Investment Articles

There are five steps that you need to follow in order to be a successful tax lien investor whether you investing in tax liens online or in person. But how you follow out these steps is just a little different for the online tax sale. I like to use the acronym “STEPS” to describe these five steps.

The 5 Steps To Buying Good Liens Online Are:

1. Select where you will invest
2. Track down the tax sale information
3. Evaluate the tax sale properties
4. Prepare to bid at the sale
5. Show up and bid!

As I mentioned earlier these are the same five steps that you would use to get ready for any sale whether it is an online or live sale. However for participating in the online sales, you have to go about these steps a little differently. So let’s take them one by one and go over what it is you need to do for each step.

Step 1: Select Where You Will Invest

If you want to invest in taxes online you are limited to the states that have online sales. Not every state in the US that sells liens has online auctions. Just three years ago, when I first started writing about investing in tax liens online, there were only five states that had tax lien auctions online, today there are seven. They are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Louisiana and Nebraska. Even in those states, not all counties have online tax sales. You can find a list of these counties with links to the tax sale websites, and other details about their sales in my Buying Tax Liens Online course. The online sales are very different in each state, but they do have a few things in common, which brings us to step 2.

Step 2: Track Down The Tax Sale Information

This part is easy for the online sales because most if not all of the information you need is usually provided on the online bidding web site. To find out where to go you can call the county tax collector or treasurer or you can go to one of the online tax lien investing platform listed below that conduct many of the online sales.

Platforms For Online Tax Lien Auctions:

• RealAuction.com
• GrantStreetGroup.com
• SRI-AuctionsOnline.com
• CivicSource.com

Step 3: Evaluate The Tax Sale Properties

These counties make it easy for you to register and bid online. The hardest part of buying tax liens online is doing your due diligence for the tax sale properties. Unless you purchase a tax sale list from a tax list provider, or in some cases from the county, you don’t always get to see the list of properties that are in the sale. Instead the properties are listed individually or in batches by an id number and you have to click on the property number to get the rest of the information on the property. Some counties do provide a lot of information about the properties on the tax sale web site, but you have to click on each property individually to get the information. They might also provide an excel file with all the properties listed that you can download to your computer, but this list has very little information about the property. This is where buying a detailed or enhanced list, with all of the assessment information for the property can me very helpful.

Step 4: Prepare To Bid At The Tax Sale

You need to register for online sales days or in some counties weeks ahead of the actual sale. You register for the sale and bid on the properties online. You are not actually bidding on the property, but on the tax lien certificate that is being auctioned. These sales usually require a deposit, and some of them have a non-refundable registration fee. Payment for the liens that you are successful bidding on is required within a day or two of the close of the tax sale for tax sales that use wire transfers as the method of payment. For sales that use ACH Debit as the method of payment for tax liens, you usually have to pay the day of the close of the tax sale. For these tax sales, you agree before hand to allow the county treasurer to debit your account for the tax liens that you purchase.

Step 5: Show Up And Bid!

Again this is easy for online tax sales because all you have to do is put your bids into your computer and usually, unlike the live sales, you have plenty of time to do it. The online tax sale web sites usually open up at least a couple of weeks before the sale is over, giving you plenty of time to bid as long as you register and get your deposit in on time. You do have to keep track of the time though, since the properties are usually separated into batches and a batch will close every hour – you must get your bid in before the batch closing time.

Also many of the online platforms allow you to download an excel file of the tax sale properties and upload your bids all at once instead of putting them in individually. The important thing is to double check your bids before submitting them. If you bid on a property by mistake and you are the successful bidder, there is no taking it back. You will have to purchase that lien or forfeit any successful bids and your deposit, and you will be barred from future sales. So just as with live tax sales, it’s important not to have any distractions while you’re bidding.

Joanne Musa works with people who want to build an extremely profitable portfolio of tax lien certificates or tax deeds FAST. You can find out more about how you can invest in tax liens online with the Buying Tax Liens Online home study course at http://BuyingTaxLiensOnline.com

Cerium, for example, is the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, very similar to copper in fact. What gives them the name Rare Earth Elements is a result of their dispersal in the earth’s crust. REE are typically widely dispersed and rarely found in concentrated and economically viable mining concentrates. Hence it was this apparent scarcity that gave them the name rare earths.

