Margin-borrowing from your broker–increases your buying power, and when all is right with the world it literally doubles profit potential. But if you make a lousy play you have to pay back double. That’s why we have preached for years against using margin. There’s already enough risk in the market.

Let’s suppose you like stock XYZ at 50 but don’t have the cash in your account to buy all that you want. So you decide to “margin” it, which simply means you borrow 50% of the money to buy XYZ from your brokerage. If the trade goes well and XYZ moves higher, you can sell with a very nice profit.

But what if the market is in the process of correcting? Old XYZ could take a 10-15-point loss, and there is a good chance that eventually the brokerage will call you for the balance. Well, if you had to borrow the money to buy XYZ in the first place, where are you going to get the money to pay back the broker? We know that sometimes margin calls go out, and the customer simply doesn’t have the money to pay. That is an ugly situation that can result in liquidating positions, closing accounts and facing lawsuits.

It’s a different situation with short sales. Brokers insist that you have a margin position to do this sort of trading. That’s because short selling involves borrowing shares from your broker before selling them on the open market. When you are ready to close your short position, you “buy back” shares on the open market and return them to the brokerage.

We like to err on the side of safety. Buying on margin might be OK if you are a day trader who has the right tools and is operating in real time and keeping an eye on things. But if you are a short term investor or even a long-termer you have to be extremely careful if you are going to employ margin. You cannot buy something on margin and sit back and forget about it. A bad market stretch can get you into a boatload of trouble.

For a FREE report on HOW TO TRADE FAST, enter your email address at:

http://lb.bcentral.com/ex/manage/subscriberprefs?customerid=12826

This may also be very helpful to some of you:

http://www.americancashflow.com/agile/index.html

The buying or selling of a currency within the same calendar day is known as currency day trading. In this case, all trades are completed in the same day and nothing is held overnight. The United States passed laws six years ago that enabled small investors and common men to participate in currency day trading; previously, only large banks and financial institutions and millionaires were engaged in the practice.

Industry analysts believe that currency day trading is a well-kept secret of the rich and powerful who have the power to control all the banks, corporations and foundations throughout the world. In currency day trading, the traders have vast buying power. For instance, it enables traders to use $1 to control an investment worth $200, and $500 to control $100,000.

The professional day traders are divided into two primary categories, those who work alone and those who work for a larger institution. Most of the traders work for a larger institution as they are given access to greater resources. Large amounts of capital and leverage, expensive analytical software, and a direct line to a dealing desk are some of the facilities given to the trader who work with big companies. On the other hand, individual traders mostly manage other people’s accounts or just trade their own. As these people have limited resource access, it prevents them from competing directly with institutional day traders.

There is a lot of software with which a person can learn currency day trading practices. One needs to be a keen learner with an Internet connection. Websites such as Blackjack Trader.com, Choice Daytraders and CompuTrade are some of the portals through which a person can learn more about currency day trading.

Online Currency Trading provides detailed information on Online Currency Trading, Foreign Currency Trading, Currency Day Trading, Currency Trading Seminars and more. Online Currency Trading is affiliated with Online Currency Trading.

Stock options are an excellent way to reduce risk in trading or to leverage your capital. While advanced stock option strategies are for experienced investors only, the basic option strategies can also be used by novice traders.

Basically an stock option is nothing complicated. There are just a few things to consider. There are two basic option types which are the call option and the put option.

The call (put) option gives you the right to buy (sell) a stock at a fixed price before a certain date, the expiration date. The option expires at this date and does no longer trade. Until this date your strategy should have worked out, otherwise your stock option expires worthless.

Buying the stock option is nothing else then buying the stock itself. Just that you need much less money to buy the option instead of the shares and that the option expires one day. But the rest is almost the same. When the stock moves, the option moves as well.

The difference and the big advantage of options is the leverage involved. To buy the option you need about 10% of the capital which would have been needed to buy the shares directly but with the same profit potential. There lies the risk as well.

One option contract equals 100 shares. If you want to own 1000 shares of Microsoft then you either can buy the 1000 shares at the stock exchange or you buy 10 Microsoft option contracts at the options exchange. You will figure out that there are many options for one stock. The reason is that options have different expiration dates and strike prices. The strike price is the price where you could buy the stock if you want.

In the praxis you don’t want to buy the shares through the options so this remains a theory. Most options are not exercised but sold before expiration with a profit or expire worthless otherwise. So the option is just a bet with limited investment. You can never loose more than your option purchase price with the basic option strategies.

There are various combinations of covered and uncovered call and put options. Different strike prices and expiration dates have different option prices, leverage and risks. To learn the basic option trading strategies you must first explore the possibilities of simple call and put options.

