Year: 2019

Project Libra: Facebook’s new currency based on a blockchain

3 min read

Project Libra is the internal name for Facebook’s plan to launch its own cryptocurrency. For now, it is known that it should be a stablecoin backed by government currency.

Facebook has still to state those plans about Project Libra openly. But media news about its crypto aims has risen over the past half year or so. Now, since the information is secret, we have part of them. The very well-known part is that Facebook has been planning ways of how to capitalize on blockchain technology.

Did you update your WhatsApp? Do it now!

Former PayPal president David Marcus is on the head of the team that has to build this asset-backed crypto. As far as we know, that crypto will be made to operate within Facebook’s messaging infrastructure such as WhatsApp, FB Messenger, and Instagram.

Facebook has planned blockchain long time ago

Facebook will represent plans about Libra this summer, as it is assumed. Mark Zuckerberg has already talked to Bank of England governor Mark Carney.

The discussion was about the potentialities and risks involved in launching a crypto-currency.

Facebook has also asked details and advice on regulatory issues from the US Treasury.

Facebook’s plan is to launch a full payments network including Visa, Mastercard, payments processors such as First Data as well as large e-commerce merchants. This social network asked them to support the launch with $1 billion in investments collectively.

Facebook is trying to involve these firms in order to provide support and strengthen a stablecoin that will be connected with the payments network.

The main goal is to eliminate credit card fees for merchants. Also, to avoid the volatility of bitcoin and ether.

Facebook is also in consultations with money transfer firms like Western Union because it tries to find cheaper and faster alternatives for people who don’t have bank accounts.

How will Facebook’s Libra work?

Will we have a new icon after Project Libra finished?

Facebook aspires to design a cryptocurrency that gives secure ways of making payments, notwithstanding users have or not have a bank account.

They are expecting to upset the other networks by cutting financial limits. The new Libra is good for competing with banks and decreasing user’s costs. The point is that this project will provide people to change dollars and other foreign currencies into its stablecoin. That’s why the arrangement with other banks is necessary.

In the next several weeks a group of co-founders would launch the Swiss-based association in the coming weeks, as it is expected.

Meanwhile, Facebook bans all cryptocurrency ads.

According to the Financial Times, it is still unclear how Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be issued, stored, and transferred.

Libra will be valued on a fiat

Geneva’s commercial register displays Libra Networks was registered on May 2 with Facebook Global Holdings as a stakeholder. Reuters first reported the development.

You would like to know which money app to use in 2019

The LLC is attempting to develop software and infrastructure connected with investment activities and data analysis. Among other services, there are some relating to finance and technology, according to the register.

Facebook has not yet confirmed the foundation of Libra Networks.

What we know is Facebook Global Holdings is a stockholder in the new company and it will, according to Reuters, “provide financial and technology services and develop related hardware and software, plans submitted on the Swiss register reveal.”

More about Project Libra

Facebook’s shift to crypto has been gradual and constant. Facebook’s latest move, was the hiring of two Coinbase compliance managers. That happened on May 14.

Blockchain expert David Gerard said that Facebook would get access to important spending data by creating its own payment system.

The question is why Facebook needs that, instead to use some conventional payment platform.

Garrick Hileman, a researcher at the London School of Economics, said the Libra project could be one of the most important developments in the short history of cryptocurrencies.

He estimated that around 30 million people use cryptocurrencies. And Facebook has 2.4 billion monthly users. So, just count!

You may also like to read how Apple Is Not a Tech Company Anymore

risk disclosure

6th June 2019
Question everything, it is a vital part for your trading

Forex Education Part 5

by Hans Stam – Trader, Mentor, Author

Interview

You must question everything.

Recently I received a request for an interview.

This was a rare invitation going out to the best traders available to share some wisdom.

Most of the questions were easy for me to answer, but there was one I had to think about for a while, and I would like to share it with you as this might be useful to you.

You see, I’m not a wealthy man at the time of this writing, so let me be an inspiration to you.

Patience is better than a quick fix, experience and knowledge are greater than gambling your way to success.

Best advice

One Question that stood out for me was,

What is the best advice you gave give to other traders?

My answer was…

Question Everything, then make up your own mind!

This may not be advice about how to spot a trend, or how to manage funds, but it really is an answer I like to explain.

You see, in my years of trading, I have tried a lot of ways to make a decent profit.

You may recognize yourself trying to make it all work for you.

As in many cases, the most talented people are also the ones that have made a lot if not all mistakes possible.

The thing that stands out is the way they solved those problems.

Question Everything...

Especially in trading, you can’t just accept what you are being told without any credentials.

There is a lot of misleading going on in the Forex Industry, I rather see proof.

Of course, there are many ways to trade, but even the fancy guru’s don’t always provide you the insight on how to do it yourself.

What I’ve learned in my years of trading is to question everything, and to make up my own mind.

I suggest you do the same.

Example

I’ll give you an example of how to apply this to your trading.

Let’s pick a random scenario.

Some guy tells you he found a great strategy but conditions apply.

And every time it fails, you didn’t understand the conditions or this was a rare case of where you had to take a loss.

Let’s say he claims to win by watching a combination of candlesticks, and whenever that pattern emerges, you have to buy or sell.

When you investigate the claim, and compare it to a monkey pressing buttons, who would win?

Then, I don’t care about the times it works, I’m more concerned about when it fails.

What happens when it fails and why? Is it really worth it or could I just as easy trade the other way around and get the same results?

Does it make any sense to you and are you willing to lose your money on that claim?

It’s up to you to decide.

Make up your mind

Keep in mind, no one on the other side of your trading cares when you lose.

Also, keep in mind, there are people ready to take your money and even might provide you with false signals just because they have to give signals they are selling.

Whatever signals or tools you are being given to work with, ask yourself the question, is this really benefitting me?!

Can this tool cause me to lose? Can this signal be explained and what causes the failing trades?

You have to be very skeptical about everything you hear or read.