The first such mineral to be discovered was gadolinite. This is a compound of cerium, yttrium, iron, silicon and other elements. This mineral was first extracted from a mine in the village of Ytterby in Sweden and many of the rare earth elements bear names derived from their location.

Modern mining techniques and the big demand for the Rare Earth Elements in the electronic industry has now made it much more economically viable to mine. The important Rare Earths are:

Lanthanum Oxide

Cerium Oxide

Neodymium Oxide

Praseodymium Oxide

Samarium Oxide

Dysprosium Oxide

Europium Oxide

Terbium Oxide

China was quick to grasp the importance of many of these metals back in the 90’s when it out-priced global competition, causing massive mining / refining closures in developed Western nations.

They understood early that the advancement of technology was not only dependent on typical base elements, but rather on rare metals which can maintain higher durability ratings.

Today, China control over 95% of the world’s and are firmly set on keeping the status quo. Over the last year, they’ve had a slash fest. In 2010 they cut a whopping 72% of their RIM export quotas for the last part of the year. In December, they again whittled 35% off the quota for the first half of this year. Some analysts believe that China will completely shut out the world by 2014 in order to secure their own demand and manufacturing dominance. Obviously this is creating somewhat of an international crisis. Nations with technology backbones are currently taking heed and hedging themselves with alternative suppliers – and they’re limited.

Only recently, The Korea Times reported that their Ministry of Knowledge and Finance is slated to add Indium to its critical substances list because the nations’ heavy hitters like Samsung and LG, are dangerously dependent on the element. Rare metals are one of the most important basic necessities for all of the world’s industries. For example, German industry, is one of the top exporters of cars, medical equipment and many other products, is acutely aware of the increasing prices and limited, diminishing, supply of these high demand rare industrial metals.

One of the major influences affecting the demand and supply of these rare metals is the booming Chinese local and export market. It is well known that China has signed many mining contracts with countries in Asia, South America and Africa in order to maintain and control access to these high demand metals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the President of the Federation of German Industry forecast that the demand for these rare metals and their prices will continue to rise due to the economic growth of the BRIC countries: (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The BRIC’s need a huge amount of these rare industrial metals for the construction of their infrastructure and industry.

China alone is one of the biggest consumers of rare industrial metals. According to assessments by experts, China will need about one quarter of all the rare industrial metals available globally for its future economic growth and will need to import these metals by 2013.

Due to the fact that the exploitation of new deposits can take many years, mining enterprises are unable to increase their supply in the short run. The shortage of supply, bottlenecks and the current upheavals in global financial markets will help boost rare industrial metal prices for the foreseeable future.

For further information go to Rare Earths Investment

Permission to use this article is granted provided the link to Swiss Metal Assets is included.

Michael Moore http://www.swissmetalassets.com/michael-moore

A lot of people don’t seem to comprehend that, despite how much work owning and running a farm can be, farming investments have some of the greatest return out of any industry in the country. Farmland offers, and has offered in the past, stable returns for any investor looking to support the industry. In New Zealand, agriculture contributed two thirds of exported goods between 2006 and 2007. The sector is mainly comprised of pastoral farming for beef cattle, sheep, dairy and other livestock, but land being developed for horticultural use is definitely increasing.

Farm investment offers a lot of benefits for anybody looking for something with a quality return. As such a big part of the economy in the country, there is not a lot of risk through well placed funds. New Zealand also supports free trade in agricultural goods. While other countries have to offer government subsidies to keep their sectors afloat, New Zealand has one of the most deregulated farming industries in the world. Because government subsidies were removed in the mid 1980s, the country’s farming industry had to develop new techniques and technologies in order to increase efficiency in operations.

Sheep are iconic in New Zealand because of the animal’s heavy farming. Close to 1 billion NZD worth of wool is exported yearly as well as over 2 billion NZD of lamb and mutton. Other farmed livestock garners impressive figures as well. Over 1.5 billion NZD in beef and veal is exported yearly. As the demand for New Zealand product grows because of its high quality, so does the number exported.

