An option in general gives a person the right but not the obligation, to buy or sell whatever the contract was created for.

For example, an option on a car gives you the chance to buy or sell that car for a specified price, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to buy it.

Options Price

In return for this privilege to buy or sell an asset for a specified price anytime you want before it expires, there is a price to pay. This price is the option price. As we know, anything that has value or price, can and will be traded if there is profit to be earned.

In terms of the stock market, there are 2 types of options: Call Options and Put Options. Call Options give the owner the right to BUY the underlying stock at a specific price by a certain date; and Put Options give the owner the right to SELL the underlying stock at a specific price by a certain date.

Read on below to get familiarized with some concepts that will start you off to trading options. If you are looking for more specific information please visit Call-Options.com

Direction of Stock Price

Most people would guess that stock prices can only move in 2 directions , but stock prices can move in 3 directions:

  • They can move up
  • They can go down
  • They can stay the same

Difference between Calls and Puts

A call option gives you the right to buy a security at a certain price by a certain date; and a “put option” gives you the right to sell a security at a certain price by a certain date.

You can remember this difference by remembering that  a “call option” gives you the right to call the stock away from someone else and a “put option” gives you the right to put the stock (sell it) to someone.

Some more important Options Language

The “strike price” is the price at which someone has the right to buy a call option or the right to sell a put option.

The “expiration month” is the month in which the oportunity (or opportunity to buy/sell) expires (this is usually the 3rd Friday of each month).

Best Discount Option Brokers and Promotions

If you are ready to open a real brokerage account to start trading options, please look at this list of the best option brokers and their current offers and promotions.

Click Here to see all Options Articles

 

The How to Make Money in Stocks Complete Investing System: Your Ultimate Guide to Winning in Good Times and Bad

AUTHOR: William O’Neil
BUY IT AT: Amazon
Retail: $29.95
At Amazon: $15.93

Anyone Can Learn to Invest Wisely With This Bestselling Investment System!

Through every type of market, William J. O’Neil’s national bestseller How to Make Money in Stocks has shown over 2 million investors the secrets to successful investing. O’Neil’s powerful CAN SLIM Investing System–a proven seven-step process for minimizing risk and maximizing gains–has influenced generations of investors.

Based on a major study of all the greatest stock market winners from 1880 to 2009, this expanded edition gives you:

  • Proven techniques for building stocks before they make big price gains
  • Tips on picking the best stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs to maximize your gains

Author Profile
William J. O’Neil (Los Angeles, CA)
is the founder and chairman of Investor’s Business Daily, one of the world’s leading financial newspapers, and is internationally regarded as a foremost source of investment research and advice. He is also founder of William O’Neil + Company, a leader in equity market information and data research for more than 400 major institutional money managers worldwide.

Automatic Investment MachineA.I.M. Automatic Investment Machine is an Automatic investment Software
based on Robert Lichello’s best seller “How to Make $1,000,000 in the Stock Market Automatically” where he teaches his now famous
Automatic Investment Management system.

In fact, we have an Automatic Investment Management Software
for you to manage your portfolios and use Mr. Lichello’s system with ease.

Get More Information

Easily Create Stock Market Charts

Stock Chart WizardAs an investor, you need software that can create stock market charts.  You want to download data so you can create charts throughout the trading session.  This software can create any kind of indicators that are important to you so that you can make buy, sell, or short decisions.  Stock Chart Wizard also has historical data available!  

Stock Charting Software Made Easy

Stock Chart Wizard is simple and easy to use with no extra fees for downloading data. Stock Chart Wizard has its own graphical chart engine built-in, and downloads historical data to your hard drive so you can analyze it any time you wish.  Download for a free stock charting software trial.

Uses Free Historical Data

Stock Chart Wizard uses freely available market data on the internet and presents technical charts and indicators. There’s nothing to sign up for, no monthly subscription fees– the data is all free! Just load Stock Chart Wizard, enter the stock ticker for the stock and Stock Chart Wizard will retrieve the data free of charge from the internet. From then on, you can display free stock charts and indicators.

