ASX Share Trading – What You Need To Know
The ASX Share market can be a great place to increase your wealth – provided you make the right moves from the start. By this I mean that there are a few fatal mistakes that can cost people their nest eggs, and see them leaving the market for good.
What do I mean? Let me give you an example: Let’s say you started putting $150 a month into ASX Shares in 1980. That’s around $5 a day. It earns an average of 15% per annum over the years including dividends. If you re-invested all your returns, today it would be worth over one million dollars – $1,038,490 to be exact.
But not everyone makes it that far. In fact statistics show that over 82% of traders lose a large portion of their capital and never trade again. If you are investing for the long term, your odds are slightly better (although 2008 scared a lot of investors out as well). But the thing is – now they miss out of the rest of those gains, on that million dollars that we discovered.
So here is the important part – what you need to know when trading ASX shares. It is often the most overlooked part of trading or investing: It’s your Trading Plan. In fact, don’t trade shares without one. But finding a trading plan can be a daunting task. Where do you start?
Well, if you take 100 different people, you will probably get 100 different trading plans. We are all individuals, and we all have different thresholds for risk. Therefore a good place to start with a trading plan is the following:
1: Your Entry and Exit Rules – these are the solid rules you have outlined allowing you to buy and sell your shares. It could be based on fundamental reasons, like a company’s earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), or it could be based on technical reasons, like a Dow Theory entry signal. Whatever you decide, you should follow them diligently.
2: Your Money Management Rules – this is where you decide how much of your portfolio you will invest in one share. And also how many positions you will spread your portfolio across. As a guide, between 6 and 12 positions is usually optimum. Any less than 6 and you risk not being diversified enough. Any more than 12 and you risk being unable to out-perform the market (the best portfolios are often slightly focused).
Having these in place will set you on your way to a solid start in ASX Shares.
Get more from your ASX Shares with a free course on trading and investing. There’s also free research on Australian Stocks – all at www.asxmarketwatch.com .
Filed under: Trading
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