that needs years of training and higher education. This is true for big and complex transactions, but it is not true for most of the time. It takes ten minutes to build a portfolio that tracks major indices like index funds. Yet, many companies charge fees for such funds.

Steps

1. Choose an index you like. You could choose S&P 500, for example. It is the most followed index in the US stock market.
   
2. Try to get a list of the biggest components of that index by size. In other words, what are the biggest companies in the S&P 500? (Decide how you are going to determine size by the way. Are you going to go with market capitalization?
   
3. Pick the biggest ten companies. General Electric and Exxon Mobile will most likely be in every index

How to Choose the Best Forex Software

The most successful Forex brokers, investors, and traders waste no breath in telling the fledgling player in the Forex market that the success is in the system. Unfortunately, finding the system that works the best for you is sometimes as difficult as choosing the best Forex software to use when you are actively involved in the foreign currency exchange arena. Here are three steps to follow when it comes time for choosing the best forex software.

Steps

1. Pick the right software to begin with. Nearly all of the forex software products available on the market offer live online forex trading features, but how will you know which one is the best application for you? The easiest answer to that comes from knowing your needs and level of skill with currency exchange. You need to choose the software that will be the easiest for you to navigate and utilize to the best of

How to Trade Forex Online

Trading forex (foreign exchange) is highly risky. Due to the leverage available, with very little money down you can have big gains, but also big losses. In addition, there is financial friction, since you are paying fees in the form of the spread. Only highly sophisticated investors should trade forex -- and if you're not sure what you are, then you're probably not highly sophisticated. Whatever you do, don't trade more than you can lose -- because odds are, you will lose everything.

Steps

1. Research the best ways to invest. Forex is the biggest financial market in the world. It's bigger than the US stock market, because the daily turnover has now exceeded 4 Trillion US dollars. First understand that you, the retail investor are not going to move the market, the banks trade in multimillion's, most retail traders won't be doing so.
   

How to Avoid Day Trading Mistakes

Day trading for beginners is like lion taming, except more expensive. It's a risky and challenging pursuit: buying stocks and selling them again in the same day, making money off tiny fluctuations in the price of a stock over only a 12 hour period. For many years, the tools of day trading were not available to the average investor — real time stock results, analysis tools and access to instant trades (without the help of a broker). Today, with high-speed connections, anybody can try to day trade. For those of stout heart, here are some common pitfalls to avoid.

Steps

1. Learning to day trade. The first step for any day trading beginner is to learn the game with a qualified, actively trading consultant - coach. Learning the game of day trading stock with a coach, like Federer learning to be the best in tennis and Woods in the game of golf, you need to learn the winners game

How to Become a Trader

There are two main kinds of traders, those who deal with their own money, and those who trade with the money of an employer. There are also important differences to each of these, which finance professionals are quick to point out. However, for someone who simply wants to become a trader, meaning to facilitate trades on the stock market (or, colloquially, on Wall Street) some basic guidelines apply. Here's how to become a trader and get the best chance at managing a greater amount of capital in financial stock markets.

Steps

1. Acquire your own capital. This is the first step to actually being able to trade in financial markets. Finance pros always recommend distinguishing money that you use for trading from money that you may need in the short term, in order to prevent some distinct budget problems.
   
2. Access a broker. In order to start trading, you'll need access to the stock market. Unless you already

How to Avoid Investment Trading System Scams

Everybody, it seems, has an investment trading system these days. There's so much baloney in the trading system marketplace that it makes you want to follow Mark Twain's advice about how to double your money: "fold it over once and put it back in your pocket." How do you separate the few legitimate investment trading systems from the scamsters? Based on research and experience, here are the "Top 11 most common ways to spot trading system scams".

Steps

1. Think Often, they will start "improving" the system, or stop using it altogether. Especially for beginners it is a big help to gain confidence in the system if there is a winning percentage of 65% or more.
   
2. Avoid "hypothetical" trading systems - systems that have only been backtested, never actually traded in the market Insiders, like the proverbial "Them", as in "They say…" This is almost always a sign that

Online Stock Trading - Who Else Wants to Finally Get Profits?

Online stock trading, Blue-Chip style.

Investing in conservative blue chip stocks may not have the allure of a hot high-tech investment, but it can be highly rewarding nonetheless, as good quality stocks have outperformed other investment classes over the long term.

Historically, investing in stocks has generated a return, over time, of between 11 and 15 percent annually depending how aggressive you are. Stocks outperform other investments since they incur more risk. Stock investors are at the bottom of the corporate "food chain." First, companies have to pay their employees and suppliers. Then they pay their bondholders. After this come the preferred shareholders. Companies have an obligation to pay all these stakeholders first, and if there is money leftover it is paid to the stockholders through dividends or retained earnings. Sometimes there is a lot of money left over for stockholders, and in

Choosing the Right Stock Trading to Invest

Stocks, also known as trading shares, are one of the options available for those who want to invest their money. Other options include bonds, real estate, and bank deposits. These present ownership rights to a company, allowing investors to part-own firms they would never buy outright. It is a well-known fact that in the long run, stock prices always rise, mirroring population and GDP growth. Since new companies emerge while older ones wither away, choosing the right stocks to invest in can be tricky. Investing in shares of stocks requires a consistent, deliberate approach. This removes a lot of the emotionally driven investing decisions that typically lead to poor choices and lower returns.

Share trading online has now become the norm for individual investors and traders for the past decade. A lot of brokers now are offering online services with unique trading platforms. There are two basic methods of stock trading: on the exchange floor and electronically. Trading on the floor is the image most people know of

The Reason To Buy or Sell

 If you not have any stock, then you should first buy a stock. For those who has own a stock, there will be a doubt (most of times) when you want to buy a new stock.

Should I buy this stock....or....Should I just pass this stock.

This is common a question for many investors.


The first thing to do before buying a new one is to determine whether your new buy is better than a previous one. If not, then you should not buy it whatever attractive the price is.

Averaging Down. Should or Shouldn't ???

I think this question is common for most investor. It is mainly because there are no specified answer to this question. For one it is 'yes' but for someone else it's maybe 'no'. In this post it all about my opinion in this averaging down (some would say average down).

For someone new, averaging down is a technique (or skill??)  that is developed to have a maximum benefit to an investor in market reaction (in hope). Some will say right, and some will say wrong. For me, there is no right or wrong. Both are right and both are wrong. Neither are truely right or wrong.

I have read years ago that Averaging Down is among 10 Common Mistakes of investors/traders. I also know some people who make huge profits with Averaging Down.

When the Right Time to Buy Stock?

There are people keep asking when is the best time to start invest in stock markt. Then, the answer is...

"The best time is today. The second best is tomorrow.
The earlier the better"

How I gonna start if I don't have any money. There are saying "Start Early Start Small". You can use a few bucks you get from your bonus to start. In Malaysia (KLSE), you can buy a share as low as 100 shares. So, start by putting your bonus into the market and add it more as you have more knowledge and money (of course).

Are the worst is over? "L" shape.

I've been thinking for a while what should I write about in this post. There are some topics in my mind (should it about my journey as investor, investors' book that I've been read or my opinion in the current market).

Then, I decide to share some information which I get from a trv program. It was Stock Watch by TV3 (one of tv channel in Malaysia).

That night the guest is Choong Khuat Hock.

(Choong Khuat Hock has 20 years’ experience in investment banking, having worked in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia for international financial institutions such as Barclays Bank and Dresdner Bank. He was rated one of Malaysia’s top analysts for most of the 1990s. Hock is director of research and a fund manager at