There are three advantages to this kind of operation. First, if your judgment has been good, you make more money faster than by relying on dividends. For example, the man who buys 100 shares at $30 and sells even at a 10-point profit has $1,000 (less commissions) to show for his year’s work. This represents nearly seven years’ worth of dividends from the $30 stock yielding a conventional 5 per cent.

Secondly, if you hold your investment for more than six months, your profit is considered a long-term capital gain, taxable at a maximum 25 per cent rate for many people, a saving over straight-income rates.

Finally, if your stock doesn’t go up as anticipated, there is always the chance that it will at least be a decent income-producer.

This is something of a rationalization, of course. There is no use pretending to be in the capital-appreciation business if a little mess of dividends is all you have to show for your efforts. The more consistent course is to drop the non-producing stock (losses, if any, are tax deductible) and shop around for a winner. This, to be sure, takes guts. There’s nothing like a couple of growth stocks that don’t grow to take the steam out of a capital-appreciation man

On the other hand, the gloriously rising market since World War II has simplified the task of discovering and getting aboard a company with promising prospects. And, as noted, an investor could wait five years for his 10-point gain and still be ahead of the plugger piling up dividends.

Capital appreciation, it should be noted, is an omnibus term covering any change or advance in a company’s position which might be reflected in the market price. It may mean the emergence of a new company in a new industry, the coming of age of a speculative youngster of a decade or two ago, or even new evidence of vitality in an
established veteran.

Recently for instance, the stock of Ampex, Inc., a bright little California company manufacturing top notch equipment for the booming tape-recorder industry, has more than doubled in value.

Dozens of small companies dealing in electronics, precision equipment, and other fruits of current scientific research (Tracerlab, National Research, Beckman Instruments, etc.) are similarly attracting attention and consequent jumps in price.

Somewhat more established and riding crests of speculative interest are such stocks as General Dynamics, builder of atomic submarines and Convair airplanes; Owens-Corning Fiberglas, manufacturer of insulation, filters and textiles, and glass fiber boats, and Bendix Aviation, no infant, but investing heavily in diversification and new-product development. Dow and Minnesota Mining might also be grouped here, although possibly by now they should be included among the older companies Corning Glass, Goodrich, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, National Lead, Minneapolis Honeywell, Eastman Kodak—whose youthful spirit and astonishing technological resources have kept them in the forefront of American industry for years.

All of these examples would qualify as growth stocks, as the kind of investment that would tempt the investor seeking capital appreciation.

But appreciation can also follow from subtle and complicated changes in a company’s structure. In these cases, appreciation may have nothing to do with a new product or even with the company’s prospects within its industry. Rather it is the anticipated result of a merger, a spin-off (distribution of assets), a reorganization, or any one of a number of procedures available to the complex institution known as a corporation.

Talk of a merger between Bethlehem Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube made both stocks interesting possibilities. U.S. Foil “B” (American Stock Exchange), representing about 48 per cent control of Reynolds Aluminum; duPont, which is having to divest itself of 63 million shares of General Motors stock; Northern Pacific Railway, which has important oil interests in the booming Williston Basin of North Dakota; El Paso Natural Gas, which has formed a subsidiary, Rare Metals Corp., for uranium exploration and processing; and many others are examples of stocks with potential capital-gains features.

It is not possible to say exactly how or if the gains will be realized. Mergers require an adjustment of the stock prices of the participants which may benefit one or the other; or public interest in the prospects of the combined company may cause the stock to spurt.

An as yet undeveloped asset, such as Northern Pacific’s oil, or Inland Steel’s Steep Rock iron interest in Ontario, might mean an eventual bonanza which would be reflected in stock prices or a capital distribution of cash or stock. Several years back, Andes Copper, an Anaconda subsidiary operating in Chile, made a capital distribution of $6 per share at a time when the stock’s market price was hovering between $12 and $15.

Most gains on Forex are capital gains, where the currency trader is hoping for an increase in the value of one currency against another. Profits can be spectacular, but it is worth
having good Forex software to prevent large losses.

The first thing you need to realize is that, it is not easy to make money. As every other endeavor in life, where important rewards are to come after mastering it, you need to work hard. You need to get very well educated and experienced before having the possibility to receive important rewards on it. The key on mastering the Forex market relies on commitment, patience and discipline.

Ok, you have decided you are going to trade the Forex market, you have seen several advertisings featuring how easy is to make money in the Forex market. You might think this is your opportunity to reach your financial freedom, right away, time is money, why waiting any longer if you have the opportunity to make money now. I know, I’ve been there, but you have a chance now, I didn’t, no body told me what I am going to tell you.

We, Forex traders, make transactions based on a set of rules. These sets of rules are what we call a Trading System. Our systems tell us the exact time where we need to get in the market and out the market in order to make a profit (i.e. buy low sell high.)

Creating a system is the first big step you need to take care first. Why is this so important? Because you need to build a system that suits your personality, otherwise you are going to find hard to follow it, thus hard to profit from. A system can be based on technical indicators or what we called a mechanical system or based on experience and intuition or what we call discretionary systems. I highly recommend using and trying first a mechanical system, because discretionary systems are dangerous during the early stages of a Forex trader (can lead to indiscipline.) With experience, on later stages, you will find out which signals work better and which ones to avoid.

The next step in this Forex course is to try your system on a demo account. Most Forex brokers offer a demo account, an account with virtual money. This is an excellent choice to test your trading system as there is no money at risk. In this step you will figure out if the strategy works for you. If you feel comfortable trading it, then it is most likely to produce good results. How much time should you stay in this step? It varies, but you shouldn’t go one step further until your system gets consistent profitable results over a period of time. It can take many months, but remember, you need to be patient.