Does it make sense to you, does your own trading make any sense to you.

I have provided some serious advice to some people around me, and even though they knew it was working, they still used their gain to waste it on trying something else.

To me, that was frustrating to see, but on the other hand, it’s their money and they too can try and question everything, including what I tell them.

Success ratio 1:5

I had a question earlier by someone who asked how to get a 1:5 success ratio.

While understanding what he was trying to achieve, this question also was a bit silly to me.

Why would you want to have 20% failure in your trading?

Wouldn’t you rather have less losing trades than that?

What causes the 20% losing trades?

Why would you take those trades anyway?

No one can predict the market?

If that would be true, then why are some more successful than others?

Don’t you think that when other traders are consistently winning their trades, they have another mindset?

In this article, I’m asking a lot of questions rather than give you the answers right away.

I do that to make you think for yourself, to question everything and to let you make up your own mind.

To me, this is the basis of becoming successful.

This has to work for you because You will need to make the decisions which trade to pick.

Something to think about

Hopefully, this has given you something to think about, because nothing will change if you stick to being ignorant.

You could read all the articles in the world, pay for whatever service, or follow a stock picking money,

as long as you don’t start to Question Everything and make up your own mind, it will lead nowhere, and nothing changes for you.

Dedication

The chapter most of you will want to read has come.

How do I make money?!

I hear a lot of people telling me, this is my dream, I really want to do this, etc.

Unfortunately, statistics show dedication sticks to words and not often become a reality.

Some people seem to forget it took me about 30 years to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Also, a lot of people think they can start at $100 and hopefully be rich next week.

Their way of doing that is gambling which most likely will blow their account.

Be smarter than that, do whatever it takes and make educated decisions.

As mentioned before, this really is a career, and you can decide to do it or not.

But it does take action and patience, that seems contradictory but it is what you will need to do.

OPM

Other People’s Money (OPM) is a way to make money faster, once you built your track as mentioned before, you will want to use your talent to make money using OPM.

The way to do that can vary, and usually is done by attracting investors and trade through a MAM or PAMM, which are basically the same technically speaking.

How does that work?

You have your own trading account, and the software will copy your trading to sub accounts.

These subaccounts are in the investors’ name and you have agreed on a fee or commission.

After both have signed all legal documents, the investor funds his account and trading will be done as you trade your own money.

The agreed earnings are then automatically transferred directly into your trading account.

How to get Investors

You might think to yourself, I don’t have any investors, so now what?!

There’s good news for you if you really are talented or educated.

If you are prepared to deposit a fair amount on your trading account and let your results being tracked by A.I. you can get a Track that can be used by a Broker linked to that specific software, and it will make it possible for you to get funded.

How to get funded?

I will go through this simple process step by step.

Step 1. First, sign up for a Live Trading account by clicking here

Step 2. Then sign up for the Free Tracking software by clicking here

Step 3. You keep on trading the way it works for you, and you will automatically be funded once you have gone through the process of 6 months and if your score is 75 or higher.

Step 4. Progress through the system, and 4 months later you are a Pro Trader if you are doing well.

Step 5. Once you already received funding from the Broker, you are now ready to be introduced to the Investors market. No way to tell where that will lead you but it is Free money for doing the same thing.

If you have questions or need help, then Click Here and I’ll help you the best I can.

Experience

Since I’ve been in the market, this really is the best way I have found to start making money while trading the Forex market.

There are other similar programs, and I have had many discussions with several others, but I couldn’t manage to come to a fair arrangement.

Another reason why I promote this one is that there are a lot of options here to make a solid income.

Sounds like a big commercial but this is my experience, the choice is yours.

If you are serious about making Forex trading your career, these are some good tips to your benefit.

If you like to ask me any other questions, I’m here for you.

Click here to contact me

Best Regards,

Hans Stam

5th June 2019
Track Record

by Hans Stam – Trader, Mentor, Author

Track record – What is it and why do I need it?

A Track Record is an overview of past trading.

For example, it shows what your results were in the past year.

January 2,4%

February 3,1%

March 1,9%

April -2,3%

May 5,0% etc.

But it can also show the percentage of profitable trades and losing trades.

A more detailed Track Record can also advise you on what you are doing right and where you need to be careful.

If you would like to have your Trading Station checked by A.I. and give you an overview of past performances, you can try that out by clicking here.
This gives you insight on how successful you are and it creates value.

How does track record create Value?

First of all, this is valuable information to yourself.

Sometimes in your trading, it might seem you are not going anywhere, but if you take a step back, you might be surprised by how well you are doing.

But there is a second reason.

Others may not be as willing as you are to do the work, or they just don’t know how.

Many still want to make some money and will want to have others trading for them, but that is risky as those people never know for sure who is for real or not.

While doing due diligence, those people will want to see proof.

Having a Track Record creates value for yourself and those people as they can see what kind of results you had in the past and therefore hopefully will continue in future trading getting similar results.

Although this is not a guarantee, it does create some confidence.

Think of track record as going to a movie with actors who are well known, you don’t know if the movie is any good until you went to see it, but going by the actors you have seen before, you do get an idea of what to expect.

Taking another view is where you are the actor, you will need to have some good results to show if you want to be hired for the next movie.

Of course, you can do an audition, but your chances would be a lot less in comparison to when you featured in a few blockbusters.

Brokers

There’s a lot to be said about brokers and although I would want to mention a thing or two, I choose not to.

What I can tell you, that it’s best to check if they are registered with the FCA.

I’m very well aware of IB’s and how Brokers work, and I do realize it’s not easy for Retail Traders to make a consistent profit.

I’ll stick to my end of the line, and will continue with the options we have.

My guess is that the future is not set in stone and that we may see some changes in the near future.

If you like to stay in the loop, You’re invited to join my Community.

Successtory

Why don’t you tell me about a brand new car or trips to the beach?

Or how I can make a million dollars starting from scratch?

