Tag: trading

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A chaotic December in equity markets

2 min read

Image from shutterstock.com

What caused a chaotic December? A chaotic December in equity markets is closing. But, at the end of the year, these were not usual circumstances.

It’s “completely bizarre,” says Stephen Innes, head of trading for the Asia Pacific at Oanda Corp. “It’s incredible just how harmful markets veer when sentiment slides.”

Innes mostly is keeping his money on the sidelines. But he has been taking profit on some winning investments. And, also, from blue-chip stocks whose valuations have dropped in the December sell-off.

Like many other traders in Asia, he’s been watching events play out in the U.S. from a distance, astonished at what he sees.
So, what he did see?

Source: Bloomberg

The S&P 500 Index posted its biggest upward reversal since 2010 on Thursday. Just a day after the largest advance since 2009. Despite this two-day gain, the measure is still down almost 10 percent in December alone.

That’s the largest drop for each key market barometer since 1931, according to data from LPL Research. But those Depression-era losses were much bigger: the S&P 500 plunged 14.5% while the Dow plunged 17%.

Two golden rules have been broken.

First, since 1945, December has produced the highest average gains of any month. But December is the worst month of the year. Second, since the 1970s, the S&P 500 has never slumped when earnings growth was more than 10 percent.

Mark Matthews, head of Asia research at Bank Julius Baer & Co. in Singapore, is planning to ride it out. “I remain invested through good times and bad,” he says. “Not being invested, over the long term, is like betting against the house in a casino.” He is a long-only investor.

The December 2018 chaos is making investors nervous.

This chaotic December in 2018 could have an impact in the future. The investors are worried that the economy could slow in 2019 because of continued trade tensions with China and rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

The Dow and S&P 500 are both in the red for the year, their worst annual loss since the 2008 Great Recession, and first annual loss since 2015. Last year, the S&P 500 returned 22%.

For the past, eight to nine years never happened the U.S. market dropping at this magnitude and speed.

Maybe the solution is to go overweight cash for the time being. The volatility will continue until year-end until investors get a clearer picture from the holiday earnings season, say experts.

But longer-term, it is unknown if this will prove a “healthy correction”. The investors may find the S&P 500’s low valuations are attractive and earnings come in above expectations. Or it will mark the end of the bull run. Either way, one thing’s for certain, this movement is definitely unusual.

This market turbulence isn’t normal.

Maybe investors should keep away from new trades and tend to the existing investments. Anyway, investors opinion is very bad.

Yes, most of them don’t think that this huge volatility will continue. But also, they are thinking that it is not a quite good idea to trade stock while the market is like this.

The investors can’t hope that the markets will turn around in the year’s final days. They are here and it is obvious that nothing will change.

In the past years, December was usually a very solid month for the market. Professional money managers used to buy top-performing stocks. That made their portfolios look good. This phenomenon is known as window dressing.

There was also the somewhat mysterious Santa Claus rally effect. The market was very well in the final week of the years.
There was some chalk up to light trading volume with so many people off for the Christmas holiday.

But volatility remained this year. Stocks are down.

It is, as we can see, unusual for this time of year. But the people take holidays. They have hope that the U.S. economy is robust and the sell-off will bottom out.

For this time of year, some people are probably a little more focused on the market.

But trying to explain short-term movements in the markets is an exercise in futility because generally, it is pretty random.

Not only stocks, but Bitcoin has also had a brutal 2018.

This chaotic December in 2018 had an impact on cryptos too.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap is nearly 84% since its meteoric rise topped out at an all-time high of $19,870 in December 2017.

But just after bitcoin (BTC-USD) peaked, technical trader Peter Brandt made a fantastically prescient call. This has recently resurfaced in crypto circles. In January, he called for an 80% retrace of bitcoin’s parabolic advance, predicting a $3,933 price target. Bitcoin is currently trading around $3,600. It was very close.

But as ever, there were different opinions.

The dominant Bitcoin price prediction was that Bitcoin would reach the $14,000 mark by the end of 2018.

However, that prediction is blown out.

Despite some optimists who were hoping that Bitcoin will break through the $100,000 barrier till the end of this year. In fact, Jim Cramer was predicting that Bitcoin will go as far as shattering the million dollar threshold one day.

To do so, market capitalization should surpass 1 trillion USD just on BTC to reach $66,000 per coin, a 10x increase. Well, the entire market cap is at $212 billion. The BTC market cap was $170 billion almost a year ago. Now it is $115 billion and it was at $800 billion in January 2018.

So, who knows what can happen.

Today’s price of BTC you can see here

One thing is certain. After this chaotic December in 2018, next year will be difficult and uncertain. Markets will be full of volatility. Permanent ups and downs.

Anyway, it will be interesting.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

2nd January 2019
Market signal – HOW TO USE IT

1 min read

What is a market signal and how to use it?

The market signal is an unintentional or passive passage of information or indication between participants of a market.
For example, If a firm issues bonds it indirectly shows that it needs capital and also desires to retain control. Thus instead of equity capital, it prefers loan capital.

It is based on the technical indicators and usually is the sign for when to sell or buy a particular product.

It also brings the attention of users to the other options available, abnormal growth and short-term interests.

Using signals in volatile markets can help to point out opportunities to the investors and also will signal them if they disappear.

The market signal is indication or information passed passively or unintentionally between participants in a market.

For example, a firm issuing bond indirectly indicates that it needs capital. And that there are reasons for which it prefers loan capital over equity capital.

The reason can be the desire to retain control of the firm.

Every company doesn’t market in a static environment. The competitor and member of the outlet will make prediction and reaction to enterprises.

Their decisions process is a dynamic market mechanism. And based on rival actions or reactions.

The market signal is any activity of rival.

We want to understand rivals motive, intention and direct and indirect target news and competitive signals such as reduced price.

So, we have to understand the new product introduction and adopting new engineering technology.

The information delivers to the market mainly through the market signal.

If we identify, search, study and analyze the market signal, we take the strategic decision and contribute to analytical behavior trend. We also improve enterprise results.

For example, a well-reputed company can be judged by its income i.e. if its sales increases then its reputation in the market also increases.

Let’s take a look at the experts’ definition market signal.