One of the latest growing aspects of New Zealand livestock farming is deer farming. In the past thirty years, the country has gone from having a small herd of 150,000 animals to over 1.5 million. This growth has pushed the country to be the number one exporter of farmed venison in the world. As deer are a pest and have a negative impact on the country’s biodiversity, their farming began after live deer recovery operations in the mid 1980s removed them from areas they were becoming a nuisance.

With such a booming industry, it makes sense to make your investment an agricultural one. With stable returns and high appreciation due to the limited amount of farmland available worldwide, it is only going to grow bigger and better. Whether you are looking for a change of lifestyle or just an opportunity to silently finance one, farming in New Zealand is a great choice for you.

Find out more about Waibury Investment Farms here.

Having fallen into this trap of investing with very close friends, so close they were considered members of our family, I feel compelled to write about this experience and hope the warning does not fall on deaf ears. Probably like myself people will say ‘Oh it won’t happen to me’ ‘My family/friends love me and know me, they know I wouldn’t cheat them’. Maybe you wouldn’t but were money is concerned rationale goes straight out the window.

So here is my list of the reasons NOT to invest money, credit or any other funds from investments, RRSPs, 401K, etc, that belongs to family or friends.

Were money is involved among members of a family or between friends, the only people that generally benefit from this transaction are lawyers. If you watch any legal TV show, or movie, the crime or the motive is closely connected to an amount of money, that somebody else wants, needs, deserves, earned, won, lost, stole, found, expected.

You have control over someone else’s money, hopefully you have contracts, and the contracts were checked by a lawyer before accepting the money. You will now be the one to blame for standing between them and their money. Fear and suspicion breeds mis-understanding, and nervousness, and anger. Your family or friends will want to believe that the money is safe hands, but there will be little voice that is telling them ‘i haven’t seen my money, or they haven’t mentioned it, for a while, have they stolen it?’

It should have been a clue regarding money and relationships when you read about ‘Money being the number one reason for divorce’. As previously mentioned every transaction and agreement should be fully recorded and under contract, hand-shakes don’t cut it. It is very easy to tape the conversation and have it transcribed into a contract. We usually have known the potential money lender/partner for many years, either family or friends, but bringing money into the equation makes this a business, and as such, peoples perspectives alter dramatically even though they may not be aware of it. If ever anything changes, make sure it is legal and signed by all concerned…..

correct dates, closings, exit date, interest paid.
location,
interest rate, term
exit strategy,
use of property,
type of tenants,
lease/no lease, month to month, 12 month lease contract,
mortgage info,
property insurance, take lots of photos.
tenant insurance,
maintenance responsibilities,
management – yourselves or professionals,
outside maintenance, snow removal, grass cutting,
‘in case of emergency’ what is your plan of action?
‘contingency funds’,
if tenants skip out owing rent,
tenants damage property – recourse.

Christine Gilmet Real Estate Investor FUB Investing Inc. (Can) F.U.B. LLC (US) CGG Investing. LP (US) 404-300-3672 1-877-320-3123 chris@fubinvesting.com http://www.fubinvesting.com

INVESTORS – We have a program that pays up to 70% ROI passive income, (no tenants-no problems), or 6% per month. Pls contact for us further information. We have US financing available for Canadians investing in the US. We have a team of professionals, management (will have renters for occupancy on day of closing), property inspectors, attorneys, contractors to assist with renovations, to help with making your investment easy and simple. We buy, sell and lease properties.

The art of bonsai has been cultivated over 500 years since the Japanese borrowed the idea of growing trees in small pots from the Chinese. Where the Chinese simply saw this as somewhat of a scientific practice of collecting very old trees the Japanese saw something in its beauty and the ability of a craftsman to emulate a tiny version of a tree, scrub or vine. One such variety is Bonsai Ginseng, a fig plant native of Taiwan and now common in many households around the world as a bonsai plant.

In recent times bonsai has spread around the world and has picked up admirers from Tokyo to Melbourne, Osaka to New York. With as many as 800 varieties a green thumb or bonsai enthusiast is unlikely to get bored with choice. In addition they may indeed become a worthy investment with regular sales of bonsai reaching 20 to 30 thousand Australian dollars and one as high as 1.2 million Australian dollars last year. It was a very large but stunning five needle pine which sold in a private auction in Japan.

