The Market Coalition

We’ve all heard of the stock market and probably have a general idea of what it is and how it works either from high school economics classes, television financial reports, and the countless film depictions of what happens on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. But how does it really work and what is meant by “playing the stock market?”

The Stock Market in a Nutshell

Companies sell shares of stock as a means of raising capital. For example, let’s say that the XYZ corporation, makers of the finest whatsidoos and thingamabobs in the country, wants to open a new factory. Doing so will require a hundred million dollars. The company can get a loan from a bank, but it would wind up in debt. So, instead of borrowing, it decides to offer additional shares of stock. As investors purchase the stock they are giving the company the capital it needs to do business. In return the stockholders actually own a part of the company and have some say in its activities. If XYZ does well in the thingamabob market, its stock will raise in value as more people will want to have a piece of XYZ for themselves. If it doesn’t do so well (maybe it gets undersold by the Ichi Nee company, a Japanese conglomerate that has found a way to make smaller, cheaper thingamabobs), less investors will buy the stock, current stockholders may try to sell, and the value of the stock drops. The price of individual stocks will rise and fall several times a day. The price for a certain stock you may see on the evening news for any particular company represents where the stock was valued at the end of the business day. It will also tell you whether that price rose or fell from the previous day. It can be enough to make an investor tear his hair out. Didn’t you ever wonder why nearly all economists are bald?

“Playing” the Stock Market

You may have heard people refer to “playing” the stock market as if it were all a big game of Monopoly. This is an adequate term because that’s exactly what some people do, but the game is more like Roulette - sometimes of the Russian variety. People who “play” the market typically invest for short periods of time in the hopes to get a quick return. They will buy some stock, wait fro the price to go up, then sell right away and invest in another stock and await the next profit. They may do this several times a day in some cases as prices fluctuate. This can be a very risky way to behave because a lot of money can be lost, but a lot can be earned as well. It’s almost like a trip to Vegas without Wayne Newton.

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The stock market is driven solely by human emotion. Nothing else really matters. Human emotion is driven by perception, and perception is jaded by expectations. If your expectations are not met, than your perception is that this is bad. So if your expectations are high, chances are you will be disappointed. The trick then is to gauge the expectations that stock traders have at any given moment. Unfortunately there is no reliable measurement that I know of to gauge expectations.

Much of any days movement can be attributed to the daily news. And most of the time it can be narrowed down to the day’s economic news. There are of course non-economic events that shape the trader’s expectations. Politics, war, disasters, etc., but barring any unusual activity in these areas, the economic news is the driving force of most trading day’s activity. The notable exception is during ‘earnings season’, but we will be writing a whole article covering this at a later date. Suffice it to say however, earnings are the epitome of our theme presented here. Traders usually have scenarios in their heads, expectations if you will. They expect inflation to fall or rise, interest rates therefore will either fall or rise in lock step fashion with inflation. Indicators are used to predict inflation such as productivity, employment, consumer sentiment etc. And traders, have expectations of all these figures as the month goes on. They use their expectations to gauge whether these numbers come in as good news or bad news. In high inflationary times, a report on higher unemployment actually becomes a positive. Because higher unemployment means consumers have less money, thereby inflationary pressures will ease. But if the economy is perceived to be in a recession, than a report on higher unemployment is seen as negative, because we are not likely to pull ourselves out without people working.

And then to add to the confusion there are times when the numbers come in better than expected and the market still tanks. What gives to all of this confusing melting pot of expectations, perceptions and emotions? Well, one thing I can tell you, don’t read too much into the standard market reports given at the end of the trading day. They are valuable in that they are nothing more than a report driven by the same emotions that drive the market. However, their downfall is that they fail to recognize this. Daily reports report the exact condition of the human psyche, without ever recognizing that the psyche is the market. They can’t separate the two, and therefore their weakness is, that the psyche is an ever changing environment, and rarely stays the same two days in a row. Unless there is that rare and exceptional event that the whole world is focusing on. Sometimes the market just sells off, because it is time to. Sometimes it rallies because is just time to. If our expectations are that the market will go higher, because the economic data points that way, it will. But there will come a time, when the economic data fail to, or when our rosier than rosy scenario, shows a chink somewhere in that shining armor. And viola, nobody buys that day, or two days or week. Nothing in reality has changed except our emotions.