Instead of a short sale you could buy a put option. Instead of going long in shares you buy a number of call contracts. Following the option prices for several days will show you that the option price decreases slowly although the stock price hasn’t changed at all. This is the price you pay for the leverage.

If you are just starting out in currency trading, or looking to sharpen your trading skills, there are plenty of currency trading courses to choose from – and this article will help you find the information you need to make big profits.

One advantage of the Internet, is that most of the information is available free of charge – once you know what to look for, you’re all set.

Lets put together a personalized currency-trading course, to help you make the big profits you desire.

First, a Word of Caution!

There are plenty of vendors on the net selling currency trading courses, that claim 90% accuracy, and promise that you can make hundreds of thousands a year with no effort. A word of advice – don’t buy them!

A trading method is easy to put together, and here we will show you how to put one together for free.

Technical Analysis

Currencies trend well – and the big trends can last for many months, or even years.

Your aim is to lock into, and hold these trends for profits. All the information you need to know about technical analysis, is free on the net – so do your homework

A Simple Method that’s made Millions

The most effective method for trading currencies is one based on a breakout philosophy.

This method has worked for years – and it will continue to work – if you read about it, you’ll understand why – it’s simple to understand, and simple to trade.

Don’t be deceived by its simplicity – many of the worlds top traders, including the legendary turtles, made millions from it – and so have many others.

You need filters on a breakout, and the best two are Bollinger bands, and stochastics – to confirm trades.

NOW THE IMPORTANT BIT

The above trading method will work – and you will understand it, so you should have confidence in it – but the major problem for all traders is discipline.

In your currency-trading course, you need some motivation, and knowledge on the importance of discipline.

Again you don’t need to buy an over priced course – you can simply buy some books from some of the world’s top traders.

Unlike many vendors who have claimed to have found the route to huge profits, (and yet still sell courses) you can learn from traders who have been there, done it – and made millions.

A few good books from the great traders will give you far better value – here are some of the best:

Market Wizards & The New Market Wizards – Jack D Shwager – excellent interviews with some of the best traders of all time.

Also these books:

Larry Williams – any of his books – a great read, and a trading legend

Jake Bernstein – the best part about his books, are his insight into the minds of traders – all his books are worth a read.

Trader Vic – Vic Sperendeo – a trading legend. A great book for novice, or pro covering psychology, money management and strategy

Read the above books and combine them with the trading method given here – and you’re on your way to making big trading profits.

Buying a Ready Made Course

We haven’t recommended an actual course to buy – because you can get all the information you need for free on the net, and from books. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t any good courses out there – just do the following:

1. Ignore courses that promise 90% accuracy, etc. – Look for courses that have realistic sales copy.

2. Many good courses give free trials – so take your time and shop around.

3. Try and find out the vendor’s background – and look to see if they’ve made any money from their own methods.

Go with your gut feeling – and don’t get caught up in the hype of sales copy.

New! A valuable FREE Currency Trader CD containing 9 critical trading reports, tips, strategies and currency trading info. Visit our web site now and grab your CD http://www.tradercurrencies.com

Many years ago stock trading was reserved for the very wealthy or for those individuals that had the right connections. However, with the explosion of the Internet and the ability to easily trade stocks online it has become more common for anyone with money and a desire to trade to buy and sell stocks of almost any company. Perhaps the only stigmatism that still exists is the necessary knowledge needed to understand the terminology associated with how the stock market truly works. The fact is knowledge is power and the more information you possess on how to trade stocks the better your odds become at actually making money in the long run.

Even with the use of the Internet most stock trades are down by a middle party known as a broker or brokerage service. This entity is responsible for taking your stock buying and selling orders and executing them. Some brokerage companies offer stock-picking advice related to the current conditions of the stock market. There are two primary brokerage firms. The first are usually referred to as full service brokers. They offer the most stock picking advice but they also charge a fee or commission for their service. The second type of brokerage firm is the discount broker. They are extremely popular amongst consumers that don’t really need any type of financial advice and are merely looking to purchase and sell their stocks at a discount.

The Internet age truly is marvelous and it clearly shows with the technological advances that allow online trading, interactive systems that take stock orders placed over the phone and the relatively new method of buying and selling stocks through web enabled phones and high end electronic handheld devices.

Many brokerage firms offer software that allows you to effectively track your most recent buy and sell transactions. They also usually offer some form of software that analyzes stocks allowing you to make a more informed decision when it comes to buying or selling your favored stock pick.

Some terms that you should definitely become familiar with include the following: Market Order – This refers to the action of buying or selling a stock at the current market price. Even with the most advanced technology your order won’t exactly happen at the price you want. There is a slight delay that occurs which allows your action of buying or selling the stock to occur as close to your preferred price as possible.