You must be honest to yourself; you need to take every single signal generated by your system, not only the signals you thought were going to work, otherwise, you are going to have problems in the next two steps.

Ok, by know you had consistent profitable results on your demo account. You might think its time to go full. Nope, nope, nope. There is a big difference between trading a demo and a real account. The most important difference lies on emotions (fear, greed, anger, etc.) These are psychological barriers that affect every single decision made by traders regardless of what he/she is trading (stocks, bonds, Forex, futures, grains, etc.) These emotional factors, in my opinion, are the most determinant factor that separates profitable traders from the others.

The next step in this Forex course is specially designed to deal with emotions and to confirm the results obtained in the prior step (consistent results in a demo account.) At this step you need to trade in a real account with limited funds. Some brokers offer fractional lot trading. Meaning you are able to trade any desired amount (even cents.) The important thing here is that these emotions we’ve been talking about are present only when there is real money at risk. At this stage, you are going to see if you are really comfortable trading your system and if you are able to trade with such system, remember different systems produce different emotions. If you are able to produce similar results than those obtained in a demo account, then ready for the next step. If you didn’t, then you might need to create another system, there is chance your system never fit you. If you created consistent profitable results on this stage, you have a chance to produce similar results in the next one, on the other hand, if you didn’t produce good results in this stage, you will not be able to make on the next stage. Remember, you need to do things right, and be honest to yourself.

The last stage is trading in a real account with sufficient funds. If you are at this stage, and have passed successfully every prior stage, then you have a chance to make it, go ahead and try it, you need to be confident in yourself and in your system, your strategy have already produced consistent profitable results, there are reasons to believe you are going to make it. Very few traders fail at this stage (if passed successfully prior stages.)

Trading successfully is no easy task, it requires a lot of work, patience, discipline, and education. By completing the steps outlined in this Forex course, you have a chance to produce profitable results. I repeat it again, you need to be honest to yourself about the results obtained in every stage. Some times you might need expert guidance regarding your system development strategies.

Ideally, you buy stock or currencies at its lowest price and sell at its highest.

Practically speaking, you do the best you can between these unpredictable extremes.

For, as you will see, the low does not become apparent until your stock begins to rise above it, the high is not established until your stock begins to drop away.

Although all of us could wish it otherwise, no bells, no flashing lights, no 21-gun salutes ever mark the bottom or the top.

Timing your stock transactions, therefore, is perhaps the most delicate element of investment, the decision requiring the keenest judgment and the surest touch. Experience helps, although success is not necessarily proportional to it. Veterans of the market, men who have been buying and selling for 30 or 40 years, sometimes seem to have a sixth sense about turning points, up or down, for individual stocks, or industrial groups, or the market as a whole.

On what seems to be no discernible evidence, they will mutter, “Well, I think the market’s going to fall out of bed,” and, sure enough, within a week there is a 9 or 10 point reaction. Yet newcomers may also acquire this skill with surprising speed.

Since judgment is a subjective quality, there are no firm rules for applying it. But there are generalities that can begin to define objectives and delimit areas of choice. And there are a number of techniques which attempt, more or less successfully, to better the average results obtained from trying to calculate timing arbitrarily.

Most professionals will tell you, right off, not to try for the extremes. The surest way to miss tops or bottoms is to wait for that last extra point of gain, that one more point of drop. Usually, an investor is considered to have done very well if he buys or sells within 5 points of the limit on a moderate-to-wide swing, within a point or two over a narrow range.

Another way of looking at the ideal objective is to reverse it: try to avoid selling at the low or buying at the top. This may seem to be superfluous advice, but both have happened many times when emotion entered heavily into judgment. Buying near or at the top is a temptation when a stock has been rising swiftly and steadily and the investor is eager to get aboard. The top, after all, is only relative.

New tops may be within reach which will make the current one seem a reasonable buying level. Selling near or at a low is tempting when a stock has slid downward and the holder has become disenchanted with it. The impulse is to sell out, take the loss, avoid further trouble, and be well rid of the dog.

The correctness of these decisions cannot be judged in the abstract. They depend, first, on your objectives (See Chapter 3) and on how closely or satisfactorily you have realized them. And they depend on your analysis of the several dimensions of highness and lowness involved.

Buying for income is relatively easy. The indicated dividend divided by the current price will give the yield in percentage terms. If the yield suits you, and investigation suggests that it is likely to be maintained, the price is right, whether it is in the high, middle, or low range for the year.

The problem of the buyer-for-income in recent years, of course, has been the fact that a rising market has reduced yields to some very uninspiring levels. The average yield of 10 big oils in the first quarter of 1959 was 3 per cent. For five chemicals it was 2.24 per cent. For seven steels it was 3.85 per cent. Only the better railroads were around 5 per cent, as a group.

Strictly on an income basis, the investor would do better at the savings bank than in oils and chemicals, and might be considered to have missed his market in these categories. The choice then is whether to argue himself into accepting 3 or 3.5 per cent (or 2.2 if he wants G.E., 1.5 if he wants Dow) in a sought-after category, whether to switch categories, or whether to ignore the market until conditions are more to his liking. There may also be a temptation to jump into a stock that for some reason is still yielding 5 or 6 per cent, although it would be foolish to do so without determining why it has maintained a high price/dividend relationship when everything else is low.

If the objective is capital gain, timing becomes more crucial. Somehow you must determine how many more points above the current price your stock is likely to go, and whether this will be a satisfactory profit, considering that possibly 25 per cent of it will go for taxes.