The trick to making money off all this is, watch the expectations. Watch the perceptions, and then watch the technical factors of the market, and the industries. If there is a bull move in housing say. And the underlying factors are there for home building, i.e. low interest rates. And the industry is moving along just fine, without speculative fever. This is the time you watch it, and wait. There will be some bad news along the way. Maybe even just a pause in housing permits, maybe an uptick in interest rates, for a very silly reason. And watch the band wagon empty out. This is when you buy, not while it is falling, but when it stops falling. This is the easiest band wagon to jump on. One that is stopping at the bus stop. Don’t jump on the moving bus, wait for it to stop. Likewise that is when you jump off too, not after it has gone into reverse. But when it has stopped. The easiest part of any move, is the middle part. The beginning is hard to see, the end is full of unpredictability and wild price changes, but ahh that middle. The boring old middle, full of narrow trading days, and small incremental price jumps. Nobody prints articles about that, it isn’t sexy or romantic. It is just profitable.

The other nice thing about the middle of any move, is it is backed by solid economic data in its favor. Any time there is unfortunate reports, people jump off slowly. The uptrend stops, not reverses. Because speculation hasn’t hit yet. Expectations are not unrealistic. And it doesn’t show up in the daily reports yet. The daily reports are filled with information about sectors that are either at the bottom or the top of their speculative run. Because without recognizing it they are reporting on the sectors that have the strongest emotions. And the two strongest emotions driving the market are none other than fear and greed. And when are fear and greed are at their most prominent, at the top and the bottom.

Trade without fear and greed, and you will trade well.

Now what to do about those daily reports? How to trade off of them? You trade opposite them. Not the day they are printed. When oil or housing are booming out of control and EVERYONE is talking about it. You put large cap oil and housing stocks on your watch list and wait. A month or two or three it isn’t exact science here. Dealing with human emotions never is, just ask Freudians. But you wait, until they stop making news highs, until they start making lower highs, then you short them. Or vice versa when techs crashed. You wait, and when they stop making lower lows, you buy them. But not just any stocks, large caps, quality stocks with real value, like earnings, assets, maybe even a dividend or two. Shorting large caps makes sense too, as they are easier to borrow, and they pretty much follow the trend, in fact in many industries they are the trend.

Trade without fear and greed, and you will trade well. Think for yourself and you will trade well. I encourage you to read my daily blog at http://livingonlargecaps.blogspot.com

For real time trading following these and other common sense principles.

CT Larsen has been trading stocks since 1990. Now trading large cap stocks exclusively. He has recorded three straight years of greater than 50% annual returns. You can read his blog at http://livingonlargecaps.blogspot.com

I went to the department store once to buy a suit. I stopped at one to take a closer look and feel the fabric, and the salesperson said, “That one’s very popular right now.” I kept looking, and she kept following me around. I found another one and tried it on. And she said, “That one looks good on you.” But I didn’t think so. So I tried on another one. This one looked good, but it felt a little big, so I asked her if they had one in a smaller size. She went and checked, and said no. I kept looking at the suit, and she said, “I don’t think it’s too big.” At that point, I had had enough of her lying (selling, I mean). So after looking around a little longer, I said, “Thank you,” and left. Needless to say, she wasn’t very happy. And neither was I.

This salesperson is actually like many salespeople. They don’t care if you look good in your clothes or not. They don’t really care about you at all; they just care about your money. They want you to spend your money so that they can make money. And I think they end up being poor salespeople - literally.

But I remember one time I walked into another store, and the salesperson came and said, “If you need any help, let me know.” Then she went away. Later on, I asked her for some help. She asked me, “What kind of suit are you looking for?” Instead of focusing on what they have to sell, good salespeople try to find out what you need to buy. And if you try something on, they’ll tell you if it looks good or not - they’ll tell you the truth. If the salesperson really knows their stuff, they should be able to tell you what you might look good in and suggest where you can find it - even if it’s not in their store. A good salesperson will focus on satisfying you and meeting your needs, which in turn will cause you to spend money - which will satisfy their needs. Satisfaction starts with the customer, and it ends with the salesperson - not the other way around. Serve the customer, and the customer will serve you.