In contract theory, signaling is the idea that one party (termed the agent) credibly conveys some information about itself to another party (the principal).

For example, examine Michael Spence’s job-market signaling model.

Potential employees send a signal about their ability level to the employer by acquiring education credentials.

The informational value of the credential comes from the fact that the employer believes the credential is positively correlated with having greater ability and difficult for low ability employees to obtain.

Thus the credential enables the employer to reliably distinguish low ability workers from high ability workers.

Signaling took root in the idea of asymmetric information, meaning a deviation from perfect information.

That says that in some economic transactions, inequalities in access to information upset the normal market for the exchange of goods and services.

Let’s suppose that two parties could get around the problem of asymmetric information.

How?

By having one party send a signal that would reveal some piece of relevant information to the other party.

That party would then interpret the signal and adjust her purchasing behavior accordingly. Usually by offering a higher price than if she had not received the signal.

There are, of course, many problems that these parties would immediately run into.

So we can say, the market signal is any action by a competitor that provides a direct or indirect indication of its intentions. Also, motives, goals, or internal situation.

A short note about George Lane (1921 – 2004).

He was a securities trader, author, educator, speaker, and technical analyst. Lane was part of a group of futures traders in Chicago.

He developed the stochastic oscillator (also known as “Lane’s stochastics”), which is one of the core indicators used today among technical analysts.

A March 2007 article quoted George Lane’s description of his famous indicator: “Stochastics measures the momentum of price.

If you visualize a rocket going up in the air – before it can turn down, it must slow down.

That’s the essence.

The market signal is developed by George Lane.

Momentum always changes direction before price.

This means as prices move down, the close of the day has a tendency to crowd the lower portion of the daily range.

Just before you get to the absolute price low, the market does not have as much push as it did. The closes no longer crowd the bottom of the daily range.

Therefore, Stochastics turns up at or before the final price low.

Lane was also President of Investment Educators Inc. in Watseka, Illinois. There he taught investors and financial professionals basic and advanced technical analysis methods.

He popularized the stochastic oscillator, a momentum indicator that uses support and resistance levels.

The term stochastic refers to the point of a current price in relation to its price range over a period of time.

This method attempts to predict price turning points by comparing the closing price of a security to its price range.

The 5-period stochastic oscillator in a daily timeframe is defined as follows:

%K = 100 * (Price – L5) / (H5 – L5)
%D = ((K1 + K2 + K3) / 3)

The H5 and L5 are the highest and lowest prices in the last 5 days respectively. While %D represents the 3-day moving average of %K (the last 3 values of %K).

Usually, this is a simple moving average, but can be an exponential moving average for a less standardized weighting for more recent values.

There is only one valid signal in working with %D alone — a divergence between %D and the analyzed security.

The market signal is an indicator that measures the relationship between an issue’s closing price and its price range over a predetermined period of time.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

28th December 2018
Best-Paid Job In 2019!
3 min read

The best-paid job is so close to you, close to the new year, so think about them.

Ways to make money online are numerous. Our goal is to present you as many profitable deals as possible.

We want to help you find the best-paid job for you. And it is your goal too. To find the best-paid job that suits you more than any other.

You may not become rich, but certainly, this way of working will provide you additional and not small income.

But this is one of the best-paid jobs from home.

And know what, those of us who have worked from home for years wouldn’t dream of going back to a corporate office. Ever. At any point!

It won’t always be easy, and you have to work very hard, you will make mistakes and failures along all that path.

But be honest, the internet has opened up so many possibilities to people regardless of age, location, or background to build a sustainable, online business or side project that can make extra money online every single month.

So, let’s start. What can you do from your home and earn decent money?

1. Trade or invest from home is one of best-paid job

Trade from home is a totally online job.

And it can provide you a quite nice income. Or to be one of the best-paid jobs.

Once upon a time, people relied on the services of a stockbroker, who would make buy and sell orders on the customer’s behalf.

Today, individuals are able to execute buy and sell orders themselves in a fraction of a second using computerized trading services.

But, reading online articles doesn’t make you qualified to trade from home.

Reading the classics of investment literature could be helpful. But the best way is to set aside six months to practice trading with real-world data before investing your money.

You can use some demo account and practice.

Before deciding to buy or sell any stock, you should carefully research the company, its leadership, and its competition.

Make intelligent decisions about what you can afford to invest. Consider investing a portion of your money in an electronically traded index fund, which holds many stocks.

To that end, we present our top three stocks to buy for the long-term:

Buying marijuana stocks can be a best-paid job

The trade becomes more fundamental than gambling. There lies the opportunity and it can become one of the best-paid jobs in 2019. The concept is viable. Moreover, the use of pot will increase because of the legalization trend propagates. The millions of more potential users will access it.

It would be wise to take small positions. Don’t just lay the bet on one perfect entry point. Also, there are no guarantees when investing in stocks.

It’s important to consider the size and never bet more than you can afford to lose.

When looking at potential marijuana stocks to buy, it’s important for investors to remember that there are many ways of trading a concept. Also, not one method is perfect.

Here are three marijuana stocks to buy in 2019:
- Canopy Growth (CGC)
The first reason, the Constellation Brands invested $4 billion in it. So, you can be comfortable joining them in their bet on CGC stock.

If you are going to risk money on this market, you would like to do it in the one that has a strong balance sheet.

It sounds like CGC has good plans to open up more markets to follow the legal path expansion. Constellation made a multibillion-dollar bet on Canopy Growth because it thinks cannabis is a “once-a-century disruptive market transition” and that Canopy Growth is the best marijuana supplier in the world.

Constellation believes the total addressable global market could top $230 billion within the next 15 years. So, projects that Canopy could realistically claim up to 40% of the Canadian market and between 5% and 15% of the market in the rest of the world, including the United States.
- KushCo (OTC: KSHB)
KushCo is a dynamic sales platform. It provides unique products and services for both businesses and consumers in the cannabis industry.

It regularly services more than 5,000 legally operated medical and adult-use dispensaries, growers, and producers across North America, South America, and Europe.

An ancillary play, they have the opportunity of supplying both the legal and black market with their packaging products.

We believe KushCo to be the best additional play in the current market. They have a strong management team. Also, solid execution track record, and servicing the market. We really think their stocks are good investments.
- Innovative Industrial Properties
Stocks of REITs can be attractive for marijuana investors in comparison with pure-play marijuana stocks because REITs spread their risk across multiple leaseholders.