A more complicated order is called the stop order. This order is normally executed by more advanced stock pickers who are looking to purchase a stock at a certain price (identified through analysis) above or below the current quoted market price. This form of purchasing a stock is sometimes used as a hedge in order to limit any possible losses that may occur from your stock action or to protect any profits that you may have already made.

As you can see stock picking can be easily down by anyone with an Internet connection and a little bit of knowledge. However, no matter how easy it has become to buy or sell stocks it’s still a good idea to familiarize with the many stock-trading terms. After all the informed investor often becomes the richer investor.

Timothy Gorman is a successful Webmaster and publisher of Online Stock Trading Secrets. He provides more stock advice, information and ways to make money with stocks that you can research in your pajamas on his website.

If you’ve been looking at different ways of making money from the stock market, than at some point you’ll come across the idea of options. Many people trade options successfully, and it can be a great way to increase your returns once you have some experience in the stock market. But let’s look a little more closely at why people find trading options so profitable.

Firstly, trading options means you access the power of leverage. With a minimal outlay of capital, you can make excellent returns. It’s important to remember, however, that leverage can be a double-edged sword. Although leverage ensures that when you get it right you win a big way, it’s also true that when you get it wrong, you can lose in a big way too. Leverage works against you in that situation.

Another good thing about trading options is that you can make money no matter what the market is doing, once you become familiar with a variety of option strategies. It doesn’t matter whether you feel the market is bullish, bearish or even drifting sideways; there are opportunities to make money with options trading. If you’ve developed your charting skills to the point where you can be reasonably confident about the direction a stock is trending, then there will be an options strategy you can use to cash in on that trend.

Trading options is a great way to generate income even in a flat market. If you’re trading stocks, and the market goes flat, there’s not a lot you can do except hold on and hope things improve. But with the right option strategy, you can make money from a stock that’s going nowhere. Although you can short sell the market with stocks, if you know how, you can also make money with options in a falling market, putting a lot less capital at risk. Options also allow you to make money consistently from the market, rather than having to wait months or even years for a stock to move and generate a profit.

Finally, it’s not necessary for an options trader to be familiar with the whole market, which is a massive undertaking. Instead, the trader can focus on a few favorite stocks, become very familiar with that stock’s movements and patterns, and plan an options strategy to earn money from those patterns.

Experienced traders understand that money and risk management, coupled with strict disciplined use of stop losses are the main keys to survival and long term profitability in the market – in fact I believe these are more important than which stocks you buy.

The main advantage in going one step further and using ‘Conditional Order Trading Strategies is that you can carry on your day to day activity, ‘safe’ in the knowledge that if any stock or stocks fall to your predetermined levels, then your stop loss broker will act as a third party on your behalf -and close the trade if your predetermined stop loss level has been triggered.

Some of the popular resource stocks have fallen savagely in recent weeks. Many experienced traders would have exited before the loss in open profits or capital became too great

Others may have frozen as per my article at Ezinearticles.com on “Difficulty in taking Stop Losses”. If so, they have subscribed to the BHP approach – they have Bought and are now frantically Hoping and Praying. When individual stocks or whole markets turn, they often turn quickly, such that months of gradual growth can be wiped off the board in days – and sometimes hours.

In my articles I teach Jim Berg’s and others’ strategies which all incorporate the use of initial stop losses to protect capital and then trailing stop losses to protect open profits. We have discussed the use of various types of stop losses:

Ever hear of no risk, no reward? Well, buying riskier small cap stocks that could return triple digit gains doesn’t have to be a risky proposition. In the first three articles of this small and micro cap series, the first four rules focused on buying strategies. In this last article, the last and fifth rule will cover selling strategies.

Rule Number Five: Remove emotions from your decisions with disciplined selling strategies.

So now that we’ve covered how to buy in to such stocks, let’s review selling strategies because they are just as important. With selling, always limit your downside with stop losses of 10%-15% in long positions and stop losses of 25% with options. Using this strategy eliminates much of the risk from attempting to capitalize on double digit and triple digit gains. In fact, once you become good at identifying opportunities, having winning pick percentages of 70%-85% would not be unusual. And if you attain these percentages, the 15% of picks you lose several hundred dollars in becomes irrelevant when offset by your huge gains. In reviewing what to do about gains, just abide by one rule.

Don’t get greedy and always lock in gains.

If you don’t get greedy, there is no way you should not make money from a stock that has experienced explosive growth. But this scenario does happen. And only one thing causes this to happen. Greed. People will watch 100% profits turn into 20% losses because of greed.

