Traits of a Successful Trader

By Sum Edward

Mastering fundamental and technical skills of trading appears to be quite easy to most people when compared with mastering the mindset of successful trading. Let us examine some of the traits that make a person a successful trader. They are in no particular order.

Have clear trading objectives. Do not just throw money at short-term trades and sit back expecting to ‘make it rich’. Map out exactly how much of your total investment capital you will risk in short-term strategies and spread that risk over many different trades instead of ‘putting it all on red’.

After setting your objectives, believe you can achieve them. If you don’t believe in your plan, how can you possibly expect to have that plan succeed for you?

Prepare plan for each trade before the market is open. Always do you analysis and map out entry and exit points when the market is closed. If you try to jump on ‘hot stocks’ during the trading day, you are not a short-term trader, you have become a day trader. Day traders must operate under much different rules, so it is best for most of us to stick to well planned short-term trades.

Regularly review your trades. Pick them apart, both good and bad. Look for what could have been done to make the trade better. Honest self- evaluation is the single best way to improve your performance.

Focus on the positive, but deal quickly and correctly with the negative. Do not dwell on your mistakes, but do not gloss them over either. Have a fair and balanced view of how you are performing and keep a positive attitude to keep yourself on track.

Please also visit http://options-diary.blogspot.com

Profiting From a Stock You Don't Even Own

Many people even in this "enlightened" era, do not realize that you can make a lot of money if the market is falling. Well the fact is that you can, and there are 2 good ways to do it. One is to "sell short" and the other is to buy options called "puts". Today we want to look at the short selling game and try and give you some advice on how it works.

Selling short is not a new idea. It has been an acceptable practice since the beginning of the market. In fact after the crash of 1929, there was a remark people would use quite commonly. Have you ever heard the old term "hey don't sell him short"? Its a very old saying and the idea behind it is if you think someone is going to fall short of the mark, or miss the boat, or what have you, you would "short sell him". Why? Because if it comes true and the target did indeed fall or stumble, you were right. Well the term comes from the stock market. If you think the market or an individual stock is going to fall, you can short sell it and if you are correct and the stock falls, you will make money.

So, how can you make money on a stock that is falling apart? Quite easily, you simply sell it before it falls, and buy it back cheaper later. The difference between the two is pure profit. Suppose you think the XYZ company is ripe for a fall. They have been running up too fast and you feel that one of these days it's going to really see a pullback. You would call your broker and say something like this: "I would like to sell 500 shares of XYZ short please". Now let us suppose that XYZ is trading at $75 when you "sell it". Now lets also say you were right and it falls down to $65 the next week. At that point you would want to "cover your short sale". How? By buying the stock back at the lower price. So you call the broker and say: " I would like to cover my short sale in XYZ at this time." The broker would then buy back the shares you sold on the open market and the difference between where you sold the shares at and what you bought them back for (in this case $10 per share) is your profit on the trade. Thats it!

Where did we get the shares to sell in the first place?? Your brokerage literally "loans" them to you. When you called to say I want to sell the shares, they take their own stock holdings and loan them to you. So when you sold them, you were selling something you did not own. But because you borrowed them, eventually they will have to be replaced and that is what happens when you "cover". Basically you are replacing them. So the way to look at short selling is this: You borrow the shares at the current market price and sell them, basically saying to the brokerage, IOU 500 shares of XYZ. In our example XYZ was at $75 when we sold them so we took in $37,500. Then when XYZ fell to $65 a share we decided that was as far as as it would fall so we literally "bought them back" on the open market. So it cost us $32,500 to buy them back and replace what we borrowed, but there is a difference of $5,000 dollars between the two transactions and that money is yours! You sold shares you did not own, took in money, bought them back lower and made a very healthy profit doing it.

Well like everything there is risk involved. The risk in shorting a stock is that it might not fall like you thought. In fact it could go up! That is the problem. When you borrow the shares from the brokerage, they have to be replaced, and if the stock rises instead of falling, you are going to have to buy them back for replacement to the broker at a higher price than you sold them at meaning you lost money. This has to be avoided so it is important that the stock you short has every reason to fall.

Shorting is indeed a useful tool. Every day, stocks go up and stocks go down and only playing the upside limits your profit potential. To keep your risks at a minimum, remember these points: First, keep your short sales very quick in duration, do not sell a stock short and forget about it like its a long term hold. Try and align a poor market day with your short sales. In other words do not short a tech stock when the NASDAQ is gaining 50 points every day. Wait for the overall market to go into a dive and chances are your individual stock will fall too. If you can align a stock that has a "reason" to fall with a very poor market day, its possible to put many dollars in your account even on a one day trade.

With a run up in the market there are definitely going to be days when traders lock in profits and the market will be pulling back. Going short on a day like that, in a stock that is weak, or just missed earnings or what have you, will net you very good returns. Learn how to use this tool, and if you are not sure abut it, try "paper trading" for a while. Write down what price you sold at and what price you "covered" at and as you get better at the mechanics, then try your first one using real money.

Now we want to explore the other most common method of capturing profits in a falling stock.

There are options available that are called "puts" and puts are used when we think a stock is going to lose value. First what are they? They are options and you do need to know a bit about what they are. In their basic form, an option gives you the right but not the obligation to do something. In the concept of buying a put option, we are buying the right to sell a stock at specific price, within a specific time period. Why is that important?

Lets look:

Suppose you think the XYZ company is going to fall like a rock. They are trading at $50 a share now (say January), but you think they will be about $45 in no time. Well we can buy a "put" option against it. In our example lets say we buy the January $50 put and they cost us $2 each. (options are bought and sold in blocks called "contracts" with 100 "shares" to the contract, so we would be buying one contract of puts, for $200) that means we are indeed betting the stock will fall and if it does we will be rewarded. So how do we get rewarded? Like this: Remember with a put option you are buying the right (but not the obligation) to SELL a stock at a particular price. We have bought the right to sell XYZ for $50 per share until the 3rd Friday of January (all options expire on the 3rd Friday of the given month). Well, if we are right and XYZ is only trading at $44 by that Friday, we have an interesting situation here. We can sell XYZ for $6 more than they are trading for on the open market. We bought the right to do so, but that isn't the fun part. The fun part is that those options that we paid 2 dollars each for could be worth $7 or $8 each at that point! This is the beauty of option trading, the huge returns you can get if you're correct in your assumptions.

So, buying a put on a falling stock is a very good thing to do because if it keeps falling, your put option that you just bought is going to be worth a lot more shortly. Then you simply sell the option that you bought and pocket the profit. We know that one day there is going to be a pull back and knowing how to short the market or buy puts becomes extremely profitable.

More on Shorting

When the market is going through some major convulsions, the concept of shorting individual stocks naturally comes to mind. One thing that must be kept in mind and that is, you have to be very very careful when you are going to short something simply because companies are so aware of their stock prices now. Years ago a company could let their stock "ride" but now shareholders are quick to instigate lawsuits if a stock underperforms. So we like to see long trend down turns in the overall market before we short individual stocks simply because a company can and often does release news just to prop up its price. If the news is significant enough, it can quickly turn a falling stock into a rallying stock and that gets ugly if you are short. So, one thing to take into account is that you should monitor your short sales very closely.