First of all, I do not want to you have an unrealistic expectation.

Second, I do not want you to start chasing after the big money as fast as you can.

Why? Because you would be in very dangerous waters.

My advice is to monitor risk as much as you can and to take small trades and consistent profits.

Make sure you have enough buffer on your account and don’t get greedy or lured into risk-taking based on past successes.

Not all may agree on that, but those people may very well be gone off the market next year anyway.

MT4 / MT5

Many Brokers use the MT4 / MT5 Platforms.

Those are platforms where you can automate your trading, or place your orders manually.

It lets you program your strategy so trading would run by itself.

I do not advice letting trades and orders run without monitoring, but you could preset orders and take only those trades you really want to have.

MT5 has a few more options but in most scenarios, MT4 will do just fine.

Passwords

There are two kinds of passwords available in MT4 / MT5.

Your own to trade, and a read-only password.

The read-only password, also known as Investor Password, can be shared with investors or linked to analyzing tools such as PsyQuation.

It allows them to see your trading and the results so they can see for themselves, but it will not interfere with your trading.

Hedging

Hedging is when you pick a trade and place another trade in the opposite direction.

Wherever the market goes next, one trading is winning, the other loses.

Basically, you freeze up the trade by letting it lose as much as you let it win.

This might be a way to make some money, but don’t forget the opposite trade is in the negative just as much as your gain.

Pitfalls

The most common reason you make a loss are just a few.

Did you pick the wrong direction?

Whatever analyses you use, almost every trader will agree you can’t be right all the time.

And when traders are new to the Market, most traders won’t be.

So try to rethink the reason why you pick a trade and review it once it’s done.

What did you do wrong, and what went right?

Also think of another possibility, even though you won a trade, were you just lucky, or did you really think it through?

Did the trade hit your Stop Loss?

What caused it hitting the Stop Loss?

Was it too close, did you do it right but the spread of the broker hit it anyway, did it hit because it was there in the first place?

Did you not take full advantage of the trades once you were winning?

Taking profits too early or taking them too late is another pitfall.

Once you have picked you trade, you should know where to take your profits.

There are ways to take profits automatically, first is a trailing stop.

A trailing stop can close in the profits when you are following a trend, but it can also kick you out of a trade on the worst possible moment.

The other way to take the profit is by using TP (Take Profit)

Of course, you can always close a trade manually at any time you want.

Did you get impatient or nervous?

Sometimes when you take a loss, or you get impatient you may want a quick trade to make up for it.

Usually, that ends up in losing even more which causes more panic.

If you find yourself caught up in trading like that, and don’t even have a good reason to take the trades anymore, step away from the market and come back the next day.

Do not get bummed out, because now you are your worst enemy if you don’t step away.

Did you get in too heavy or run out of Margin?

Going in too heavy is a common mistake, what is important to know is that trades are done with leverage.

That can really be a benefit, but also takes trades south much quicker.

Be aware you always have enough buffer so whatever trade is done, positive or negative, it will not influence your account too much.

Greed can really mess that up, just as much as fear can. Keep that under control if you find yourself in that place.

That would probably cover the majority of reasons, so if you do not want to lose, you will have to figure out how to deal with that.

Facts

What facts do we have once we enter a trade?

The only facts that I can come up with are even less.

The Market Fluctuates

On any given timeframe on the charts, you can see fluctuations.

You’ll see them on the 5-minute chart, as well on weekly charts.

If there are no fluctuations in price, there would not be a market.

You will not have a Loss until you take it or when you run out of Margin.

Taking a Loss can be manual, or by hitting a Stop Loss.

Also when you ignore a trade which is eating up your Margin can cause a Margin Call.

A Margin Call means the broker will close all your trades due to lack of funds in your account.

Some will warn you up front, others will just Close everything and you basically blew up the account.

Much more facts we don’t have really.

I do not have to wear a fancy suit or go to some guru in a hotel conference to convince me my 100% winning system is wrong.

Going with these facts, it’s possible to create your own 100% winning system. Try it out on a demo first as that takes years of experience!

I truly hope you will benefit from these very simple basics.

Hans Stam

You would like to read Automatic Trading – What Is It

risk disclosure

31st May 2019
Invest in any age, put the money in the stock market

2 min read

Invest in any age. Don’t care how old you are you, you should put the money in the stock market. You should invest. Also, it doesn’t relate to how wealthy you are.

What makes us think like this.

The stock market is, yet, the genuine way we have for the progress.

Think!

Who invests a nice part of salary every year can be compensated after a decent number of years.

For our financial growth, long-term investing is the best way to increase our wealth.

Build your investing portfolio with the right stock and bond mix.

Support it with index funds to maintain costs low. Avoid hedge funds for small investors and ETFs. In other words, you have to be smart and manage your investments.

It is never late. Yes, we know. Everyone will tell you that the early ages are the best time to start investing.

That’s true, but also, you can invest in any age.

The stock market is open space, who would forbid you to invest at age after 40, for example? Or after 50?

Human’s life is longer and longer. Hence you could buy some stock, invest in bonds and in some index fund and supply your investment account for the next 10 years.

When picking stocks you need to have in mind how you project to manage your investment. Say you are in your 40s, so you might want to invest in some high-risk assets.

You might choose shares in some new or small company. But you might be interested in some abroad assets and developing markets.

If, however, you plan to invest shortly before retirement you will need some different strategy.

Therefore, you should invest in a less volatile property. For example, you might like to invest in bonds and shares that are paying plentiful dividends. If you are an older investor who just starts investing it is recommended to hold a mix of stocks, bonds, and index funds. Just put your money in the stock market.

Invest in any age no matter how old you are.

The S&P 500 gives a 10% return per year, with dividends included.

You might think it isn’t too much, but thanks to phenomena of compound interest you will double your capital every seven years.

You see, just a little amount of money simply put in the stock market can produce big pays after some time.

