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Hi Everyone, A lot of people are investing in the stock market as a preparation for retirement days. Yes, it is one primary reason why you should start getting involved in the world of trading but there are other valid reasons you might need to look at. Investing in the stock market means for most people, securing their immediate future and of course hoping that along the way, they earn a considerable amount of cash. Investing in the stock market could give you the power and means to possibly buy the home you've always wanted. While you do not essentially need the full money upfront, you still need the money for down payments to lower down the interest and get a good deal. With a better deal, you will pay less over the years you need to complete to pay the house in full. It also means that you will have immediate equity in your home as an additional bonus. Another good benefit of investing in the stock market is you are not only preparing your future but as well as your children's future. Winning big in the market possibly set up scenarios in which you could send your kids to college for them to start establishing their careers and make their dreams and your dreams a reality. This is yet another long term goal but not that long compared to retirement.

Hello All, Hope you all doing well, I need to know the simplest strategy for a regular trader who trades daily and earn little to fulfill his/her needs?

One of the most important reasons why traders take big losses is because they often fail to recognize when a trade has gone wrong. You see, stopping out of a trade is probably the biggest fault of traders and investors. Often, this happens to young and inexperienced traders and investors, but I know many veteran traders and investors that struggle with this as well. Early in my own career I struggled with stopping out of a bad trade myself, so I can sympathize with this problem. The problem with taking a loss is really two fold. First, the trader has to admit that he is wrong. As you all know, as human beings we all hate to be wrong. The ego simply gets in the way and we all want to always be right all the time. The first secret in this business is to check the ego at the door. The market does not care about your the color of your skin, religion or anything else. It will move in the direction of the money and that is the bottom line. Once a trader or investor goes into what I call 'hope mode' the trade is over. I'm sure everyone has been in this position at one time or another. Simply put there is no room for ego or hope in the stock market. The market is always right and there is no reason to fight it. Here is the second problem with taking a loss, it hurts. Pain and pleasure are the two reasons why humans do anything at all. As a human being, we are always looking to have pleasure and avoid pain. Well, losing money is painful and many people would rather simply hold a losing equity than lock in a small loss and move on. I cannot tell you how often I see a trader hold a losing trade only to see the position move further out of the money. Many years ago I watched a day trader blow up a $200,000 account in a single day averaging in on a bad day trade. To this day I can remember the look on his face as his money vanished in thin air. Believe it or not, this trader could have exited the position with a $500.00 loss, but instead he kept averaging in and fighting the position until he was wiped out. As a rule, once you have your full position you should never average in on a trade. At that point, it is critical to know where your max loss is going to be and stop out if that level is breached.Now when should we stop out? The answer to this question is not that simple, but here is what I personally do. I always place my stop loss below an important breakout or pivot on the chart. You see, prior breakout or pivot levels are usually defended when retested. After all, this is usually an area where institutional traders and investors got involved, that is why there is a pivot low or high on the chart to begin with. If that level is breached on a closing basis then I will move out of the position. So If I took a trade based on a daily chart pattern then I will usually check the daily and weekly chart levels. If there is a major pivot on the weekly chart then I will use a week chart close as my stop out level. While this method may not be perfect, it has saved me from much bigger losses when I have been wrong. Nicholas Santiago

Investing is a calculated risk. Throwing money into a venture without understanding the downsides, upsides, and being unable to control the moving parts is a gamble, no different than going to a casino without understanding the game of odds. When I am investing in real estate, I am taking a calculated risk with every purchase. My business model is centered around buying property 70-80% of fair market value. Meaning, if i know the house is worth $1,000,000, I refuse to buy it unless I can get it for $7-$800,000. This is me covering my downside, in case the market tanks, in case the house sits on the market for too long, in case there's a huge defect with the property, I've bought conservatively enough that in the worst case, I'm going to break even. Speculation is if I buy the property at 950,000 with the hope that the market will continue to climb and so I can sell the home for 1,100,000. Investors do not bank on speculation. Investors understand and evaluate all the factors in their industry and either hedge for the downside, or can control the moving components to reduce the risk. When VC's are evaluating their next venture, they spent time evaluating the management team because a business is only as good as team directing it. That is a part of how they evaluate how risky the venture is. Risk can be the unpredictability of a market or it can be the lack of education that you have concerning the industry. An old investing adage goes like this: "Cover your downside and the upside will worry about itself"

