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Think About Your Investment Goals Before You Invest

The first step before you embark on any investment activities is the setting of investment goals. You may find it difficult to harmonize your goals since some of them may conflict each other or may not coincide with your way of life.
When it comes to investing, many first time investors want to jump right in with both feet. Unfortunately, very few of those investors are successful. Investing in anything requires some degree of skill. It is important to remember that few investments are a sure thing – there is the risk of losing your money!
Pat Swanson, a Certified Financial Planner and families’ specialist with Iowa State University (ISU). States that “Individuals spend more time planning a summer vacation than they do setting investment goals”
Before you jump right in, it is better to not only find out more about investing and how it all works, but also to determine what your goals are. What do you hope to achieve with your investments? Will you be funding a college education? Buying a home? Retiring? Before you invest a single penny, really think about what you hope to achieve with that investment. Knowing what your goal is will help you make smarter investment decisions along the way!
If you focus on your dreams, establish specific investment goals then you are more likely to be successful.

Too often, people invest money with dreams of becoming rich overnight. This is possible – but it is also rare. It is usually a very bad idea to start investing with hopes of becoming rich overnight. It is safer to invest your money in such a way that it will grow slowly over time, and be used for retirement or a child’s education. However, if your investment goal is to get rich quick, you should learn as much about high-yield, short term investing as you possibly can before you invest.
You should write down your goals. Putting them on paper reminds you of their significance and can motivate you to do what you need to do to achieve them.
Most individuals have more than one investment goal.  Try not to have many competing goals that you become discouraged. Also, divide them into short-, medium- or long-term goals.
You should strongly consider talking to a financial planner before making any investments. Your financial planner can help you determine what type of investing you must do to reach the financial goals that you have set. He or she can give you realistic information as to what kind of returns you can expect and how long it will take to reach your specific goals.

Again, remember that investing requires more than calling a broker and telling them that you want to buy stocks or bonds. It takes a certain amount of research and knowledge about the market if you hope to invest successfully.

Your Investment goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reviewed and Time-related. That is it should be “SMART”
A specific goal is one with dollar amounts and dates established for an identified purpose. Decide on a regular amount to invest weekly, biweekly or monthly to accomplish your goals. Be realistic and establish attainable investment goals given your financial situation. Review your goals regularly, for example, annually, to see if you are on target or whether revisions need to be made in your investment plan.

 

 

www.sidewaysmarkets.com We had a challenging day in our live trade room with markets recovering from the election on Tuesday and the FOMC announcement yesterday. We saw WIDE ranges on Wednesday, and today we saw NARROW ranges just off the highs made overnight last night. It’s very typical for a market to consolidate after a few days of busy price action, and today was no different. We knew to expect a rough day, the dollar confirmed this in our morning prep, so we stayed focused on taking only the very best patterns. We took 2 losses and still earned over 100 ticks on only 4 contracts, so don’t miss today’s video recap!

A lot of us when we were a child had our own unique requests of getting the “dream job.” Being a professional or a public servant would be favorable for the nation as well as to our own pockets, and our parents were greatly overjoyed to look at us receive our college diploma down to having our first employer phone call. But right after some years of constant engagements, commute and traffic we all turn out looking identical-tired and exhausted. That is why you ask all middle-aged workers and they all have same dreams. That is to work without menacing bosses and stiff schedules. So maybe, just maybe, it’s not yet late to have stock trading training.

As a matter of fact a lot of workers stake a wad of their earnings in the stock market so they can have enough money to fritter when they retire. Then again, if you could earn money now and spend it to take a trip now then why hold horses until you become 60? If you read books regarding stock trading training and basics you would find out that when you own stocks you own a share of a business. It is in this process of owning that anybody can make money. However, your idea about owning stocks should go beyond buying and selling. The stock market just like in any other trade also demands a street-wise and instinctive intellect.

To begin with you should know the essentials of the stock market. What is a shareholder? A shareholder in simple terms is what you call your conventional stock owner. You buy stocks from your preferred business which entails you to have a share of their earnings. As an individual investor however, you do not have the concrete or substantial influence to the board of directors to command them how to run the business. Leave that to the multi-millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs. Although you will have one vote to choose one board member. For other companies conversely, in order to check the voting privileges would rather modify the classes of stocks for buyers. So either you could be a common shareholder or other else, you will have a varying scale of voting power. But will gain earnings all the same.

As an individual investor what you own is called a “common stock” which is what stockholders name as when they reply they own a stock. This is what we also name as when we mentioned common shareholder at the previous paragraph. So how do you become wealthy from it? Common stocks are more firm in the long run. That’s when your stocks are in a stable corporation also. So common stocks essentially pose more probability of bankruptcy. When the corporation loses in the market, either you get naught or you’re paid behind in excess of the creditors, bondholders and preferred shareholders (compensated in that same order).

But if you have undergone stock trading training and orientation you can always make a clever choice of investment. And you can also always warrant to make instant money.

www.eminitradingstrategies.com – Short emini trading today! One and done early entry followed by another early entry trade.
Video Rating: 1 / 5

Been a funny old day at the Trading With Common Sense offices in that the markets have to all intent purposes been treading water but as far as our accounts are concerned we have had a “blinding time” i.e. on one account we started the day at £57,259 and just recently closed the last transaction of the day to bring the fund up to £102,118.74 a staggering profit for the day of £44859.04 and an ROI for the fund for the day of 78.34% which equates to an annual rate of……well “loads of wonga” as a colleague of mine once eloquently put it.

