A Life Changing Opportunity

I don't think anyone would consider themselves a wild investor...except The Wild Investor! With the market swings, government bailouts, and political stumping we need some good news. I asked The Wild Investor to come and give us some good news and how we can benefit from all the news. Enjoy!

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When you think about the events that have taken place over the last year it almost feels like we are reading a book that is still being written. By the time we find a way to pull ourselves out (and we will) of this downward spiral of a market, the shelves will be littered with How I Survived the Credit Crisis Era books and paraphernalia.

You see the media has a way of exacerbating situations. While many of these outlets try to be as neutral as possible, often times they create more problems themselves than they report. We are constantly flooded with the notion that we are currently experiencing one of the worst economies since the Great Depression, soon nobody will have jobs, and all businesses will go bankrupt; however, all this couldn’t be further way from the truth. I would go as far as to say we are possibly experiencing one of the best opportunities anybody could ask for.

If you look back through history, then you will notice that many of the successful people in the world somehow found a way to be extremely profitable when nobody else could. If you delve down even further, you will notice these methods to get insanely rich were actually pretty easy and duplicatable. But if it was so easy, then how come more people didn’t profit? The answer is simple. Nobody wanted to take the risk.

Regardless of what experience you have had with the stock market, everybody can agree that there is always some sort of calculated risk. The misconception is that risk increases as the market goes down. The truth is that the risk is greater, while the market is rising.

How I have come to this conclusion is pretty simple. Lets say we are experiencing a bull run and stocks are on the rise. What happens if we decided to buy shares only to see the market suddenly turn for the worse? The higher a stock goes up; the more it can fall. Many people got trapped in this type of market just last year. We experienced huge gains, and when people finally got the courage to invest some money the market headed south.

Now lets say we are in a bear market and prices are obviously headed downwards. (like the market we are currently in). What happens if we buy some shares? There are two things that can take place. The first being the stock heads a little lower before eventually moving back up or we got lucky and correctly picked a bottom.

So you see there is less risk during a bear market. We know what the problems are, and there are really no surprises. As long as we do our due diligence and invest in solid opportunities, stocks or whatever you investment is more likely to move up, then had you bought on the rise.

The strong minded, who are able to set aside any third party news and take on that risk, will eventually be rewarded. Although the economy could still head lower, we are in a messed up time: expectations are low, but opportunities are higher.
While everybody is fleeing, the successful ones are heading towards the problem. We may be experiencing on of the worst economies, but we are also experiencing a life changing opportunity. Don’t take it for granted.

The Wild Investor - http://thewildinvestor.com
Speak Stocks - http://speakstocks.com

Finding Your OWN Stocks

Today I'm pleased to introduce The Wild Investor from...The Wild Investor.com! I've had the chance over the past few weeks to spend some time at his site, seeing his methods, and really gleaning a lot of good info. His post today covers something we can ALL benefit from. Enjoy.

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A couple years back, I got my first break into the world of trading stocks by listening to Jim Cramer of Mad Money. My first couple of trades came through his recommendations; however, that seemed to die out pretty quickly. He covers so many stocks at one time, that it seems he is proven wrong more often than right. If I was ever going to make some real money in the markets, I would have to branch out on my own.

Tons of people know how to buy, sell, see if a stock is worth acting on, and so on, but very few actually know how to find stocks.

Let me clarify. Perhaps some article talked about the 10 stocks you have to buy in 2008. Many can probably pick and choose the best ones out of those 10, but without that article they probably could have never come up with a list of 10 stocks.

So how do you go about finding stocks to invest in? You can't always rely on some third party.

Many people enjoy the ease of scans, but the tools and resources may not be available to everybody or they may just not understand enough to perform one.

Below are some steps that can help you create your own manual scan and perhaps help you run an automatic scan sometime in the future.

1. Reflect

Create a list of the past stocks you have either traded, watched, followed, or whatever. Try to get at least 50 stocks (100 if you are an overachiever). One by one, see which ones were successful, which failed, why they moved the way they did, and how you gained interest in that stock.

2. Breakdown

Try to group the stocks in the different ways your broke them down. For example, perhaps you have a few stocks that were successful on a cross of the 200 day moving average. Maybe some were oversold. Whatever it may be, just try and group some stocks together.

3. Classify Each Group

Out of the different categories you have created, come up with some sort of criteria that fits each stock in the group. For instance, say I have Stock A and Stock B in one group. Go back before those stocks experienced their gain and create some sort of pattern that could have been used to predict those gains.

4. Trial and Error

After you have gone through all your different groups, it is time to test. The more test you run, the better chance you have of creating a profitable search. Run your test on all the different stocks on your list, and see what results you get. Choose other random stocks that might match your criteria. Tweak it if you need to because the goal is to try and perfect your criteria, so that it should work more often than not.

5. Practice Run

Most likely you want to see if your system works before you throw real money at it, so find some stocks that fit your criteria. Use your finance site of choice and find top movers, similar stocks to the ones that were already successful, or look in the sector you are comfortable in and just let your system run. Follow the stocks until your system said it should have worked and look at the results.

Did it work? Keep trying and editing until you are comfortable throwing real money at it. It may seem tedious and cumbersome, but hopefully you will be able to move out of the realm of Jim Cramer and into your own world.

For those that still may be confused, here is a simplified version of my criteria:

  • Consistency to perform within 6 months or less

  • Ability to diversify and maintain some form of global exposure

  • Companies that have been oversold or beaten down

  • Buy and sell signals according to technical analysis

  • Best of breeds that continually produce and post solid numbers

  • Capability to shine in any type of market condition (recession proof)

In the end, the goal is to create a simplified way to complete a somewhat complicated task. If you can ease your tasks and rest your mind, then it only betters your trading, which increases your profits.

The Wild Investor