All rises must be predicated on earnings, or the expectation of earnings. Take, for instance, a stock selling at 50 and paying $2. This is a 4 per cent yield, which, we’ll say, is about average for this market this year.

Now, news gets out that it is possible that the company will earn $6 per share by year’s end. Since a 50-per cent payout is the general practice, a dividend rise to $3 is indicated.

Naturally, there will be a small rush toward the stock and a rise in the market price, probably to 75, or the new equivalent of 4 per cent.

This is the simplest sort of cause-and-effect relationship, so simple, in fact, that it practically never happens just this way. If prices reacted exclusively on good or bad dividend news or expectations, the market would be far more static than it is. Still, earnings and the benefits there from that shower down on the stockholder are the basic premise of stock activity.

The biggest complicating factor is the general absence of hard information. It’s rare that a jump in earnings can be positively pin-pointed, or pin-pointed before a market rise has taken effect. As a result, most investors have to contend with a vast range of other investors’ hopes, guesses, anticipations, and facts.

Furthermore, the stocks believed to have the greatest potential for growth usually vary the general pattern. The Dows, Minneapolis Honeywells, Owens-Cornings, and Minnesota Minings have long since been pushed to levels where their dividend returns are virtually meaningless, and where perhaps even their growth potential has been completely discounted.

Still, these extremities were more marked when stocks generally were yielding 5 and 6 per cent. Now that so many yield 3 and under, the growth specials do not seem so unreasonable at less than 2.

If you are trading shares or Forex you can also benefit from software that can help you time your purchases and sales for maximum profit.

One of the secrets of pooled investment is that you will also gain a significant amount of knowledge. This will help to steer you on your way to success.

Most clubs are less than three years old, and that nine out of ten have a portfolio valued at less than $10,000.

No concerted organizational or promotional effort One of the astonishing developments in stock ownership in the past 10 years has been the wildfire spread of investment clubs throughout the nation.

A New York Stock Exchange survey indicates that there are at least 20,000 clubs in existence, with a total membership of more than 277,000 people—and that more are forming, at a phenomenal rate, every day. The market value of the clubs’ holdings tops $160 million and they are pouring $2 million of new investment into the market each month.

All this is the more remarkable when it is considered has created these clubs. They have sprung up spontaneously as the realization has spread that here is a device enabling people of modest means to educate themselves about investment and to acquire stock in an orderly, consistent, and intelligent manner.

In outline, a club’s members meet regularly, contribute funds equally, study investment possibilities carefully, and agree jointly on shares to be purchased or sold. The unique features of this procedure are, first, that by responsible group effort the members can learn the complexities of investment and, second, that by aggregating funds they can acquire stock with individual contributions even smaller than the Monthly Investment Plan minimum.

Most clubs are composed of neighbourhood friends or business associates. Sometimes they are employees of the same firm, sometimes members of a fraternal or religious group. The majority of clubs have all-male memberships, although some 3,800 include women, and something over 2,000 are exclusively for the ladies.

A group of policemen form the New York’s Finest Investment Club. A group of Maine business¬men, who have been long-time hunting companions, are now stalking profits as the Katahdin Investors Club. Some avid bridge players have become the Bridge Investors Club; the Johns-Manville Club is made up of J-M employees. Essentially, these alignments assure a pleasant social atmosphere and economic compatibility, so that everyone can contribute equally to the club’s program without strain.

The average club membership is 15, a few number 20. Many clubs start with six or eight, and grow as interest is aroused. Experience indicates that 12 to 15 members are best able to conduct the business of the club. Beyond that number, things get somewhat bulky and unmanageable.

It can be extremely helpful to have a lawyer, accountant, and/or banker among the members. This is not always possible, and many clubs are operating successfully without them, but if they are not members, they should be within hailing distance to give professional advice on legal and tax matters, where necessary.

Clubs should also establish an account with a brokerage and get to know the customer’s representative who is handling it. He can be a source of much useful information on the new and unfamiliar field the club is entering.

Many brokerage houses are happy to have representatives attend occasional club meetings to explain brokerage and market operations, security analysis, and economic trends.

With membership established, the club’s next step is to agree on objectives and procedures: How often shall it meet? How much shall each member contribute? How should stocks be selected? What should be done with dividends?

Clubs ordinarily meet once a month. Meeting less frequently than that slows activity to an unsatisfactory pace, more frequently places a greater demand on the members’ time than the funds involved warrant.

The usual investment is $10 per person per month, although this depends entirely on the group’s level of income. Some clubs set the ante as high as $100 per month. Less than $10, of course, does not give the club much capital to work with, and will probably make progress seem discouragingly slow. More than $40 makes it possible for a member to set up an individual MIP, and at $100 an investor could deal directly with a broker from time to time. In these latter instances, however, diversification would be harder to achieve and, of course, the burden of stock selection would be on the individual rather than decided by the shared wisdom of the group. It appears that most individuals find the club experience a good training ground in investment and that, after they learn their way around, some 40 per cent of them feel well enough oriented to open personal accounts.

Investments of $10 to $20 a month for groups of 10 to 15 people mean a fund of from $100 to $300, not an overwhelming amount, but enough to buy 10-share blocks at 30 or 5-share units at 60. The average club investment is about $260 a month.

Whatever the amount, most clubs feel that it is absolutely essential that all members invest equally. If individuals are allowed to have two or more memberships, or to invest twice or three times as much as the others, it will also be necessary to give them two or three votes in club affairs, thus unbalancing the share-and-share-alike mutuality which is basic to successful operation of this kind of organization. Twice as much money is not automatically a guarantee of twice as much good sense when the votes on investment are cast.