Just as you did with your buy in price, have a predetermined selling price. As opposed to the buy in price range, I would choose a more specific price. For example, let’s consider stock YYY again and assume you bought the stock for $3 a share. Say you set your goal at $5 a share, a 67% increase, but that it blows right through that price two weeks later.

Now what do you do? Hold on or sell?

With sell strategies of rapidly rising stocks, the picture becomes slightly murkier than with sell strategies of stocks that are falling. When a stock passes through your 15% stop loss order (see part I of this article), it will sell automatically, no questions asked, with all emotions removed from that decision. But what do you do when the stock is shooting skyward with seemingly unlimited upside? It depends on what’s driving the price up. If pure speculation is the only thing driving the price, sell half your position and then put trailing stop losses of 20% on the remaining half. In other words, now that stock YYY has risen to $5 a share from my original buy-in price of $3 a share, I sell half my position, and my stop loss price on the remaining half has now moved up to $4.25 a share. This way I’ve locked in my predetermined 67% gain on half of my position of YYY and the least amount of profit I can make on the remaining half is 42%.

Now if earnings and sales are driving the price up, I may take another strategy. Instead of selling half of my position in YYY, I’ll hold onto my entire position, but again institute a trailing stop loss of 20%, moving my stop loss price-point up to $4.25. This is riskier than the first strategy, but the important thing to note is that I am still locking in gains. In this scenario, I still guarantee myself a 42% gain no matter what happens with the stock from here on out.

The key, and I can’t emphasize this enough, is to always take gains off the table or to lock them in with trailing stops. By doing this, you remove your emotions from your decisions. Formulate a disciplined sell strategy and you’ll make a lot more money than you would by trying to forecast the direction of the small and micro-cap stocks you invest in. Plus you’ll save a lot of money on the psychiatrist you won’t have to hire due to all the unnecessary stress you would have caused yourself by not employing these strategies.

So to summarize, always limit your downside and lock in gains with stop loss orders when investing in small and micro cap stocks and you can invest in stocks with enormous potential without the stress associated with the enormous risk of some of these stocks.

© 2006 Global Market Opportunities, Inc.

About the author:

This article may be freely reprinted on another website as long as it is not modified, changed, or altered and as long as the below author byline is included along with the active hyperlink exactly as is.

J. Shin Kim is the founder of Global Market Opportunities. If you’re tired of measly 6%, 7%, and 10% returns from your stock portfolio, learn more about how to identify small and micro cap stocks that consistently and significantly beat the market indices by clicking the following link, Learn to Invest Money and Achieve Financial Freedom. Also subscribe to our free investment advice newsletter by visiting this link.

A few years ago on a Monday morning, I checked my brokerage account and to my surprise it showed that I had purchased 1,000 shares of AMD for a total cost of $15,000. The payment for this purchase was taken out of my brokerage money market account.

Why surprised you may ask. I had not put an order for this purchase nor did I really intend to buy AMD. I get to this in a little bit.

Had I wanted to sell the stock on that day, I would have received around $14,500, a loss of $500 in just a few hours. In the end it worked out and I sold that particular stock a few months later for a handsome profit.

But on that day I had a paper loss of $500 and if I didn’t have enough money to pay for the purchase, the $500 loss would have been the least of my worries.

So, how did I end up with a stock that I did not necessarily want or order?

Automatic exercise threshold for equity options is the reason.

Today, I just received the following message from two of my brokerage firms that reminded me of that day.

“Beginning October 2006, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) will implement a change to reduce the automatic exercise threshold for equity options. The current threshold of $0.25 will be set at $0.05 for expiring options that are automatically exercised by the OCC. The threshold for index options will remain at $0.01.”

Who cares about a measly $0.20? You can’t even buy a stick of gum with that.

For options traders this could mean a huge potential loss, margin calls and a whole lot of trouble.

Let’s go over a few simple reminders about options trading. Options are contracts that allow a person to buy or sell securities, for example stocks, at a predetermined price called option exercise price and on/or before a predetermined date in the future called option expiration date.

Options represent a reserved right but not an obligation. In other words, the holder of this right, that is to say the buyer, can exercise this right or not. For example if you own a Microsoft January 25 Call Option, it gives you the right to buy Microsoft for $25.00 on or before third Friday in January. It is obvious that you would not exercise your option if Microsoft is at $20.00. In that case, if you really like Microsoft, you just go to open market and buy it for $20.00.

However, if Microsoft soars to $40, then you want to exercise your right (option) and buy the stock at $25 and turn around and sell it at $40 or keep it for further potential increase.