Where to invest in your 50s?

As you are nearing your retirement it is allowed to be a more aggressive investor so put your money in the stock market. For example, you may have a portfolio with 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds. It is a good balance for the majority of investors. Keep in your mind your plan to retire at 65 and you have 15 years at least to collect very nice income thanks to compound interest.

Of course, it is best if you can start earlier. But, truly, you may invest in any age. Think how much you will have after 14 years if you start in your 50s with $10,000. The compound interest phenomena are on the scene again. Just count, after 7 years double, and the next 7 years, and… Not bad, not at all.

Maybe you wouldn’t be able to buy the new house but you might have enough for a relaxed life.

That’s why you should invest in any age.

risk disclosure

30th May 2019
Creating strategy for Forex trading

Forex Educational Series – Part 3

by Hans Stam – A Forex trader

Creating a strategy

We left off in the previous chapter talking about creating a strategy of your own.

It’s obvious you do not want to lose money, your aim is to be right on your trading as much as possible to make a profit.

So how can you create a strategy that will work for you?

I mention specifically it has to work for you because many will sell trading signals on their analyses, but once you try to implement the signals, your timing could be off and totally miss the trade.

Then again, who knows if that signal is very successful and why would you trust other traders signals?

Of course, that’s a personal choice to make, but once you would decide to create your own strategy, here are some tips.

Demo testing before creating a strategy

While creating a strategy that works for you, you obviously do not want to spend a lot of money so you will use virtual money using a demo account.

Once you have set up your demo account, you can start trading as if it was real money, but more importantly, you get to know the trading station you will be using later on.

You see all kinds of options, and most will not apply to you so you will have to figure out what you will use or not.
For instance, the chart used.

If you like to open a demo account.

Charts

Most will stick to candlestick charts but there are many other types of charts to choose from.

Also, there are timeframes you can choose from.

In this example, we’ll stay with candlesticks but many other types of charts will have similar info.

A candle represents what the price did in a specific timeframe.

If you pick an hourly chart, it shows candlesticks and the info of the price in an hour.

Main info a candlestick is giving you the Opening Price at the beginning of that hour, the highest price, the lowest price and the closing price of that hour.

The next candle would start its opening price where the previous candle ended its closing price.

(If that is not the case we speaks of having a gap, but that’s not common)

If you would change your hourly chart to a 5-minute chart, it would give you a lot more information whereas the hourly would give you the bigger picture.

It’s for you to decide what you do with that information and how you would apply that in your strategy or not to apply it at all.

Indicators

Using charts you will also have indicators. For example, you can use a curving line which follows the Simple Moving Average of the price known as SMA.

Others are MACD or RSI to name a few. There are countless indicators, and it’s up to you to use some of them or to ignore them.

Every indicator you would use has its own specific purpose and shows you the result of what that indicator is designed for.

We can’t go through all of them, so if you choose to apply you can do some research on a specific indicator.

Most commonly are MACD, RSI, Moving averages, often in combination with trendlines, Channels which form, Support/Resistance, Fibonacci or Elliott Waves, etc.

It’s up to you what you want to use or go a completely different way in your trading.

Trends

Often when patterns emerge from the charts it shows a direction to where the price is heading.

If you see a clear direction you could translate that to yourself as seeing a trend.

As we talked about previously, we would like to figure out what most other traders would do, and seeing a trend could be useful.

If you build your strategy, you could make up some rules for yourself to test and see what result that gives you, one of them could be catching those trends.

The beauty of trying that out on a demo is, it will be virtual money, so even if you lose, no harm is done. But it is very useful while creating a strategy.

Stick to what works

While trying out your strategy starting from scratch, you will notice some things work, others don’t.

Try to figure out what causes losses, and eliminate those reasons by altering your strategy to where that won’t happen again.

Then go test it again on your demo.

You decide when you think your strategy is working properly, then you can try to trade real money and go make a profit.

As soon as you notice it’s not working, stop trading and go back to demo trading, see what caused it to fail, and alter the strategy.

Rules

When you look at how others trade, they often have rules. Institutions also have rules which you cannot break if you want to work there.

The big advantage we have as private traders is that there are no rules at all.

We can make up our own rules. It’s our money, our strategy, and whatever anyone else says, you can choose what to apply or not.

The broker you work with could have some rules, but other brokers might not have those rules at all.

Choosing a broker may be of importance when you want to trade your strategy.

It really takes some creativity and patience to create your own style, but once you have done that, the rewards will be all yours.

Mentor

If you think to yourself, it’s hard to do all that work, can’t I just get a mentor?

Well, that may be harder than you think.

Often when people look for a mentor they end up in a strategy that can be incredibly difficult to follow.

The alternative is to just let some robot trade which is programmed by these “companies”

Real mentors will learn you how to think for yourself, and if what they have tried and tested makes sense.

The reason why a mentor is very valuable to you

…is that you will have to make your own decisions in the future.

You can’t rely on anyone else to make all the decisions for you, because what would happen to you when that mentor decides to just quit?

Or what would happen when that mentor starts to charge you $1.000 a month just to follow instructions?

If that would happen, the information may or may not be that valuable, but you would still have to make more to end up with a profit.

A good mentor will take you by the hand and walk you through all your questions, pointing out the stones on the road so you can find your way in the dark.

I once met a man who had sold over a thousand courses for the price of $300.

So he made over $300.000 just by selling his course and in addition, he lets his students pay an additional $30 a month just to get access to “Hindsight Trading” on YouTube.

When I talked to him, he did know a lot about indicators, etc. but frankly, I thought he didn’t know what he was talking about as he was guessing just as we would too.

He’s a great salesman, but that is not a guarantee you will get value for your money.

In the end, results count and you will be the judge if it is worth your money or go look for another mentor if you would need one in the first place.

Q&A

If you like me to cover a specific item regarding trading, just let me know by sending me an email, and I’ll try to clear that up in the coming articles.