In selecting stocks for investment, procedures are as various as the ingenuity of the club permits. Some clubs start by accumulating shares of the company the members work for, or a company active in the area whose personnel and operations are known to the club.

Other clubs undertake a study of a different industry each month and then, perhaps, appoint a committee of several members to report on companies within the industry. Some clubs arrange visits to company headquarters, or branches, in their vicinity. They inspect oil fields, mines, mills, and manufacturing facilities. All of this, of course, is rudimentary, but it is the beginning of understanding and evaluation.

For the rest, it depends on the club’s objectives. Like you, it must decide whether to try for growth, dividends, or stability, whether it is in for a quick profit or for long term appreciation.

There are some Forex investment clubs that you can join by searching the internet that help to pool investors money.

It is well worth using Forex software to help you perform well when you trade on the Forex.

Typically, there are two types of oil drilling deals, from a broad sense……..Wildcats & Developmental Deals. Wildcats are the most aggressive types of drilling programs where oil has not been found within 1 mile of the drilling location, but the geologist might feel based on characteristics of the underlying lease that it is attractive to test for a producing well. Developmental Wells, which are the only kind I have ever invested in, are wells within 1 mile of known oil production. Many times when I have invested in these deals, I would see the adjacent leases’ pumpjacks moving up and down just a few thousand feet away. The concept of a tangible investment is very reassuring in the wake of the Dot Com bubble, thus the ability to physically see a producing field adjacent to your prospect is very exciting. The fact that there are wells adjacent to your prospect does not guarantee success, but it is a great comfort.

I believe that oil will continue to be in high demand based on the growth of Asia and India. I tend to take a simplistic, common sense approach to the issue of Peak Oil. If most of the “Easy” finds or holes have been poked in the ground the last 100 years, new production will continue to gain in value. Oil will fluctuate in the short run, but the long term value seems clear …….UP! The oil wells we drill, when successful, will typically pay out for 15-20 years. Production will peak in the first few years and steadily decline, but 10 years from now oil should be higher.

Know what you own is a common refrain in investing, but it is very important in oil well investing. It is important that you meet the individuals that you are entrusting your hard earned money to. I will never invest in an oil deal without meeting the principals face to face. I want to see their operation in person. Independants vary in the amount of talent, machinery, and know-how, therefore it is important that you assess each company before giving them a dime.

I have decided to invest one third of my investable assets into the natural resource arena. The choices are not limited to oil & gas investing, but that is what i feel comfortable with. I have come to accept the fact that we will have many dry holes and unsuccessful wells over the years, but I view my investment process similiar to dollar cost averaging in mutual funds. By consistently investing in wells, I can remove the inevitable hiccups along the way. If I had quit investing in wells because my first well was a failure(true story), how could I now take pleasure every time I fill my tank!

America always has been a land of promise. Whatever the course of our economy in the years immediately ahead, it is likely that opportunities for investment will be both numerous and attractive. Energetic new companies will emerge, looking for venture capital. Solid old companies will come forth with exciting new products. One industry or another will enjoy a boom period relative to the rest. And, of course, there will be casualties, too. There inevitably are.

For the observant investor this activity, properly evaluated and properly timed, will bring rewards. There will be chances to buy stocks before they have called attention to themselves and begun to rise, or to buy a Blue Chip, temporarily out of favor, at a depressed price. There will be stock splits, dividend increases, new issues, mergers, spin-offs, as well as the tidal rise and fall of stock prices all of this characteristic of the restless life of the market as a reflection of American business.

If you have never invested before, you are bound to be tempted.

Whether or not you yield will depend on your answer to the first hard question about investing: Can you afford it?

It is a lonely question and only you can answer it, for it involves not only how much money you feel able to invest, but what kind of person you are. Actually, it is several questions wrapped into one. You are asking, first, whether your financial condition permits you to invest; second, whether you can assume the risk implicit in stock investment; and, third, whether the market is a safe place for you to be.

Let’s take them one at a time.

Your Financial Position: One point should be made clear at the outset: you don’t have to be wealthy to invest. Among outsiders you can hear it said that stock ownership is a rich man’s game. This can mean any of several things: that the market is too complicated for the little man, that brokers aren’t interested in small orders, that only the person who can lose a bundle without feeling it should invest. However persuasive these arguments, they are all untrue.

The fact is—according to a recent New York Stock Exchange Survey—that almost half of all shareowners are in the $5,000—$10,000 a year income bracket. The median income of the 3,860,000 people who have become stockholders since 1956 is $6,900.

This would seem to suggest that an understanding of market operations is not too difficult to acquire, and that an attentive, interested broker is not too hard to find. It can also be assumed that these are shareowners with a fair appreciation of the value of a dollar and in no position to laugh off losses.

The goals a small investor can hope to achieve and the pattern of investment possible within the limits of a modest income will be outlined further on. The conclusion to be reached here is that investment is not a matter of enlarging a fortune you already possess, but of making available some money, however small the amount, to start with.

Regardless of your salary or income level, investment is possible if three conditions can be met:

1. If you are assured of a steady income.

2. If you are meeting your current running expenses and obligations.

3. If you have a cash reserve with which to meet unforeseen emergencies.

These conditions are, first of all, safeguards made necessary by the inescapable fact that stock prices fluctuate. Your judgment of when to buy, when to sell, and how long to hold should never be dictated by outside circumstances. Investment should be undertaken only with funds you can honestly and legitimately earmark as extra. With a regular income and your monthly bills paid, you know where you

stand and what amount can be put aside, in reserve, for any investment opportunity that arises. Or, of course, for emergencies. A sudden demand for ready cash—to pay a hospital bill, an insurance premium, or your income tax—should come, if possible, from your reserve, not from cashing in your investments. Whether your stocks are up or down, you are likely to take a loss—on the downswing because you may be selling at less than you paid, on the upswing because you may be selling at less than the potential.