One thing that often works as a timing indicator for when to short a stock is the exact opposite of the "10AM" rule, Or "gapout" rule. Here is how it works: If a stock opens weak and falls for a while, at some point it will settle out and probably turn back up for a while. Then if it is indeed going to be weak on the day, it will start falling again. We have found that if the stock falls below the price level it fell to during that first half hour, it will probably fall further. For example, let's say we think ABC is going down today and sure enough it opens at 50 and slides to 47 by 9:45. then it bounces up a bit to say 48 1/2 , but it cannot hold and back down it goes. If it falls below that first half hour low of 47, even by 1/2 a point, chances are great that it will continue to fall on the day. If you were considering shorting ABC that would be about the safest time to try it because it obviously couldn't even hold the first plunge price.

Does this method always work? No, nothing in the market is ever a guarantee, but as far as a "safe" way to try, it's as good as it gets. One other note we would like to express is that we often like to do short sales on a "daytrading basis" or in other words, if we are profitable on our short sale, we take the profit home that same afternoon. Again the thinking being that overnight they can brew up a decent press release and the next day the stock could gap up a bunch and leave you with no profit. Years ago, CEO's didn't take nearly as much notice of their stock price, but things have certainly changed. Now they need a strong stock price for a multitude of reasons. One is lawsuits, but they also leverage their stock price as a way of generating usable capital for expansion or rebuilding. So, we find it safest to treat shorts as a daytrade or a very short term hold at the very least. Naturally there are companies that just swan dive and keep going down, but if you watch, for the most part you will see them doggedly try their best to reverse back to the upside. Play your shorts quick and consider the downside "gapout" as a good entry point, we think you will find it useful.

By Larry Potter

Adsense Ways to Make Money that Every Writer Should Know About

Top Adsense earners usually jealously guard their Adsense ways to make money and the secrets they might want to reveal, they will only sell at the maximum possible price – like valuable keywords.

You cannot really blame them because most of have gone though hell and lots of difficulties to arrive at their highly successful and effective ways to make money, which give them thousands of dollars on a monthly basis from AdSense.

This writer has been using his journalistic investigative and research skills to continuously find some of these closely guarded secrets that are being used by top Adsense earners. And even as they help me multiply my Adsense earnings, I do not mind sharing them out to others. Let me be quick to add that you can be sure that I still end up profiting in many ways, so this is really not an entirely selfless thing I am doing here. That’s the really wonderful thing about the net, if you take your time to figure out stuff, you’ll always be able to find a ways to make money from virtually everything you do.

1. Ways To Make Money In The Power Of A Safe list To Get You Clicks

The first time I tried distributing articles through safe lists and article announcement groups to pull in traffic to my AdSense sites, my daily revenue shot up three times. Recently I stopped for a while just to test the impact since I had introduced a lot of other ideas and ways to make money from Adsense, since. My daily clicks and earnings fell like a stone back to where they were.

Yahoo groups is a good place to start. Ensure that you join groups that are as relevant as possible to your subject area. This is easier said than done because most groups are fairly general. My advice is that you carefully view recent articles and submissions at each group before you join.

Do not make the mistake of using your main email address for this because you’ll get tons of emails. Instead register a totally new email address for this. Do take time to quickly glance at the email headings you receive and maybe to open one or two that strike your fancy. This will give you new ideas and also remind you how competitive safe lists are and the sort of headlines you need to get your mail opend by as many people as possible.

You should remember that you will have to churn out articles fairly regularly to keep your safe lists well fed and the traffic flowing to your Adsense sites. You will need a minimum of 5 articles a week.

2. Ways To Make Money By Generating Traffic Using Referral Marketing

Most people do not have any long term or medium term strategy for building up traffic to their Adsense sites. While valuable keywords are important, the truth is that the vast majority of clicks will earn you a couple of cents and maybe a dollar once in a while. So the only way to dramatically increase your earnings is to increase traffic.

Despite what people say about viral marketing sites, I still find that they make a lot of sense as far as the principles of effective online marketing go. The net is really a very powerful tool for viral marketing where you can do only a little and trigger off a viral effect that will give you millions – more so when you are talking about traffic and hits to your site.

At my blog I have listed the name of my favorite viral marketing site.

Even if you do not like my viral site idea, please ensure that you have a medium term and long term strategy for building up the traffic to your Adsense site.

3. A Valuable Keyword That Is Not Relevant Is Not One Of The Ways To Make Money From Adsense

There has been a lot of emphasis on valuable Adsense keywords in recent times. In my opinion many folks have gone overboard with them. It is important to note that the only keyword that will help you are the ones that are closley related to your site. The more relevant the valuable keywords are to your site the better.

Finding a clever way to use a valuable but irrelevant keyword at your site is not one of the ways to make money with Adsense. The reason is simple. The visitors you attract will not be interested in the keyword as a subject and are therefore unlikely to click on it.

So what is the secret the high Adsense earners use here? They actually narrow the focus of their valuable keywords search to keywords that are as closely related to their subject as possible.

By Christopher Kyalo

Good to Know Stock Trading Information

Stock trading is a complex process that may be quite confusing and deceitful to a new trader. Therefore, if you plan to start investing your money in shares, you should first choose a stock trading strategy that is most suitable for yourself.

The major difference between stock trading strategies is based on timeframe. It means that an active day investor will act and react differently than a long term trader. Any stock trading strategy has its own pros and cons so analyse them carefully before starting investing your savings in stock shares.

The day trader is an active player; he is always buying and selling shares inside the timeframe of a day. This kind of stock trading has to advantage of saving you the trouble of facing any overnight risk. If a share’s price is experiencing a sudden rise or drop, he can immediately take advantage of the situation. A day trader is usually targeting to get quick profits while facing small risks. The bad thing about this type of stock trading system is that it is very time consuming, you have to be permanently alert and focused on the stock trends. But the trading costs represent the worst thing. The commission tends to be very large when you sell and buy several times a day.

The swing trader is an investor who is focusing on longer periods of trading, meaning a few days or even weeks. This method has the advantage of having few commissions to be paid and the opportunity to experience some important changes in share’s price. The main downside of this method is its higher risk due to the longer trading period.

The long term swing trader is an investor much alike the swing trader above. The difference between these two is the longer period of time, several weeks, he is targeting. This method has a good aspect: the long term swing trader is avoiding the inconvenience of being affected by minor trading swings. And the profit is bigger; experienced traders target even a 50% profit using this method.

But bigger profit brings bigger risks; you will be trading over a longer period of time, therefore you will be exposed to bigger trading risks. And it is likely for you to miss many short-term trend changes.

The buy and hold trader is the investor who is buying stocks and hold them for a very long period of time, even for years.

This type of stock trading can bring you a very good profit with a small effort. But be careful when you choose to use this method as it may turn against you if you don’t have a good, strong investment strategy. This means that the secret to earn money out of this method is not just holding to the stock and hope for the best, but to analyse the stock trend, the market evolution and to set a profit target.

In conclusion, there are methods of stock trading for any type of person. You just have to analyse every type of method and use the one it represents you best. And remember that making profit on the stock market requires brains, instinct and luck!

For a Stock Trading system and investment strategy that is simple and easy to follow just visit http://www.mytradingsystem.net Portfolio management strategies that work in all types of stock market.

By Ispas Marin

Currency Trading: Create Massive Wealth From Currency Trading Program

This article describes the secrets on how to create true personal wealth from safe currency trading online from your home or office.

What is currency trading?

How can you get rich and powerful from currency trading?
Who can do currency trading?

Can you do currency trading from any country of the world?
Until six years ago, when the United States Congress passed a law and made it possible for the small investors and average citizen to participate in this currency day trading, only large banks, financial institutions, millionaires and billionaires were doing currency trading.

Currency day trading is the best kept “Secret” of the rich and powerful, international bankers, the money elite, who own and control all the banks, companies, corporations and foundations in the world.

Currency online trading is when you buy and sell the foreign currencies of different countries online.

