Banking and co

Risk tolerance is essential for taking stock market investing advice. As you know more about investing, you’ll come to see that each individual has their own tolerance to risk that should be understood thoroughly. A professional financial planner worth his salt must know this and help you determine what that tolerance is for you. Then, that person needs to help you ascertain which investment vehicles fit your risk level.

Many people think that risk tolerance is related only to your emotional reaction to investing.Nothing could be farther from the truth. A lot has to be taken into account when ascertaining what your risk tolerance level is, and gauging your emotional response is only a small part of it.

Determining your risk tolerance, with regards to online stock market investing, requires that you consider multiple factors. One is that you have to know how much money you have available to invest, and the other is that you are thoroughly aware of your ultimate financial goals. For example, if you want to retire in 15 years and you haven’t saved any money at all, you will need to keep up a high risk tolerance and do some hard line investing to have enough money to retire.

But, if you begin investing for your retirement in your early twenties, your beginner stock market investing risk tolerance will be low. Beginning young will allow you to let your money grow over time. When you factor this in with your emotional response to financial risk, the right investment recipe will become obvious. This can be difficult to figure out for yourself, so it’s advisable to use a knowledgeable investment professional that can help you find an acceptable risk tolerance, and assist you with selecting appropriate investment instruments.

Determining your personal risk tolerance will let you establish your own investment rhythm and allow you and the investment professional you choose to invest with confidence. While there are many different types of investments that one can make, only three investment styles exist – and those styles are directly related to your personal risk tolerance. Those three styles are called aggressive, moderate and conservative. But I will save the clarification of those for another article. Those will be explained in a future editorial.

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• Carnival of Personal Finance #195 | Growing Money

Small cap stocks, bulletin board equities, penny stocks ” call them whatever you want. Many of them hold the promise of great fortune. The challenge for investors is distinguishing the winners and losers, and then maximizing that promise. Its not an impossible task though not in the least.

Five key ideas act as the backbone for consistently successful small cap trading plans.

First, the very best small cap traders tend to at least do one important task very well ” they can differentiate a short-term trade and a long-term investment. Mechanically both trades may start and end the same way. Mixing and matching the underlying philosophies, however, often leads to frustration.

Second, penny stock traders and investors should accept the fact that smaller company stocks are easier to drive higher or lower than large company stocks. In fact, a large institutional player may have the ability to very quickly buy or sell the majority of a small companys float. Traders just need to be prepared to see rapid swings when that happens.

Third, successful penny stock traders focus as much on charts as they do on the stocks perceived value. Sometimes these stocks trade at appropriate values. However, just because theyre undervalued or overvalued doesnt mean theyre going to rally or sink. Reading charts will help time optimal entries and exits of stock picks that are based on fundamentals.

Fourth, penny stock traders absolutely must understand these stocks generally trade based on future potential. Fortunes have been made with micro cap stocks even before the underlying company made its first dime. In other words, this is something of a psychology contest; since other traders also speculate with the same small stocks, you must also outguess their entry and exit strategies.

The fifth characteristic most successful bulletin board stock traders have is the willingness to take profits. Thats not to say these speculators lock down a gain every time they can, as the longer you can hold a stock the more money you can make. But, too many traders never realize that losing big is far worse than not winning big with absolutely every single trade.

Its not really that complicated, is it? These are just five simple ideas, yet five very powerful ideas. Their simplicity may surprise a lot of traders, in fact (new-comers in particular). Adding layers and layers of modeling and analysis should translate into better small cap picks, but all that analysis can obscure the most important basic ideas like these.

Bottom line ” With the right mindset, anyone can create big profits with small stocks.

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NASDAQ is relatively young but has been giving NYSE a run for its money. NASDAQ operates very differently than the NYSE as it works on a method called the double auction method. In this method the highest bidder competes with all the bidders on a buy and same goes for a sell.

Now for NASDAQ the auction method does not work, it is like a series of dealers which are selling stocks and each dealer has some sort of inventory of stocks as well as cash. Now NASDAQ is completely automated so going by above analogy you do not visit each dealer shop instead the computer system visits the store of each dealer and checks what prices and how much shares does each dealer have to satisfy an order.

As an example I will show how a limit order works and how a market order works. Limit means that you impose a limit on the price you are willing to pay for the stock. In the market order you are willing to pay any price which is currently in the market. For example if you need to buy 1000 shares then the dealer will give 500 shares at a price you quoted but the next 500 shares you will get at a price which can be anything based on the price the dealer procures the additional shares for you.

Market makers is the term used in NASDAQ. Market maker is a person who sells and buys shares and they keep on postinmg both bid and ask prices. You can also have access to these bid offers via a system called the SOES which is Small Order Execution System

In conclusion, NASDAQ seems to favor the small investor like you and me for trading and that is all that matters in the stock trading arena.However there are other exchnages which can help really really small investor with special deals and cash only options like the American Exchange.

The stock exchange which provides capability for trading in penny stocks is teh OTCBB. Penny stock trading is very risk and volatile.

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• An Introduction to NASDAQ

The NASDAQ though we know it as an exchange is not an exchange, and works like an automated mechanism where buyers and sellers can meet. The NYSE works on the system called double auctions where in the highest bidding buyer competes with other buyers and the lowest bidding seller bids against other sellers.NASDAQ though not very old has give tough competition to NYSE.The technology focus has helped NASDAQ some inherent strengths.

In NASDAQ much like in the real world each broker or the dealer as you may want to call it has an inventory of shares which they are willing to sell and that means that they can easily assume that their inventory along with other broker’s inventory will be taken care of. In effect each order if fulfilled based on how much inventory or shares you are holding.

As an example I will show how a limit order works and how a market order works. Limit means that you impose a limit on the price you are willing to pay for the stock. In the market order you are willing to pay any price which is currently in the market. For example if you need to buy 1000 shares then the dealer will give 500 shares at a price you quoted but the next 500 shares you will get at a price which can be anything based on the price the dealer procures the additional shares for you.

NASDAQ as you can see is the interdealer market represented by securities dealers and these dealers are called market makers. These dealers then compete with each other to post their best prices (both bid and ask). A normal non professional person can have access to this bid offers, ask size, size of each offer and they are called level II quotes. The system that provide the quotes is called Small Order Execution System.

As small investors NASDAQ is the one which provides a very option for trading apart from American Stock Exchange.

The there is OTCBB which trades in only penny stocks, but trading on OTCBB can be very very expensive and very volatile.

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