Even if one or two fail, it’s not catastrophic to the whole investment. Innovative Industrial Properties currently owns nine properties, all of which are either greenhouses or indoor facilities used for cultivating marijuana.

2. Launch and grow a startup

Launching a startup can be a very exciting experience and best-paid job.

The first mistake is that founders tend to over zeal their efforts to monetize their products and services. Instead to build a strong base from which the startup can turn into a realistic company.

To avoid mistakes make your list of knowledge areas/special skills on the one side and passions on the other. Then try to connect each of them.

Your knowledge and skills should hybridize with your genuine passion. It means that you have a passion for some job to work and, at the same time, you have knowledge or skills which job requires.

The truth is that you need to love what you do and be damn good at it as well.

Startup founders face a lot of factors and barriers that can stay in the way of success.

Testing your business expectations should be done without investing too much time and money. When you found a winning product, double the original bid on it and focus on the winner.

That’s the whole truth and wisdom!

This world is content obsessed. And we are obsessed by trying to find the best-paid job. This one can be that one in the coming year.

3. A virtual assistant is a defenetely best-paid job

A virtual assistant is a contact made over the internet that assists in day-to-day tasks. Yes, like an assistant, only virtual! And this is one of the best-paid jobs.

These assistants don’t just help someone business run smoothly, they help their life run smoothly.

Whether it’s sending a thank you card to a friend or researching potential investors, a virtual assistant can do just about anything.

They take charge of not only the day-to-day business tasks but can even take hold of day-to-day personal tasks so you can keep focused on what’s at hand.

They can send flowers, thank you cards, or even just schedule an Uber or Lyft so you can go from one venture to the next without a single hiccup.

However, it is just about anything.

Setting up your own Virtual Assistant business may seem like hard work, but we have to tell you that it’s actually the easy part. Moreover, we think it can be the best-paid job.

Being a successful VA isn’t simply helping someone with their admin or supporting their business, it’s knowing how to manage and communicate with them.

If you want to be a VA because you think it’ll be an easy life and easy money then you’re in for a shock because the reality is very different. It’s a brilliant life once you’ve nailed it but there can be a steep learning curve at first.

Virtual assistants charge anywhere from $1 to $100 per hour. Sometimes even more.

But the sweet spot is generally between $15 and $30 per hour for executive assistant services and $40-$75 per hour for higher-level marketing or financial tasks. This definitely may be the best-paid job in 2019

Bottom line: We, here in Traders Paradise, found a lot of very interesting and profitable jobs for 2019. More about them you will read soon, in our new ebook. It’s up to you just to pick one of the best-paid.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
27th December 2018
The First Trade – How To Make It

2 min read

The first trade should be like a selection of a school.

You’ll need to decide on the kind of assets or securities you want to trade. After that, you’ll need to make is choosing the right broker or brokerage firm through which you’ll access the markets.

That’s very important because the broker you choose will have a direct influence on securities you’ll be able to trade. Also, on the tools, you’ll have at your disposal. On how much you’ll pay in fees. Hence, what final returns you can expect on your trades.

You have to find a broker that would charge relatively low fees and provide you with a full package of resources to make your trading experience easier.

And you have to choose the right strategy.

FEW WORDS ABOUT TRADING STRATEGIES

The main difference between trading and investments is that a trader seeks out market movements for profit.

On the other hand, an investor waits to profit from long-term price movements in the assets in their portfolio.

A trader will make tens or hundreds of trades within a week while an investor will buy and hold an asset for months or years.

The first step in creating your trading strategy is to have a trading plan.

The trading plan is like writing a business plan for some entrepreneur. A trading plan will help you to make a realistic decision in periods of rapid market movement when your emotions might lead you to make impulsive decisions.

The trading strategy should include specific goals such as: getting out of debt, retiring early, making your first million.
Also, your trading strategy should include your asset allocation and diversification moves.

As a beginner, you should not have more than 5% of your trading capital on any single trade. Make sure your trading strategy contains a mix of fundamental analysis of global events, like wars that impact oil prices.

But also technical analysis like trading rules based on price and volume transformations.

It is important because you can use this information to determine your entry into trades, your exit when the trade goes your way, and your escape when the trade goes against your plans.

For you, your best interest is to develop the disciple to incorporate stop/limit loss orders into every trade you place.

New traders can use technology to lower the entry barriers to trading by automating many of the activities.

THERE ARE SOME OF THEM:

* Trading bots – This is simply computer programs with instructions based on a predetermined set of market indicators and parameters.

You can use automated trading systems to trade stocks, options, futures, and foreign exchange products.

It is based on a predefined set of rules, which determine when to enter an order, when to exit a position and how much money to invest in each trading product.

Trading bots are especially helpful to beginner traders and sometimes, a bot can be an important market ally for reducing your losses.

* Stock screeners – That can help you filter the stocks in the market to narrow down potential winners before their big breaks.

It will help you identify top gainers and losers, stocks on turbo momentum, and stocks that are about to break out above resistance or break down below support lines.

* Social trading – This is simply a type of trading in which traders rely on user-generated financial content, collected from a variety of networks.

Social trading provides you the platform to be part of a community of successful traders and you can purify the wisdom of the crowd and make you able to make your own trading decisions.

The first trade isn’t like a first love, it is more about how to choose the best school

Always use a trading plan, don’t underestimating the importance of a trading journal, change trading strategy after every trade.

Test your trading skills on FREE DEMO ACCOUNT in a virtual environment before you start risking your own money.

Practice trading strategies so that when you’re ready to enter the real market, you’ve had the practice you need.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

26th December 2018
Bitcoin Bear Market Is Far From Over

2 min read

Bitcoin and the Bear market? Why the bear markets are the best time to be in crypto?

Recently, Bitcoin made a strong rally. Enough to break past the neckline of its double bottom at $3,600 to $3,700. This can be an uptrend underway. If buyers keep the price above the area of interest, it will be possible.

If you apply the Fibonacci retracement tool on the latest swing low and high shows that the 38.2% to 50% levels span the former resistance. That might now hold as support. That means bitcoin could recover to around $4,035 and beyond.