Through currency trading, you can put your money to work for you like millionaires and billionaires do, instead of you working for your money.

There is no large investment, hard work, technical training or big “risk”.

Currency day trading investment enables you to use $1 to control an investment worth $200, and $500 to control $100,000 and $1000 to control $200,000 and $5000 to control $1,000,000 worth of investment.

Currency trading is the most profitable and attractive internet investing opportunity because you can do it from home or office and from any country in the world.

In currency online trading, you don’t need to do any marketing or selling or internet promotion to succeed.

In currency trading, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to do any internet promotion.

In currency trading, you don’t need any stocks or warehousing.

In currency online trading, all that you’ve to do is open an account with one of the brokers with as little as $300 or $2000.

Then follow simple instructions to buy and sell the currencies.

When the price of the currency is low, you buy.

In a few seconds or minutes, the price may go up, and you may sell it and make a profit.

By doing so, in a day, you can easily make $500-$1000 by just buying, selling and trading these foreign currencies for about 3 or 4 hrs!

And get this:

You don’t even have to be stuck sitting behind your computer buying and selling these foreign currencies.

You can enter all your buy trades and specify the sell prices you desire and then log off.

Whenever the values of these foreign currencies rise and your selling prices reach, the currencies will be automatically sold for you and you make money!

You can put it into an auto-pilot and forget it, and it will keep generating fast easy cash for you daily, 365 days in the year like an “ATM” machine.

You can do currency trading and at the same time keep your day job, because in currency trading, there is no work to do.

In the future when you have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, you may then quit your job and just keep doing currency trading forever and go on permanent vacation!

To understand the beauty of currency trading, picture this:

In the morning, you get up from sleep at 6 am.

You go to your bathroom and have your shower.

At 7am, you hurry and eat your breakfast.

At 7.20 am, you login into your currency trading account on the internet and spend 10 minutes to buy about 3 or 4 different currencies, [for example British Pound, Euro, CHF (Swiss Currency) and Yen (Japanese currency).]

You can specify the price that you wish to sell each currency.

Then you can log off.

By 9 am, you’re at work in your office or business place.

You do your job as usual and by 5 pm, you’re finished and heading home.

When you get back home around 6.30 pm, you login into your currency trading account to see how much money you’ve made.

Holy Molly, there in your account it says you have made $750!

“Is this for real?”, you wonder…

Yes, it is. (Your eyes are not deceiving you…)

$750 in a day for just clicking your mouse twice and doing no work?

(Whereas at your job, you work 8 hrs, but make only probably $150)

This is how easy it is to make money from currency trading.

But before you use real money to open a live currency trading account, you have to open a free trial (demo) account (currency simulating trading) and practice first, to understand how it works and to acquire the right skills.

This free demo (trial) currency trading account (currency simulation trading) will help you to reduce a lot of risks that can lead to a loss.

In currency trading, you can choose how much money to invest, how much money to make and when to make it.

You may make money daily, 365 days all year from currency trading.

Your computer can be transformed into an “ATM” machine that cranks out cash for you daily (without large investment or hassles) from currency trading.

In currency day trading, you can choose what type of risk you can manage, when to invest and when not to invest.

In currency trading, you’re the boss. You may do as you please.

When currency trading is compared to other investment programs such as stock trading, bond trading, mutual funds, real estate and regular business, it is evident that currency trading is the fastest and greatest way to make money in the world.

Currency trading is a 2.5 trillion dollars daily business and it is larger than all the stock trading in the world combined.

These are some of the reasons why I believe that currency trading is the best online investing opportunity.

Perhaps from reading this article you’ll now come to know why currency trading is the secret behind the greatest wealth on earth and why it has been kept hidden from the average people of the world and therefore little known to the masses.

No matter who you are, be it a salesmen, doctors, office clerks, accountants, carpenters, actors, stockbrokers, small business owners, policemen, firemen, musicians, soldiers, housewives, technicians, attorneys, nurses, students, traders, cab drivers, engineers, you can get rich from currency trading.

No matter which country that you come from, such as USA, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Greece, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, China, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand... you can create true personal wealth and success from doing currency trading.

Creating personal wealth on the internet from your home or office has never been this sinfully easy. (http://www.mscsrrr.com)

May these currency trading insights open your eyes to the possibility of infinite wealth and success that can be yours from currency trading.

Please feel free to print or publish this article anywhere and read and also send to your friends and well wishers and please preserve the author’s resource box below.

Warmly,

Ikey Benney

Penny Stocks - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

By S Sokol

Penny Stocks – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Penny stocks, in the most common terminology, are any stocks trading for less than $5.00 per share. While the official Securities and Exchange Commission definition of a penny stock is a low-priced, speculative security of a small company regardless of market capitalization or whether it trades on an exchange or an “over the counter” listing service, such as the OTCBB or Pink Sheets.

Penny stocks generally have small market caps, under $500 million and are considered more speculative than larger, widely held stocks. In most cases, that’s true.

However, penny stocks have huge potential. That’s both the good and the bad. For instance, our website (http://falconstocks.com) profiled Phazar Corporation (ANTP) when the stock closed at $5.00 per share. Less than two months later, it traded as high as $53.96 for a potential gain of over 975%. That’s the good. But for every stock that posts huge gains like this one, there are countless others that go nowhere or lose most if not all of their value. That’s the bad and the ugly.

We love penny stocks. Penny stocks are our business. The world of penny stocks is full of exciting small companies that are working hard to become the next Microsoft. It’s also full of hypesters, scammers and cheats. The trick is to find those stocks that aren’t the fly-by-night companies or the over-hyped shell that will only make the owners rich while leaving you holding the bag.

There are plenty of stocks out there that are truly good, growing companies that post a profit, but happen to have a low stock price. Some penny stocks were previous high-flyers. Gateway, Inc. (GTW) for instance, traded above $80 per share in 1999 but now trades just above $2. It seems improbable that Gateway could ever reach $80 again, but it could reach $4 or $6 if it can get its act together and make some headway. That would be a 100% or 200% gain. A gain like that would make holders of Wal-Mart envious as its stock is down from 2000, a full seven years ago, while the company was growing. Could Wal-Mart gain 100% or 200%? It’s possible, but it would take an enormous effort, like moving a mountain. Not so with smaller companies. In many cases it takes nothing more than good news, a switch to profitability or a new product to see these small companies post huge gains.

Everybody loves penny stocks, even if they don’t invest in them. We typed “penny stocks” into Google and it came out with 1,850,000 hits. That’s almost twice as many hits as we found typing in “blue-chip stocks”. Face it, the world of penny stocks is exciting, the world of blue-chips is, well, boring. Its amusing to us when the big news of the day is when a Microsoft or IBM moves 2% in a day. Yawn.

Our team looks for small companies with share prices under $5 that have a clean balance sheet, growing revenues and income, experienced management and a promising business outlook. Then we perform an extensive technical analysis to the basket of companies that we like and we pick the one that is acting the best that week. We post that stock for our readers every Tuesday before the market opens.

We’d like to invite everyone to stop by our site and see what we have to offer. While we do more than just penny stocks, that’s our main focus and our true love.
Visit us at http://falconstocks.com

How Compounding A Simple Monthly Investment Will Make A Millionaire - Guaranteed

by: Alex Dale



It's a fact - a simple $1500 investment can make you a real millionaire, in dollars, in less than 20 years. Of course, this won’t happen over night, or over one year, but it will happen in less that 20 years, if you have the discipline needed.