To exercise your options you need enough money to pay for buying the stock. Each option contract represents 100 shares of stocks, so 10 contracts represent 1000 shares of stocks. In our Microsoft example, for you to exercise 10 options contracts at the price of $25.00 requires $25,000 to be in your account. If you don’t have that money, well, you may face margin calls and some other not so pleasant consequence. This is where the new change can cause some serious damage.

Options are a right and not an obligation except that you have to deal with automatic exercise threshold. This is the threshold the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) uses to determine if they should exercise your right on your behalf.In the letter I received from my brokerage firm, they informed me that if the price of the stock is only a nickel ($.05) above the exercise price, that would mean they will automatically buy the stock for me according to this new rule.

So what can options traders do not to deal with unwanted stocks?

First, they can and should watch the stock price and be proactive in the process especially on the option expiration date. Option trading is not by any stretch of imagination a passive approach. They can also call their brokerage firm and find out what other alternatives are available to them.

Seasoned options traders know what they should do and the aim of this article is to bring some facts to the attention of those who are just getting started.

In investing and in life I remember what Robert Grant said, “Men and women everywhere must exercise deliberate selection to live wisely.”

* DISCLAIMER: Vishy Dadsetan, http://www.MyPersonalFinance.com/ or My Favorite Shop, Inc. do not endorse any product or company. This article and website does not provide investment, legal, insurance, or other professional services. If investment or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Although Vishy Dadsetan has made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this site, it assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies.

© Vishy Dadsetan

Are you tired of earning 5%, 8%, even 15% annual returns from your stock portfolio? Want to earn triple digit gains from your stock picks? Not only is it possible but it’s absolutely probable with a few solid strategies.

In Part Two of this article, I reviewed the importance of having strict buying rules to minimize your risk when investing your money in small and micro cap stocks. Here, in Part Three, I’m going to further expand and modify rule number two.

Rule Number Three: Don’t try to buy at “perfect” prices.

In buying small and micro cap stocks, know that you will almost never buy in at the “perfect” price. If you’ve researched a company thoroughly and are confident that its price will move upward over the short or long term, then do not wait for a “perfect” price. Chances are you will almost never buy in at a perfect price. Small and micro cap stocks almost always have greater volatility than large cap stocks and inevitably will have days of rapid price spikes upward and downward. And it’s impossible to be right all the time about when these spikes will happen.

Furthermore, the law of averages should even out for you over time when buying into small and micro cap stocks. Sometimes the price will dip after you buy into a stock and you may experience immediate regret. Other times the stock’s price will rise upward from the moment you buy in and you would have never been able to buy the stock at a lower price. But if you’ve applied rule number one, even scenario in which the stock dips immediately after you buy in shouldn’t cause you to lose faith in your stock pick, because it does take a strong stomach to invest like this. I’ve had scenarios where a stock lost 10% on the same day I had purchased it, only to rebound by 60% in the next month.

So instead of using a specific price point to buy a stock that seriously interests you, use a price range instead. Using hypothetical company YYY as an example, if you absolutely love the future prospects of company YYY, determine a price range that you would be okay with after studying its historical price charts. If you decide that you would be happy buying this stock at a range of $2.90 to $3.10, and the stock is sitting at $3, then go ahead and buy.

I know other financial advisors that will disagree with this advice and declare that if the stock’s technical charts show weakening indices, the wait for a dip in price before deciding to buy. Unless those technical charts are negative in almost every index, I wholeheartedly disagree. Technical indicators are never right 100% of the time, often giving “false” positives and “false” negatives. Furthermore, they are even less accurate with volatile small and micro cap stocks because their inherent volatility makes their technical charts harder to evaluate for optimal buy-in prices. If an “unknown” stock’s story eventually passes through media filters to reach the public masses, its price could spike very rapidly without any technical indications. If you’re solely using technical analysis to decide the optimal buy-in price, you’d be left behind in the dust when this happens. That’s why you should determine a buy-in range, and not an exact price.

Rule Number Four: Invest a smaller portion of your portfolio in riskier small and micro cap stocks.

This is a self-evident rule but I’ll review it anyway, because greed sometimes makes even the most rational of human beings do crazy things. I recommend devoting no more than a maximum of 50% of the total value of your portfolio to small and micro cap stocks. Using a combination of micro and small-cap stock picks and safer large cap stocks can help you easily outperform the S&P 500. But when your small and micro-cap stocks really start to outperform the large cap portion of your portfolio, it is inevitable that the following question will invade your mind:

If my small/micro cap stocks are up 75% and my large cap stocks are only up 15%, why not just shoot for 75% gains in my entire portfolio?