Analysis indicates that the current Bitcoin price chart entirely mirrors that seen in late-2014 and early-2015, this market’s last moody bear market.

What happened then?

2013 marked a very significant year not only in the history of Bitcoin’s bear market but in the history of Bitcoin as a whole. In October 2013, FBI officially shut down the Silk Road.

Silk Road was an online black market. It also represented the first modern darknet market. However, Silk Road’s represented the crypto asset’s first form of widespread user adoption.

The Silk Road closed activity in October of that year. But the price of Bitcoin continued to rally until the end of November before the market had fully systemized the effects of that event.

It is impossible to know when Bitcoin has reached its peak while events are ongoing. Even more, the media didn’t help paint a clear picture of reality. At the time, even as the price of Bitcoin began dropping, headlines were incredibly optimistic.

But, during Bitcoin’s reversal period in January 2015, the general sense in media’s headlines was negative.

These headlines did not provide any positive signals to indicate the bottom of Bitcoin bear market, at that time.

Let’s go back to 2018! What is happening now with Bitcoin?

Although many have claimed that Bitcoin, has finally touched the bottom in 2018’s market downturn, data indicates that many investors still see plentiful amounts of value in blockchain-based assets.

The research group divulged that the 30-day moving average of Bitcoin flow into investors’ wallets has been on the rise, eclipsing the $400 million milestones as of November 1st. Well, $400 million out of Bitcoin’s current $65 billion market capitalization isn’t especially important. In June, this same figure was $300 million. In that period, the price of Bitcoin was approx $6,000. Those days it is about $3,750. November’s inflows should be seen as a bullish indicator.

The data suggests that investors have sought to accumulate Bitcoin at lower prices. Many investors started to allocate more capital towards Bitcoin, due to their long-term belief in the asset’s underlying value.

That wasn’t the case only with “personal wallets”. The institutional players via Grayscale Investments saw an increase in Bitcoin balances. It is an investment-centric subsidiary of the conglomerate that is Digital Currency Group (DCG).

Since the start of 2018, Grayscale has seen its Bitcoin coffers swell by 30,600 BTC to 203,000 total.

Now it accounting for more than 1% of the asset’s total circulating supply.

As seen in the chart above (sourced from LongHash), the wallets pertaining to Grayscale’s GBTC, a vehicle that allows retail and investors to purchase customized BTC on the U.S. OTC market, has seen month-over-month increases.

Markets move solely based on the demand from investors. Hence, if investors think a large rally cannot be maintained throughout the years to come, then some of the largest markets can experience steep sell-offs.

Bitcoin made the recovery and market watchers are pinning it on a number of factors. First is the Coinbase offering of crypto to crypto trading that could boost volumes in the retail sector. Next is the report that Mark Dow, the former IMF economist that opened a major short play on bitcoin after it hit its all-time highs, closed his remaining position also led many to think that he may already be seeing a market bottom.

Bitcoin could take a longer time to recover than in previous years.

Because the market is more structured.

But, it is wrong to claim that Bitcoin could drop to zero because of its 85 percent decline in price this year. This because, in the previous year, it demonstrated a 1,850 percent gain. And a major correction was expected after such a large movement.
But many aren’t convinced that lines can be accurately drawn. The Bitcoin industry has matured beyond measure in the past year alone, and even more so in the past four. Moreover, others have claimed that the worst has yet to come for crypto assets.
Vinny Lingham, CEO of blockchain-centric identity ecosystem Civic, explained that trading within the aforementioned $2,000-wide range is likely to continue for a minimum of three to six months, a common timeline in the eyes of Bitcoin’s short-term bears. The entrepreneur added that if a convincing breakout isn’t established by the end of Bitcoin’s six-month range, a strong foray under $3,000 wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

The Civic chief noted that Bitcoin will likely remain range-bound between $3,000 and $5,000 “for a while.”

But Fundstrat’s Tom Lee said: ”Bear markets are a ‘Golden Time’ to be in crypto.”

Bitcoin bear market is far from over, this is the opinion of analytics.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)

20th December 2018
Position Trading

What are the benefits and disadvantages of this trading style? All explained.

By Guy Avtalyon

The position trading is an approach to trading in which the trader either buys or sells contracts and holds them for an extended period of time. It also refers to the longest term trading. You can have trades that last for several months to several years. This kind of Forex trading requires a good understanding of the fundamentals. Let’s say it isn’t for traders without patience. So, why is that?

What does Position trading require?

Patience. Fundamentals force the long-term trends of currency pairs. Hence, it is very important that every new trader understand how economic details can affect the domestic financial outlook. In this kind of trading, the trader has to hold the trade for a long time. Stop losses will be very large.

That indicates that the trader must have stable capital. Otherwise, the trader will get a margin.

What does taking a position trading mean?

Taking position trading means a position you take when you buy or sell securities. If you buy a stock, future or option, it refers to a Long Position

But if you sell-short a stock, future, or option, it is Short Position. In short, the word position describes your action and view on security/shares/futures, etc.

By taking the position in the stock is something you do to earn money from the stock market.

Very simple.

How to earn money in the stock market?

By purchasing a stock (called taking the position) and then selling that stock (closing the position).

Or by selling the stock (called taking the position) and then buying that stock (closing the position).

However, the duration of your position can fluctuate depending upon your strategy.

It could be for a few seconds, or a few minutes, or a few years, or 20 years. It depends on your personal psychology and goals you want to achieve.

What is the basic analysis of this trading method?

Read the charts or use some fundamental analysis before trading.

When you buy a particular stock always lookout for high volumes.

Of course, don’t buy all the shares at once. Buy it in installments. You have to buy at a lower price. So averaging can helps a lot and don’t forget to put stop loss.

Sometimes market swings beyond our expectations and things may not go well. In that case, you need to exit on time and always make a substantial profit and move on.

You are not married to the stock, so you can always buy it when it corrects.

What is position trading?

Let’s say it again, the position trading, also known as ‘trend trading’, can best be described as a ‘buy and hold’ method.

If you want to become a forex position trader you must be the independent brain. Sometime you must ignore popular views and make your own presumes like, to where the market is going.

You must understand fundamentals and have good vision into how they affect your currency pair in the long run. First of all, actually, you must have enough capital to withstand several hundred pips if the market goes against you.

