Top 100 Financial Blogs

http://blog.valuewiki.com/2007/02/26/top-100-finance-blogs/

How I find the gap information?

How I find the gap every day?

Actually, I have several methods to use.

1) Use my Interactive Brokers's Trade Station's screen feature.
2) Use Nasdaq.com premarket most active. It is real time information before 9:30 am, but it can only show stocks trading on NASDAQ, no NYSE stocks.
3) Use Yahoo Finance's most active just after 9:30. There is no active information before 9:30. The information provided by Yahoo Finance is what I called pseudo-real-time information. Because the rank is REAL TIME, but the price, volume is 20 minutes ago. So I get the stock ticker, and add it to stock chart software to see the real time price.
4) Tradermiker.net post some gap information from briefing.com.
5) Trader-X's thread on how to find the gap
http://traderx.blogspot.com/2006/09/finding-gaps-091206_12.html

It is hard to lose money in the stock market?

When you see the topic, "It is hard to lose money in the stock market", do you believe?

Let's think this way. If you have a trading method, and you lose money on this trading method, then you just do the opposite and you can win.

So it is hard to lose money.

Also, it is hard to beat the market, say the return of S&P 500 index. Look at this,
http://tony2007.blogspot.com/2007/03/secrets-about-s-500-index-that-you.html

How Trader-X trades

Trader-X gives out how he trades. He said his accuracy is about 80%, though I don't know how much he can earn in concrete number.

His trading method is here,

http://traderx.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-i-trade-and-analyzing-charts.html

And he is a day trader. As a day trader, we should always think the liquidity, that your money to buy or sell should not impact on price. Also price slippery is also the thing we should consider carefully.

And according to elitetrader.com, the best day trader's earning is 400,000 last year. So actually that is not a very attractive number for those who has decent job. And the quantas on Wall Street's salary is a stable 300,000. (The number is all heard from Internet boards)

Secrets about the S&P 500 Index that you should know

Read something about S&P 500

The whole article is here,

http://biz.yahoo.com/cbsm/070307/1b9c7d92295e4a0f91e2c8dd594d0f15.html

The following fact interests me.

"Indeed, the S&P 500 is a litmus test both for investors striving to outperform the market and those satisfied with market-matching results."

"An estimated $1.3 trillion is given to mutual funds and other portfolios directly tied to the benchmark."

"Another $4.5 trillion -- almost one-third of the U.S. market's $14 trillion value -- is deposited with investment firms that justify their fees by comparing their performance with S&P 500."

"'Did you beat the benchmark?' is the bottom line for mutual-fund managers and other investment professionals who trade larger-capitalization U.S. stocks. Just three in 10 managers in any given year can make that claim against the S&P 500."

How to deal with the market crash?

This week, the market is going down about -5%. This is the worst week after 9-11.

I think most of the investors lost their money in this week. Fortunately, I got about 5% gain this week.

OK. Let's talk about something how to deal with market down.

Some guys advice you to buy more at this time. Some guys say you should sell. Whose idea should we listen?

Every investor should well consider his/her own risk before invest. But like me too, I lost a lot of money before I have positive gain now. We can't seriously consider how risk is unless we are in the market and we lose the money. That's why most of the individual investors lose money.

My strategy for dealing the market down is to buy enough QQQQ puts. The reason is my trading method can beat the market no matter it is a bear market and bull market. Although I will lose some small money when the market is going up, but the QQQQ puts is like some kind of insurance. And if the market crash is coming like 1987 (down 20% in one day), I still can preserve my funds well.

Google the keywords "portfolio hedging" for further information. Enjoy.

Day Trader - Trader-X

Day trader Trader-X writes an excellent blog. A good start point to read his blog is,

http://traderx.blogspot.com/2005/08/welcome.html

Trader-X said he has the average win ratio above 80% based on his trading. He studied thousands of previous chart and reached his own trading style now.

And trader-x has several followers. They trade on different variations on his main idea.

To put in a nut, he is a gap trader and observes the trend on the first trading hour. And he trades if the chart is similar to his ideal chart pattern.

Thinking is good

I decided to start my stock investment blog at this time.

The two purposes of this blog are:

1) I can write down my thinking on my investment.
2) I hope my readers enjoy my blog.

I hope I can persist to write something. But anyway, I am starting.