Best Regards,
Hans Stam

29th May 2019
The stock market trading for beginners – It Shouldn’t Fright You

If you’re afraid to start trading stocks, here are some sure ways on how to do that

By Guy Avtalyon

The stock market trading for beginners can appear somewhat terrifying. Trust me, I know that.

Before you begin to trade stocks you need to know the costs. Invest the money you can cover if failed. The tricky part of the stock markets is that you can’t expect any guarantee you will get big returns.

But there is a big advantage when trading stocks. It gives you an opportunity to preserve your savings in circumstances of rising inflation. If you work smart and catch the experienced traders’ performances, you may have the chance to hit big returns.

How to start trading stocks?

As first, you have to pick a broker. That broker must be licensed and regulated. This matter is crucial for all stock market trading beginners.

The chosen broker will provide you access to its trading platform. For instance, you would like to join the stock market. You have to know better what are you dealing with. If you want to become friendly with the platform you prefer, the general advice is: begin with small sums of money.

You are a fresh participant in the arena of online stock market trading.

You have to read the financial news. That is helpful when it comes to which stock to buy. News is very important for stock market trading for beginners. Also, you can participate in a number of forums. There you can find some advice.

Truly, you can get a lot of helpful free data in public places for stock market trading for beginners. And study a business you prefer before you stock market trading.

The reasons to start the stock market trading

Say, you got some stock. And the time goes by as always. Assume that after several months the price of the stock goes up. So, you may trade your stock, sell them, and earn a profit. Of course, you can wait longer. If you were smart enough and done well research you picked a worthy company and your stock will rise more.

The stock market trading for beginners is full of chances. But here we come to the importance of news. The value of your stock depends on a large variety of circumstances. As you are a beginner in the stock market trading, you have to know that socioeconomic impacts, geopolitical topics, inflation, and so many others may have an influence on the value of your stock.

You have to know that all the time, all of them, are acting cooperatively. Sometimes they are operating in reverse courses, but they are working. And all of them may have influenced the price of the stock. That is necessary to know for stock market trading for beginners.

But possibly the highest influence on stock prices create the people. If there is a crowd that assumes the price is going up, the price will go up. It will take some time to learn how to trade stock but it worth your effort.

Stock trading strategies for beginners

When you start a stock trading and you are beginners one central question appears. Which trading strategies for beginners to implement?

This question isn’t without purpose.

Some stock trading strategies are very complicated. You should not implement those as the best stock trading strategies for beginners. As a beginner, you should rise with simple strategies. With something smooth and comfortable. This rule fits every novice. It is very important to understand how markets work, so it is highly recommended to follow the trends.

Following the trend is an excellent strategy for stock trading for beginners. Just set it and open the position in the course of the trends. There are various ways created to identify when a trend begins and finishes. An easy stock trading strategy for beginners has simple rules. Follow trends and you can gain large profits. But there are also some disadvantages. Actually, large trends develop rarely.

This strategy can generate losing trades. “The trend is your friend, UNTIL THE END,” said some very smart and experienced once. The end is when the trend sinks.

It is very important for stock trading strategies for beginners to be executed with risk management. Find more about stock trading and investing in stocks with a little money HERE

Don’t waste your money!

28th May 2019
Forex is the area to focus on

Forex Educational Series – Part 2

6 min read

by Hans Stam, A Forex trader

The terminology of trading Forex

When I first started showing interest in trading, I might have been where you are now, so I will go back a long way to put myself in that place again and try to help you.

The first obvious attempt was going for stock trading and I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at.

After I had done a course on stock trading I soon got stuck on terminology.

Also, I figured out very quickly, stock trading was not for me.

At the end of the course I was getting really good grades, but in real life that didn’t do much for me as I simply did not have the money to buy stocks in masses and get something of real value back. Back then I had to go to the bank and buy stocks, but the commissions were very high and it wasn’t really worth the effort.

The other problem I had was I did not understand the language traders used, so in my writing, I will try to explain every step so you can follow this series with ease.

First, I will try to explain trading to you, before going to set up an account and trading platform, as that is a totally different story.

Options vs Forex

When I figured out stock trading was not for me simply because I did not have the money, I soon found out about trading options.

The big plus of trading options was that you didn’t actually buy the stocks, but you bought a contract to buy these stocks at a certain price.

Think of it as getting an option to buy a house, it simply means the house is being taken off the market for a while because there is a potential buyer.

Now I was able to trade at leverage. Instead of buying 100.000 shares hoping they would go up to sell them again against a profit, I could buy a contract to buy at current price and keep that option for say 3 months, if the price went up I could still buy these shares at the previous price and make an instant profit.

Instead of actually buying and selling these stocks or commodities like oil etc. the put and call options that were being traded.

The contracts were much cheaper than buying the actual stocks or commodities, but the negative to me was that if the stock went against the option, the option was worthless.

Why would anyone buy a contract that would allow them to buy a stock at a higher price than they could at the current price? If that happened, the money to buy the option was gone.

So back to Forex. Again, forex trading is being done using leverage. But this time, although you may lose some of your money, it’s always worth something.

Closing out your position (your trade) will still have some value even if the other currency went down. That’s when I knew, Forex will be the area to focus on.

Bull and Bear Market

You might have seen this before, and you probably have.

Think of the bull of Wall Street, or the phrase bullish or bearish markets.

Maybe it seems irrelevant to write about this, but once you are looking at a chart, it’s good to see of the Pairs go up or down.

When the market is heading upwards, we call that a bullish market. When it’s heading down, it’s called a bearish market.

The way to see this clearly, think of it like a bull that takes you on his horns and throws you up in the air, as where the claw of a bear crashes you down.

Explaining Pairs

In our previous example, I used the pair EUR/USD.

But how about Base and counter currency?

In this example, it’s simple to understand you can buy the Euro against the Dollar.

But what if I want to buy the Dollar against the Euro, I don’t see that pair anywhere?