Long-term Forex trading can net you several hundred to several thousands of pips. If you are too excited being up 50 pips and already want to exit your trade, examine moving to a shorter-term trading style.

You have to be very patient for this trading style.

For position trading, historical points of support and resistance are maybe more important than indicators. The most important is to draw straight horizontal lines and use different time frames. The longer the time frame, the more important level. For this trading style, once again, you must have enough starting capital, you must be patient.

So, what might entice you to try this style?

Firstly, position trading is very convenient for new traders. The speed isn’t as wild as day trading or swing trading. Hence, you have a bit more time to plan your activities and create a trading plan. On a wider level, position trading can also be more attractive in different types of markets.

For example: If you are in a bull market where there are strong emerging trends, it can be a good time to engage in position trading.

You will not see the result fast, it will take time. We are speaking about months and years, not hours or days.

16th December 2018
Trade Crypto And Stocks / Forex – How To Do That
4 min read
- If you understand how the financial markets are structured you can use the same skill and experience to profit in all three.
At first, we have to define the difference between crypto and Forex/Stock trading because you have to have theoretical knowledge.

– Crypto trading, or cryptocurrency trading, is simply the exchange of cryptocurrencies. Like in Forex, you can also buy and sell a cryptocurrency for another, like Bitcoin or altcoin for USD and Euro.

– The foreign exchange market (Forex, FX, or currency market) is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices.

– Stocks trading is the buying and selling of company stock – or derivative products based on company stock – in the hope of making a profit.

Let’s go further!

HOW TO TRADE CRYPTO

Crypto shows bigger growth than stocks or forex. Honestly, all of these types of investment are risky.

While Bitcoin is not the only digital currency on the market, it is indeed the first and most popular one and stands as the digital gold within the industry. The technology behind cryptocurrency holds a large part of its value. The secure way to identify a transaction and the way to transfer funds.

If you want to trade cryptocurrency you need:
1) A cryptocurrency wallet (or two).
2) A cryptocurrency exchange (or two) to trade on.

There are only a few things to know about trading cryptocurrency.

Trading cryptocurrency is simple to start. Yeah, it’s easy.

But there are some essential aspects to understand before you start trading. And this is basic friendly advice to mull over. This not professional investment advice.

I’ll explain on the example of Bitcoin.

There are three ways you can trade Bitcoin:

1 Buy the underlying from an exchange or online cryptocurrency broker

For those who are willing to actively safeguard their Bitcoin, owning the underlying is clearly the way to go.

But prudent steps must be taken to mitigate the risk of Bitcoin theft or loss of private keys.

Diversifying holdings across wallet types, using two-factor authentication and strong passphrases, can be helpful.

2 Trade (buy/sell) a CFD (Contract for Difference) derivative and hold cash margin with an online forex broker or multi-asset broker.

Active traders looking to speculate on Bitcoin over the short or medium term can count that using an online forex broker will provide them with 24-hour trading. And potentially lower margin, and the ability to go either long or short.

So, it is good!

Because of counterparty risk, choosing a broker is just as important as finding one with the best trading tools or commission rates.

3 Buy a publicly listed security related to Bitcoin and hold shares with an online stockbroker.

For stock market investors, investing in Bitcoin indirectly through a listed security such as an ETF, ETP, or trust may be suitable for those looking at taking a passive position.

Active traders might find the limited trading hours and potential lack of volume a limiting factor that could hinder their trading.

Overall, using listed securities that invest, track, or hold Bitcoin can be a viable alternative to diversify away from the risks of margin trading. Or safeguarding private keys when buying the underlying.

HOW TO TRADE FOREX

Forex, also known as foreign exchange, FX or currency trading, is a decentralized global market where all the world’s currencies trade.

You can trade currency based on what you think its value is. Like, for instance, you think a currency will increase in value, you can buy it. But, if you think it will decrease, you can sell it

All forex trades involve two currencies because you’re betting on the value of a currency against another. Think of EUR/USD, the most-traded currency pair in the world.

EUR, the first currency in the pair, is the base, and USD, the second, is the counter.

When you see a price quoted on your platform, that price is how much one euro is worth in US dollars. You always see two prices because one is the buy price and one is the sell.

The difference between the two is the spread. When you click to buy or sell, you are buying or selling the first currency in the pair.

Since the euro is first, and you think it will go up, you buy EUR/USD. If you think the euro will drop in value against the US dollar, you sell EUR/USD.

If prices are quoted to the hundredths of cents, how can you see any return on your investment when you trade forex? Leverage!

When you trade forex you’re borrowing the first currency in the pair to buy or sell the second currency.

To trade with leverage, you simply set aside the required margin for your trade size. If you’re trading 200:1 leverage, for example, you can trade $2,000 in the market while only setting aside $10 in the margin in your trading account.

However, leverage doesn’t just increase your profit potential. It can also increase your losses. If you are new to forex, you should always start trading with lower leverage ratios, until you feel comfortable in the market.

HOW TO TRADE STOCKS

Stock markets are places where buyers and sellers of shares meet and decide on a price to trade.

It is important to know that the corporations listed on stock markets do not buy and sell their own shares on a regular basis. When you buy a share of stock on the stock market, you are not buying it from the company, you are buying it from some other existing shareholder.

There are many stock exchanges, many of which are linked together electronically which means markets are more efficient.

The prices of shares on a stock market can be set in a number of ways, but most the most common way is through an auction process where buyers and sellers place bids and offer to buy or sell.

A bid is a price at which somebody wishes to buy, and an offer (or ask) is the price at which somebody wishes to sell. When the bid and ask coincide, a trade is made.

If there are many buyers and sellers at sequentially higher and lower prices, the market is said to have good depth.

Stocks are quoted by their ticker symbol, represented by between one and four capital letters. They are often loosely representative of the company name.

Let’s break down what is the market order!

A market order is simply an order that instructs the broker to buy or sell shares at the best available price. The market order does not guarantee the price you will get. But it does guarantee that you will get the number of shares that you want.

When an order is completed, it is said to be filled.

Stop orders are contingent on a certain price level being attained to activate the trade and your trade will be executed only when what you want to buy or sell reaches a particular price.

