Trading Against a Monster

Do you trade stocks online? Do you have an online brokerage account? In this age and time, most people do have access to financial markets as individual but whether you take advantage of it or not, it depends on your confidence level and past experience. Most of the current individual investors got started during internet boom time. How could you not jump in when you see a stock doubling in price every other week? There were mutual funds created specifically for internet sector with astronomical three digits returns. Moving forward to 10 years later, where are those funds now?

Well, financial market in 21st century is a very different place. Hedge funds who started in internet boom time have become Monsters. Rules and guidelines for hedge funds are not as strictly regulated as for mutual funds. This has helped them grow faster and bigger. They have become so big that individual investors often get killed in the stampede that occurs when a company fails expectation and stock takes the punishment. Naked short selling has become a norm of the modern day trading.

If you're an individual investor and have made a decent return in stock market, you should feel pretty good about it. This obviously shows that you have learned a thing or two. But majority of individual investors lose their life savings in stock market. They don't understand what has happened to that old golden strategy of "Buy and Hold". If you still trade with old principals, chances are you're going to lose money and going to lose a lot of it. There are too many big players in stock market today and every one has to deal with the pressure of good returns and consistent performance. An individual investor in most cases in no match to the power and clouts of a big financial house. They use sophisticated computer trading programs that have decade of trading trends and data available to them. On top of that, they have "connections" with big Wall street research firms that can "downgrade" or "upgrade" a stock for no apparent reason and can cause you lot of pain in you are caught on the wrong side.

However, their big size could also be used for your advantage to make money. This is what is going to be the topic of a article later this year. So get ready to learn the dirty little secrets that Wall Street never wanted you to know.


-Amplidyne

Time to fund your IRAs

Well, It's tax time and most of us are busy doing our income taxes. Most people will get a refund and that's some extra case that you can really use. Remember, this is also the time to fund your retirement accounts if you don't have a company sponsored 401(K) or 403(b) plan. You can open a traditional IRA account and benefit from the upfront tax break with traditional IRAs. If you have a company sponsored retirement plan, you can still invest money in a Roth IRA account if you meet certain income restrictions. Current contribution limits are $4,000 for individual unless you're over 50 years old.
So don't let your retirement planning slide another year and do something about it. If you don't have a lot of money to put in an IRA, start may be with $50 a month.

-Amplidyne