A reserve also enables you to pick and choose. The fact that you have a few hundred dollars lying idle does not automatically mean the time is ripe to buy stocks. There’s no hurry. As the professionals say, “The market is always there.” If the trend of the market isn’t to your liking, or the price of a stock is higher than you want to pay, a reserve allows you the luxury of waiting for a more favorable situation.

Finally, a reserve permits investment over a period of time rather than all at once. As you learn more about the market, you will hear both sides of this argument. Some experts feel you should back what seems to be a good situation with all the investment funds at your command. Others will warn against getting greedy, and advise partial investment here and there, at different times, to spread the risk. This is not the place to discuss the merits of these techniques. The point is to give yourself the flexibility of moving either way your judgment dictates.

Remember: your income need not be large, so long as it is regular and enables you to put aside a surplus after you have taken care of your bills and the possibility of trouble. The surplus need not be large, either. Saving, as has been said many times, is a matter of regularity. No one considers $5 too small an amount to put into a savings bank; don’t worry if that’s all you can save each week for your accumulating investment reserve. In most markets, brokers usually can suggest a number of sound, solid stocks, offering liberal yields, that sell for less than $20 per share.

There is no rule about the number of shares an investor must buy. If you can afford a single share (plus commissions), a broker will get it for you. As a matter of fact, through the Monthly Investment Plan you can buy a fraction of a share, although the Plan requires a minimum investment every month.

To invest in the Forex, you will probably need a float of around $400 and invest from $1 to $10 per pip to start with, then reinvest your profits.

So there is a much smaller outlay required to invest in Forex, although it is more speculative.

Good Forex software will help to reduce the risks involved.

The Dow Jones Average is composed of blue chips, and since there are only 30 listed, at the same time that the average has been going up, it might seem a simple matter to toss a coin to see which ones should be bought out of this list of 30.

But let us get down to specific cases: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey is one of the largest, best managed and generally soundest corporations in the United States. Its earnings per share in 1958 were $2.72, in 1959 $2.91 and in 1960 $3.18. From 1957 through 1960 its dividends have been $2.25 per share each year. From the middle of 1957 to the end of 1960 the price trend of this stock was down. It declined from almost 70 to a point below 40.

Another giant on the list of 30 Dow Jones stocks is the highly successful General Electric. From a high in early 1960 of nearly 100, GE plummeted to a level of close to 60 in the spring of 1961 because of the actions of the United States government in connection with price fixing by the corporation.

There is some merit to the classical approach to the valuation of a stock by analyzing the underlying strength and prospects of the company, but this is only * An example of a high yield tax free bond is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Authority 5¾% bond. In 1961 this bond could be bought under 100 to yield almost 6% and this 6% is equal to 12% for a man whose top income is taxed at a rate of 50%.

one of the elements to look at. It, of course, should not be overlooked because in the long run, earnings per share will determine the price of a stock. The only question is, “How long?” While you are holding a sound company’s stock others may be moving up and you want to move up with them.

Determine the earnings trend of the company over the recent four or five years. It should be up in general, but stocks have moved up in price while earnings were declining.

Determine the position of the industry through reading the Wall Street Journal, the financial and business section of The New York Times, the Value Line Investment Survey, and the journals published by every industry and available in any library. The reason Standard Oil of New Jersey was not moving up more rapidly is due to the fact that the outlook for the petroleum industry was not as healthy as some of the other industries.

The most important piece of advice that can be given the investor in stock is that the price of a stock is the direct result of the forces which make the price of anything (stock, commodity or service) demand and supply. For a long time in the spring of 19611 thought GE was a good buy; that it might go up. I questioned a number of brokers and investment bankers about GE. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Since these are the buyers and these are the people who recommend that customers buy the stock, it was evident to me that the demand was not there. It might change very quickly, but until it did I determined to buy other stocks.

It is important to emphasize this point once again: that the price of a stock is the direct result of how much of a stock is offered for sale and what the demand is. We will return later to this point with a striking example.

The next most important piece of advice is that you should buy a stock which is moving up, not one which might move up or one which is moving down and looks as though it might be a bargain. You cannot hope to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. If you try to buy at the bottom you have no assurance that the decline has stopped; and if you try to sell at the top you cannot be certain the rise will not continue. Buy just after a stock has demonstrated its willingness to rise for a few weeks, and sell after about two weeks of decline.

The most foolish piece of philosophizing that an investor can engage in is to say to himself, “I don’t need to worry about the declining trend in the price of my stock. It will come back.” Yes, it may, but when? And if you sold and simply held cash, you might for your cash get far more shares with which to ride the market up again. At the beginning of 1960 Shell Oil was well over 40. By the summer it was down close to 30, and by the spring of 1961 it was close to 45. The downtrend was clear and the uptrend was just as clear. A person could have sold early in the decline and bought early in the rise. My wife, being as good an analyst as I, if not a little better through”intuition,” hit the low point and advised buying at that point. A profit of 50% could have been realized in one year!

Next, follow the market and follow it every few days to determine trend. The closer you are to the market the better you are informed as to what to do. Do not worry about a decline of a few days or a sudden break in the market, no matter how sharp. Worry only about the trend of your stock and the trend of the market.