If you understand how the financial markets are structured you can use the same skill and experience to profit in all three.

In all three you have to buy low and sell high against the crowd.

There is no difference.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
14th December 2018
Automatic Trading – What Is It
3 min read

Automatic trading, also known as Algo/Algorithm trading is a somehow new field in the financial markets.

It’s there since the 90′, but it started to get much more popular in the past few years, for 2 main reasons:
1. The technologies are way better to handle that kind of challenges – Dealing with a lot of data:
2. Save it (it’s millions of giga-bytes so you need special server farms around the world, and that’s something that only available in the past few years)
3. Analyze it – Create an algorithm to go over that amount of data and also issue insights out of the data. This can take millions of years.
4. Find a way to keep adjusting the algorithm. In the financial markets – what happened yesterday IS NOT a guarantee that it will act the same today. So, we need to know what happened yesterday, but also find a way to give it the appropriate weight in our calculations
5. Many non-legit bodies got into the industry to try and take money from innocent customers, claiming they succeeded to figure it out.
Our aim, here in Traders Paradise, is to help you, our visitor, in understanding the risks in automatic trading.

Important to know (and I’m full of hope you’ve learned it by far in life): There’s no profit without the risk.

We will talk about how automatic trading systems work, under what circumstances you change / diverse strategies, what’s available in the market and why you probably won’t have access to the automatic trading platforms that truly works.

Let’s start from the beginning – Why is it so difficult to create an automatic trading software.

The short version of the answer is – the financial markets keep changing on a minute basis.

What I mean-

1 In an asset (like stocks) level:

Say we’re talking on Apple, and they issued an announcement that iPhone sales are going higher than predictions – The price will rise. Now, studies show that in a matter of a few seconds the price will already include the latest news.

From this point there are 2 options – Either the price keeps going up or it will drop lower. If it’s rising anymore – we definitely know that some people will sell their holdings, as it reached their strategy profit point of exit. So if they’re more than the ones who want to but – price will drop. So it’s kind of a gamble.

Ways to avoid this – invest in two companies that are competitors, so that when one is dropping the other is rising. This called hedging the investment.

2 In an industry (such as technology) level:

In this level, it’s more tricky, because if an entire industry is dropping (regardless of a specific company) then it can affect our whole portfolio. Several things can trigger it, such as a big player comes with an announcement that affects the whole industry. Like, if IBM (that creates chips for most of the big companies in the world) will announce that we reached a “no way to overcome” scenario. Then all the industry can lose some points. Until someone else will come with some better news.
Ways to avoid – Diverse your portfolio with serval industries like motor, pharma, and technology.

3 In a market level:

This can happen when an announcement or new policy comes out of the main bank or the government, or when a global incident is occurring – The whole financial markets can drop, and then ALL portfolios will lose (except the ones who bought ‘short’ position).

Ways to avoid – VERY DIFFICULT. It happens in surprise and there’s no way to predict it. But you can still avoid some if you add short positions to your portfolio.

So, those are, in general, the major points we need to look on when creating a portfolio.

This created an environment that is impossible for short-term predictions.

Next question is – How do we choose our assets? Or how we create a good portfolio?

Let’s think about it for a second:

If I read on the finance news about an asset that is going high. I must think – yes, this is the asset I was waiting to buy. Right?
Wrong.

Because there are many other people who read the same news like me.

And if we all buy now, at the top, we’ll all be the “stupid top”, just like the people who bought bitcoin at a price of $15,000 and saw it drops to $5,000. Someone made money in these actions, but some lost a lot! (Never forget the simple rule of – when someone is buying it means there’s someone who’s selling)

So,

Do we need to go short on that asset?

Nope. Short is a VERY dangerous position. Why? Because only in short you can lose MORE than you initially invested

How’s that possible: When going long – it means you believe that price will rise,

For the easy example, we say there’s an asset cost $1 per share, and we decide to buy only 1, so it costs us $1.

Now, this company had been acquired by another company and overnight the asset is now worth $20. Pretty nice huh?

And if overnight the company bankrupted – then we’d lose that $1.

Now let’s say we went short on that asset –

If it bankrupted we doubled our money, but in case the price jumped to $20 – we, then, lost $19 on a $1 investment.

That’s brutal!

So, shorts are something we try as hard as we can to avoid, but sometimes it’s the best strategy. We’ll talk about it later in another article.

Back to the asset we just read is exploding and rising up. What are we doing?

NOTHING!

If it’s already on the news – we missed the train.

So what’s the asset we should buy? It doesn’t matter. Why you probably wondering… And that brings me to the next question:

So what is automatic trading software trying to do?

Most people think the purpose is to find either an asset is before or during an explosion and recommend that asset to the user, right?

But wait…

I got into a position. When do I get out?!?

That is the real question.

See, a good asset position is built on 3 things:
1. When to get in
2. When to get out
3. Which direction we choose (long/short)
That’s it.

But, when we start to break it, we see that there’s one of them that is the most important.

Yes, I know you already know which one it is!

It’s “When to get out”.

This is the most important thing in every single trade you will ever do, and what sucks about it is that you’d know if you got it right only on in retrospective look. Never at the same time of action.

THIS is what good automatic trading algorithm supposed to do, and this is what our algo trade software does. It doesn’t matter which asset you choose nor when you get into a position or which direction you go – It’s ALL a question of when you got out!

If you were wrong about the direction – you need to get out ASAP, but with a minor loss as you can.

If you got the direction right – you want to optimize the profit you can, before price bounces back.

That’s the whole idea, and that’s what we created.

How is Automatic trading even work?

Well, it’s kind of a secret… But we’ll tell you what we can and we’ll let you use it to see for yourself (for free of course).

But basically how it works is we have many supercomputers that work together on sets of data, to create the most optimized exit strategies for every asset we choose.

It’s working according to historical data, but it gives the right weight to every piece of data.

In other words, we, as people, could never understand why the software does what it does.

We know how the math was created, but this algorithm is an unsupervised algorithm (read more in the previous article)

It had only one rule to follow: “The more profit you gain, the better this strategy”.