There are different interpretations of success, reaching form “participation is everything” to attainment of wealth and fame. Let us take the same range of interpretation for trading/investing then it would read as follows: “Success is making money” to “success is attaining wealth”. Trading is a professional business and professional attainment is measured on score cards. Fund managers performance for example is measured in how close the fund performs to the referring index. For funds, which relate to large caps or the overall stock market, the S&P 500 index is generally used as the base line. If you want to do the same as a private investor, take SPY: The ETF of the S&P 500, which has a year-to-date-November-2013 performance of 27% growth. If your trading/investing account grew with the same rate of return, you met the index. In case you run on a lower return rate, you are in good company, because most of the fund managers: Mutual Funds, Exchange Traded Funds, Hedge Funds are not achieving the average fund performance either; only a small number of funds is beating the S&P 500, where the best in class run at double the return rate of the S&P 500 (We will report separately in giving you a detailed overview on Hedge- and Investment Fund performance). Let us take a look at the top 10 stocks of the S&P 500 and their year-to-date-November performance: 1 Exxon Mobil Corporation Common (XOM): 8.0% 2 Apple Inc. (AAPL): -1.1% 3 Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): 42.6% 4 Johnson & Johnson Common Stock (JNJ): 32.2% 5 General Electric Company Common (GE): 25.8% 6 Google Inc. (GOOG): 43.7% 7 Chevron Corporation Common Stock (CVX): 10.8% 8 Procter & Gamble Company (PG): 21.6% 9 Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class B (BRK.B): 24.2% 10 Wells Fargo & Company Common Stock (WFC): 26.0% The results show that we have a wide spread of developments, reaching from -1.1% (AAPL) to +43.7% (GOOG), with an average performance of the top 10 stock at a return rate of 23.4%. Take a look at the Berkshire Hathaway Fund performance in relation to the S&P 500: -2.8%, which would be seen as an average good performance for fund managers. However, had you bought SPY-shares, you would have been better on. How can you do better than average and most important, how will you be able to produce wealth, when the markets might not give such a positive development in 2014? You need a trading or investing system, which shall give you the following: Seven Critical Elements of a Trading Flexibility to trade/invest in various assets. Why various assets? In case stocks halter, institutional money might flow into assets like commodities, currencies, treasuries and you should be prepared to participate in institutional money moves when they happen. A system, which lets you produce income if the markets move up, down or sideways. In average, markets drop with three to five times the speed they grow. Hence, you should be ready for applying short trading strategies applicable to all kind of account holdings: IRA, 401(k), Cash, Custodian, and Margin. Clearly defined entries and exits: Institutional money is moving the markets and institutions leave their trace of directional intends. With the right trading system on hand, you can spot and trade along with those actions. Focus on spotting and trading along with institutional money moves, produce constant income and reinvestment. Such method makes you independent from picking the right stocks with long term growth. Imagine, you were able to win two out of three trades, with an average trade duration of four days, aiming for a 1.5% return/trade, making income to the up- or downside; then you are striving for an annual return of 62%, regardless of the directions the market take. If you can apply this method successfully, you will beat the best hedge fund managers of the world by far. Risk management: Professional traders have clear guidelines of how they act. As a private investor/trader, you need the same: Define the odds ratio for every trade and adjust the lot size of your investments to hedge and leverage your positions accordingly. Have trade repair strategies in place, helping you to turn potential losers into winners for all account types. Have a method to spot key assets on the move. Never fall in love with a stock or asset. No stock has to grow. The performance of an asset is the result of supply and demand. Apply a system which helps you to visualize when changes in supply and demand occur in an asset and be part of the directional move. [*]Journal your performance to see where you do well and where you have needs for improvement. Pros of every genre: Sports, theater, movies, trading, do this and you need to do the same to strive for constant improvement and long-term trading success. Clear cut documentation for every trade situation and asset, so you can always go back to the drawing board for revisions. Hence, please consider: Those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Good trading. Thomas