So when choosing a bonsai be it of the bonsai ginseng variety or any other, a couple of things hold true; craftsmanship and character including the ability to look at the plant in wonder are something that a true bonsai grand master will adjudicate on. A great bonsai will draw the attention of the viewer and would almost trick them into thinking that this small bonsai is a tree worthy of a mountain top. Many would also believe that a bonsai has a height limit, but this is not the case, with the plant which sold in Japan recently for 1.2 million Australian dollars close to 300 years old and very large.

To get a good feeling of the kind of bonsai to invest in one should view many bonsai pictures and become familiar with one variety be it bonsai ginseng or any other. Having a good understanding of the way a certain variety should be pruned and how it should look will go a long way in providing the investor with the best chance of achieving a positive result. When a variety is finally chosen, be sure to check the plant for damage and the roots for rot. A good trick to checking the roots are healthy is by pushing a finger into the soil, if the roots are slimy there may be some issues with the plant. Other than that, good luck.

Please visit my website http://www.bonsaiginseng.net for further interesting articles on bonsai ginseng and bonsai in general.

If you have remembered 2008-2009, that may be the worst financial year we have ever faced since Singapore became independent in 1965. With the credit crisis in US then unveiling its dark closet, the Dow Jones Industrial fell approximately 54% from its high of 14,164 in October 2007 to finally hit bottom on March 9 at 6,440. The truth is – the Final Impact of that tsunami is yet to hit us and it’s on its way now.

Now in 2012, major economies like the US and Europe are slowing. Retail sales in US and Europe are running at their lowest pace in five months, and US and Europe corporations ended 2011 with their slowest profit growth in two years. 2011 was the worst year for new home sales in the US since 1963 and housing prices are set to fall again in 2012. Yet, people are lured back to the stock market, thinking that things will be fine and controlled as portrayed in the main media. When this final wave of tsunami come, even Singapore may have to retest its Straits Times Index low of 1513 in Mar 2009.

Backdrop of US

With the US budget deficit at US$ 1.3 trillion, the official US national debt exceeds US$15 trillion. President Obama just got approval to increase the US debt to US$16.4 trillion in 2012. With all these in mind, the US unofficial national debt could be close to US$100 Trillion if we take into account unfunded liabilities and entitlements in US. If US is running like a corporation today, it is already technically Bankrupt. US as a leading economy and empire, is history.

Backdrop of Europe

When Greece announced to the world that they are in trouble of defaulting their national debt, the euro zone leaders said that they would bail out Greece in 27 October 2011. However, by 20 February 2012, the Euro zone finance ministers agreed to a second bailout for Greece. Greece has technically already defaulted on its debt, with Spain and Italy not far behind. Having said that, Germany is the only real foundation of the European economy. Will Germany get tired of bailing out its poorer and mismanaged European counter-party one day and each country just go back to its own currency? If that happens, Euro will die and so do the weaker European countries like Greece, Spain Italy and Portugal.

Current Scenario

Have you heard of the Great Depression? If not, quoting from Wikipedia, “The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s. It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the 20th century.” Why am I mentioning about the Great Depression? Do you know that there is a great similarity between the years 1934-1937 and 2009-2011?

Let us re-examine these two scenarios

The stock market crash in 2008 is similar to the crash in 1929 crash which eventually led to the great depression. After the crash in 1929, there is a bear market rally that started in 1934 which lasted until 1937 and it took the Dow Jones from a level of 90 to 185, a positive gain of 106%. The Dow Jones then collapsed and did not recover till seven years later, 1944. If you look at this past trend, isn’t the bear market rally from 2009-2011 similar to that of the bear rally back in 1934-1937? I hope I’m wrong but if I’m right, we are heading into some serious financial tsunami that will ultimately bring the current US stock index below March 2009 low (6,440). If this happens, Singapore may also retest its STI low of 1,513 occurred on March 2009.