That’s it. Like when you plant seeds in your backyard, water it, and then you wait for the fruits? Same thing, but way better fruits…

Want to get access to our software once it’s ready for outside users? Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll let you know when it’s ready. Also, you’ll get more interesting articles on how we solved this almost-impossible technology and math problem. You can ALWAYS unsubscribe.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
29th November 2018
TradeInvest90 – Why Trade With Them
3 min read
- Traders Paradise delves into all aspects of this online trading brokerage.
ABOUT

TradeInvest90 is a relatively new and unregulated trading brokerage. The question is how do they compare to the competition and can they be trusted? You will find out in this in-depth review. Traders Paradise delves into all aspects of this online trading brokerage and shines a light on the products and services they provide.

TradeInvest90 is an international online trading brokerage. It provides innovative trading services to traders all around the globe. The brokerage provides trade, invest and profit from the global financial markets. That include over 1000 top class assets.

Where and how it originated

TradeInvest90 was established in March 2017 and is owned and operated by Capital Force Ltd. The brokerage serves the international markets through their online trading platform. They are based out of Oceania with their company headquarters located in Samoa. As TradeInvest90 is an offshore trading brokerage, they have not acquired any sort of regulation from reputable regulatory authorities but claims to operate their services within the means of the strictest regulatory requirements.

TradeInvest90 Trading Platform

TradeInvest90 provides its very own proprietary web-based trading platform. The ever-popular MetaTrader 4 (MT4) trading platform is not offered. So, traders will have to learn a new platform. But, the TradeInvest90 trading platform is incredibly easy to learn and use. Their platform has a fantastically designed user interface that is fast and easy to use. That provides traders to trade multiple financial instruments all in one place. That is a great opportunity for traders who like to diversify their portfolio with one trading platform. The platform features a standard charting package with basic features for technical analysis.

You can find a variety of technical indicators, chart types, time frames, and drawing and analysis tools. This trading platform is satisfactory for most traders needs. But some of the traders could wish more recognized trading platforms like the MT4 and MT5 trading platforms. For such we have only a few words: TradeInvest90 is simple and easy to use trading platform.

Very good for beginners

The custom-made and in-house developed online trading platform has a user-friendly operating interface. That allows users to trade comfortably. Clients are not required to download anything on the PC. Instead, it can be accessed online using a computer connected to the internet. On the other hand, traders can also use the company’s online trading platform on all on-the-go devices. Such as mobile phones, and tablets. The supported versions of the online trading app for Android or iOS-based devices can be downloaded from Play Store and App Store respectively.

Exchange markets and tradable instruments

Traders at TradeInvest90 have access to over 1000 world class financial assets across 5 global markets including forex, stocks, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. Traders can trade CFDs on the latter three markets and can participate in forex trading on the world’s most popular currency pairs. A complete list of asset index is available on the company’s official website. Clients can click the following link to access a comprehensive range of asset index.

See below, a quick overview of the CFDs and Forex markets.

CFDs

6 commodities
6 indices
Over 100 stocks
Trade on the leverage of up to 1:200
Trade both rising and falling markets
24 hours a day, 5 days a week
Risk management capabilities

Forex

Trade Majors, Minors & Exotics
Nearly 70 currency pairs
Trade on the leverage of up to 1:200
Trade both rising and falling markets
24 hours a day, 6 days a week
Risk management capabilities

Types of accounts

This company offers a standard account only. The minimum deposit is $250. All you need is to open an account at TradeInvest90 with the company’s recommended broker to get started. The broker offers Forex, binary options and CFDs trading all in one account. It has fixed spreads in place. It charges zero commission.

Clients can expect their investment to grow by 400% over time. It has state of the art trading facilities available for clients wishing to invest more than $250 including customized trading analysis and charting tools. It also provides its account holders dedicated customer support round the clock, six days a week.

Fees and commission

TradeInvest90 offers its traders zero commission trading by incorporating the fees into fixed spreads. The fixed spreads are higher compared with most of the competition. For instance, the fixed spread on the EUR/USD currency pair was 3 pips which are 1.5 pips higher than the industry average. Also, traders have to pay an account maintenance fee of $7.50 per month. Also, traders incur a profit clearance fee. Here are the profit clearance fees associated with the number of profits cleared.

250$ or less = 1.5$
$251 – $500 = 2.00
$501-$1000 = $3.00
$501-$1000 = $4.00
$1001-$2500 = $4.00
$2500 or more = $5.00

Other penalties

If traders account is inactive for longer than 31 days, they have to pay.fee of $10.00 per month. Honestly, this time frame could be too short. Withdrawal fees are of 3.5% and a minimum withdrawal fee $30. We have to say, the fees on traders by TradeInvest90 are pretty much high. But, clients can withdraw their funds as and when they wish to. The company offers a wide range of deposit and withdrawal methods to its clients including debit cards, credit cards, payment via e-wallets (Skrill, Neteller), bank transfers, web money, and other local payment methods.

Tradeinvest90 customers can withdraw their funds and benefits whenever they need to when they pass the compliance procedures. It could take 5-7 business days to process the withdrawal request.

Demo account

Unfortunately, the company doesn’t offer any demo account. We do hope that in future it will begin offering demo accounts as well.

Customer support

It looks like this broker is created with great intention to be helpful to traders who just started. The broker understands the importance of excellent customer service which is excellent for novice traders. It offers 24/6 dedicated customer support to its clients. The company ensures the availability of professional and competent staff round the clock to assist its customers.

Clients can contact the company using a telephone line. This is wonderful because of the opportunity to talk with a real person. Inquiries can also be made through email at [email protected]. A live web chat feature is also available on the company’s official website to facilitate clients on a runtime basis.

The bottom line

We made a very careful review. TradeInvest90 is one of the best online brokers available in the market. It’s user-friendly and award-winning trading platform. It definitely states of the art trading tools make it stand out of the crowd. It provides excellent customer support to its clients round the clock. Recommended for novice traders as well as for advanced.

You can also find more companies we recommend in our wall of fame, and be aware of the ones inside our wall of shame.

Risk Disclosure (read carefully!)
Screenshots from website www.tradeinvest90.com
28th November 2018
Mining with GPU versus CPU

Both CPUs and GPUs are inventions made from billions of microscopic transistors packed on a small piece of silicon. But they have some differences.