The strange thing was as you see the as far as most FTSE trades were concerned the index actually opened and closed within 15.74 points of each point but the story of the day was the tremendous range trading in between. Perhaps we were lucky and perhaps we just managed to “get into the zone” for the best part of the day but to be honest that would be making more of it than it actually was. A lot of the trades were so mind stunningly simple to make that it would “over egg” the report to make anything more of it than usual.

The day kicked off with better than expected results from major UK Bank Barclays which though as I said better than expected still didn’t manage to fire up the markets to the degree that they perhaps would have done in the halcyon days before the present muddle that we find ourselves in. Still at least they didn’t throw the market into a downward spiral which has quite often happened in the past. With net profits of £6.08Bn they were 14% down on the previous year but up on analysts expectations so as a result rose by some 10% on the day.

I think the key story lay “over the pond” as we Brits like to affectionately refer to the Atlantic in that what was fast emerging from various sources was a slightly different take on the so called “financial bailout” or stimulus plan as the “Obama” Whitehouse would have us view it. The plan being discussed now was one with which a major component was to include a large degree of private funding from a various number of sources that would be underwritten by various Federal Agencies.

Basically the markets are running scared now and looking for a gift and one with which there are very little in the way of surprises. This as you could imagine does not exactly fit the bill and the end result was market which started by plunging 60 points straight after the opening bell and then spent the rest of the day see-sawing between 8300 points and the lower 8200’s and ultimately finished at around the 8237 mark.

One of these days Politicians will learn that the best way to stabilise or control the markets is to actually limit the number of surprises it experiences and therefore altering a large part of a hitherto announced financial package at the last moment falls into the category of what is known as a surprise.

Bankers might be incompetent but banks controlled by politicians, now that’s a concept guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of most free thinking folk. Heaven save us from Politicians.

Find More Futures Trading Strategies Articles

Learn the secret to maximizing profits and minimizing risks while generating the fat cat profits that make Wall Street Banks and Investment Firms wealthy.  Learn how to use the power of leveraged investing to generate explosive returns on your money in days not years. Place a bet with or against the house based on the daily up and down movement of the stock market. With a Steady Returns strategy, you make high probability/low return bets (12.32% return) repeatedly in order to “gind out” a profit.

Minimum Bet: 0

Average Win: .60

Win Probability: Greater than 95%

Average Loss: 1.65

Loss Probability: Less than 5%

Use auto execution to trade the S&P Emini futures contracts and you will eliminate the emotions associated with day trading. Use a simple one trade a day system that is either long or short futures contracts. No complex futures strategies are utilized. Overdoing things doesn’t make a system better; on the contrary, it can take away from a good system.

Risk vs. Reward

Our subscribers all have different risk tolerances, so creating a sell formula that is applicable to everyone is impossible. The purchase or sale of a security is up to the discretion of the subscriber. Please do not assume that we are indicating when you should buy or sell.

If you are already familiar with emini futures trading and you prefer to place trades on your own, as opposed to using a stockbroker, you have the choice of using our clear, step by step instructions on how to enter each entry order and exit order yourself.

You do not have to worry about constantly buying or selling. With our futures trading strategies, you typically only have to enter a limited number of trades each month.

You do not need to update entry and exit orders during the day nor do you have to follow the stock market or futures market each day.

Because recommendations are not given intraday and because subscribers have almost 12 hours to enter a new order in their brokerage account, our futures trading service is suitable for customers in any time zone working a full time job.

www.eminitradingstrategies.com – Some Tick Traders had a “one and done’ today. I was stopped out break even on that trade. I did get a good short Normal System Entry which was out of No Zone so it was a high-probability trade! Made 6 ticks before 10 am. My kind of work day!

More Futures Trading Strategies Articles

Planning plays an important role in any action of our lives and similarly sketching out commodity trading plan before beginning futures trading can be very handy. You will have set action plans in line to your objective, helps you to be consistent and track actions of your futures broker.

Having at least a minimum knowledge of commodity futures, futures trading strategies makes it easier in drafting a sound commodity trading plan. Don’t complicate your trading plan and aim to keep it simple and well-designed. Let’s look into few key aspects a good commodity trading plan should cover:

•  Choice of Commodities Markets : With the presence of many commodity markets like grains, metals, energy, livestock etc, it is crucial to decide on the markets you would enter. Depending on your knowledge, experience and risk appetite, you can chose to trade either in one or more markets.

•  Account Size : Normally it is believed to be difficult to survive with less amount in futures account, however, with prudent trading strategies one can make good profits. Don’t expand your finances and start off with large trading accounts, instead after gaining certain experience in commodity trading, it is advisable to increase account size in a phased manner.

•  Trading Strategies : The most crucial part is having sound commodity trading strategies in place. Regular information about your target commodities, general market, economic situation, technical and fundamental analysis and a smart commodity broker can aid you in framing apt strategies. Though constant changing of strategies is not recommended, a regular revision as per the existing conditions is prudent.

•  Risks in Trading : Keep yourself abreast of all the risks involved in executing a trading order and plan the amount you are prepared to risk on it. A Stop Loss order often is seen as a tool to limit your losses on trading. Stop loss order is a form of futures order, which requires you to specify the limit of loss on any futures trade. It helps you to restrict your losses and enables you to survive for a longer period.

•  Maintain Records : Keep track of all the trades you made, the strategy used in the trade, the market conditions, profit or loss made on the trade etc. Such records themselves form a very useful guide for your portfolio in the long run enabling you to plan well.