It really is a simple process, and all it takes is:

1. A paycheck, or any other kind of steady income. Most people have that.

2. Discipline. This is where most people fail. In order for this plan to work, you need to make monthly deposits into your "millionaire fund". Many people will fail to make that commitment and stick with it. If you are ready to do it, your future as a millionaire is secured!

Are you ready for this simple plan?

Here's how to do it:

Step 1 : you need to find $1500/month to deposit into a special fund.

How do you get those extra $1500/month? You can take a second job, start a small business online or off, give up a few magazine subscriptions, work over time…whatever way you can find - you should be able to come up with $1500/month that you can save. Of course, you can start with less (maybe $1000/month), but this will slow things down.

Step 2: After you got those $1500/month, invest them with a conservative mutual fund that gives you a %10 yearly growth, on average.

Step 3: Repeat this process, EVERY month. Almost every month, a new "good" reason will arise, requiring you to give up the $1500 for another cause. This could be an unexpected bill, a vacation, a new appliance you "need" to buy. Don't be tempted. Keep depositing $1500 a month into your fund! This is the only way to make it to the millions. If you start skipping monthly deposits, your growth will suffer, and you will take years longer to get there.

OK, let's take a look at the yearly growth of $1500/month deposited into a %10 yearly growth fund:

End of year 1: 19,005
End of year 2: 40,000
End of year 3: 63,195
End of year 4: 88,817
End of year 5: 117,123
End of year 6: 148,393
End of year 7: 182,937
End of year 8: 221,098
End of year 9: 263,256
End of year 10: 309,828
End of year 11: 361,276
End of year 12: 418,112
End of year 13: 480,899
End of year 14: 550,261
End of year 15: 626,886
End of year 16: 711,535
End of year 17: 805,047
End of year 18: 908,351
End of year 19: 1,022,473

See? Over 2 million dollars in less that 20 years!

Of course, if you keep depositing for 30 or 40 years, the amounts will be much higher:

After 30 years: $3,418,987.99 (!)
After 40 years: $9,565,170.37 (!!!)

Building wealth is not rally hard. All you need is a paycheck and a commitment. If you start today, imagine where you'll be in 20 years!

Remember - the older you get, the more important money becomes (imagine being old AND broke…NOT a good thing).

Start early - and you will enjoy the rewards when the time is right.

Financial Alchemy: How to Be a Money Magnet

by Morgana Rae

Financial Alchemy: Changing Your Relationship with Money By Morgana Rae, CPCC, MRC, MPNLP Your current financial situation is a direct reflection of your inner relationship with Money. If you don't like your finances, something needs to change in your relationship. This is where Alchemy comes in. Alchemy is the art of transformation. With roots in ancient Egypt and classical Greece, Alchemy comes from a time when there was no distinction between science and magic. The mysteries of matter and consciousness were inextricably linked (as they are again, in today's quantum physics). These ancient studies gave birth to modern medicine, psychology, chemistry, and even Sir Isaac Newton's work on gravity. The ultimate pursuit of Alchemy was the "Philosophers' Stone," a substance believed to turn worthless metals into gold. While Alchemists through the ages slaved in the laboratory, their metalwork concealed a spiritual process, a Philosophers' Stone which had to be kept hidden from the Church: this was the process of inner transformation. Two principles are involved here: 1) turning lead into gold was an outer demonstration of inner transformation, and 2) the seed of the solution (the gold) was hidden in the problem (the lead). I invite you to use this chapter to discover your own Philosophers' Stone--your key to wealth and inner transformation--hidden in your relationship with Money. Before we proceed, let's review some guidelines I adapted from Alchemist tradition: Rule #1: As it is above, so it is below. What shows up in your head is going to show up in your life. This chapter will be using fundamental Relationship Coaching skills to help you transform your relationship with money from a dead seed into a flowering garden. A seed comes to life as a living, thriving, fruit-flowering plant...in the right environment. So, too, your own prosperity. Your potential for financial abundance is there, waiting for the necessary environment within you. Your relationship with money is like the soil that feeds or starves your economic growth. As long as you have hidden beliefs that cause you to unconsciously repel money, perhaps "protect" yourself from wealth, your garden will not grow. Rule #2: There is no scarcity. A wealthy client once explained to me how he had overcome poverty. "The amount of money out there in play every day is limitless, beyond our comprehension. Money is everywhere," he explained. And it's available in proportion to "how big your funnel is to take it in." He had learned to tap into the Source. This relationship supported him. Rule #3: Consciousness gives you choice. I assert even a small change in your relationship consciousness can have a huge impact on your material life. You get what you choose, but first you need to know what you're choosing. How do I know this? I experienced this transformation myself. My story: For years I was struggling as a life coach. I had trouble attracting clients who would pay the fee I wanted. I found myself avoiding discussions of money as long as I could. The whole subject embarrassed me, and my discomfort translated into making clients uncomfortable too. I was "doing" all the right marketing things--networking, newsletters, sample sessions--and getting nowhere. I was not making a "grown-up" living. What was in my way, I wondered? My coach and I took a look at my relationship with Money. What were my stories about Money? What is this entity I'm in relationship with? What's going on with this relationship? Two discoveries popped out: money didn't feel safe or reliable, and money caused separation. (My family would swing between being rich and poor over and over again, and money was a "reason" for family members not to talk to each other for decades.) If my experience of money were given personhood, he'd look like an unkempt, unappealing, Hell's Angel biker type I didn't want to be around...someone untrustworthy who liked to cause fights. No wonder I wasn't bringing Money into my life! This was not the relationship with Money I wanted to have. (And it wasn't the relationship I wanted to model for my clients either.) So I created a new paradigm. I fired the Biker persona and put a romantic, clean-cut, soft-spoken suitor in his place. I chose a new Money "person" to relate to. This Money was like a sweet boyfriend who wooed me with gifts. He even wore a tux! Whenever I received a check, signed a new client, came across some unexpected income, I would graciously thank Money for the lovely gift. And this version of Money was valued and invited into my life. From then on my business and income kept growing. Within six months I had accrued such a waiting list of clients that I had to add group coaching to my services. I didn't have to look for my new clients; they were finding me. And all I had changed was my inner dialogue with money. Now it's your turn: If you want to improve your financial situation, you must first uncover the beliefs that shaped your relationship with Money. Get out some paper and respond to these questions. (Writing creates clarity and speeds your change.) What did you hear about money when you were growing up? What beliefs get between you and prosperity? What have you heard about women with money? Next, look at how Money has shown up in your life and in the lives of those around you. Give Money personhood in relationship to you. If Money were a person, what would your version of this Money "person" be like? Who is Money? How do you feel about Money? Do you trust Money? Does Money trust you? How does Money operate in your life? How does Money feel about you? Is Money someone you'd want to have a relationship with if you didn't "have to?" Now, take a step back and imagine looking at this relationship between yourself and Money-as-a-person from the outside. What shift needs to happen in this relationship? Now, as yourself, negotiate with Money: Does Money have a request for you? Do you have a request for Money? What's going to be different? How do you want to be different in this relationship? What is the next step to making this change real? Money is like any other relationship; it comes where it's invited and appreciated. It rarely comes when it is chased. It can be your partner if you listen to it. The more you care for this relationship, the more money you will attract. HERE ARE FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO BE A BETTER MONEY MAGNET

1) Appreciate money. Appreciate even the smallest denomination. Think of how good you feel when you are valued for even a small gesture. It's the same with money. Every time you practice receiving and appreciating, you train the universe to send you more.

2) Strengthen your boundaries. Have the courage to say "yes" to what you want and "no" to what you don't want. Clear the clutter and energy drains in your life. Strong boundaries build your self esteem and free you to focus on what is important to you. This is very attractive to money.

