You are already familiar with trading stocks, but did you know it is Options Trading alone that presents the widest range of opportunity to investors?

The power of options lies in their versatility. They enable us to adapt or adjust our position according to any situation that arises. This means that we can do everything from protect a position from a decline to outright betting on the movement of a market of index.

In 1999 there were about 507 million options contracts traded on US exchanges. By 2010, that number had grown to an all time record of more than 4 billion.

So, why the surge in popularity? Although they have a reputation for being risky investments, options are actually useful to the average investor – if you understand them.

1. Cost Efficiency – Options have great leveraging power!
2. Less Risk – Depending on how you are using them
3. Higher Potential Returns Than Stocks
4. More Strategic Alternatives – Options are so flexible!
5. Ability to trade successfully in any Market Condition

Trading For A Living: Dr. Alexander Elder – this book is the first in a series of 3 great trading books – each come with study guide to fine tune your trading skills.
Trading In The Zone: Mark Douglas – Mark discusses the benefits of being in the right frame of mind when those trading opportunities are presented to us

Finding The Next Starbucks: Michael Moe – like a rich Grande Cappuccino this book is full of straight talking wisdom from a great entrepreneur, who talks about looking for the next growth opportunity.

It has been a busy summer for our Ideal Trading Lifestyle project team as they have completed the transition of all of our customers to our New Membership Site.

It has been our vision to have all of our membership trading tools and resources available to our customers on 1 site with the capacity to grow in the future to meet our customers trading needs.

The original MWA Membership was built in 2004 and though a remarkable site in it’s day, we needed to build a customer site on a new platform that would grow with our customers and offer them the needed trading capabilities.

The team has succeeded in building a customer friendly, service orientated trading platform.

Below are just some of the new capabilities of our new customer membership site:

• Weekly LIVE ITL Spotlight sessions that review the ITL picks for the previous week.
• Daily LIVE End of Day Market Review, 3:30 PM CDT for all our customers.
• Access to all recordings of LIVE and training webinars – if you cannot make the session it will be available on the site
  
• Online changes to your customer information – change your contact and credit card information automatically
• All course material including the prework for the courses that you have completed – you can go back and review anytime you like
• Community News that informs you at a glance of the location of our live events and courses available
• Access to both the MWA and ITL Memberships all from 1 platform

My thanks to the team for all their hard work and long hours and to the customers that took the time to share their feedback. GREAT JOB!!!

We have tried to make this transition to our new site as seamless as possible to our customers and your patience has been appreciated.

I do believe that our new memberships, trading tools and resources will help each of you on your journey to trading success!

Developing a routine that views a stock charts technical trend and looks to confirm momentum breakouts or trend support is a learned skill and requires time-tested seasoning. This approach also needs to consider other potential impacts that could ultimately alter a stock’s current trajectory.

The market declines of 2008 revealed the importance in building market sentiment as a precursor that can impact a stock’s current trend. The overall investing moods of the collective community can override a stocks seemingly predicative trend and needs to be considered prior to any short term position. Utilizing the Dow Jones  or the S&P500 indexes as a market barometer is a typical method to assist in determining the overall market sentiment from a technical view. When identifying overall market support and resistance in conjunction with the appropriate technical indicators it becomes apparent with the trained eye if a market’s direction looks to change from its current trend. Seasoned traders will also consider the overall market volatility utilizing the VIX CBOE as an indication of potential extreme market moves.

Swing Trading also requires an awareness of some of the more relevant global events found to be impacting investor moods and often during extremely highly volatile periods it is important to be connected to the pre-market futures and how markets on the other side of the global are interpreting high-profile events. Rest assure that any time governments are intervening on any event that the politics has a tendency to create a rollercoaster effect in the markets.

When looking at a potential stock position other impacts to consider are upcoming quarterly or annual corporate earnings. In fact, it is highly recommended to stay clear of a short term position if an earnings release is to happen anytime within the next 10 business days. It is not only the stocks corporate earnings date that needs to be confirmed but also any bell-weather companies earnings dates could also impact your stocks ability to continue its current trend. Examples of a bell-weather company would be Apple or HP for the IT sector or General Motors for Automotive. The easiest way to determine this relationship is when a stock is viewed in Google or Yahoo Finance, associated companies are also featured that coincide with a stocks sector.

These are just some of the variables to consider when analyzing stock opportunities and reflect a single component to being a successful swing trader. At IdealTradingLifestyle our market trading experts have developed these lessons-learned and make this a part of their everyday strategy to providing clients with a unique and time-tested solution to trading profitably in these changing markets. To find out more about these and other key trading strategies, please refer to www.idealtradinglifestyle.com.

To find out more about how IdealTradingLifestyle fits into your day and how to take action to self-directing all or a portion of your personal financial portfolio, contact us direct at 1.888.942.0266 ext 01 or email direct to sales@idealtradinglifestyle.com.

Article by: Randy McMullin – MBA, ITM

When you consider this for a moment, it is not unlike anything else that looks at future forecasting. I have been trading stocks since 2004 and if it were not for my background in Predicitive Modelling I am not convinced success could be forecast with any consistency. I realize that to be successful at anything, there is not only the initial knowledge development but continuous learning is required to stay on top of changing conditions.

The key to consistent positive results is to understand the metrics and the analysis process used to arrive at a decision. It is so important to rule out emotion and let a disciplined approach always be the determination.  I also realized a second layer to this approach and it is an intuitive understanding that comes with a time of seasoning and lessons learned. That’s right even after following a logical process using data elements that when regression tested support positive outcomes, there is still the application of the “human element” that can take consistency to a whole new level.

At IdealTradingLifetyle our team of seasoned and experienced market traders understand the data elements and the analysis process necessary to interpreting stock and market momentum. A knowledge-base also exists with-in this team that has developed the intuitive skills necessary to understanding when changes will impact a data-models results.

Just like a cold-front coming in that disrupts a warm weather pattern or a change in a wind pattern, understanding the change of seasons in market trading is combined with what can be gathered in terms of data and what has been experienced over time.

IdealTradingLifestyle is a focus of providing a graduated learning program that looks initially at an expert-support process guiding clients with recommended momentum picks. These picks have been arrived at using time-tested and a refined predicitive modeling system. Then a team of seasoned market experts apply the intuitive-side of trading into each selection looking at elements that change market conditions to further enhance overall trading consistency and timing.

A comprehensive trading solution, IdealTradingLifestyle supports where you are today in terms of your time available. Let experts provide you with a fully-screened stock selection with a pre-defined buy/sell/stop-loss or build your own intuitive knowledge though the graduated trading courses and coaching offered to select from a larger selection of Daily List Picks.

To find out more about how IdealTradingLifestyle fits into your day and how to take action to self-directing all or a portion of your personal financial portfolio, contact us direct at 1.888.942.0266 ext 01 or email direct to sales@idealtradinglifestyle.com.

Our next article will focus on the “Strategies to Trading” and will discuss why expertise and a governed approach will lead to long-term success.

Article by: Randy McMullin – MBA, ITM