Use the stop loss order to protect yourself against losses and to provide you with peace of mind. When you purchase stock after careful study and consideration, you may not want to put in an immediate stop loss order which is an order to sell if the stock reaches a particular price below the present market. In the past I have placed stop loss orders, when I bought stock, at about two points under my purchase price. If I bought a stock at 501 put in a stop loss order at 48. Very often the stock went down to 48 and I was sold out. I lost both in the price of the stock and in the commission and tax I had to pay when I bought and when I sold.

Then I had the unhappy experience of seeing my stock rise above 50 and keep on rising. If an investor followed the rule of placing a stop loss order a few points under the purchase price, he could hardly ever purchase a stock that jumps around like O’okiep Copper.

This stock jumps up and down two points during one trading session.

If a stock goes up say 10 points, you may place a stop loss order three or four points under the market. This still prevents a loss and you have already made a good profit in the stock. The strict trailing stop loss order may hurt you not only by getting you out of a rising stock on a minor decline, but the use of trailing stop loss orders by the general investing public damages the market. A slight drop in price of a stock can touch off a series of stop loss orders which lower the price of the stock needlessly.

The major value of having a stock market is the provision of a place in which to buy and a place in which to sell with little delay and at a price which can to a great extent be known in advance. For this reason stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and on the American Stock Exchange offer a great advantage to the investor. He knows where he stands by looking at the daily paper, and he has liquidity. He can get his money out of the stock in a matter of minutes.

With the Forex our money is just as liquid and we stand to make more money in a shorter space of time, and we can put a stop loss to protect our position.

Good software will help us predict future price movements in currencies and help us time our purchases and sales of currencies for maximum profit.

Consistently profitable online currency trading requires both confidence and discipline to first achieve and then maintain a reasonable level of success. For virtually all traders, these two aspects of trading are responsible for their success or lack of it: having confidence as a trader, plus the discipline to stick to their orrex currency trading system.

Most traders that struggle with their discipline do so for a very simple reason and this is something that can be very easily addressed and rather quickly.

Ask any frustrated or struggling trader what their biggest problem is and it will boil down to a lack of confidence and / or discipline in one form or another. Traders who have both are the ones the that are doing fine and enjoying their trading.

Even the veteran traders will tell you that the primary reason for any rough spells they have occasionally experienced were from when they had a lapse or breakdown in their confidence or their discipline, but once they got it back all was well.

So how do you go about building these two emotional pillars for successful currency online trading? Or regaining them if they’ve waned?

The 80/20 Solution

One of the fastest and most effective ways to give yourself that boost is to intentionally create a disruption in the UNsuccessful pattern that has been established. Now this applies whether you’ve known success and temporarily lost it or if you haven’t found it yet.

The most powerful way to disrupt the pattern is through stepping back and making an assessment of your current day online trading. Now, this doesn’t have to be a lengthy or monumental task. There are two parts to this process and it generally follows the 80/20 rule with which you’re already familiar.

Good news for you is that the first part is the 20% of your effort that will yield 80% of the results. Even better is the fact that you can do this within the next hour or two and see results that fast. Here’s what you do:

Step 1. Effort = 20%, Yield = 80%

Step 1, part 1 is to take your recent trading results and run your metrics on your current trading. So which metrics are going to give you confidence and discipline-building information?

• Your real winning percentage
• Your actual profit-to-loss ratio
• The true size of your average winner
• The true size of your average losing trades
• Your actual number of winning trades
• Your actual number of losing trades
• Your REAL ROI from your trading efforts in both time and $
• Your projected annual income from your trading – based on real numbers from your current trading

So how does this help with your confidence if the numbers don’t look so great? Especially if you haven’t yet experienced a level of success that you desire?

Well, very specifically these numbers give you a very clear reference point to work with regarding the factors in your trading that make the bottom line what it is. Rather than going on hope and wishful thinking, you now know the particular aspects of your trading on which to focus your efforts – a realize results. It brings a great deal of clarity to the exact direction for you to take.

Just this simple step alone with give you a substantial boost, and part 2 will really bring about a transformation.

Step 1 Part 2.

In this part, you simply backtest your system (whatever it is) very specifically according to the rules of the system using recent historical market data for the markets you trade.

You then run the metrics and compare the two. This information is incredibly powerful in two ways for building both your confidence and your discipline to stick with your system. Here’s how this works for you.

By backtesting your system with historical data, this can give you a very clear measure of what your forex currency trading system is capable of delivering for you. If your current trading is not delivering the profits that you want, you need to knowif the problem is with the system or if it in your execution of the system.

If your current trading results are comparable to the backtesting results, then you know immediately that you need to take a closer look at the system you’re using.

If your backtest results are good, but your current results with your system are not, then you know that you need to focus on your execution.

Most importantly, if your system doesn’t backtest well, then you know straightaway that you need to consider changes to the system you’re using, either a new system altogether or changes to the one you’ve got.

Directly for confidence and discipline, if your system tests well, then your confidence in it should go way up, along with your discipline to stick to it – because you are providing PROOF to yourself of its capabilities and limitations and with real numbers.

Plus you can see its limitations and more easily get through short losing streaks and drawdowns while maintaining confidence in your system, thus making the discipline part of sticking with it much easier.

Step 2. The More Intensive Process

If you have gone through the process in Step 1 and find that your system is good but your execution is where you need to focus and you need assistance working through other possible emotional management issues, then you need to seek out resources specifically for finding the core issues to address. Go to Inside Out Trading for resources specifically created to help you with these.

In conclusion, confidence comes from thorough understanding and successful experience. Once you have a system in which you can have confidence, then the discipline to stick to it gets much much easier.

Analyzing your current trading then backtesting your system can provide a great deal of confidence and thus make sticking to your system considerably easier by knowing the particulars of how it makes your bottom line what it is and what your system is capable of delivering.