That’s correct, so instead of buying the Dollar, you will now Sell the Base currency, the Euro.

That also explains the next bit of terminology, Buying the Euro (EUR/USD) now becomes going LONG, and buying the Dollar now becomes going SHORT on the pair EUR/USD.

Simply put, Long is buying, and Short is selling the Euro against the Dollar pair (Where in fact you are buying the Dollar as the counter Currency of the pair)

Analyzing the market

As you may have read in the previous article, there is a difference between trading and gambling.

So what makes the difference? And why are traders not agreeing with each other on where prices will go?

The final judge is the market itself, and sometimes you are right and sometimes you’re wrong.

To make sure you are more right than wrong, you would want to try to analyze what the market is going to do based upon what other people think.

Although, there are analyses of the market, even so, if everyone would disagree with the projections and still went another way, the market as the judge would rule that the price would head towards supply and demand.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often in real life. If you’re interested in reading more about this, Google George Soros and see what he did.

The majority of traders will try to analyze based upon two different types of analyses, Fundamental or Technical.

Knowing that other traders have the same information, they will very likely try to figure out what most others decide to do based on the presented information and go along with the flow.

Fundamental vs Technical in Forex

Fundamental analyses, in a nutshell, are more or less analyzing where the market will go based upon the news and events that happen around the world.

It’s possible the influence of these analyses are very high, high enough to even close the markets temporarily. Think of an event like 9-11 or a war for example.

More common in this type of analyses are reports that are presented publicly like unemployment rates or elections etc.

Whatever the news is, usually this is affecting the market greatly and prices will go up or down rapidly, sometimes in seconds.

Once the move happens, you probably are too late already because of the speed, so many will preset orders in case the market goes up or down fast, others will already have the trade open based upon their expectations of what will happen with certain rates like unemployment.

Technical trading Forex

…is something completely different.

When trading based upon technical indicators, many will look for patterns in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

There are many tools to use, think of moving average price waves based on the last X numbers of price values.
Others are Elliott waves or Fibonacci for example.

Also, support and resistance levels are used a lot. When a price is trying to go upwards, it often happens it will try to break a ceiling, bounce back, and have another attempt to breakthrough. Once that happens often, a resistance level is forming. Other traders will see that too, and will most likely trigger a lot of buying orders once that level is broken which is a self-fulfilling prophecy as it will go up because others will buy in that direction which supports the move.

The support level works the same, the difference here is that it supports the lower side of a move.

So the difference between Gambling and Trading basically is that you can try to analyze what most traders will do and go along with that direction.

If you made it this far, you really seem dedicated to learning! Well done!

When you need mentorship, please contact me by clicking here.

Is there another way?

In short, Yes.

We’ve been over Emotions, we’ve been over Analyses. So basically I need to be a robot?

No, you don’t, you can be a vibrant human being and still get very good results.

In fact, it doesn’t have to be difficult at all, but it does require a bit of money to do it right.

I’ll say it out loud, it will take between $5.000 – $10.000 to get started, so a few hundred doesn’t really get you very far with this option.

If you want to know more about this option, please contact me here and I’ll set it up for you.

What is PIP?

For consumers, the best-known decimal is in cents.

For example, if the rate EUR/USD is 1,12 it means that 1 Euro is worth 1,12 Dollar.

It would be very difficult to trade on that decimal.

So in trading, we add a few numbers behind the comma and start trading in PIPs.

PIP (Price Interest Point) Although some have other versions, it’s the point on the market.

1 PIP equals 1/100 cent on the dollar.

Example:

1.1200 to 1.1300 equals a price change of 100 PIP’s and that equals 1 cen

1.1200 to 1.1201 equals a price change of 1 PIP…

But wait, there are more digits when I’m trading?

Correct…

When you see 1.12000 to 1.12001 that’s 1/10 PIP So we call that a Pipette.

Hopefully, this is a simple way to understand how that works.

Demo Trading

The best way to start learning is to open an account and start demo trading. You can do that by clicking here.

Those account with real live numbers are FREE to use, and most will be temporarily but on request, most brokers will extend the trial period.

It might be overwhelming at first, but the good part is, you can get to learn how it works, and you can see directly if you make or lose money.

By the time you are ready, you can open a live account, and start trading for real.

Be aware, going live is really different!

The main difference is, you can refresh your demo, where on a real account your money is gone when you lose.

I have seen people trade on a demo and all seemed reasonable, but when they switched to a real account their balance went south.

The most common difference I noticed was the demos were being traded without much stress in comparison to live-accounts.

It didn’t really matter if this was about thousands of dollars or a few dollars; the tension was just making traders fail a lot quicker on the live account.

Most common mistakes were taking profits way too early, and experiencing fear of loss which totally ruined their trades.

Although some brokers do have their tricks, it’s usually something you can figure out and workaround, but the human factor makes trading more difficult than you may think for most people.

Many also think it will not affect them until they realize they too are human.

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

Many of us are aware of Alexa, Siri, and other A.I. which to a lot of us is very intriguing.

For us Forex Traders this is the future.

If you want to experience A.I. which checks your trading and gives you advice on where to focus, you can try that out for free by clicking here.

What you will need is a Free demo account or set up a live-account by clicking here.

This A.I. does not give you strategies, but it makes you aware of the risks you are taking, and if you are doing well or where you need to improve.

If you are struggling to get a good score, and need to perfect your strategy, wait until upcoming articles where I will explain how to create a strategy of your own.

This is not like the trading robots you may have heard about, as I believe you always will have to keep a close eye on your trading instead of letting whatever robot take your decision from you because to a robot it doesn’t matter if it is blowing your money away or not. And of course, we don’t want that to happen.

We will go through more valuable information coming very soon!

Hopefully, you appreciate the value offered to you on this website, stay tuned!

Best Regards,

Hans Stam

risk disclosure

27th May 2019
Tesla shares drop but it could a 50% grow within a month

3 min read

Tesla shares were higher 2%, floating around the $200 mark on Thursday.