The only reason I recommend against this is because, hopefully, from part I of this article, you gained a sense of how research and time intensive the process is of uncovering great small and micro cap stocks. Frankly it’s not that difficult but it does take LOADS of time. If you build an entire portfolio with stocks like these, unless you have LOADS of time to constantly monitor every one, it’s a much better strategy to just boost your portfolio’s performance every year with great small/micro opportunity stocks while also investing in some less volatile ones that will give you a smoother ride.

© 2006 Global Market Opportunities, Inc.

About the author:

This article may be freely reprinted on another website as long as it is not modified, changed, or altered and as long as the below author byline is included along with the active hyperlink exactly as is.

J. Shin Kim is the founder of Global Market Opportunities. If you’re tired of measly 6%, 7%, and 10% returns from your stock portfolio, learn more about how to identify small and micro cap stocks that consistently and significantly beat the market indices by clicking the following link, Learn to Invest Money and Achieve Financial Freedom. Also subscribe to our free investment advice newsletter by visiting this link.

The best way to learn to trade currencies is to attend a currency trading seminar, as you will gain a far greater insight into trading than by simply reading books.

Many currency trading seminars not only allow you to learn theory, but also to apply what you have learned in practice in real trading situations, so you can test what you have learned.

So what makes a good currency trading seminar and how do you pick one that’s good?

Here are some useful tips:

Free currency trading seminar or pay?

This is really down to you, but there are plenty of free seminars out there, so this is the best place to start.

Generally, these seminars will be wanting you to buy a trading method or system eventually and this provides an ideal introduction for you to the vendors systems and methods.

You can of course pay but check very carefully what you are getting.

Avoid currency trading seminars that promise to reveal secrets and systems with 90% success rates.

These are a waste of money; some seminars are good though and also offer you money back guarantees etc, so you have confidence your getting value for money.

Who’s giving the seminar?

Check out the background to the people doing the currency trading seminar – Their experience, track record and trading methodology and see if it fits with your trading personality. Get a clear background of the format of the seminar and exactly what you will learn as well.

Is it theory only or practice as well?

With the internet now available many seminars will not only teach theory, but then allow you to apply what you have learned in practice in real market situations.

This is a great advantage. Theory is all well and good but it needs to be applied, so a currency trading seminar that involves real time trading is ideal

What length should seminar be?

Again it’s all down to the individual, but a good length is 1 – 2 days which should be long enough to include plenty of theory and some practice thrown in as well.

The way to choose a seminar is to do some homework first, so you will be learning the type of tools that fit your trading personality and you will derive enough information from the currency trading seminar to make it worth while

The advantages of a good currency trading seminar

The good thing about a seminar is that allows you to interact with other traders as well as the seminar leaders.

This help you clarify points of trading you may be unsure of. Its much more “hands on” than reading a book and tends to motivate you and give them more confidence, which is essential when trading.

There are plenty of good free currency seminars available, so take a look around and attend one and gain a greater trading edge in your quest for trading profits.

More Info on FREE currency trading seminars

For more information on free currency trading seminars and one that teaches you the methods of one of the greatest traders of all time, from a company doing business for 25 years visit:

http://www.gann.co.uk

Financing church construction is, for some churches, a very easy task while for others it is a source of never-ending frustration. We could expound on some of the factors that might place your church in one group or the other later, but let’s instead review the three major methods of funding church construction, along with their benefits and drawbacks.

The three major methods of funding (in part or in whole) church construction are conventional lending and bond offerings and capital stewardship campaigns. Of the first two, loans and bonds, each is available in a variety of “flavors”. While it is true that capital campaigns can be used as a funding source, they are more infrequently done as the sole funding source than loans or bonds. Capital stewardship campaigns are typically done in conjunction with a loan or bond. More on that later…

A conventional loan is one where you will go to a direct lender or broker and get a construction loan based on the future value of the facilities you are going to build, using your assets as collateral. In a conventional loan, you are essentially borrowing all the money from one lender. Construction loans usually can be easily converted into mortgages at the end of construction. Many lenders will allow you to do this without a separate closing at the time the loan converts.

A bond is a (generally) public offering for many people to “loan” you money by purchasing bonds. Your church would deal with a bond company who specializes in putting together and promoting the offering and as they sell the bonds, the money becomes available to your church.

For both conventional loans and bond offerings, the amount of money that you can borrow is going to be limited by your current income and cash flow. One of the common financial rules of thumbs is that the church can only afford to borrow (read “will only be able to borrow”) between 3 and 4 times their current earnings. If the total church income for the year is $150,000, your borrowing capacity is probably only $450,000 to a maximum $600,000. Other factors that can affect your borrowing capacity are cash flow and equity. Regardless of bond or loan, the lenders are going to need to be able to see how you will make the payment from your current cash flow.