Gold Investment

With losing faith in currencies and stocks, the only way for gold is to move up. The correction within the year should not be taken as a bear, rather than as a correction. Looking at the situation today, I expect the gold price to hit 3,200 before the gold rally is over in approximately 3-5 years time. It is to be noted that for 11 years, the price of gold has closed each year higher in price than it started the year. I have previously written an article on gold investment back in 2009 and if you will like to have a look, it’s under my Ezine articles

My two cents worth of advice

Ensure that you have enough liquidity to ride out this coming rough financial tsunami which may last several long years from 2012-2018.
Ensure that you have minimum financial liability moving forwards by not borrowing unnecessarily.
Ensure that you have enough insurance coverage to pay off hefty hospital and medical bills when jobs and income are tighten during this period.
Ensure that you stay out of stock market and exit now for any gain that you have made currently. Do not be greedy. However, there are a few categories of stocks that you can hold and make money when the tsunami come..Put on your thinking hat…I shall reveal one in part 6 below.
Ensure that if you hold on to any investment portfolio, they are continuously rebalanced with at least 50% Bonds in Asia.
Ensure that you diversify your investment by buying into gold or gold mining companies as gold price continues to rise.
Ensure that you dispose any US$ or Euro as they will continue to depreciate in value as outline in my discussion above.

A Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Financial Practitioner (FChFP), Registered Financial Consultant (IARFC) and a member of the Insurance and Financial Practitioners Association of Singapore (IFPAS), Philip has demonstrated a high standard of professionalism in the Finance and Insurance related industries throughout his career.

To boost your financial knowledge with Wealth Mastery, go to: http://www.PhilipChua.com/MWMSU.html.

As part of the continual research that we do on the subject of investing, we have noticed a rising trend in financial advisers and the general public becoming more aware of passive and tracker funds.

We have been involved with this style of investing for many years now, and although it is very plain to us that it (in our opinion) is the most robust and academically proven route to investing one’s capital (as opposed to investing in alternatives, such as ‘active’ funds), it has taken some time to become more mainstream.

Now, however, there is much more coverage in the press about this way of investing, and Richard Saunders, Chief Executive of the Investment Managers Association commented recently that passive funds had experienced a 12% rise in the value of the amount of money being invested in them in 2011 as compared to 2010.

Some of the media coverage included ‘This is Money:

“Investors ditch expensive fund managers for trackers. Despite the vast amounts of money still being thrown at active fund managers, the average UK fund has been beaten over five years by ones which blindly follow the FTSE All Share.”

IFP

Then there was the meeting of the North East branch of the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP) Ray & I attended. There were some good speakers, including Tim Hale, author of ‘Smarter Investing’, whom we have met many times before.

Tim is excellent at pointing out the merits of passive funds and presented to us an example of how hard it is for an active fund to beat a passive fund on average, over time and after costs.

Remember, an active fund aims to beat the market by holding the right shares (and will often trade shares on a regular basis to try and achieve its objective).

A passive fund simply buys the market, and trades very little as it is based on a ‘buy & hold’ strategy.

Tim put a slide up that had 353 dots on it, with a 40 year time period. Each dot was an active fund, and he then clicked the button to see how many of these funds either survived this period (you don’t close a successful fund) or gave a return which could be proved to be performing above average.

Out of 353 dots, only 3 remained!

This IFP day was the day after Ray and I had been on our bi annual trip to London to attend the Dimensional Educational Seminar. This is always well attended and has a high quality of guest speakers from around the world.

One of the speakers was Amit Goyal, a Professor of the Swiss Finance Institute at the University of Lausanne. Amit is an unusual guy, as he is soaked in data but manages to make it interesting!

He is passionate about making known the truths he finds, and this particular talk was on the performance of pension funds using active fund managers.

He used thousands of data sets to show his findings, but the easiest thing to remember was simple. He said imagine there are a hundred active fund managers, and they flip a coin with, say, heads being a performance above average.

We would expect 50% of them being right. So let’s take 50 managers doing the same the next year. If we use the 50% figure, we now have 25 who have performed above average.

I think you get the drift here and what would typically happen year three and four years etc.!

Cutting to the chase, he summarised by saying that “active money management fails to fulfil its promise”.

Others would disagree we hasten to point out, but we feel that the evidence is conclusive in favour of passive and index funds to give you the best chance of investment success.

The Financial Tips Bottom Line

Be careful where you decide where to invest your money. It’s vital that you do (or have someone do on your behalf) comprehensive research so that you know you are investing in the right types of funds, assets and tax structures.

