As a trader, you need to master the two technical indicators that are very simple to use but most effective. These are the trendlines and the moving averages. These two technical indicators can be used with a naked eye by just eyeballing the chart. They work for all markets. While calculating the moving averages, the time period used to calculate the average is very important. The shorter the time period, more fluctuations and whipsaw. What this means is the chances of getting wrong trading signals increase with shorted time periods.

Moving averages can be simple, weighted or exponential. In case of simple, all the prices are treated equally whereas in the weighted and the exponential averages, recent prices are given more weight so that these averages are more responsive to the recent prices as compared to the old ones. These averages tend to smooth out the price action that is more easy to interpret and understand.

Now, longer time period averages tend to move slowly and have a long curve that makes them slow in giving trading signals. Traders use a combination of slow and fast averages in trading. A trading signal is generated when the two cross each other and hence the name crossovers.

Most traders use the combination of three averages. When the short period average crosses the medium one, this gives a trading signal but this need to be confirmed. Confirmation is obtained when the short and the medium move above the longer period average. Futures traders use the combination like 4,9 and 18 period averages. Stock traders use longer periods like the 40 day, 100 day and 200 day to generate trading signals.

Now next to trendlines, moving averages are the most widely used technical indicators. So when using moving average crossovers, when the short period average is above the long period average, you should be long. Similarly when the short period average is below the long period average, you should be short.

Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is based on these averages and is a powerful technical indicator in the trading arsenal of any trader. These crossovers between the three averages are an indication the momentum is shifting from one direction to another.

These averages work very well in a trending market but do not work well in non trending or choppy markets. However, when trading with these crossovers, you should know this that these averages are lagging indicators. What this means is that they are giving a signal about the past price action something that has already taken place.

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Technical analysis is based purely on the price action. It does not take into account the fundamentals behind the price action. It only follows the swings on the charts. Many traders use technical analysis in making their trading decisions. There is no doubt that technical analysis is a powerful tool but ignoring the fundamentals altogether is not a good thing. As a good trader, you should always keep an eye on the changing fundamentals in the market.

People use more heating oil in the winter. In the same way, agricultural commodities have seasonality in them that you need to know as a trader. Now, if you think that going long on the December Heating Oil Futures Contract is a good think to do than you must be quite naive. Professional traders and investors are already aware of the seasonality in the heating oil or for that matter the contract that they trade. So they have already catered the price of this seasonality in their contracts. If you are trading heating oil or for that matter agricultural commodities than you might know that heating oil demand climbs in the fall and the winter. This is obvious.

Another thing that you need to always keep in mind is the date and time of release of Economic Reports. So, if you are trading on Friday, you need tos top trading before 8:30 AM EST as the market usually gets too volatile around this time. There are traders who specialize in trading the NFP Report. But if you are not specifically trading NFP Report, you need to stay away from the market around this time. You can’t do anything about the breaking news. It is always a surprise. But as far as the Economic Reports are concerned, they have a fixed schedule. These reports are released at a fixed time and date of the week or the month. NFP is report is always released on Friday at 8:30 AM EST.

As a trader, you need to keep yourself abreast of the developments in the world that are going to have an effect on the market that you trade. Read the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times or the Bloomberg regularly. This way, you know what fundamentals are driving the market that you trade. There are some markets like the agricultural commodities and others that might not get extensive coverage. In that case, you need to subscribe to a specific newsletter that you think is good and can keep you informed about what is happening in these markets.

Always remember that markets are interrelated and often influence each other. What starts in one market may eventually spread to other markets. Remember the subprime mortgage crisis that started in 2006-07 and eventually spread to the stock market as well as other markets bringing down many big financial behemoths.

Now markets like crude oil, gold and US Dollar can significantly impact other markets. So never limit you scope to one market only. Always use intermarket analysis to figure out what is happening to the other market and how it can spread to the market you trade.

As a trader, you need to develop the practice of keeping a trading journal and developing your own checklist. In this trading journal, you should enter each trade. Try to analyse the market before entering that trade. After closing the trade, there should be a post analysis. In your checklist, always use multiple timeframe analysis. A trend might appear different on different timeframes. So you should check that the trend on the daily chart is in confirmity with the long term trend on the weekly as well as monthly charts.

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Most of the people who invest in stocks, only know about the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NASDAQ over the counter market. Futures trading is one of the ways to grow your wealth. There are many dozens of futures contracts that you can trade ranging from crude oil, gold, ethanol, heating, gasoline, silver, copper, wheat, corn, coffee, soybeans, pork bellies, cattle, interest rates, currencies and others.

If you want to profit from commodities than futures trading is the best and direct method of getting access to the commodity market. There are several active futures trading exchanges in the US. Three of the world’s largest futures exchanges are located in Chicago.

The largest futures trading exchange in US is Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). A large number of futures contracts get traded on CME that includes commodities, stock index futures, foreign currencies, interest rates, environmental futures and others.

The commodities futures that get traded on CME include cattle, butter, limber, pork bellies, Goldman Sachs Commodities Index, live cattle, milk, lean hogs, feeder and fertilizer. Now as said before, commodities is an important asset class. CME provides you with the opportunity to trade many commodity contracts.

CME provides you with the opportunity to trade futures contracts on these stock indexes as well as their mini versions the E-Minis. Now, one of the ways to trade stock market is to trade stock indexes like the various S&P 500 like the S&P 500 Midcap, Small Cap as well as the Russell 2000 and the NASDAQ 100.

GLOBEX is the Electronic Trading Platform owned by the CME Group that allows the electronic trading of these contracts almost 24 hours a day. So you can easily trade almost all these contracts from the comfort of your home electronically using your computer.