Prior to answering this key question, let us clarify the difference between a trader and an investor: From a top-down perspective, there are many elements where both do the same: Participating in the financial markets with assets like stocks, commodities, currencies, treasuries and their derivatives: Futures and options. However, there are behavior differences, where the action of the one is very different to the other: The investor usually takes a longer-term perspective and mostly only makes money when an asset bought, increases in market value. A trader focuses on participating in the short-term price moves of assets and mostly uses methods and trading instruments, which allow making money when prices move up or down. Successful traders and investors manage the following challenges: Challenge-1: Finding assets with a future perspective price move. Challenge-2: Applying a method of protecting profits. Challenge-3: Managing risk. Given the circumstances that some assets have price developments: With-, separate from, or against the markets, makes Finding Assets with a price move potential a key challenge. When those are found, the second challenge is to define how far their price move will reach to realize profits or find forms of protection prior to a potential reversal price move. In general, there are two basic methods to identify trade- or investment potentials: Fundamental Analysis: Where you equate financial and other business factors of an observed asset to decide for its future perspective. This is the arena of smart people working for the big investment firms, constantly analyzing the world’s markets and finding assets to invest in. As a private investor; however, if we try to replicate the same; we are facing a hard time in keeping up with the information base and point of view of institutional investors. Their managers have contact to the world leaders of business and politics and use pre-information constantly to their benefit. Technical Analysis: If applied right, a sound chart analysis helps you to spot and follow the action of institutional money moves with a trading system which equates the happening in price, volume and volatility for identifying asset in supply or demand, for you to trade along with the referring price moves. Given the magnitude of more than 40,000 investment instruments in the US-markets only, you might want to find a service, helping you to identify assets with institutional attention, fundamentally or technically. Protecting Profits The equation to consider is: Protecting Profits = Making Profits. A common saying is: “You trade with the trend until it comes to an end”. However, there are two fundamentally different ways of making and keeping profits: Way-1: You find a systematic to trail a critical price level along with the price move of an asset and when the price direction reverses to this level, you either exit your trade or you apply a method of profit protection against a potential counter price move. Way-2: You define positive trade exit price levels by equating the minimum and maximum expected price move from trade entry. When those critical price levels are reached, you either exit or you apply a form of protection to assure that the gains you made cannot disappear from your account. Check the graphics below for examples: Trail Your Stop (Way-1) Approximate Min and Max Price Expansion (Way-2) Managing Risk Managing risk builds the foundation for successful trading or investing. Only when you are able to prevent major draw downs in your trading/investing account, you will be suited for staying long-term in the trading/investing business. If the foundation of your trading system/plan is not standing on solid ground, your temple of success will quickly fall: Always be aware that there is no risk-free trade and the higher you put your return expectation, the higher the risk will be to accept a trade or investment. At the end of the day, a million dollars is a million dollars; however, if you are able to build up a trading plan, where you keep a constant low risk, while producing constant returns from multiple trades, you are better on than aiming for a onetime high return with an associated high risk: Imagine a trader with a $20,000 account, if he aims for a onetime return $10,000 and an associated risk of $10,000. When he fails, 50% of the account holdings are gone and the trader needs a 100% return on the remaining capital to just breakeven. Instead, if he is striving for a $1,000 return/trade with an associated risk of $1,000, he has a much higher probability to being long-term successful, as long as he constantly finds and trades assets with high-probability trade setups. The key question arises: How to define an appropriate risk in relation to the considered return? Our recommendation is to consider two risk levels: The minimum risk is the one you need to accept to allow for a price move in the desired direction, considering the natural price distribution of the asset to trade: Finding this price level prevents that you will be stopped out even so the price moves in your desired direction. If you continuously experience being stopped out and afterwards you see the price taking off, your risk tolerance was too narrow. Best is when a computer programs measure the statistical volatility of an asset at the time to trade, giving you a clear-cut approximation, where to put the stop- or trade adjustment level. Aside from this, you can surely pick a major support or resistance level where the price haltered in the past, at which your base hypothesis of the directional price move will no more have validation when it is surpassed. In addition to the minimum risk, you need to decide for a maximum risk to allow for accepting a trade, with the implication: When the maximum risk level is touched, a trade adjustment is necessary, which can be released or enforced, depending on the continuation of the price development. If your experience from the past was: Small gains, small gains and big losses, your risk tolerance was too wide and you face the danger to drain your account by either having no trade adjustment or stop level or an inappropriately wide risk tolerance, which is not in relation to the potential reward of the trade you entered. For any trader, if the relation from the maximum risk to the expected return is not in your favor, just do not accept the trade. Price levels, where the prices remained for a longer period in the past, can be used to define maximum risk levels. However, you can also help yourself finding those levels by letting your computer build the associated volume-price-relations, so you can see on the chart where the critical price levels are. Prepare for your trading success by installing the elements of asset selection, profit protection and risk management. The knowledge how to apply those instruments to your benefits is not widely accessible, however with the help of this article, you can check and balance where you stand today and how you can create your trading future by gaining the necessary knowledge and obtaining the referring instruments, helping you to develop yourself into the trader or investor you want to be.

Returns on every investment are subject to taxation. In order to attract a reasonable level of foreign investment, some countries and territories offer very low levels of taxation as an incentive to attract such investment, while at the same time, offering other conditions to keep such investment such as good corporate governance. Tax havens also have secrecy laws which prevent financial institutions from disclosing details of the monies held in their coffers by foreign individuals and corporations. This has led to several points of conflict between tax havens and the countries which depend on tax revenue of its citizens for income (e.g. the US). An example of a tax haven is the Cayman Islands.