Even if I didn’t buy a suit from that salesperson, I might have bought something else, like a shirt. But whether I bought anything or not, I would definitely go back to that store. And I would definitely recommend the store (or more specifically, the salesperson) to my friends. Which in the long run, increases sales.

When I go shopping, I don’t just want a product. I want trust. Honesty. Friendliness. Expert advice. And good service. If you want to make money from me, all you have to do is try to make me happy. And the way to do that is to first find out what I need, and what would be best for me, and then try to give it to me. And I will gladly give you my money because you saved me time, trouble, and the possibility of having to deal with a selfish salesperson. I believe this is the secret to making my money - and your money as well. The way to make money is to understand people and what they really need - because people control money. And really, all you need to do is just try to make me happy - because even if you fail, I might still buy something from you because you tried so hard to make me happy. I might even feel guilty if I didn’t buy something from you.

Most salespeople don’t sell like this. They don’t try to give the customer what the customer wants; they try to give the customer what they want to give the customer - or anything in their store that the customer is willing to buy. Yet the more you want my money, the less I trust you and the less I want to give it to you. But the less you seem to want my money, and the more you want to make me happy, the more willing I am to spend it on you. If you want to make money, wanting it more doesn’t help you - it usually hurts you. This leads me to what I believe is a natural law of life: if you want something, the best way to get it is not by trying to get it directly, but by researching what it needs, and trying to make it happy so that it wants you. The best way to catch a dog or any other biological entity (which includes human beings, I suppose) is not by running after it, but by giving it the food it wants or likes. Trying to attract it to you, rather than chasing after it. When it realizes that you were the one who brought it happiness, it will voluntarily come to you.

skytoheaven.blogsome.com

After the publication of the first part of this two part series, I had a few questions asking if shorting stocks is legal and I will quickly reply with a big YES. Some people believe that shorting shares of American companies is not patriotic or does not seem like the right thing to do. Shorting stocks is not my primary method of making profits in the market as many of you already know, but it is a valid strategy that must be covered especially since the market has focused on red flag and shorting opportunities since December 2004. In the world of supply and demand, things go up and things go down, it’s human nature. Stocks have been shorted for over a century and have provided investors with an alternative strategy to making profits.

To initiate a short sale, you must place the order with your broker or online brokerage by determining the size and price at which the trade will occur. Your broker or brokerage company will check to see if shares are available in the specific stock selected or if they can borrow the shares. Once they are available or can be borrowed, they will be sold in the open market on the first plus tick or continuation of an up-tick also known as zero-plus tick (the stock must move up for the transaction to complete). To close the short position, the broker will purchase the shares using the original proceeds and return the shares to the third party.

As a short seller, you believe that the price of a particular stock will fall in value over time. For example: by establishing a short position for 100 shares in XYZ at $50, the broker will place $5,000 into your margin account. If the stocks falls over the next few weeks and you decide to cover the short at $40, you will initiate a buy for 100 shares in XYZ using the money placed in your account when you sold short. The cost to buy back the shares in this example will be $4,000 or $1,000 less than the original short sale amount. This difference in price will result in $1000 cash that will now become your profit.

On the flip side, if the stock was to jump to $60, you would most likely cover your short or have your stop loss triggered, buying back the shares at this price. The cost would be $6000 or $1000 more than the original short sale, resulting in a 20% loss. The broker would take the additional $1000 from your cash account to cover the loss in the short sale. This is how you can lose money when shorting stocks. The higher the stocks rises, the more money you can lose, theoretically resulting with an infinite loss (excluding stop losses and broker margin calls).

If the stock rises in price or if the value of the stocks you are using as collateral goes down in price, you may be forced to add cash to your margin account or cover the short sale prematurely. As I mentioned in the first article, you must pay any dividends issued while you are short a particular stock.

The two basic reasons for selling short would be to profit from a stock that you believe is grossly overvalued or to hedge your account with protection from a down-swing in prices due to anticipated or unexpected events. In the first case, you may have noticed a stock such as EBAY (red flag on our screens since December) topping on the charts and then slicing through all long term trend lines in above average volume. If the stock fails to recover these key trend lines, a further decline may be in the immediate future and you may want to profit from this action. In the second case, you may own several stocks and fear a market downturn is on the horizon but don’t want to sell for certain reasons. Instead, the investor can short specific stocks to hedge their account against possible down-turns. Some investors diversify their portfolio with several long positions and a few short positions. I don’t agree with this strategy but it is a common practice by some institutions and investors.

