I had promised that I was going to start my own thread regarding stock investments and the markets. So many things have happened since last time I was here and I really do not feel like sharing my knowledge. But a promise is a promise and there have been few people that have emailed me and supported me.

This thread will deal with investing in the stock markets. I will not discuss individual stocks but discuss ETFs like SPY, DIA, IWM and QQQQ. The one good thing about trading ETFs compared to individual stocks is the the ETFs provide instant diversification among similar companies within the same sector.

I will post more as we go along, regarding entry-price, profit-target and stop-losses. I do not think that any ETF is good or bad. It is good only if I'm making money and bad if I'm losig money.

If you have not been in the market so far, please read this as an information piece only rather than my recommendations. There is risk involved and you should know how much risk to take on any position.

Any suggestations, comments and criticisms are welcome as long as it is market related. If this thread gets out of hand and we start discussing off-topics, I'll stop posting.

Have a happy new year!!!! May 2007 bring you and your family lots of joys and riches.

Sorry, i didn't see your earlier posts. Discussing trading strategies sounds great!

Within the past week, the Retail Index, the Health Care Index, the Broker/Dealer Index and the Cyclical Index have all staged decisive breaks to all-time highs.
Each group's breakout has been marked by consecutive higher closes, suggesting the broader markets remain on relatively firm footing.
And while the Nasdaq did edge under its 50-day moving average on Monday - marking just the second such occurrence since mid-August - it did so on its lightest volume total this year!!!!! Barring a decisive break under that 2,375-to-2,390 area, the Nasdaq's primary uptrend should probably be given the benefit of the doubt.
Take everything together, and the path of least resistance remains higher. Despite the Nasdaq's deeper-than-expected pullback, the broad-market backdrop remains bullish....

Find stocks that are about 1-2% from their all time high and buy those as soon as they make new highs.

My picks: HLIT, INPC. I would buy it $0.25 above their previous high.
I'll take my losses if HLIT goes below 6.50 and INPC goes below 9.

i said CTEL, check it out, itswas 30 percent up today. nice money.

CTEL gapped up in the morning and gave up most of it throughout the day. These stocks are good for day-trading but not as good for swing trading or long-term trading. It is time to be buying strong Nasdaq stocks. I still like HLIT and INPC. They had a nice run yesterday but there is more to go.

WU that I had mentioned previously is not performing as strong. It is time to dump that stock and put money elsewhere.

So here are my picks so far:
LLTC, SVNT, OVEN, HLIT & INPC.

Bhunte, what other parameters or criteria would you look for when choosing a stock?

Riten, there are lot fundamental and technical factors. if you r in trading business you need to master or know them.

wish i could predict the market direction on day to day basis...

Can you name some? Important ones?

Today is what I'd describe as a 1% true selling day. All major averages are down about 1%. It is too early to tell whether it is a change in trend or just a 1 day sell-off but it is important to take some money off the table and look for opportunities in the coming days.

Ritten: Get William O'Neil's book on How to make money in stocks for fundamental analysis and Secrets of Profiting in Bull and Bear Market from Stan Weinsten for technical analysis. Other wo really good books are How I made 2 million in Stock market by Darvas and How I trade for a iving by Gary Smith.

I have read those all and they are all good but I like Gary Smith the best.

riten, it is not that easy to list few important criteria, as stock prices are influenced by multitude of factors. you can easily find some common criteria in google resources. tell something to what depth you know of finance and investment (पढेर र परेर जानेका कुरा हरू ).
if you have hard earned money and want to trade on अर्का को लह लहै मा without sufficient knowledge, you better take help of professional money managers or study relevant resources.

I have done some historical analysis on the relationship between the bond yield and the S&P. Based on that I have come to the conclusion that this market has topped. It will be prudent to take some money off the table and get in cash. We are still in a long-term bull market but in the medium term there are going to be some sell-offs. I would not be surprised if we see a huge decline in the next 2 days. In another 3-6 months we will have many chances to buy at lower prices.

I've been following some elliott wave study too. They all signify that the market has topped. This is just a sign. I can see some wonderful shorting opportunities.

Here are my picks for this coming week.

SSTI buy if it goes above $5.45

CYPB buy if it goes above $9.20.

The sell-off that I was expecting did not materialise. Maybe this bull is strong and has ways to go.

how do you do it....

goodness!

Here is a good read for the 3-day weekend.

http://neif.org/Zurich_axioms.pdf

Boy, you really are well ahead. The content of that article, while active on a subconscious level on most people's brains, never really becomes fully aware to an individual.

Any tips on shorting?

hehe, feel bad for chinese investors.

north american markets are tumbling too...but glad for those who have a few short positions like i do.

:D

HAPPY TRADING!!!

eminitrader looks like your recommendation for CYPB is completely wrong... u said buy at $9 or higher, and now the price is even less than $8.. infact looking at the trend your recommendation for BUY was at the peak of the cycle.


maybe u are not soo good as u think. sorry.

Latoby,
That's call speculation aka day trading.
Noone can predict the market accurately unless they can see the future.

Wow Latoboy, I know I was wrong on CYPB. Big Deal. I'm wrong on many picks but when I know I'm wrong I get out at the break of support. it's when I'm right I make big which helps to offset other losses. Actually my win/loss ratio is less than 50% but my win % is way bigger than loss %.

I don't know what the market will do tomorrow or in 3 months. I'm playing probability. For example in the past whenever X, Y and Z happened the market went up 75% of the time. In this case if the same thing happens I'll buy, but there is always that 25% chance that the market will go down and if that happens I'll get out. I'll know when it is the 25% because I'll have a loss and I sell my position at a loss.

Last month I had mentioned that the market was ready to correct. It is impossible to pick the top or a bottom but I knew that I needed to be careful because all my analysis was pointing to a sell-off. I was waiting for a catalyst and when the market sold off after making a new high(SP around 1460), I knew it was close to the top. The last week's price action made me pretty bearish but I was not expecting such a huge sell-off today.

So why is this market down. Fundamentally nothing has changed since last week or a month ago. It is all because of liquidity. People think market goes up or down because of valuations but that is not always the case. It goes up and down because of money-supply. Chinese government increased the reserve ratios for the banks, it dried up lot of liquidity so they had to sell stocks and commodities in order to maintain the cash. It is as simple as that. They had been doing this for more than a month and I became bearish a month ago.

Long-term we are still in an uptrend but we will get more opportunity to buy at a lower price. Usually after such a sell-off there is an after shock which we shall see either tomorrow or on Thursday.

Look for HSI, buy US stocks when it HSI stops going down. In the past foreign markets used to follow US now US markets follow HSI. If HSI is down, then sell, if it is up then buy.

Here is a parting gift. I deleted the average prices and stuff. This is from the morning. The maeket was down big and I had been adding to my short positions for a while.

This will be my last post here because I have been busy with other stuff. Good Luck.

eminitrader, dont be mad.. get glad :)