Stock Charts and Indicators

Stock Chart Wizard is an easy-to-use stock charts software package.  You can select to display your free stock market charts as:

Line Chart (Closing Prices)
High-Low-Close
Open-High-Low-CloseCandlestick

Turn on the Cross hairs data line to display daily prices and volumes, then select from several moving averages and indicators, including:

Simple Moving Averages
Exponential Moving Averages
Bollinger Bands
Compare to other stock or average
Volume
MACD
MACD Histogram
Stochastic
Slow Stochastic
RSI
Momentum

Watch Lists 
You can create as many watch lists in Stock Chart Wizard  as you like. Enter stock tickers into a spreadsheet, press the update button, and Stock Chart Wizard will update all the watch lists with the most popular data, including: change, last price, volume, last open, high, low and more.   Free stock charts software has never been easier!

Export Data

You can export data from Stock Chart Wizard  in ASCII format using the export utility!  Can be useful if you desire to view the data in Microsoft Excel.


Screen Shots
Click here to view Stock Chart Wizard  screen shots.

 

Download Now
Download Stock Chart Wizard today.  It’s free for a 14 day trial!

Contact Us

Send us an email at info@stockchartwizard.com.

TradeStation® Trading Platform

TradeStation’s has the best award-winning REAL TIME trading platform. This trading software also offers online financial brokerage and a set of the best fundamental and technical analysis tools.  It also provides direct access for online trading using multiple asset types.

Our proprietary and customizable tools, TradeStation can create custom trading strategies. It is quite exciting to back-test them with our historical database and automate real-time monitoring and execution of the strategies. TradeStation offers very low and competitive commission rates for online stock trading, options trading and futures trading. TradeStation is also the leader in Forex (currency) trading, offering the lowest forex spread – available to online forex traders.

Learn More

Ramp is a chart pattern recognition screener for stocks and currency exchange markets
Ramp will screen for stock patterns like breakouts, MACD divergences, Fibonacci retracements, W bottoms, head and shoulders, cup and handles and many other great trading setups.

Ramp is a trendline scanner.
You can scan for any combination of price trend lines. Identify trend line touches, breakouts and much more.

An automatic trendline generator.
Ramp includes charts that show you the closest support and resistance lines on any symbol. Using this feature alone will find great trades.

Ramp is a huge time saver.
Ramp will cut your search time from hours to seconds as it automates your trendline search. 

Ramp can be used as a Fibonacci Retracement Screener.
Ramp does all the work. It identifies chart patterns and draws the lines for you. All you do is tell Ramp what symbols to scan and what Fibonacci levels to find.

For more information about the Ramp screener, click here!

Hulbert Financial Digest
Here you will find the definitive guide to newsletters, the Hulbert Financial Digest. You’ll get an analysis of the benefits of all the top financial newsletters and get to know the market timers’ expectations.

The Hulbert Financial Digest should not be used as an investment adviser. It is an independent, objective and accurate rating service that examines the available financial, stock and mutual fund newsletters and reports on them.

Mark Hulbert began this informative newsletter to help the public pick the most excellent investment newsletter. This analysis is accumulated by using the return from selected stock portfolios of each newsletter.

The Hulbert Financial Digest (HFD) computers’ track the performance of more than 180 stock and mutual fund newsletters with more than 500 recommended portfolios, which gives you the entire accurate picture.

The Aftershock Investor

The Aftershock Investor

Retail price: $29.95
Amazon Price: $19.97

The stock, real estate, and debt bubbles have already burst. There is more trouble coming soon. The hard truth from David Wiedemer, Robert Wiedemer, and Cindy Spitzer — the authors who predicted the 2008 financial crisis—explain in their books America’s Bubble Economy in 2006, Aftershock in 2009, and bestseller Aftershock, Second Edition in 2011.

Now these authors have released The Aftershock Investor.  This book provides NEW INFORMATON on what the future holds.  They advice on what you need to do to survive the next bubble—and even thrive. This book promises to be the ultimate guide to investing your money in our turbulent stock market with an eye to the future. The Aftershock Investor is filled with practical knowledge that you will need to keep your money safe. They start with what you  can do with your home to what to do with your cash. This invaluable book is filled with fresh investment insight that you can put into practice immediately.

These authors take an in-depth look at the current and future economic climate.  The book covers key issues as what’s coming next for stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and other assets.  The authors go into detail why recent actions by the U.S. Federal Reserve will eventually hurt the dollar’s world value, the economy, and much more.