3) Make a wish list. List one hundred things you would buy if money were no object. The items on your list put what you want on your radar. Through a mental process called reticular activation, your mind will start to discover opportunities to manifest the items on your list.

4) Manage your money. The better you manage what you have, the better able you will be to manage more. Get in the habit of diverting a percentage of your income into a wealth-building account, even if you are paying down debt. And set aside something for your favorite charities--nothing builds a sense of abundance like the ability to give to others.

And finally,

5) Surround yourself with successful people. You take on traits of the people you spend the most time with. If you want to be financially free, spend your time with financially successful people who share your values. Identify rich people you admire. Pick up their mindsets and practices for enlightened wealth building.
About the Author

Morgana Rae, CPCC, MPNLP, is president of Charmed Life Coaching, a life and business coaching company that guides clients to market creatively and inexpensively, to attract more than they chase, and to enjoy success without sacrificing their humanity. A popular speaker and frequent television and radio guest, Morgana was featured in the new movie "A Millionaire Mind- Awaken The Secret" with Christopher Gardner ( As portrayed in "

Gold – The Celebrity Of The Metal World

by: John Gibb
The most iconic precious metal of all time, gold is a valuable and widely used metal for jewellery, currency, computer parts, dentistry, satellites and various other applications.
Gold occurs naturally as nuggets or grains in rock; in fact the gold nugget is an iconic symbol of frontier America when prospectors would ‘pan’ for gold, sifting through rivers and streams for traces of a gold mine. Gold gets its chemical symbol Au from the latin ‘aurum’ which means ‘glowing dawn’, due to it’s distinctive yellow metallic glow. The purity of gold is measured in carats, with 24 carats being pure, though this was originally for measuring the weight of the gold. Merchants from the Middle East would weigh items with carob beans and this is still used for gems.
Gold is known for its practicality. It is very malleable meaning that it can be made into various shapes with relative ease; it conducts heat and electricity (this being a reason for its use in electronic components) and does not react to most corrosive chemicals which makes it better for jewellery. It also forms alloys easily, allowing other properties to be found and the colour to be changed. One such alloy, platinum with gold, makes white gold which has become massively popular in jewellery, because it has the elegance and stature of gold while being new and distinct
Gold is so malleable that it has been used as thread in clothing, wiring in computers, in dentistry for crowns and bridges and even actual gold teeth. It is used on satellites and astronaut’s visors because of it’s reflective properties. Gold flakes are even used in expensive gourmet dishes is come countries. It has no taste and is merely a delicacy and status symbol, thought some people believe that gold has medicinal properties. The symbolism of gold as a token of wealth has been used throughout history; the negative of golden pocket watches in Communist propaganda and the positive of ‘gold cards’ or golden tickets employed by credit card companies and promotional marketing. It has been used by civilisations all over the world to decorate religious artefacts and temples. This contributes to the steadfast place that gold holds in our society as a symbol and a practical tool, giving it a permanent place in our history.

How to Pick Hot Stocks in 2007 Good Growth Stocks to Buy - Top Technology Stocks

By Bill Carter

The stock market should present you with a lot of hot stocks in 2007. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the nanotech, biotech, voip, healthcare, homeland defense or internet sectors.
Most of them might seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities could be extremely risky, while others are simply not as good as they look. That's why it's very important to know how to choose among the best especially if you want to day trade them.
When you know how to pick and approach the best hot stock trading opportunities, you are able to generate a consistent and respectable amount of money in a very short period of time.
Experienced day traders recognize that trading hot stocks on momentum can be the fastest way to make money in the stock market.
You don't necessarily have to trade momentum hot stocks all the time. But you can learn how to take advantage of them when you encounter the best opportunities for going long or for shorting them to make money when they are poised to fall down.
If You decide to day trade stocks just keep always in mind that for a trader to survive and be consistently profitable, its necessary to keep things as simple as possible. To much confusion and technical indicators will most of the time make you slow in your decisions and froze you up when a good opportunity is right in front of your screen.
In the end, stock market day trading is all about picking the best daily stock opportunities and following your buy and sell signals with ease and simplicity. Once you learn to master your trading decisions, you can aspire to produce consistent profitable results.

Do-it-Yourself Retirement Plan

By Rex Truman

For your retirement plan, do you have to rely on financial advisers? Or can you build your own retirement plan? Yes, it is possible to run your own retirement plan, and in many countries you are allowed to do so.

But building a retirement plan takes time and effort – it is no good just putting your money into one thing like a group of equities and leave them alone. You might scan the financial pages of the paper one day to find your retirement plan had lost 30-50% of its value!

To build your own retirement plan, you will need to spend, say, an hour a week managing it, and more time reading.

How does the Big Picture affect your retirement plan?

The reason you need to keep in touch with what is happening in the investment world is that you need to see the Big Picture well to make your retirement plan work. What do I mean?

You need to know:

1. Whether the economy is growing or flagging or in recession.

2.

What is expected to happen with inflation over the next two years or so – and keep getting it right.

3.

Is the stock market in an uptrend, going sideway, or going down – these trends can last from one to 10 years.

4.

How high are interest rates relative to inflation.

Here are some examples. If real inflation was zero, and interest rates were 10% - you might just stick bonds in your retirement plan. It would be that simple.

Alternatively, if you knew that the stock market had just embarked on an uptrend that would last ten years – then you might put good quality stocks in your retirement plan.

If inflation is growing, and likely to grow in the future, then you might want to put lots of property, gold and/or silver coins or bullion and collectibles in your retirement plan.

These are just extreme examples. However, life is rarely like that, while investment advisers – who are mostly salesmen – will tell you that the outlook is good for stocks whatever is happening. Generally, it is necessary to have some of your retirement plan invested in government bonds, some in stocks and some in property bonds. If the stock market is weak, then a Bear Fund may be appropriate.

If you are prepared to study the stock market, and follow the long trends, it may be worth managing your own retirement plan. However, you should seek professional advice whatever you do.

Disclaimer: This information is not intended as investment advice, but is intended to show how things can behave differently at different times. Do not use this information as investment advice for your retirement plan or anything else – consult a professional advisor.

Gold Investment Versus Alchemy – Turning Dross Into Gold!

by: Charles Goodwin

I’m often asked if Gold is a good investment and I invariably answer that gold may well be a good long term investment for an investor but I am a wealth creator and the very word “investment” is simply not part of my wealth creation vocabulary.

This statement usually results in a very perplexed look on my questioner’s face.

And so it was with Walter. Walter is a financially struggling bank employee and came to me to learn about wealth creation. (Yes I assure you, there are tens of thousands of financially struggling bank employees out there.)

‘Charles, so you are saying that if you had a spare $25,000.00 you would not even consider exchanging it for gold bullion?’

‘My dear chap, why would a wealth creator swap one asset (money) valued at $25,000.00 for another asset (gold) also valued at $25,000.00? Rather pointless exercise don’t you think?’

‘But gold may rise in value and your money might devalue – isn’t gold a hedge against such occurrences?’

‘Yet equally, gold could go down in price and the currency strengthen – surely what you are contemplating is just a form of gambling, is it not?’

‘On that logic all investment is a form of gambling, as prices of any share or commodity can go down as well as up. That is why one needs to weigh the risks.’

‘Exactly so – and that is why I am a wealth creator and not an investor or speculator. Investors and speculators hope and pray for some future event to occur, whereas a wealth creator insists on increasing one’s wealth at the point of purchase.’

‘But Charles you can’t buy gold bullion at wholesale rates – as you well know the spot price is fixed daily.’