By Traders-Paradise Team

To find the answer, we must first look into how mining works. A computer guesses a string of characters and puts them through a hash function to try to reach an expected hash output. However, the computer has no way of knowing how to get to that output. Let’s say the output needed is “6”. The computer doesn’t know what calculations are used to generate the output; it could be 3+3, 5+1, 6+0, 3×2, and a nearly limitless number of other functions. Once the computer has found an input string that works, it can be easily verified by the other computers.

Go back to CPU and GPU!

A CPU is great for multitasking, such as saving documents, editing video, deciphering instructions, running the OS, and much more. However, because it needs to figure out what to do each time, it is a lot slower than a GPU. Think of a Swiss knife. The knife itself may not be very useful, but it has a lot of different tools attached.

What is CPU

The CPU, or central processing unit, is the part of the computer that performs the will of the software loaded on the computer. It’s the main executive for the entire machine. It is the master that tells all the parts of the computer what to do – in accordance with the program code of the software, and, hopefully, the will of the user. They are designed to perform very complexly, and often changing in the mid-stride, operations. Most computers have multi-core CPUs nowadays (which is almost the same thing as having multiple CPUs in a single physical package), and some computers even have multiple CPUs.

The CPU is usually a removable component that plugs into the computer’s main circuit board, or motherboard and sits underneath a large, metallic heat sink which usually has a fan, and few are cooled by water.

What is GPU

The GPU, or graphics processing unit, is a part of the computer for the video rendering system. The typical function of a GPU is to assist with the rendering of 3D graphics and visual effects so that the CPU doesn’t have to. Powerful GPUs are needed mostly for graphics-intensive tasks such as gaming or video editing.

These days, miners are moving quickly to GPU because when GPU was discovered it was said that, it could offer more hash power compared to CPUs, its cost is lower and can save electricity.

Why mining with GPU

A CPU is designed primarily to be an executive and make decisions, as directed by the software. For example, if you type a document and save it, it is the CPUs job to turn your document into the appropriate file type and direct the hard disk to write it as a file.

CPUs can also do all kinds of math, as inside every CPU is one or more “Arithmetic/Logic Units” (ALUs). CPUs are also highly capable of following instructions of the “if this, do that, otherwise, do something else”. A large bulk of the structures inside a CPU are concerned with making sure that the CPU is ready to deal with having to switch to a different task on a moment’s notice when needed.

Differences

A GPU is very different. Yes, a GPU can do the math, and can also do “this” and “that” based on specific conditions. However, GPUs have been designed so they are very good at doing video processing, and less executive work. They are designed to do a high number of simpler operations than CPU and to do them quickly.

GPUs have large numbers of ALUs, more so than CPUs. While CPUs can have up to a handful, modern GPUs have between 1.500 and 2.800 ALU. As a result, they can do large amounts of bulky mathematical labor in a greater quantity than CPUs.

That, in a nutshell, is why GPUs can mine Bitcoins so much faster than CPUs. Bitcoin mining requires no decision making, it is repetitive mathematical work for a computer. While CPU can do these calculations one or a few at the time, GPU can do more than a thousand at the same time. The only decision making that must be made in Bitcoin mining is, “do I have a valid block” or “do I not”. That’s an excellent workload to run on a GPU.

GPU can mine much faster than CPU. In order to mine Bitcoin, you must have at least one GPU installed on your computer.
Also, GPU has the ability to mine different coins such as Ethereum, Bitcoin Gold, and many others besides Bitcoin.

Why mining with GPU?

GPU is very good at complex computation, is easily sourced, is standardized hardware, has high resale value.and is easily upgradeable. A GPU is great at doing the same thing over and over again: producing graphics. Normally, this involves performing a mathematical equation with two or more numbers that give an output that is rendered as a pixel. Sounds familiar?

That’s because it is. This task is exactly like mining – putting a set of inputs through the same function. Because of GPUs when mining has to do this one thing, they can do it very fast. And can do a high volume of these operations, just like drawing a high number of pixels on your screen.

The choice of CPU in a crypto mining setup doesn’t matter that much because it is only doing telling everything what to do, which isn’t that much of a workload.

The GPUs are the ones doing the heavy lifting. The choice of which GPUs to use is important because you want the best hashing performance. And you are limited as to how many GPUs you can connect in a rig as each GPU requires at least a single PCIe slot.

Thus it is important to choose the motherboard carefully as they can come equipped with between one and six PCIe slots.

Luckily, those slots do not have to be of the x16/x8 kind, and x1 suffice well enough. Hashing performance is often rated at hashes per watt given that electricity is your largest cost after the initial investment in a mining rig.

Why mine with CPU?

At the point when Bitcoin was begun, the only way to mine was utilizing Central Processing Unit (CPU) on PC and Bitcoin core wallet. Intel and AMD were the famous names in CPUs. When bitcoin was released you could dig only 100 coins a day using CPU. But it is impossible today to CPU mine bitcoin because of much higher difficulty which gave rise to ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Specially designed chips just for mining of a one or the other cryptocurrency.

CPU was designed to switch between different complex tasks. Hash required proof of work in not very complex mathematical calculations. And CPU has less arithmetic logical units. So, when it comes to performance in the large calculation CPU is relatively slow. CPU has the ability to mine different coins such as Zcash, Nexus, Hold coin, Reicoin.

Advantages of CPU mining: there is no specialized hardware required, a very good starting point to enter mining, invaluable educational experience. And it is fun to mine with CPU.

The bitcoin network hash rate is really high, so in CPU mining there is no longer a guarantee for profit. During the mining process, the miners use fast running hardware to try to solve blocks. And slow CPU hardware can only make a certain amount of hashes in a given time frame. You need very good and fastest hardware for faster hashes.

Both CPUs and GPUs are creations made from billions of microscopic transistors crammed on a small piece of silicon.
Trying different hashes repeatedly is a very repetitive task suitable for a GPU. Each attempt varying only by the changing of one number (called a “nonce”) in the data being hashed.

That is why GPUs can mine Bitcoins so much faster than CPUs. Bitcoin mining requires no complex decision making because it is repetitive mathematical work on the same set of numbers. The only decision making that must be made in Bitcoin mining is, “do I have a valid block” or “do I not”. That’s an excellent workload to run on a GPU which can do a high number of these calculations at the same time.

27th November 2018