The day before, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had sent an email to employees, saying that Tesla could gain a new delivery record and had above 50,000 net new orders for the next quarter.

“Based on current trends, we have a good chance of exceeding the record 90,700 deliveries of Q4 last year and making this the highest deliveries/sales quarter in Tesla history!” Musk wrote in the mentioned email.

Tesla last report for the first-quarter was disappointing for Wall Street.

The company missed Wall Street expectations.

And the worries about Tesla short term arose immediately.

Tesla last month announced first-quarter deliveries missed Wall Street expectations. The worries about the company’s short term bloomed.

The consequence was, some Wall Street experts have decreased their expectations for the company.

They expressed their concern, frequently focusing on sale worries and liquidity. The negative criticism arose.

Tesla shares have dropped 30% in the past 12 months and 42% this year.

The big turn over of Tesla’s shares

Shares of the electric-car maker drop at $190. It is for the first time in two years.

Image source: Yahoo Finance

The company got thrashed by a range of negative analyst predictions.

Also, Elon Musk warned the stuff the “hardcore” cost cuts are necessary because the company would be out of cash in 10 months if not doing so.

For analysts, the bad sign was recently price cut on its cars. The demand is lower and there are so many reasons for experts concerns.

But still, some of the analysts claim that Wall Street is “misunderstanding the Tesla story”.

Musk’s successes are internationally recognized. Also, it isn’t a secret that he put himself and Tesla into trouble. All because of a tweet on August where Musk claimed there is a possibility to the company to be taken private with “funding secured”. That caused problems with the government.

According to Yahoo Finance, an analyst for a firm “with a major investment in Tesla said Friday that recent drastic price-target cuts on the stock by others on Wall Street are missing the big picture.”

That firm is Ark Invest. Last year its founder forecasted on CNBC that Tesla could score $4,000 per share. They still stand by that call, even now when Tesla’s stock lost almost 40% of its value.

To buy or to sell Tesla shares?

Tasha Keeney, Ark analyst, stated Ark hold so firmly in Tesla that its five-year, bear-case scenario is $560 per share.

That would be almost triple the value of the price where the stock closed, at $195.

Also, the fact is the company raised $2.7 billion. The first quarter was finished with $2.2 billion in cash.

So, bankruptcy appears very doubtful. Almost impossible. The opinion that Tesla will easily run out of money in the next period and close its complete business looks a bit absurd.

The company could raise more capital as Musk already showed they are able to do so.

Also, they could change its business model and sell battery packs to some other carmakers. Or something else, Elon Musk is able to do very unexpectable things to maintain Tesla and exits as a winner.

Tesla could also sell more stock and convertible debt. The last has a lower interest rate than regular loans. Tesla recently raised a convertible debt with an interest rate of 2%. So, who says they cannot do it again?

Tesla is a global leader in two businesses: cars and renewable energy.

Tesla has a really great opportunity in the sector of electric cars. Especially in China, for example.

Its stock could easily produce a return of more than 100% in the future.

Okay, there was some disturbing situation with their autopilot when one man was killed in a traffic accident while using autopilot. He simply and sadly hit the truck. But the company announced that their new cars have the hardware for full self-driving abilities and the software is ready.

Tesla can meet its near-term production goals, that is for sure. It can manage the cash crisis. So it is more realistic to expect it will have a good future. This brand is not going to easily disappear.

Yes, its CEO Elon Musk can be questionable but at the same time, no one can say he isn’t a very capable man. Controversial but capable.

So, Tesla stock can be attractive for risk-tolerant investors.

risk disclosure

26th May 2019
Forex – What is it – The Differences and Similarities With Other Tradings

Forex Educational Series

by Hans Stam

As a Forex Trader, I would like to create a series of short explanations about how this market works. What are the pros and cons etc?

My aim is to make this as clear as possible, so you can follow the process step by step.

What is Forex?

Forex (FX) is the abbreviation for Foreign Exchange.

When you travel to another country, you may want to exchange your local currency to the currency of the country you’re traveling to.

At the bank or airport, you can exchange your money into the currency used in the country you are heading.

The exchange office works with an exchange rate, depending on the current value of both currencies of a “pair”.

A Pair is, for example, a euro against a US dollar which would be the EUR/USD pair, where the EUR is the base currency, and the USD the quote or counter currency.

EUR/USD – Base / Counter

At the end of your trip, you like to exchange the remaining funds again, back to your currency.

Again, the exchange rate can be changed as it is constantly changing.

So it could be very possible that you will get more value back compared to when you first exchanged it, or a lot less value.

The excitement of Forex trading

This exchange can make or lose you money, and that is very interesting to investors, especially the part where the trader can make money of course.

Just like stocks, currency can be traded on the Market, and you don’t have to go to an exchange office to do it.

So what makes Forex different from trading stocks?

First of all, you don’t have to find a buyer for the trade you are holding, you can close the trade any time you want and instantly get the current value credited back to your trading account.

The second main difference is, leverage!

For instance, the broker gives the trader a 1:100 Ratio with your broker, which means you can trade 100 times the value you pay for.

An example would be trading the Pair EUR/USD and you would buy 10.000 Euro’s, the broker will then take 100 Euro’s locked in your account while you trade the exchange rate over 10.000 euro.

It’s easy to understand you can make far more profit over 10.000 euro, than over 100 euro.

When the market goes your way

Now, when the market goes your way, and close the trade to take the profit, you get the initial 100 euro credited back into your account. So all that happened was that you win or lose the price difference from where you entered the trade to where you closed the trade over 10.000 euro.

It’s logical that when you take profits over 10.000, you make a high percentage on 100 initial deposit.

This goes both ways, so it can be risky, but the rewards can also be a very nice ROI (Return on Investment)

If you like to find out more about how you can enter this market, please visit my page.

Can you really make a living trading the Forex Market?