‘Who said anything about paying wholesale price for it – I would prefer to be an alchemist and turn dross into gold.’

Walter’s young moon face went red with frustration. ‘Oh come Charles, please be serious with me and stop toying. I truly want to be wealthy one day and on a bank teller’s salary alone, I can’t see that happening.’

‘Oh but I am being serious. Turning dross into gold is a very enjoyable hobby – the challenge is not whether one can accomplish the task – merely how quickly one can accomplish each stage of the goal one sets for one’s self.’

‘An enjoyable hobby! … But how on earth do you do that?’

‘Simply by making the conscious decision to become a wealth creator – develop your own part time wealth program and stick to it. Besides my book The Secrets Of Wealth Creation Revealed, I’ve written many free articles that are now all over the web. Study them and then begin your wealth program ASAP! There are a thousand and one ways to accomplish the task of turning dross into gold. It’s a matter of first knowing the principles, secondly establishing an easily managed workable plan - then thirdly, having the fortitude to stick at it.’

‘You mentioned setting “goal stages” could you give me an abbreviated example of how one goes about the process?’

‘Well if your desire is to amass gold then if I were you, I would have a clean out boot or yard sale of all superfluous items in my possession (dross) to raise some initial capital. I would take that small amount of money and taking my time (because time is virtually immaterial to the success of this endeavor) haunt charity shops, other peoples yard and boot sales, auctions etc and buy items that I know I can resell at several times the price I paid.

I would keep a list of the expected realizable value of such items (wealth total) and keep buying and selling till that list total becomes about $9,000.00 in value. Now I know to you that may sound difficult to achieve right now but please understand, if you are working on 200% minimum mark up, this can be accomplished so quickly. That is $150.00 in sales becomes $450.00 which becomes $1,350.00 which becomes $4,050.00 which becomes over $12,140.00 and so on.

Now as I said, once that total of goods on hand passes $9,000.00, stage 2 of my wealth plan would come into effect. That is, I would then save the proceeds of the next approx $3,000.00 of sales (depending on current spot price) and purchase a 5 ounce gold bar.

The realizable value of the remainder of stock would still be a minimum of $6,000.00. My next task would be to quickly increase this total back up to $9,000.00 and then repeat the gold purchase. You can continue this process until you feel you have amassed enough gold.

You will find as you learn and gain experience, wealth creating will become your second nature. Opportunities will materialize all around you. Soon you will be running in and buying gold bars at least twice a month. People will think you have the Midas touch and you will be able to say ‘No it isn’t that at all – It is all the result of Alchemy and my dear old friend Charles Goodwin!’

Do not worry about the spot price fluctuating. Merely stay detached and consider that you are simply turning dross into gold and of course that is exactly what you are doing. If you have any doubts in your own abilities divide all the figures by 5 and initially buy an ounce of gold at a time. I can assure you the journey is both exciting and interesting. You will learn so much upon this journey and then one day the penny will drop and you will suddenly realize that the world is now your oyster. You can create as much wealth as you desire.’

‘Charles, forgive me – but may I ask the obvious question. You have shown me a fool proof way to amass great wealth, what do I do about taxation?’

‘I am a wealth guru as well as a mystic! Would I leave you floundering without a tax plan equally as simple and equally as effective? No of course I wouldn’t. But at some stage you will simply have to beg, borrow or steal a copy of (or dare I say it – even buy a copy!) The Secret Of Wealth Creation Revealed and truly – all will be revealed!’

The Importance Of Making A Will

by: Benedict Rohan

Please note: this article applies to residents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and is provided for general information only. It does not constitute financial advice.

It’s not something that anyone likes to think about, but deciding what happens to your estate when you die is crucially important for ensuring that your loved ones are looked after when you’re gone and that your assets are distributed as you would have wished.

Many people think that wills are only necessary for people with a great deal of wealth, but this isn’t the case. There are certain laws governing how a person’s estate is divided if they die ‘intestate’ (i.e. without a will), which might not be what you would expect or intend. For example, if you’re not married or in a civil partnership, even if you co-habit with your partner, they will not be entitled to inherit anything from you unless you specifically mention them in your will. Even if you are married, without children, your spouse will not inherit your entire estate – other living relatives such as your parents and siblings will be entitled to a share. Also, if your circumstances change, for example if you get married, divorced or remarried or have children, this could make your estate more complicated to settle. Another important point to bear in mind is that if you don’t have a will, you won’t have a named executor to carry out the administration of your estate and the responsibility will fall upon your beneficiaries, whom you may deem unsuitable to handle your affairs.

Making a will has other advantages too – planning your estate and who will inherit may help you to minimize the impact of the inheritance tax laws.

To make a will, you must be 18 years of age or older. You must be considered to be of sound mind and it should be written without pressure from any other party. A will must be recorded in writing, and it needs to be signed by yourself in the presence of two witnesses, who must also sign. Beneficiaries of the will and married partners of beneficiaries cannot act as witnesses. If they do, the will won’t be invalidated, but their inheritance will be. The completed and signed will can be kept anywhere you want – at home, at your bank, at your solicitor’s office, at a Probate Sub-registry, a District Registry or the Family Division Registry of the High Court.

The big question for many people is whether it’s necessary to employ a solicitor to set up a will. The answer is no, but it is certainly recommended, particularly if your estate and personal circumstances are rather complex. It’s also easy to make seemingly simple mistakes which could end up having significant consequences. Common errors are not understanding what has to be done to make a will legally valid, changing the will without having it signed by witnesses, failing to make alterations in the event of a change in personal circumstances, forgetting about parts of your estate, or not taking into account that the beneficiary might die before inheriting.

Solicitor charges for setting up a will can vary between solicitors and will also depend on how complex your estate is. If you’re a member of a trade union, your membership may entitle you to a free will-writing service or free legal advice. You can bring down costs by considering in advance what your assets are and to whom you would like to leave them – whether family, friends or charity. This will include property, possessions, bank accounts, insurance policies, pensions and shares.

Also think about who you want to appoint as executor of your estate and who you want to look after your children should you die before they reach the age of 18.

You should certainly consider using a solicitor if you have complicated personal circumstances, for example if you live with someone who isn’t your spouse or civil partner, if you have a dependant who is unable to look after themselves, if you have a business or own property abroad, if you don’t live in the UK or aren’t a UK citizen, or if you have lots of family members who may make claims on your estate, such as ex-spouses or children from previous marriages.

If you don’t want to use a solicitor, it’s possible to purchase ‘DIY’ will kits from many high street stationers and bookshops or online providers, which will provide basic guidance.

Remember to make amendments your will any time you have a change in circumstances such as marriage, remarriage, divorce, civil partnership or the birth or adoption of children. You’ll need to be careful in how you amend your will to ensure that it remains valid. It’s not possible to write alterations onto an existing will. Instead you must either write what’s known as a ‘codicil’ or draw up a new will entirely. A codicil is like an addendum to your will. It doesn’t replace the original will, but makes alterations to one or more of the sections.

Only the person who created the original will can make a codicil, and it must be signed and witnessed in the same way as the original will (although not necessarily by the same witnesses). It’s only suitable for making small and uncomplicated changes such as increasing or decreasing the amount of money left to a beneficiary, adding a new beneficiary or changing the executor. You can add as many codicils as you want to your will, but if you have lots of amendments or complex changes it’s best to start afresh with a new will altogether. When you draw up your new will, you should insert a clause at the beginning to explain that this new will revokes all previous wills and codicils. Your old will is no longer valid after you do this (and have your new will signed and witnessed), and you should therefore destroy it. You must destroy it yourself too, or have it destroyed in your presence – otherwise it may still be considered valid.