The benefits of trading the currency market:

It is open 24-hours and it closes only on the weekends;

It is very liquid and efficient;

It is very volatile;

It has very low transaction costs;

You can use a high level of leverage (borrowed money) with ease; and

You can profit from a bull or a bear market.

Continuous, 24-Hour Trading

The currency exchange is a 24-hour market. You may decide to trade after you come home from work. Regardless of what time-frame you want to trade at whatever time of the day, there would be enough buyers and sellers to take the other side of your trade. This feature of the market gives you enough flexibility to manage your trading around your daily routine.

Liquidity And Efficiency

When there are a lot of buyers and a lot of sellers, you can expect to buy or sell at a price that is very close to the last market price. The currency market is the most liquid market in the world. Trading volume in the currency markets can be between 50 and 100 times larger than the New York Stock Exchange (Source: Oanda.)

When you are trading stocks, you may have experienced events where one piece of news accelerates or decelerates the price of the underlying stock you may have bought into. Perhaps a director has been kicked out by the shareholders of a company or the company has just released a new product and big investors are buying the shares of a particular company. Share prices can be drastically affected by the actions or inactions of one or a few individuals. So if you are relying on television reports and newspapers to get your news, most of the opportunities or warnings will have come too late for you to take advantage by the time you get them.

The value of currencies on the other hand is affected by so many factors and so many participants that the likelihood of any one individual or group of individuals drastically affecting the value of a currency is minute. Because of its sheer size, the currency market is hard to manipulate. The ability for people to engage in ‘insider trading’ is virtually eliminated. As an average trader, you are less disadvantaged. You are likely to be playing on relatively equal ground along with all the other traders and investors whom you are competing against.

Note about price gaps:

For those people who have already traded other markets, you probably know about price ‘gaps’. ‘Gaps’ occur when prices ‘jump’ from one price level to another without having taken any incremental steps to get there. For example, you may be trading a share that closes at $10 at the end of today but due to some event that happens overnight; it opens tomorrow at $5 and continues to go downwards for the rest of the day.

Gaps bring about another degree of uncertainty that may meddle with a trader’s strategy. Probably one of the most worrying aspects of this is when a trader uses stop-losses. In this case, if a trader puts a stop-loss at $7 because he no longer wants to be in a trade if the share price hits $7, his trade will remain open overnight and the trader wakes up tomorrow with a loss bigger than he may have been prepared for.

After looking at a couple of forex charts, you will realize that there are little price ‘gaps’ or none at all, especially on the longer-term charts like the 3-hour, 4-hour or the daily charts.

Volatility

Trading opportunities exist when prices fluctuate. If you buy a share for $2 and it stays there, there is no opportunity to make a profit. The magnitude of level of this fluctuation and its frequency is referred to as volatility. As a trader, it is volatility that you profit from. Large volume transactions and high liquidity combined with fewer trading instruments generate greater intra-day volatility in the currency market that can be exploited by day-traders. The high volatility of the currency market indicates that a trader can potentially earn 5 times more money from currency trading than trading the most liquid shares.

Volatility is a measure of maximum return that a trader can generate with perfect foresight. Volatility for the most liquid stocks are between 60 to 100. Volatility for currency trading is 500. (Source: Oanda.)

In this respect, currencies make a better trading vehicle for day-traders than the equity markets.

Low Transaction Costs

A currency transaction typically incurs no commission or transaction fees. For a forex trader, the spread is the only cost he or she needs to cover in taking on a position. In addition, because of the currency market’s efficiency, there is little or no ‘slippage’ costs.

‘Slippage’ is the cost involved when traders enter the market at a price worse than the level they wanted to get into. For example, a trader wants to buy a share at $2.00 but by the time, the order gets executed, his gets to buy the shares at $2.50. That fifty cents difference is his slippage cost. Slippage cost affects large-volume traders a lot. When they buy large quantities of a commodity, it oversupplies the market with buy orders. This applies a pressure for the price to go up. By the time they get to buy all the quantities they wanted, the average price they got their commodities would be higher than the price they intended to get them for. Conversely, when they sell large quantities of a commodity, they oversupply the market with sell orders. This applies a pressure for the price to go down. By the time they finish selling all their commodities, their average selling price is less than what they initially intended to sell them for.

Due to lower transaction costs, minimum slippage and strong intra-day volatility, individuals can trade frequently at small costs. As an approximate, you may only expect to have a spread of 0.03% of your position size. To give you an example, you can buy and sell 10,000 US Dollars and this will only incur a 3-point spread, equivalent to $3.

Leverage

There are not a lot of banks or people who would lend you money so that you can use it to trade shares. And if there are, it would be very hard for you to convince them to invest in you and in your idea that a certain share is going to go up or down. Therefore, most of the time, if you have a $10,000 account, you can only really afford to buy $10,000 worth of stocks.

In currency trading however, because you use ‘borrowed money’, you can trade $10,000 of a currency and you only need anywhere between fifty (For a margin lending ratio of 200:1) to two hundred dollars ( For a margin lending ratio of 50:1) in your trading account. This makes it possible for an average trader with a small trading account, under $10,000 to be able to profit sufficiently from the movements of the currency exchange rates. This concept is explained further in The Part-Time Currency Trader.

Profit From A Bull And Bear Market

When you are trading shares, you can only profit when the price of a stock goes up. When you suspect that it is about to go down or that it is just going to be moving sideways, then the only thing you can do is sell your shares and stand aside. One of the frustrations of trading shares is that an individual cannot profit when prices are going down. In the currency market, it is easy for you to trade a currency downward so that you can profit when you think it is going to lose value. This is easy to do because currency trading simply involves buying one currency and selling another, there is no structural bias that makes it difficult to trade ‘downwards’. This is why the currency market has been occasionally referred to as the eternal bull market.