It is one thing to get a loan, it is quite another to retire it. With very rare exceptions, shame on the church that takes 20 years to retire a loan! Most churches should have a workable plan to retire their debt in 7 years. Interest is money that the church gives to the world to foster the world’s economy. That money should stay in the Kingdom to finance Kingdom work. This brings us to our third form of financing, Capital Stewardship.

A capital stewardship campaign will typically raise between 1.5x and 3x your church’s current total income, over a 3-year campaign period. Over the past several decades, thousands of churches have executed professionally facilitated campaigns. The result is a large statistical universe from which we learn that the majority of these churches raise the 1.5 to 3 times their current income: an analysis that mirrors my own experience in working with churches. There are 3 ways that a capital campaign can help fund a building program. Some churches may desire to avoid debt and to save up for construction. Others may opt to augment their borrowing capacity with additional funds from a stewardship campaign. Lastly, many will choose the middle road of using a capital stewardship campaign to pay off their debt as quickly as possible. This third method is the most prevalent.

A capital stewardship campaign should easily pay off ½ or more of the churches construction debt in three years. My position is that if the church can retire half of their debt in three years, they should certainly be able to retire the remaining half over the next 4 years. I say this, as I believe that the church will grow numerically and financially over the period of paying off the debt, and it would certainly have the option of executing a 2nd capital campaign at the conclusion of the first. Hopefully the church will be considering its next expansion plans before the end of the 7 years, which is a very good reason for becoming debt free as quickly as possible. (Excerpted from the eBook “Before You Build”, by Stephen Anderson

This article is all about trading commodities for big profits and how to make money fast.

We will outline the best method and the best commodities to enable you to have big profit potential, so let’s get started.

Commodity trading covers a variety of areas including currencies, stock indices, energies bonds and a variety of soft commodities.

1. Commodity Trading – Your method

Look at any chart of any commodity, you will see trends and it these trends you want to lock into and trade for profit.

The best way to do this is with a technical trading system and you should be looking to trade the longer term trends as these yield the biggest profits.

There are lots of good trading methods, but the most important point to keep in mind is you need to understand the method and why it will work and have confidence in it.

Many traders simply buy computer systems they don’t understand, or try and follow an advisor or broker. If you do this you will probably lack confidence and when loses come you will deviate from the method.

The biggest attribute a trader can have is discipline.

You need to have it to apply your method. If you don’t, you really don’t have a method at all.

2. Commodity Trading Best markets to trade

There are two key factors in deciding what markets to trade and they are – Trending nature and liquidity.

While all commodities trend, some tend to offer better, more consistent trends than others.
Market sectors that offer good reliable trends include – Currencies, energies and interest rates and these are great for all traders.

They also offer high liquidity, which means trades can be entered and exited quickly, to lock in profits or liquidate losing trades.

Many commodities have low liquidity and erratic trading patterns and these should be avoided.

3. Commodity Trading – Diversification

If you want to make money fast DON’T diversify too much. Stick to one or a few areas only. Diversification dilutes profit potential. If you have confidence in your method don’t diversify across to many sectors.

4. Money Management – Risk

If you want to make money fast then you need to take risks. Commodity trading offers great profit potential, but with reward goes risk – It’s as simple as that.

On small accounts those below ($100,000) you have to risk more because you have small equity and your risk per trade needs to be higher.

If you have an account of $25,000 and you risk 2% (as many experts will tell you) you are risking $500.00. Chances are you will get stopped out a lot of the time and take a string of losses.

Many traders try so much to restrict risk; they end up creating it – As they are simply not taking enough of a risk to win.

When trying to build equity fast be selective in your trades and be prepared to risk up to 10% per trade.

5. Commodity Trading – Success has U in it!

If you want make money fast in commodity trading you need to take responsibility for your trades. Many losing traders blame everyone else the system they have market conditions the wife – and many more.

However winning traders take responsibility they know that they can get systems and knowledge elsewhere but it’s up to them to apply the tools for profits.

To make money fast you need knowledge, a robust trading method you have confidence in, the discipline to apply it rigidly and the appetite to take calculated risks to reach your goals.

Approach commodity trading with the right attitude and you could make money fast and pile up big profits consistently.

For more FREE information

On commodity trading please visit our website and discover a commodity trading system with an outstanding record of success from a company doing business in the markets for over 25 years visit:

http://www.gann.co.uk

What is options trading? Well quite simply, with options trading, the taker (or buyer) is buying a right to do something from the writer (or seller). There are different types of options trading, with stock options and commodity options being the most commonly used. Options trading can be used in any market where the prices of items fluctuate; this will in reality include all markets.