Your will may be challenged if a person feels that it hasn’t left them with adequate provision or they don’t believe it to be valid – for example, if it hasn’t been drawn up in line with the legal requirements outline above.

What's The Fuzz About E-Currency Trading

You keep hearing about this money making system that requires no selling, only an hour a day (max) and no special skill.

Yeah right.

At least that's the first impression for someone who has been in the internet for a while.

Enter E-Currency Trading.

What if you were able to provide the liquid capital for "Internet Money" so that it could be used with as a backup or “real money”?

You can make around 1.5% to 4% in daily interests on your capital for doing that. My eyes almost popped out. You can gain coumpounding interest for a starting investment as little as 50 bucks.

Depending on your background, it may be a little hard to believe that you can take $100 and turn them into $800 in less than 45 days. I'm 21 years old and it was tought for me to believe it. You're actually putting your money to work. Yep, it happens. And it takes no special skill. After all, your money is the one doing all the hard work.

There is a downside, of course. It’s a very complex system to grasp at first. In fact it can be overwhelming if you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. Open an account here, another one there, buy some stuff here buy some stuff there. You could go insane trying to figure it out by yourself.

I was lucky enough to do it the simple way. If someone guides you step by step, with a visual image of how he uses the system Every-Step-Of-the-Way,

“do this, open this account, then open this other account, put your money here, transfer it here, and see how it grows”

When someone takes you by the hand like that and teaches you, it just become too easy. All I did was watch a video, do Exactly like on the video. Watch the next video, do exactly what you see on the video. Watch the next video and... well you get the point.

The great thing about E-currency Trading is that you and I and everyone else does the same thing to make money. We all take the same path. If you’re heading this way, if you’re interested in learning about e-currency trading, I can recommend you take the smart way and learn the system instead of trying to figuring out for yourself.

When you decide to learn currency exchange the smart way, the rewards are higher in a shorter time frame, without really having a learning curve because you are learning it directly from a source that is already generating income for themselves.

Remember the law that says that the shortest path between two distances is a straight line.

About the author:
Charles Cruz CEO of Currency Trading Center. Teaching you how to set you income on fire with Currency Exchange.

Portfolio Management Art Of War

by: Jason Ng

It’s been a long and hard decade…

Having been managing investment portfolios and accounts for the past decade both professionally and personally, me, like an army of other portfolio managers out there, are not only looking for the perfect trading system, but also the perfect way to manage an investment account.

Indeed, there are whole bombardments of theories of risk management and portfolio management out there that it is mind boggling. There are risk management concepts that attempt to govern each investment trade and position sizing based on complex probability calculations and there are even concepts that were born in Las Vegas, claiming what high stake poker gamblers do. The problem with these concepts is that they are mainly mathematical concepts that took the human factor out of the game completely.

Let’s face it, if you have ever managed a portfolio or an investment account, you will know that it is never as simple or left to chance as a game of poker and it is never as mechanical and emotionless as the mathematical calculations claim.

After a decade of thinking along these lines, I realized that these portfolio management concepts are important but there must be something on top of these that must govern the mind that executes these concepts. This “Meta Program” must be the “Operating System” in the mind of the portfolio manager and rule the way the portfolio manager or trader looks at a portfolio or investment account. With such a “Meta Program” in mind, the portfolio manager will be able assess changes in a portfolio or investment account in the right light and to behave in ways that are appropriate to the prevailing situation.

Here I present my personal “Meta Program” called the Portfolio Management Art of War.

Every Investor, Trader, Fund Manager or Portfolio Manager is an Emperor or King of his or her own trading Empire. Your Empire exists in a world that is engulfed and consumed in an eternal warfare. This world is called the Exchange (stock, forex, commodity or whatever exchange you are involved in.).

The boundaries and resources of your Empire are defined by the size of your Fund. Some Kings have bigger territories and some have smaller ones but all are driven by the common need to survive in the Exchange by expanding their territories and boundaries.

As a King, your mandate in the Exchange is to find ways and means to expand your Empire over time. If that cannot be done, you will soon find that you might not be the King of this Empire for very long.

In order to expand one’s territory, one must lead one’s Empire into war against the rest of the Exchange. Some Kings are more aggressive and some, more conservative. Regardless of level of aggression, every King’s resources must be committed in various ways into battle against the Exchange. Every winning battle expands the King’s territory and every losing battle loses part of the Empire and the boundaries shrinks. Some King has a target boundary size but know that as long as you remain a King, you will one day be drawn into battle against the Exchange again. The war in the Exchange is eternal.

In order to battle in the Exchange, every King must have a Strategy. Some splits one’s army up into many squads which fights independently and some engages in a total war against the Exchange with the whole Empire leaving only very little backup. Some organizes one’s army into many functional squads, with some squads fighting more aggressively and some squads fighting more conservatively. This Strategy is called the Portfolio Management System that the King chooses to adopt. Each squad then fights using specific Tactics called Trading Systems.

How a King chooses his Strategy and Tactic depends largely on the part of the Exchange that a King chooses to fight in. Every part of the Exchange (Forex or commodity or equity etc..) has its own unique characteristics and rules of engagement which the King must be thoroughly familiar with.

Every time a King sends forward a squad to do battle in the Exchange by drawing upon his Empire and placing a position in the Exchange, it must always be held in mind that there is no guarantee that you will ever see that brave general that was being sent forth again. If the squad loses, you lose a part of your Empire to the Exchange. Therefore you must take very frequent look at the overall map of your Empire (which should always be pinned up prominently in your war room.) and monitor how far back the Exchange has taken your Empire before thinking about and making your next move. If the squad wins, that general expands your Empire farther into the Exchange. That gives you more resources and more troops to wage your next battle. The King must then decide how these new resources are to be deployed… shall he assign the new troops into his existing squads? Should the King hold the new troops and resources back as backup for future battles? Should the King expand on the number of squads using the new troops? Strategic deployment of these resources could turn the tide of the entire war.

Before a King sends a squad forward, he must first assess the capability of the General that is to lead this assault. This is your Research. If you are highly confident that this General will win the battle, should you give him more troops so that he can claim more territory? If you are slightly less confident of that General, should you cut back on his troop or hold back the assault altogether?

Finally, if your Empire has been compromised and the Exchange has claimed a significant portion of it, is it time you consider a change in Strategy and Tactics? Even if the Exchange has claimed a large portion of your Empire, you might still be able to wage a series of battles so successful that you could probably claim the Empire that you started with and maybe even more, like so many famous Kings and Generals in the world. So, even if your Empire has taken a rough hit, it is not time to surrender yet. You are the King. If you give up, the whole Empire falls.

With this “Meta Program” in mind, you will be able to apply many of the famous art of war and their centuries of wisdom on top of the modern finance techniques that you have learnt in order to have even more certain survivability for a long time to come.

Every King needs a tactical map. I have made one such map which you can use for free in order to have a strategic overview of your Empire and help you keep the metaphor in mind at http://www.mastersoequity.com/metamap.htm

For everything you want to know about option trading, please visit http://www.optiontradingpedia.com

Forex: Benefits of Trading the Forex Market

Trading the Forex market has become very popular in the last years. Why is it that traders around the world see the Forex market as an investment opportunity? We will try to answer this question in this article. Also we will discuss come differences between the Forex market, the stocks market and the futures market.