ACTION POINT

How often do you review your investments?

Have some of these been sold to you a while ago and not reviewed since?

Are your funds active funds? If so, how are they performing?

Graeme Urwin is a fee based Financial Planner with Rutherford Wilkinson ltd, and helps UK Resident Doctors and Dentists plan to achieve their financial objectives. Just visit http://www.medicaldentalfs.com where you can request your free retirement planning guide.

Rutherford Wilkinson ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

In recent years, many investors have started to realize that the investments that were previously viewed as safe may not be as safe as they thought. Traditional forms of investment such as the stock and bond markets don’t provide the same kind of safety that many people think. Because of this, many investors are starting to look for alternative investment options that can provide superior returns without taking on much more risk. For these types of investors, there are plenty of other alternative investment options to consider.

Precious Metals

One way that individuals can stay ahead of inflation is to put their money into precious metals. For those who want to invest in precious metals, there are plenty of options to consider. Investors can put money directly into precious metals like gold, silver or palladium. They also have the option of investing in precious metal certificates. These certificates provide investors with a certificate that shows they own a certain amount of precious metals in a secured storage facility. Investors can also invest in funds that focus on precious metals as their primary underlying asset. Precious metals mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are two similar options that allow investors to speculate on the values of these assets. Investors could also put money into mining company stocks, whose profits are based on the value of the metals that they mine.

Currencies

Another form of alternative investment that some choose to participate in is currency investing. Trading currencies is a discipline that takes advantage of the changes in the exchange rate between multiple currencies. This type of investment is done with the help of Forex brokers who make it possible for their customers to trade currencies. This is a high-risk type of investment, but it can be very lucrative if done correctly.

Assets

Some investors are turning to other physical assets for their investment needs. By purchasing physical assets, the investors know that they’ll always have something of value. With securities like stocks or bonds, this isn’t always the case. Some examples of assets that investors put their money into are antiques, baseball cards, stamps, race horses and real estate. All of these things have the potential to increase in value over time.

Regardless of what an investor puts his money into, it is important to keep a diversified portfolio. This helps reduce the risk of some of the alternative investments which are chosen.

Learn more Here

Sports fans always want the score. The score tells fans which team is the winner and which team is the loser. The score settles the contest and provides a clear sense of finality. For ES emini futures day traders, the closing bell determines if you were the winner or loser for that particular day and just like the score in a sports contest, the closing bell gives the day trader finality. In any sporting event there will be examination and evaluation after a contest has been determined and added to the record. Botched plays and successful strategies will be scrutinized and analyzed through the processes of examination and evaluation to improve results next time. So it should be for the futures day trader or any trader employing short-term trading tactics to take profits from the markets. Through examination and evaluation of daily trading results we can uncover deficiencies in our trading skills, money management model and general approach to trading the markets which in turn will lead to improvement if examination and evaluation are done correctly.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall…

The fact that 90 percent of all people attempting to day trade the markets will fail has been discussed ad nauseam, you know why? It’s true! Most will fail for one glaring reason and it has nothing to do with their trading platform, broker or surprisingly enough, the financial markets. No, none of these are the reasons for failure. The reason is as simple as looking in the mirror. If you are failing as a ES emini futures trader, the reflection in the mirror is the source of your failures. This does not mean however, that a successful trader is not somewhere to be found in the mirror. On the contrary, a successful trader can emerge from within if they are honest and accept things as they truly are and use the processes of self-examination and self-evaluation honestly.

Are You Hearing Voices?

All struggling emini day traders hear voices in their head. With that statement I don’t mean its time to call the guys in white uniforms to cart off all struggling ES futures traders and place them in straight jackets to begin a regiment of shock therapy and Thorazine injections. The voices in their head we are speaking of are the emotional ups and downs of inexperienced traders which manifest in the forms of fear, greed, self-doubt, indecision and the worry of impending trading account destruction. All inexperienced traders hear their inner voice warning them of looming disaster and the voice becomes louder and more frequent with each losing trade. Through examination and evaluation the voices will eventually silenced as new emini traders learn to become more disciplined, grow in confidence and commit to learning how to improve their trading.

