The Power Stocks

Posts Tagged ‘Trade’

Online Option Stock Trading is it for you? Some Info You Should Know Before You Take The Plunge.

The trading of stocks and options has certainly met with a great deal of new enthusiasm as of late. Many people who have never hired a stock broker, or even traded a single stock for that matter, are being attracted to the option of trading online preferably than in the traditional manner. One of the main rationalities behind this is that most of the newer generation of stock traders have literally grown up using a personal computer for more or less any task for which it’s able.

As you can probably guess, given the chance to utilize online option stock trading, this newer generation of investors will happily go online to trade. One of the advantages to online option stock trading is the power to see real time gains and losses of stocks being traded. This allows market savvy traders to be able to identify which way the stock prices have most potential to go. Another big advantage which online option stock trading offers is the chance for the trader to spot and foresee stock price variations. The ability to speculate when a price fluctuation will occur can greatly heighten the trader’s profits.

Being able to foresee when a price fluctuation may happen can also enable investors to hold on to a stock longer than they would usually if they are anticipating a price surge. Naturally this also goes with its own risks, , if the trader has a bullish position, and if the price falls drastically instead of rising, then the investor could stand to lose a significant amount of capital. One of the main attributes of any successful investor is a good sense of timing.

Online option stock trading is available for all types of stocks. It makes no difference what type of stock that you may be interested in trading, because you’ll find that online option stock trading covers all stocks. Want to trade common shares? You can trade it online. You will also find that you can trade issue stock, story stock, penny stock, treasury shares, synthetic stock, preferred shares, and widow-and-orphan stock.

Another huge advantage that online option stock trading offers investors is a rather fast and fairly cheap method to trade stocks. These trades can be made from anywhere that the investor can find an internet access, at home or on the road. Some of the online option stock trading websites also give investors a trial demo account so that they can practice trading before they invest any capital. These demo accounts also act as stock trading training, allowing the investors to see how everything works and to get comfortable with online trading.

One thing is for certain; before you begin online option stock trading, be sure you fully understand all of the inherent risks associated with online option stock trading. Always do your research before picking a stock, and if you’re uncertain of your abilities, consult a broker.

Beyond all the ‘hype’ what is it that makes option trading so good?

This is a question that I wish more people would ask, but the thing is not too many people know they even exist!

The main reason that I love option trading is that options provide the opportunity to turn a small or modest amount of money into a large amount of money quickly!

How is this possible you might ask?

Well before I get into the ‘how’ that let me show you exactly ‘what’ options are.

Options are simply ‘contracts’ that give the buyer the right or choice (but not the obligation) to buy or sell shares in a particular company, at an agreed price, on or before a set date.

Now the thing is, as an option trader I am not interested in buying or selling stocks, I am only interested in buying and selling the options on stocks.

I want to buy an option for one price and then onsell it to someone else for a higher price and make a profit before the option expires.

Now whether or not I am able to do this depends on two main things:

1) Whether the underlying stock (the stock that the option is concerned with) goes UP or DOWN in price.

and

2) The type of option that I have bought.

Now, there are 2 types of options, CALLS and PUTS.

Call options give us the right to BUY shares in the underlying stock.

PUT options give us the right to SELL shares in the underlying stock.

As I said before, we are not interested in buying or selling the underlying stock, only in making a profit by buying the options (on a stock) and then onselling those options to someone else for a profit.

However, the only way we can make a profit is if the option itself increases in value.

So What makes options go up or down in price?

CALL options increase in value when the underlying stock goes UP.

PUT options increase in value when the underlying stock goes DOWN.

This may sound confusing if you are new to option trading, but basically what we want to do is to buy CALL options on a stock when we think it is about to go UP in price or buy PUT options if we think the stock is about to go DOWN in price.

If we are right and the stock moves in our desired direction, UP for CALLS or DOWN for PUTS, we will make money.

The concept is really quite simple once you accept that it is possible to make money whether the underlying stock moves UP or DOWN.

Now here’s the thing that makes option trading so appealing.

Options only cost a fraction of what it would cost to buy the underlying stock itself and a small move in the price of the underlying stock, creates a much larger move in the price of the option by 10 times to sometimes 100 times!

Let me give you an example, let’s say that GE is trading at $31.00 per share. If we wanted to buy 1000 shares in GE today it would cost us $31,000.

However, the option to BUY GE (CALL options) for $30 at any time during the next 60 days is only $2.00 per share. If we bought enough options to give us control over 1000 shares in GE it would only cost us $1,500.

Now let’s say that GE goes up by $1.00 to $32.00 during the next 3 weeks.

If we had bought the shares in GE we would have have made a $1,000 profit (1000 shares x $1.00 per share) or 3%+ return and if we bought the options on GE we still would have only made $1,000 (1000 shares x $1 per share) however as we would have only invested $2,000 into the trade, this would be a return of 50%!

By trading the options instead of the stock it is possible to make far greater returns and at the same time risk only a fraction of the capital.

This is called LEVERAGE and this is the main advantage to option trading over other wealth creation strategies.

However, just as leverage can work for you it can just easily work against you.

This is why you need a solid trading system that stacks the odds of success in your favor on every trade and at the same time reduces your risk.

In this year, the stock market should present you with a wide variety of NEW hot stocks in 2009. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the nanotech, biotech, financial, energy, healthcare & communications sectors.

Most of them might seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities could be extremely risky, while others are simply not as good as they look. That’s why it’s very important to know how to choose among the best especially if you want to day trade them.

When you know how to pick and approach the best hot stock trading opportunities, you are able to generate a consistent and respectable amount of money in a very short period of time.

Experienced day traders recognize that trading hot stocks on momentum can be the fastest way to make money in the stock market, especially on uncertain times like these.

If you decide to day trade stocks just keep always in mind that for a trader to survive and be consistently profitable, its necessary to keep things as simple as possible. To much confusion and technical indicators will most of the time make you slow in your decisions and froze you up when a good opportunity is right in front of your screen.

In the end, stock market day trading is all about picking the best daily stock opportunities and following your buy and sell signals with ease and simplicity. Once you learn to master your trading decisions, you can aspire to produce consistent profitable results.