Some of the benefits of trading the Forex market are:

Superior liquidity
Liquidity is what really makes the Forex market different from other markets. The Forex market is by far the most liquid financial market in the world with nearly 2 trillion dollars traded everyday. This ensures price stability and better trade execution. Allowing traders to open and close transactions with ease. Also such a tremendous volume makes it hard to manipulate the market in an extended manner.
24hr Market
This one is also one of the greatest advantages of trading Forex. It is an around the click market, the market opens on Sunday at 3:00 pm EST when New Zealand begins operations, and closes on Friday at 5:00 pm EST when San Francisco terminates operations. There are transactions in practically every time zone, allowing active traders to choose at what time to trade.
Leverage trading

Trading the Forex Market offers a greater buying power than many other markets. Some Forex brokers offer leverage up to 400:1, allowing traders to have only 0.25% in margin of the total investment. For instance, a trader using 100:1 means that to have a US$100,000 position, only US$1,000 are needed on margin to be able to open that position.
Low Transaction costs
Almost all brokers offer commission free trading. The only cost traders incur in any transaction is the spread (difference between the buy and sell price of each currency pair). This spread could be as low as 1 pip (the minimum increment in any currency pair) in some pairs.
Low minimum investment
The Forex market requires less capital to start trading than any other markets. The initial investment could go as low as $300 USD, depending on leverage offered by the broker. This is a great advantage since Forex traders are able to keep their risk investment to the lowest level.


Specialized trading
The liquidity of the market allows us to focus on just a few instruments (or currency pairs) as our main investments (85% of all trading transactions are made on the seven major currencies). Allowing us to monitor, and at the end get to know each instrument better.
Trading from anywhere

If you do a lot of traveling, you can trade from anywhere in the world just having an internet connection.

Some of the most important differences between the Forex market and other markets are explained below.

Forex market vs. Equity markets

Liquidity
FX market: Near two trillion dollars of daily volume.
Equity market: Around 200 billion on a daily basis.

Trading hours
FX market: 24hr market, 5.5 days a week
Equity market: Monday through Friday from 8:30 EST to 5:00 EST

Profit potential
FX market: In both, rising and falling markets.
Equity market: Most traders/investor profit only from rising markets.

Transaction costs
FX market: Commission free and tight spreads.
Equity market: High Commissions and transaction fees.

Buying power
FX market: Leverage up to 400:1
Equity market: Leverage from 2:1 to 4:1

Specialization
FX market: most volume (85%) is made on major currencies (USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, CAD and AUD)
Equity market: More than 40,000 stocks to choose from

Forex market vs. Futures market

Liquidity
FX Market: Near two trillion dollars of daily volume.
Futures market: Around 400 billion dollars on a daily basis.

Transaction costs
FX market: Commission free and tight spreads.
Futures market: High commissions fees.

Margin
FX market: Fixed rate of margin on every position.
Futures market: Different levels of margin on overnight positions than day time positions.

Trade execution
FX market: Instantaneous execution.
Futures market: Inconsistent execution.


All this makes the Forex market very attractive to investors and traders. But I need to make something clear, although the benefits of trading the Forex market are notorious; it is still difficult to make a successful career trading the Forex market. It requires a lot of education, discipline, commitment and patience, as any other market.

About the author:
Raul Lopez is a full time Forex trader and founder of http://www.straightforex.coma high quality Forex training and Forex trading course provider.

The Importance Of Making A Will

by: Benedict Rohan

Please note: this article applies to residents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and is provided for general information only. It does not constitute financial advice.

It’s not something that anyone likes to think about, but deciding what happens to your estate when you die is crucially important for ensuring that your loved ones are looked after when you’re gone and that your assets are distributed as you would have wished.

Many people think that wills are only necessary for people with a great deal of wealth, but this isn’t the case. There are certain laws governing how a person’s estate is divided if they die ‘intestate’ (i.e. without a will), which might not be what you would expect or intend. For example, if you’re not married or in a civil partnership, even if you co-habit with your partner, they will not be entitled to inherit anything from you unless you specifically mention them in your will. Even if you are married, without children, your spouse will not inherit your entire estate – other living relatives such as your parents and siblings will be entitled to a share. Also, if your circumstances change, for example if you get married, divorced or remarried or have children, this could make your estate more complicated to settle. Another important point to bear in mind is that if you don’t have a will, you won’t have a named executor to carry out the administration of your estate and the responsibility will fall upon your beneficiaries, whom you may deem unsuitable to handle your affairs.

Making a will has other advantages too – planning your estate and who will inherit may help you to minimize the impact of the inheritance tax laws.

To make a will, you must be 18 years of age or older. You must be considered to be of sound mind and it should be written without pressure from any other party. A will must be recorded in writing, and it needs to be signed by yourself in the presence of two witnesses, who must also sign. Beneficiaries of the will and married partners of beneficiaries cannot act as witnesses. If they do, the will won’t be invalidated, but their inheritance will be. The completed and signed will can be kept anywhere you want – at home, at your bank, at your solicitor’s office, at a Probate Sub-registry, a District Registry or the Family Division Registry of the High Court.

The big question for many people is whether it’s necessary to employ a solicitor to set up a will. The answer is no, but it is certainly recommended, particularly if your estate and personal circumstances are rather complex. It’s also easy to make seemingly simple mistakes which could end up having significant consequences. Common errors are not understanding what has to be done to make a will legally valid, changing the will without having it signed by witnesses, failing to make alterations in the event of a change in personal circumstances, forgetting about parts of your estate, or not taking into account that the beneficiary might die before inheriting.

Solicitor charges for setting up a will can vary between solicitors and will also depend on how complex your estate is. If you’re a member of a trade union, your membership may entitle you to a free will-writing service or free legal advice. You can bring down costs by considering in advance what your assets are and to whom you would like to leave them – whether family, friends or charity. This will include property, possessions, bank accounts, insurance policies, pensions and shares.

Also think about who you want to appoint as executor of your estate and who you want to look after your children should you die before they reach the age of 18.

You should certainly consider using a solicitor if you have complicated personal circumstances, for example if you live with someone who isn’t your spouse or civil partner, if you have a dependant who is unable to look after themselves, if you have a business or own property abroad, if you don’t live in the UK or aren’t a UK citizen, or if you have lots of family members who may make claims on your estate, such as ex-spouses or children from previous marriages.

If you don’t want to use a solicitor, it’s possible to purchase ‘DIY’ will kits from many high street stationers and bookshops or online providers, which will provide basic guidance.

Remember to make amendments your will any time you have a change in circumstances such as marriage, remarriage, divorce, civil partnership or the birth or adoption of children. You’ll need to be careful in how you amend your will to ensure that it remains valid. It’s not possible to write alterations onto an existing will. Instead you must either write what’s known as a ‘codicil’ or draw up a new will entirely. A codicil is like an addendum to your will. It doesn’t replace the original will, but makes alterations to one or more of the sections.

Only the person who created the original will can make a codicil, and it must be signed and witnessed in the same way as the original will (although not necessarily by the same witnesses). It’s only suitable for making small and uncomplicated changes such as increasing or decreasing the amount of money left to a beneficiary, adding a new beneficiary or changing the executor. You can add as many codicils as you want to your will, but if you have lots of amendments or complex changes it’s best to start afresh with a new will altogether. When you draw up your new will, you should insert a clause at the beginning to explain that this new will revokes all previous wills and codicils. Your old will is no longer valid after you do this (and have your new will signed and witnessed), and you should therefore destroy it. You must destroy it yourself too, or have it destroyed in your presence – otherwise it may still be considered valid.

Your will may be challenged if a person feels that it hasn’t left them with adequate provision or they don’t believe it to be valid – for example, if it hasn’t been drawn up in line with the legal requirements outline above.