This is an excerpt, modified from the book: The Part-Time Currency Trader .

There is, technically, greater risk in common stocks than in the Forex. But as any experienced investor can tell you, there are many not-unusual situations in which a common stock can be viewed as a better safer investment than the issues ahead of it.

Or, take the common stocks of corporations like General Electric and Union Carbide. These, as it happens, are the only issues on the companies’ books. Who would argue that the bonds of even a first-class railroad, for example, were necessarily safer?

Safety also depends, to an extent, on the price at which the stock was bought. A company may be solid as a rock, but eager investors may have bid its stock to an unrealistically high level in terms of the per-share earnings likely to be attained. If a quarterly or year-end earnings statement does not bear out the optimism of the eager buyers, they may begin to unload.

The man who has bought near the top and wants to hang on may see a dismaying depreciation in his holdings, even though, by all investment standards, he does own a good, safe stock.

The point is, some stocks are safer than others, and the value of all stocks may shift and vary and thereby alter temporarily their safety—the possibility of cashing them at the price paid—for the investor.

It is not hard to find a safe stock, if by that you mean one representing a lively, alert, efficient company that is unlikely to collapse and fail. While not every stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange is a daisy, the mere fact that it has met the requirements for listing says much in its favor. For one thing, to obtain listing a company must agree to report its financial condition regularly. This alone makes it possible to evaluate the company’s performance and prospects, and thus estimate whether its stock is a good buy.

This in not to say that unlisted stocks or stocks carried on other exchanges are chancy. As you can quickly discover, some rather fine companies are not on the so-called Big Board—the New York Stock Exchange. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, Humble Oil, and Creole Petroleum are listed on the American Stock Exchange. Such representative companies as Anheuser Busch, Eli Lilly, and Time, Inc. are unlisted, and traded only in the over-the-counter market. Few insurance companies and no banks both quite stable stock categories—are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Still and all, the new investor will be wise to confine his dealings to stocks that are relatively well-known and have a ready market. For out of the estimated 5,000 public, stock-issuing corporations in the United States there are, inescapably, some dogs. They do not have to be thieving and corrupt. Poor management, wobbly financing, and an inability to keep pace with the times in production and distribution are reason enough for the investor to avoid them.

Here, too, may be mentioned the “penny stocks,” which have enjoyed an unfortunate vogue in recent years. These glitter like a prize in a shooting gallery, but they promise something for nothing, and this is no premise for a smart investor to accept. Many are out-and-out swindles. Others are legitimate enough, but rank as the wildest sort of speculation; double-0 on the roulette wheel, or a mare in the Kentucky Derby will come home a winner more frequently than these babies.

For the man who can only be called the ignorant investor, they have a certain attraction. The small investment— or bet—of $100 may purchase 500 or 1,000 shares which make a man feel big, whereas the same amount buys only a fraction more than one share of American Tel and Tel, which is discouraging and makes a man feel small. Furthermore, a penny stock only has to rise a penny to double in value; AT&T has to go to around 160; and with the cunning of the ignorant, even penny-stock investors seem to know that the rate of movement—up or down—is swifter among low-priced stocks than high. And finally—and this is the most insidious argument of all—the penny-stock buyer persuades himself that the amount of money he puts up isn’t too important; after all, he’s riding a long shot.

What is wrong with all of this is that at no point does value enter into the calculation. Anyone who does not consider the worth of what he is buying is a gambler, not an investor. The sorry result is that a few bad gambles can sour an otherwise sane person on the true value of investment.

Beyond this, safety is largely a matter of sanity. There are many ways of examining a stock and of judging the time to buy it or sell it. All of them are available to the average investor. Learn them and use them. You will never get stuck with a poor stock masquerading as a safe one.

Hedging Against Inflation: One of the big arguments in favor of stocks bears on another aspect of safety. This is the fact that stocks may frequently act as a hedge against inflation.

Inflation, according to the classic definition, is the economic condition resulting in a rise in prices and a drop in the purchasing power of the dollar. In effect, goods are scarcer than money. Thus, through the operation of the forces of supply and demand, goods become more expensive. Dollars, relatively more plentiful, become cheaper—more of them are needed to buy this item or that.

In the United States, inflation has been at work for some time. It is not runaway inflation. Our productivity (goods) is managing to stay fairly well abreast of our prosperity (money). Still and all, since 1939 the Consumer’s Price Index means of measuring the fluctuation in the prevailing prices of certain basic household commodities—-has jumped from 99.4 to 195.7, almost a 100 per cent rise. In the same period, the dollar’s value has dwindled from 100 cents to 47.3 cents—value, of course, representing what the dollar will buy.

In a fluid situation like this, safety of investment takes on a new dimension. Many conventional ways to save through a savings account, an annuity, a Government bond held to maturity can practically guarantee safety of principal. You will always get out the same number of dollars you put in. But there is no assurance as to how much those dollars will buy.

Stocks cannot guarantee that the amount you have invested will be returned to you, safe and sound. But when dollars are plentiful and goods bring a fat price, it is possible that a company in whose earnings you have a share will be distributing dividend dollars more liberally.

So shares and the Forex have risks but if you are aware of them you can make sure you limit them.

If you invest in Forex or shares “paper trade” first and only use real money once you feel comfortable.

With the Forex you can use good Forex software that is available to limit your losses.

A good rule is worth mentioning: Never risk more than you can aford to lose.