The Aftershock Investor is packed with detailed investment advice on your real estate, retirement, annuities, life insurance, and owwnership of  gold and silver before, during, and after the impending crisis. It is full of insight about what you should do to protect and grow your money as the next round of global asset bubbles burst.

Those who heeded the authors’ earlier warnings were able to successfully ride out the financial crisis of 2008 and even cash in during the years that followed. Now The Aftershock Investor offers readers a second chance for protection and profit from what is yet to come.

The Prudent Speculator, since March 1977, has published its monthly newsletter. It’s understanding has been invaluable to investors on subjects like long-term-oriented, dividend-focused, and value-based investment strategies. This monthly newsletter analyzes undervalued stocks, diversification and restraint in order to accomplish long-term appreciation. The Prudent Speculator assists the investor in building diversified portfolios to deal with a variety of market conditions. Their goal is to assist investors understanding of stock prices by putting together commentary, analysis, interpretations and news from throughout the industry.

They have been ranked by The Hulbert Financial Digest as the number one rated investment newsletter. They monitor over 180 stock and mutual fund newsletters, and follow over 500 model portfolios. The Hulbert Financial Digest follows each newsletter’s buy and sell recommendations as they issue them.

Fidelity offers a trading platform that allows anyone to trade like a pro. The Active Trader® fast, powerful platform is available through your web browser or on your desktop.

Features

Active Trader Pro: Streaming real time market data

Streaming, real time quotes and watch lists. Real-time news with advanced search and filtering. Interactive charts.  Filters to track market movers, new highs and lows, and more (desktop only).

Advanced trading

Trade equities, options, and mutual funds.You can store up to 50 trades and place one or multiple trades at a time with the multi-trade ticket feature (desktop only).Place advanced orders like trailing stops, conditional trades, and directed trades (desktop only).

Portfolio management tools

Your real-time balances, positions, and history is always available.Get real-time profit and loss info (desktop only).

Direct and intelligent order routing (desktop only)

Pick your market, exchange, or ECN and experience streaming time and sales data integrated with consolidated quotes.Send your choice of market center for all your orders using our customizable trading ticket.Fidelity’s intelligent order routing technology will do it for you.

This trading software allows you to trade your favorite products all on one platform. Part of Charles Schwab corporation, it is a very well known tool that will allow you to trade a huge variety of assets including bonds, futures, options, mutual funds stocks and ETFs.

The interface can be used anywhere you go and offers the ability to plan, screen, analyze, execute and monitor all your trades.

They also offer an innovative trading education plan called XpressMethod to get you started on trading on their platform.

Their trading tools are powerful and simple giving the user great information without being overwhelmed. From trading ideas to helping place your stop and limit trades automatically, the software offers tools that help you instead of bombarding you. They have charts, trading patterns, trading ideas, execution tools, option chains and many more.

Don’t forget the firs step to success is to start practicing as soon as possible!

Lesson plans for every level of education, chat with other instructors, how to create a game, and much more.

Teacher Chat about the stock marketChat with others about your problems, share lesson plans, learn about other instructor’s experience and successes.

Learning a new skill can oftentimes be scary but luckily you have the chance to not pick-up any bad habits early on with these best practices. This will allow you to start learning how to trade quickly and easily. With the following best practices you’ll be on the fast-track to becoming a savvy investor in no time!

Sticking to a Strategy

An important thing to do when your starting off is to make sure you pick a strategy and stick with it. Switching strategies from one week to the next is a sure fire way to not only do poorly, but not learn along the way. It is better to pick a strategy for a good period of time and work with it than to try to switch to a new style as soon as things are not going perfectly.

This does not mean that you should pick one strategy and stick with it no matter what; but by using a portfolio simulator like HowTheMarketWorks, you can set up multiple portfolios, each with its own strategy, and see which one starts outperforming the others over a longer period of time. This lets you get great experience before settling on a strategy that risks your real money, and lets you look at your investments from multiple perspectives while you compare against yourself.

How long you try a trading strategy will depend on the strategy itself. If you are trying a buy and hold strategy you are likely to try it for much longer than a day trading strategy. Another reason this is important is because different strategies take time to master and if you quit before you even have the chance to get good at it, you will most likely not become a successful trader.

