Short Selling And Short Interest Ratios Shocking Secret

Posted on March 14th, 2010 by Ahmad Hassam

Everyone wants to ride the rising tide in the stock market by buying stocks and later on selling them at a higher price to make a capital gain. However, can you make money when the tide in the stock market is going down? Yes, you can with short selling. In short selling, yo borrow a stock from your broker and sell it. Later on you buy it back at a much lower price and return it your broker making a good capital gain.

Now, when you go short and the market suddenly turns against you in the sense that it goes in the wrong direction, you are in trouble. You want to buy back the stock but the price is continously going up. The harder it becomes to buy back the required number of shares, the more desperate you will become and the higher the prices can go before you are able to buy back the required number of shares and return them to your broker. So in a way, short selling is tricky and must only be practiced by the experienced traders. Now for short selling to work, the stock price should go down otherwize, you will make a hefty loss in case the stock price starts to go up. Since, you are trading with a borrowed stock, you have to return that stock to your broker. In case the stock price goes up, you will have to buy it back at a much higher price with a loss.

Now, in other markets like the currencies, futures or the options market, you don’t have to borrow the security in order to go short. You can straight away go short by selling that security or currency in the market. Now, short selling in stocks is done by investors with the expectation of a making a capital gain when they expect that stock price to go down in the near future. Short selling is also done by the fund managers to hedge their stock portfolios.

There is something very important that you need to keep an eye on when you go short selling. It is known as Short Interest Ratios. This will help you monitor the rate of short selling in the market. If the rate is too high, it means that too many investors are taking short positions and you need to avoid it. New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ, both report the short interest in stocks listed on them,however, this is done on a monthly basis as brokers need sometime to collect the data of shares that they have lended to their clients for shorting.

Now this number is known as the Short Interest Ratio. Short Interest Ratio is a very important number for short sellers as it can give important clues about the investor expectation to the short sellers.

So what is the Short Interest Ratio? Short Interest Ratio is the number of shares of a particular stock that has been shorted in the market. Plus the average daily volume for that stock in the same month and also the number of days of trading at the average volume that it would require the market to cover the short positions in that stock. It also reports the percentage change in the short positions from the previous month.

An increase in the short interest ratio means that the investors are becoming nervous about the stock. Now, this number is not calculated frequently. What this means is that the trader cannot get a lot of information out of it. But still a high short interest ratio means that the stock prices will go high soon as the investors with short positions become desperate to buy it back. High Short Interest Ratios along with bullish indicators is an indication that prices are going to go up soon rather than down.

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done masters from Harvard University. Read this 49 page Quantum Swing Trading FREE Report. Get your FREE COPIES of the HVMM Ultimate Day Trading System and the Universal Risk & Money Management Tool.

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Gain Market-Beating Trade Timing Through Software

Posted on March 14th, 2010 by Peter Skonctue

The average home computer today is millions of times more powerful than the room-sized behemoths of the 1950s. Computing power continues to increase – and computers become more and more affordable every year. This has led to computers being nearly omnipresent in homes and businesses; and of course, computers have completely changed the way that many industries conduct business – and others have been decimated by new technology. There is one economic sector which is still evolving as a result of increasing computing power, a change which has been underway for over a decade now.

That industry in the midst of a transformation is the stock trading and commodities trading industry. Stock trading, especially day trading, involves trying to beat the market on trade timing. The person who moves first on a trade tends to make the most money.

Day trading is part and parcel for the stock brokerage career, and day traders at big financial firms do trade swings with leverages of 20:1 or more (leverage is taking out a short term loan to buy shares, hoping that the profit on selling them will pay off the loan and its fees).

Since leverage is one of the causes of the woeful state of the world economy at present, leverage has earned a reputation as being an extremely dangerous thing. Think of leverage as a tool; when used responsibly, it can be very helpful – but used improperly, it can cause serious damage. It all depends how the tool is used. Like a chainsaw, leverage is not inherently dangerous.