That is a question I’m getting a lot, so I will try to give some clarity.

The exact percentage of the people who really make a consistent profit is low.

Some speak of a top 5% and that is going as low as a top 1%.

What most traders will agree on is that the number is low whatever that percentage might be.

So how come many people are still trading this market and how come so many are struggling?

The first answer on to why so many people still have an attraction to this market is that it’s possible to make a lot of money really quick, on the other hand, they can lose it just as fast.

But in the end it is very simple, you either are right in the direction your trade will go, or not.

I will elaborate in later articles some more about market directions, but this is the basis of all trading.

The trader buys or sells at a specific price, hoping the counter currency will have a positive price change for their trade.

Forex isn’t the same as gambling

Some traders are hooked on the possibility of great profits, and you could compare it to Las Vegas Casinos, and it can be very addictive.

So that it the why people keep on trying, it’s like gold fever or putting your money on Black or Red in a Casino.

Second, why are so many people struggling with this fairly simple way of trading?

The biggest reasons are emotions and lack of knowledge which basically makes it like gambling.

The lack of knowledge speaks for itself, but how about emotions?

Many struggling traders have fear of loss and get excited too quickly when they are winning.

It’s usually when people are doubting a strategy they bought or came up with themselves and experience fear of losing.

When they see the trade going against them, they let the trade go really deep, but when the trade finally goes their way, they can’t wait to take the profit and have that excitement produce an adrenaline kick.

The strategies can be altered

Often strategies are altered, without really knowing why, but if they had that strategy a bit different on the last trade, then their loss would have been profitable in their mind, forgetting the trade would probably have been closed well before it matured.

Hindsight trading has been used a lot with this type of trader, and that doesn’t count.

The top percentage of the traders who make a consistent profit have learned to do things differently, and it would be wise for traders to have a mentor who knows where the pitfalls are.

Also, it is typical for this kind of gambling trader to put in a few hundred dollars, while in reality, the minimum should be at least $5.000 just to have a buffer.

Once a trade goes against the direction desired, it will need some breathing space. The bigger the buffer, the longer you can keep the trade open.

Fact is, you will not lose a trade until you take the loss, or when you run out of margin. So part of that is a decision, the other part financial.

If you like to find out more about strategies or have specific questions, please visit my page.

I hope this short explanation has your peaked interest, and it is clear to you how the basics work.

In the next article, I will go deeper into some facets of trading the FX Market and its terminology.

Make sure to bookmark this page, and come back to read more soon.

24th May 2019
Tesla’s stock hit a new 52-week low

2 min read

Tesla’s stock has fallen another 6% yesterday. It is now down 40% in comparison with last year, according to CCN.

Tesla’s stock is falling more and more every day and Wall Street predicts a total disaster.

Image source: Yahoo Finance

At the same time, Tesla’s car price is falling down too.

The company announced that it is going to lower prices on older model S and X cars. Merrill Lynch announced that selling on those models is lower than ever.

Critics have the opinion that Tesla’s stock has always been a bet for naive traders.

Morgan Stanley reduced its lowest-case scenario price target to $10:

“Our revised bear case assumes Tesla misses our current Chinese volume forecast by roughly half to account for the highly volatile trade situation in the region, particularly around areas of technology, which we believe run a high and increasing risk of government/regulatory attention.”

The Tesla golden era is likely over

Tesla’s stock had confronted pressure for a long time. It had problems with the installations of its car. It had delays and deficits of components. But Tesla and Elon Musk somehow managed to cover all of these problems.

The company had to report a huge loss of $702 million in the first quarter this year, just a few weeks ago. The consequences were they had to draw extra funding. This loss was caused by a decrease of 30% in selling cars.

Also, their tax credit of $7,500 was cut in half meaning the government subsidies are lower. That’s really the bad position for the company and Elon Musk itself.

Tesla rivals are more powerful than ever

For example, BMW progress the development of their own electric cars.

Tesla shares continued the slump falling 6% to close at $192,73.

Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli lowered the price target on the clean-energy carmaker’s plans by nearly 20% to $191 per share.

Michaeli stated the company’s recent capital growth of $2.7 billion provides the balance sheet defense against a 2019 downturn.

“The recent capital raise was a positive step but won’t necessarily get the balance sheet out of the woods if Tesla cannot achieve FCF targets,” Michaeli formulated.

But, at the same time, he said the company has to solve its serious cash spending rate.

Tesla and Elon Musk tried to guarantee the investors their investments are safe. They claimed the company developed a new driving automation system and self-driving vehicles which should increase the safety. Obviously, the investors have no trust as the consumers don’t have.

Tesla’s claims are not supported by the data, they look more just hollow promises.

Musk tries to avoid criticism and keep a good status, it is obvious.

But it looks the Teflon chief position doesn’t belong to him anymore since his reputation likely not stays intact.

Moreover, he and Tesla seem will have more problems in the future.

With competition and investors both.

Elon Musk was putting all of Tesla’s difficulties under the rug.

Declarations on how Tesla should be prized as a tech stock and not as a business with unlimited problems fall into the water.

Banks warned to a Tesla’s disaster

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citi analysts each declared critical statements evaluating the stock’s recent pull-backs by investors. They both concluded it is a sign that should concern.

Their analysis is based on intense selling pressure, with shares falling 16% during the past week.

And also, there is a leaked email from Elon Musk that refers to employee expenses.

All of this was very important for BAML and Citi.

“With fundamentals deteriorating, specifically deliveries/production that are starting to stall as well as losses/cash burn that are not turning a corner on a sustainable basis, some of these optimists now appear to be taking a much more pessimistic stance, with the stock breaking down in recent days,” BAML analysts headed by John Murphy addressed to clients on Wednesday.

The analysts told the current tension on the stock seems to be inspired by “shorts pressing aggressively, as the stock (and story, to some extent) was already breaking down.”

risk disclosure

23rd May 2019