So how exactly does an option work? Well suppose the price of a share is $10 today. You think the price of the share is going to increase to $12 over the next month. A great idea in this situation would be to buy lots of the shares. However, you are not always in a position to buy such shares, and often you will not have enough money to buy too many of them. In this example, if you had $1000 you could only buy 100 shares. This means you would gain $200 if the price went up as you are hoping. This is not a bad return but you may be wishing to make a bit more than $200 on the information you have.

With options trading, you can pay a premium to a writer for an option. Supposing the writer believes the price of the share is going to stay the same over the next month, that is stay at $10. Then if you offer him 10 cents a share, for an option to buy the shares at $10 in a month%u2019s time, he should be willing. After all, he thinks they%u2019ll still be worth $10 so he%u2019ll be making 10 cents a share on shares he doesn%u2019t even own, and all he has to do is sell them to you at their current price in a month%u2019s time, if you want them.

At ten cents a share, your $1000 could buy you an option to buy 10,000 shares. Now if the price goes up to $12, you will immediately have a $2000 gain. This is because you have an option to buy them for $10,000 and can immediately sell them for $12,000. Instead of a 20% gain, you%u2019ve made a 100% gain. This is how options trading can work to your advantage. However, you can lose big with options trading. Suppose the shares dropped to $9.90. This is a small drop but instead of losing $10, if you had bought the shares, you will have lost your entire bet.

Everyday, there is a new EBay or Microsoft or Dell company that files for an IPO and that will make the early buyers of its stock very wealthy in several years. The trick is how to find them and invest in them safely. Sure a General Electric or Microsoft could possibly have a bump up in share price in one year of 30% or 40% with the release of a phenomenal product or service, but the chances of earning 70%, 100%, or even 300% in one year with large cap companies is quite slim. But it’s not so with small and micro cap stocks. In fact every month, there will be another micro or small cap stock that nobody has heard of that will make loads of savvy investors rich.

So the key is how do you play riskier stocks like this? There are five rules you should always follow. In Part I of this series, I’ll review rule number one.

Rule Number One: Do your homework.

When you find a micro or small cap stock that excites you, make sure you do your homework before making the decision to buy in. Always research the float of a small stock. Why is this important? For a number of reasons. Let’s consider this scenario. You research a small stock ABC that you really like. You discover that ABC only has $10MM of outstanding shares, a float of $5MM because insiders hold the other $5MM, and average daily volume for the past three months of $3.7MM. Well you could be in for a very bumpy ride given the fact that daily volume is averaging 75% of the float (total amount of shares owned by the public). This discovery alone may make you reconsider buying the stock.

Furthermore, if stock ABC has recently had its initial public offering (IPO), then you must absolutely find out when its lock-up period expires. Usually, insiders are restricted from selling off their shares for six months after an IPO. Let’s look at our hypothetical stock ABC again, assuming it is now four months after the IPO. Many times, share prices of companies start falling about two months before a lock-up period expires in anticipation of insiders selling off their shares and flooding the market with volume once they legally can do so. If stock ABC is trading relatively flat and there is no added demand right before insiders unload their stock, an overnight doubling of the stock’s float is bound to dilute the stock price, and possibly do it very rapidly. It’s simply supply and demand at work. There is now twice the supply of stock on the market without any increased demand.

However, let’s look at the flip side. Let’s consider a company XYZ that has $20MM of outstanding shares and a float of $17MM. Positive news surrounding company XYZ has steadily driven its stock price higher, right up until the point the lock-up period for insiders expires. Let’s assume, even though prices have been climbing steadily, that the insiders still decide to cash out and sell off $2.5MM of their shares immediately. Because this company’s float is so small and demand is high, release of additional shares may create a buying frenzy that will drive prices up even more rapidly.

So to summarize rule number one, always do your homework and know everything you possibly can about the stock you are buying. As I’ve demonstrated, in one situation a small float may hurt a stock’s price while in another situation, a small float may tremendously help the stock price.

I’ll review the remaining four rules in the remaining articles of this series.

© 2006 Global Market Opportunities

About the author

This article may be freely reprinted on another website as long as it is not modified, changed, or altered and as long as the below author byline is included along with the active hyperlink exactly as is.

J. Shin Kim is the founder of Global Market Opportunities. If you’re tired of measly 6%, 7%, and 10% returns from your stock portfolio, learn more about how to identify small and micro cap stocks that consistently and significantly beat the market indices by clicking the following link, Learn to Invest Money and Achieve Financial Freedom. Also subscribe to our free investment advice newsletter by visiting this link.