All short positions should be covered if earnings and sales surprise the street or are starting to become positive. A short should be covered when it breaks above the 200-d moving average and certainly covered when it breaks above the 50-d moving average. If the relative strength line starts to move up, gradually making its way to new territory, I would advise covering the short position before a big breakout occurs. If the ‘M’ in CANSLIM is starting to turn positive and the daily new highs list if growing with new leaders, this would be a clue that a new up-trend if on the way or currently forming, alerting you that it may be time to cover the short positions before they turn negative.

Some investors may become impatient during bear markets or sideways markets if they don’t learn how to short stocks. Shorting stocks will contribute to a more consistent strategy throughout good and bad times. As I have said in previous articles, shorting is not for everyone and nothing is wrong with sitting in cash during bear markets, awaiting the next breakout and fresh batch of leaders.

Most important, always cut your losses quick! This rule applies to any strategy in the stock market.

Chris Perruna - http://www.marketstockwatch.com

Chris is the Founder and President of MarketStockWatch.com, an internet community that teaches you how to invest your money with solid rules. We don’t stop at just showing you our daily and weekly screens, we teach you how to make your own screens through education. Through our philosophy, you will be able to create your own methods and styles to become successful.

What is a small cap stock? First of all, “cap” is short for capitalization. Capitalization means the market price of an entire company, calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the price per share. Some people define a small cap stock as one with a market cap of less than $1 billion. But I like to define them as ones with a market cap of under $500 million.

Over time, small cap stocks perform better than large cap stocks. The record is clear about that. However, in reading the commentary offered by investment pundits and Wall Street analysts there seems to be a heavy dose of skepticism about whether small stocks are appropriate for a significant percentage of an individual investor’s portfolio.

One reason for this skepticism is risk. It is true that small cap stocks are much more volatile than their big cap brethren. So in that sense, there is more risk involved. But there is also an attitude among the investment elite that the individual investor is too unsophisticated to handle risk. Therefore, individuals must be protected from themselves by limiting their small cap investments to a small percentage of an overly diversified portfolio.

The last thing that Wall Street types want to do is empower you to make your own decisions. After all, if you’re calling your own shots you don’t need to pay for their advice, do you? And since Wall Street doesn’t cover small stocks, it’s in their best interest to steer you away from small stock investing.

But the truth of the matter is that it’s the very reason that Wall Street doesn’t want you to focus on small cap stocks that gives you an advantage. Analysts for big investment firms don’t cover the little stocks. There are just too many of them and they are too small and illiquid for their big institutional clients to buy. And since many small stocks aren’t adequately covered, they can be very inefficiently priced. That inefficiency offers a great opportunity to those who are willing to do the research to uncover hidden gems.

Super-star investor, Warren Buffett, has written, “Observing that the market was frequently efficient, the theorists went on to conclude incorrectly that the market was always efficient. The difference between the propositions is night and day.”

Buffett is saying that smart investors can find opportunities in stocks that are priced below their value.

However, if you think you’re going to get an edge by investing in Wall Mart, Microsoft, General Electric, and the like, you’re just kidding yourself. Those stocks have been analyzed to death by teams of Wall Street analysts. What is known about them is already priced into the stock. There is no way you’re going to be able to uncover information that is not already widely known by everyone else.

That’s not true with small cap stocks. If you do your homework, you can find some really undervalued investment opportunities. You do have to manage your risk. But that’s always the case in any investment you make. So don’t let the financial media and Wall Street elites keep you from using the biggest advantage that you have over them — the ability to find investment opportunities that they can’t take advantage of. And you’re going to be able to find those opportunities within the ranks of small cap stocks.

Larry Holmes invites you to visit http://www.Money-Management-Wisdom.com/
You will learn how to become debt-free, save and invest money, cut taxes, manage risk, and achieve financial freedom in a much shorter time than you dreamed possible.