Trading Baskets Part I

Written by Floyd Snyder


Q. What is a basket?

A basket is a group of up to 50 stocks that you can trade, manage and track as one entity.

In another article, I wrote about a rather conservative method of being inrepparttar stock market. See: "A Triple Dipper: How to Make 3 Profits on 1 Stock" at http://www.traderaide.com/Selected_Articles/Tripple_Dipper.html.

This time let’s talk a little about trading "baskets". The definition above maybe needs to be expanded just a bit. You can trade baskets using longer term buy and hold strategies, a shorter-term swing trading approach or as a day trader. A basket of stocks is nothing more then any group of stocks that someone has grouped together for any of a number of reasons. They may be ofrepparttar 112054 same sector, or they may be made up of a number of stocks in different sectors. An example of a few baskets could look like what is sited below. To save time and space I’ll userepparttar 112055 stock symbols only. You can look them up later if you are interested. Let’s say you see stem cell research asrepparttar 112056 thing ofrepparttar 112057 future and wanted to be invested in it. If you don’t know which stock is going to fairrepparttar 112058 best, you may want buy a basket of stocks that is made up of ASTM GERN and STEM. This would be a basket of stem cell stocks. Now let’s say you thinkrepparttar 112059 Internet stocks look good and, again, you are not sure which ones will dorepparttar 112060 best. In your Internet basket you may want to pick up some shares of EBAY, YHOO and AMZN. Obviously your basket can contain any number of stocks you want. Many online brokers will actually allow you to set up baskets in your account, and you can put in a sell order all at once onrepparttar 112061 entire basket or pick and chose which ones you want to sell. I’m not recommending these stocks in any way, shape or form, but merely using them as examples.

Okay, that’s pretty basic, but I’m sure you getrepparttar 112062 picture. The examples above would more or less berepparttar 112063 type of baskets you would probably be thinking of holding for some time and not day trading.

Most day traders have an entirely different kind of basket of stocks. A day trader may have any number of stocks in his trading basket that he or she has been become very familiar with. They have studied them and even charted them for intraday movement (I hope) for some time and have learnedrepparttar 112064 trading habits ofrepparttar 112065 individual stocks. They have a fairly good idea of howrepparttar 112066 stock moves on a daily basis with or without news. They have knowledge of how it reacts to earnings, analyst upgrades, analyst downgrades and other events that may be reoccurring. They have also probably learned how they trade when hit by surprise events as well. They know which market makers to watchrepparttar 112067 closest. They also know whorepparttar 112068 main market maker inrepparttar 112069 stock is, often referred to asrepparttar 112070 axe.

Bad Habits Keep You From Achieving Financial Plans

Written by David Wilding


Bad habits can ruin any well thought out financial plans. Habits such as your morning coffee, buying lunch at work each day, and of course smoking and drinking, can drain your bank account. They are not as noticeable as someone backing a truck up and loading all your money in and driving away. However,repparttar results arerepparttar 112053 same.

A woman shared her story with me. Her bad habit was smoking cigarettes. She smoked less than a carton a week. Along with her husband’s habit they used about two cartons a week. On occasionrepparttar 112054 decision had to be made whether to buy food orrepparttar 112055 cigarettes. Guess which one got bought.

She maderepparttar 112056 choice to get a job outside her home, to makerepparttar 112057 food/cigarette decision go away. Now she could have both. Work began to take more and more of her time. She enjoyedrepparttar 112058 other stuff besides cigarettesrepparttar 112059 money would buy. A budget was never considered, she spent every dime she made. She had STUFF!

It all came to a halt when her son began failing school. It became important to stay home and help him with his homework. The problem was she had STUFF. She and her husband returned to one income but had much higher bills. Something needed to give.

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