However, enough traders have made careless mistakes with leveraged trades to give day trading the same kind of dangerous reputation. While there are other ways to make profitable stock trades like the buy and hold strategy used by Warren Buffett, this is not a style which is well suited to every trader. Making profitable trades on this model means having an in depth knowledge of how the market works and of the long term prospects for the companies whose stock is being traded.

The big change in stock trading is due to the increasing power of computers and their declining cost. The software used to model market behavior and perform market analysis is becoming increasingly sophisticated and at heart, any successful day trader is a pattern analysis geek. What traders are looking for in those charts and analytical tools they use is patterns: patterns of price movements which tell them that a particular investment has a good chance of being profitable. There are now programs known as day trading robots which are making the analytical process much easier, which has opened up the stock market to investors who may not have an extensive background in trading stocks and commodities.

Some of the more entrepreneurial sorts are selling newsletter subscriptions based on day trading robot reports; these will usually be aimed at the small investor, and are often times centered around the penny sock or pink sheet market. As with any financial information seller, they’re going to give you information for a fee, and they’re trading on their reputation for making a majority of good trades, usually from some sort of secret pattern matching program.

These can make you a decent amount of money, but like any investor, you should use this as one tool in your arsenal. You want to investigate the businesses being invested in as well as use automated buy-and-sell recommendations from computer software. Also, most of these buy-and-sell recommendations are based on pattern matching of past performance records; this does involve risk, as does any stock investing.

Are you tired of scraping by at your day job? Why not get into the stock trading and make some money the easy way… with the guidance of artificial intelligence! Learn more about how to make money trading now. You can also check trading for a living info.

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Day Trading – Trading Strategy That Works

Posted on March 13th, 2010 by Peter Skonctue

Many people who specialize in day trading have differing views as far as what the best method to trade is. There is a lot of confusion as to which way is the best. Some traders sit in front of their computer screens all day and analyze the market.

To them, this is the only trading strategy that works. Others come in and spend a few minutes per day looking at the markets and trade accordingly. While either option is good for different people, a new trading strategy has emerged.

There are now day trading programs called “robots” hitting the market. They are essentially a tool to enhance whatever trading style is already being followed, rather than a completely new way of trading altogether. Individual traders can still determine how much time they devote to market analysis each day, while using the robot to make more efficient decisions.

Let’s take a quick look at how these programs work. A trader can be sitting at their computer analyzing the market or even just checking their email and they will get email messages saying a particular stock can be purchased for a given price. All the trader has to do is open up their trading platform and carry out the purchase for the price stated in the email message. They then wait for a follow up message from the program.

The next message may tell the trader that the stock can now be sold off for a lot more than the purchasing price. The trader goes back to their platform and sells off the stock, making money without all the analysis and strategic thought that would have otherwise gone into the process. They are essentially told directly how to make money, rather than being left to figure it out on their own.

If you enjoy looking at charts all day and reading the news, then by all means, keep doing it. Just put in the trades from your trading platform and keep doing what you’re doing. It will just increase the overall effectiveness of your trading strategy. So what exactly makes day trading program so great for stock traders?

Of course, there is always a trade off with products like this. The big trade off with these programs is that they are not going to steer a trader in the direction of the really big trades that have the potential of brining in major profits. This is because those high-profit trades are also high risk trades that can bring substantial loss. What the programs are designed to do is deliver consistent payoffs, even if they are only 20-30% gains.

Another great thing about this trading strategy is that it demonstrates artificial intelligence in its trading strategy. It actually learns from it’s mistakes and gets smarter as it goes. Overall, day trading is a great profession that many people enjoy. With the help of a trading robot, you can make it in this business muck quicker than most.

Are you tired of scraping by at your day job? Why not get into the stock trading and make some money the easy way… with the guidance of artificial intelligence! Learn more about how to make money trading now. You can also check trading for a living info.

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Filed under: Trading

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