Keep it Simple

The best strategies are usual quite simple. Trading random stocks can be just as viable a strategy as relying upon complex analysis and tools. The reason behind this is simple: a lot of tools and indicators contradict themselves and can easily overwhelm you with the shear mass of information. As we said above, picking one tool or strategy is the best way to get started when starting out. If you don’t know what tool or strategy to pick, just pick randomly and see how you like it!

Emotions

Let’s face it, losing money can be devastating emotionally and making money can be exhilarating. However, these emotions help you very little in making sound investing decisions. Panicking and selling every time the price goes down by more than a percent is the quickest way to lose money. But it would be impossible to take the emotions out of trading completely without being robot. Despite not being able to become robots, that is exactly what many traders strive to do. By setting rules, stops and limits orders when one is calm you can avoid making emotional decisions and instead rely on the analysis you made before the market started soaring 10% in one day. With very advanced software or even your own software, you could set investment strategies based solely on your analysis and never have to even look except to make sure it is performing as expected. This may seem a little cold but making investing decisions without emotions clouding our judgment is the best way towards better returns.

Trend

The old adage that the “trend is your friend” is still as true as ever. When in a bull market go long and when in a bear market go short and if the market isn’t moving much stay neutral. Though this may seem simple, many traders struggle to do this. The logic behind this is simple: generally swings in markets occur over a few days or weeks whereas movement of a much larger pattern will occur over months. It is very difficult to predict the exact moment when a trend will reverse so the easiest thing to do is to just ride the trend while you can and get off when it first shows signs of stopping.

The links below will help you get started!

Intro to StocksIPO
Volume Precedes Price and Confirm Price PatternsBid
Trade with the HTMW GameAsk
Making Your First Stock TradeMarket Order
P/E RatioTicker Symbol
DividendStock Quotes
Dividend YieldStock Charts

Learning how Mutual Funds work and how to trade mutual funds is easier than you might think. But before you can run you need to walk, and to help you get started we have pulled together this list key concepts that you should understand before you risk your real money. Take your time reading through this list, and make sure you use the HowTheMarketWorks (HTMW) free stock market game to practice trading with a $100,000 of virtual money while you study these concepts.

Beginner Mutual Fund Articles

Intermediate Mutual Fund Articles

Click Here to see all Beginner Mutual Fund Articles

Learning how to trade ETFs (or Exchange Traded Funds) is quite easy. This page will get you started on your journey to become a master when it comes to ETFs. You can start trading ETFs almost instantly with virtual trading since they trade just like stocks. To help you get started we have pulled together this list of key concepts that will give you a great start on understanding ETF’s in depth. Take your time reading through this list and make sure to practice.

Beginner ETF Articles

Intermediate ETF Articles

Ameritrade Trading PlatformAmeriTrade’s award winning trading platform is the most intuitive Web-based trading platform. This platform offers powerful investment tools and independent research, everything you need to trade at your fingertips. With the Ameritrade Trade Architect, there are no subscription fees, no platform fees and no trade minimums.

Once you set up a TD Ameritrade account, you’ll gain access to all of TD Ameritrade’s inveesting tools, guidance, and resources. Clients enjoy low, straightforward pricing and knowledgeable support when you need it.

Learn More

Wall-Street-JournalThe Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones and Company is distributed daily newspaper discussing financial matters and the stock market . All round rounded students in business should subscribe to this publication. It is the the largest circulated newspaper in the U.S. with a circulation of 2.1 million copies, and 400,000 online paid subscriptions.

The WSJ has been in print since July 8, 1888 by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. The Journal encompasses American economic and worldwide business topics, as well as daily financial news and issues of the day. The printed version has won the Pulitzer Prize thirty-three times which includes 2007 prizes for reports on backdated stock options with adverse effects of China’s booming economy.

Investor's Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) has been around since 1984 helping investors acquire superior results on the market. IBD’s asset investing strategies have been affirmed continuously to achieve the highest  returns for the novice investor.

An independent study was taken of more than 50 investment strategies by the American Association of Individual Investors from the date of January 1998 to December 2010. AAII’s system, known as CAN SLIM®, acquired 2,487.3% as compared to the S&P 500 which built up to 29.6%.

In the last 25 years there have been a lot of investors that have had large and regular returns by accepting IBD’s CAN SLIM strategy for growth to protecting their money. This approach is based on historical fact.