The world premier futures exchange is the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). The futures contracts that are available on CBOT include agricultural futures like the corn, wheat, soybeans, ethanol, rice and mini contracts on corn, soybeans and wheat.

A mini version of Dow Futures called the E-Mini Dow is also available. You can also trade mini versions of gold and silver futures contract on CBOT. CBOT gives you the opportunity to trade one of the most popular stock indexex the DJIA Dow Jones Industrial Average) in the form of Dow Futures.

Now the best place to trade crude oil, natural gas, gasoline as as well as a host of other energy futures in the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange).This is infact the global hub for energy trading and offers futures contracts on unleaded gasoline, heating oil, electricity, light sweet crude, natural gas, propane and coal.

Futures trading is something that is not difficult to do once you get the hang of it. In the beginning, you should just paper trade these contracts for a few months! NYMEX also provides you with the opportunity to trade precious metals like the gold, silver, platinum as well as palladium. You can also trade metals like copper and aluminum on NYMEX.

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

Short selling works if the price continues to fall. If the price does not fall or retraces after sometime, you can make a hefty loss on your short position. The loans that are taken in order to go short have to be repaid! If the lender asks them or the price goes up, the trader has to buy back shares in order to make the repayment. Now, the harder it becomes to get the right number of shares in the market, the more desperate the trader will become and the higher the prices can go.

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

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

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

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

The problem with Short Interest Ratio is that it is not calculated frequently. It is calculated on monthly basis. So, the trader cannot use it to gauge the short positions in the market on a daily or weekly basis. However, it can give you the general trend in the market. A high short interest ratio should make you nervous if you have taken a short position in that stock as most of the investors who are short will soon become desperate to dump that stock in the market and cover their short positions.

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Short Selling Stocks is one of the favorite day or swing trading strategy. Many traders short stocks. Now many stock brokers make it very easy for the investors and traders to short stocks. Now a days, most of the trading is being done online. When you sell a stock, a message will ask you whether you are selling stocks that you own or you are selling short. With one click, you tell the broker that you are short selling. The broker than goes about and arranges the shares for you to short sell. These shares are a loan to your account.

In some cases,a stock gets so much shorted that there are no more shares of that stock left for you or your broker to borrow anymore. Now, you cannot always short a stock instantly. Most of the investors work on rumors. In that case, you simple will have to cross your fingers and see how the other short sellers do on that stock while you search for another stock to short!

Now, shorting is one of the favorite strategies employed by day traders. A day trader may short stock on the mundane reason like its price had been going up for three days and it’s time to come down! Day traders are not fundamental traders. Day traders are simply interested in the daily volatility in the stock. Most even don’t do any financial or fundamental analysis of the companies whose stocks they are trading. Almost all are technicians or what you call technical analysis experts.

You have to be careful about the uptick rule as stock exchanges have rules in place to help maintain an upward bias in the stock market. What this means is that you can only short a stock when the last trade was a move up. In other words, you can’t short a stock that is moving down.

Now you have to be careful when shorting a stock as certain risks are involved. In theory, there is no limit on how high a stock price can go high. So when betting on something going wrong, if you yourself go wrong, the potential loss in case of a stock price going up can be immense.

Now, don’t get caught in the market with short selling when good news spreads about the stock that you had shorted driving its price up. This is known as Short Squeeze. Once that happens, almost all short sellers get desperate to dump their stocks and exit but when they try to buy back the stock, they get more hurt as the prices go even higher and higher on rising demand for the stock in the market.

Now many companies, brokers and investors hate short sellers and try tactics to bust them. Sometimes, they will issue good news or spread rumors of good news to create a squeeze. Other times, they can ask the stock holders collectively to tell their brokers not to loan out their shares. What this means is that short sellers have to buy back the shares and return them to the brokerage firm and close their short positions even if it does not make any sense.

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There are many candlstick patterns that you can master. Candlestick patterns can be highly profitable trading signals. However, some patterns appear frequently and can be easily spotted. Hanging Man and the Hammer are the two among them. Both are different. Hanging Man is bearish while the Hammer is bullish.

How to spot the Hanging Man and the Hammer? These candlestick patterns are easy to spot on the chart. When you spot a very small candle body accompanied by a pretty long wick on the bottom, it is a Hanging Man if it appears at the top of the uptrend and it is a Hammer if it appears at the bottom of the downtrend.

In less than ideal cases, you might also find a small wick at the top of the candlestick. When the Hanging Man or the Hammer appears, you need to look for the confirmation on the next day.

Now suppose, you think that you have spotted the Hanging Man in an uptrend. Wait for the confirmation the next day with the opening price. If the opening price on the next day is less than the previous day’s close, you have a true Hanging Man. If not, then that was not a true Hanging Man.

A Hammer should have a very small candle body with a long wick at the bottom. Similarly suppose, you think that you have correctly spotted the Hammer in a downtrend. You should confirm this with the opening price on the next day. If the opening price is higher than the closing price the previous day, you have a true Hammer. If the opening price is not higher than the closing price the last day, it is not a true Hammer!

Whenever, you trade candlestick patterns, first spot them correctly than wait for the confirmation on the following day. The best chart for these candlestick patterns is the daily chart. Once, you get the confirmation, trade these patterns. They can be highly profitable. But in case, you don’t get the confirmation the next day with the price action, simply ignore the pattern as not true.

Spinning Top is a signal that the battle between the bulls and the bears ended in a draw. It will start next day again with ony side giving in. What this means is that an explosive move in the price action can take place the following day. Spinning Top is just like the Hanging Man and the Hammer.

How to identify a SPINNING TOP? A Spinning Top has a very small candle body in the middle with two equal wicks on the top and the bottom. This pattern appears very frequently in the daily charts and can be highly profitable if spotted correctly.

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