You Will Fail and Success Will Be The Result

How can failure equate to success? Every trader has failures. Even the best traders on the planet have failures when trading ES futures with the difference between a successful trader and an unsuccessful trader being how they manage their failures and overcome them. Bad and broken trades are part of trading – it is simply a part of the equation and unavoidable. Professional traders know they will have losing trades but have the tools in place to minimize the effects of losing trades. They adhere to the rules of their trading system and obey their stops every time one is reached without exception. Stubbornness and an unyielding will in an effort to always be right have no place in trading for short- term profits. Take the loss and get out of the market when your system tells you its time or the loss can and will turn into a larger loss that will be difficult to overcome. Make sure all losses are small. Strive to end the day with a profit everyday, no matter how small. If you are trading multiple contracts, scale out on winning trades and lock in profits by closing one position and let the remaining contract(s) add to your profit. Let winning trades run.

Set goals which are achievable in the beginning and within reason to match your skill level and confidence. Shoot for 1 point a day and stop trading for the day once you gain it and mark it down as a success. Bask in the glow of your success that day, enjoy the feeling of following your trading plan and let your confidence grow as you learn to capture one point each day. Of course there will be days the market will not present opportunity and losing days will happen. On these days you will follow the rules of your trading plan as you do on winning days and adhere to your stop and close the trade quickly once your stop is reached, no exceptions. If the market offers another opportunity, try again but never force a trade to make up for a prior loss. This will only lead to larger losses and is the sign of an inexperienced and undisciplined trader.

Examine and Evaluate

Examine your trading results after the closing bell each day. Determine why you made each trade and note the time of day. Was the market trending? Was the trade a bounce play off strong support? A reversal? Did you short the market in over-bought conditions in anticipation of a pullback? Was the trade taken during the morning, mid-day or afternoon session? How many contracts were traded? Did you obey your stop-loss? Examine all aspects of the trade and make notes. Over time you can evaluate the data and determine where mistakes are being made and take corrective action as patterns emerge. As your skill and confidence grows through the process of examination and evaluation, you will find the score each day more times than not, in finality, to be in your favor.

Join us for our weekly Emini Trading Show – FREE! We discuss the index futures market while helping new traders understand the dynamics of trading the ES Emini Futures. We use traditional day trading methods and strategies to capture short term gains from the market, discussing in detail each method. Sign Up to catch the next show at http://trader.eminiprofits.info/

THE INESCAPABLE 2012 INVESTMENT CHALLENGE
And Its Deserved Canadian Bias

Debt of unprecedented magnitude – the servicing of which is devouring unsustainable proportions of disposable income, personal wealth and overall economic output.

Debt so debilitating that three members of the 17-country Eurozone – Greece, Ireland and Portugal have already needed to be bailed out (Greece twice), while within the 27-strong European Union note worthies like Spain, Italy, France and even the United Kingdom have needed to be put on life support under painful austerity programs.

Neither should it be much different in a debt and deficit-riddled U.S.A. where “it’s the economy, stupid” is once again the battle cry in a bruising presidential election campaign, that is already well up and running.

If there is some accompanying good in all of this it is that the developed world has at last awoken to a serious debt habit, the longer it lasts the harder it is going to be to shake.

A legacy of debt like no other is also why 2012 increasingly emerges as a pivotal year in which there is already no choice but to be “inescapably” invested.

Today’s artificially-low central bank-managed interest rates and a quiescent (for now) but ever-present risk of returning inflation are two imperative reasons for switching the focus to equities rather than bonds.

Inevitably, the markets as opposed to the central bankers will begin calling the shots as to where interest rates should truly settle. It’s already happening in Portugal, Spain, Italy and other EU countries and could well come sooner than currently thought in the U.S.

Remember, as well, that history shows few if any nations ever paying off their debts instead succumbing time and again to the temptation of inflating them away. It would be amazing if it were any different this time round as debt looms longer and more ominously than ever. Far better, then, to own rather than to loan and to look to equities and appropriate equity products to make good income shortfalls and to concomitantly build inflation protection into portfolios.

Another powerful – perhaps overwhelming – plus in favour of equities lies in the incredible power of market-driven capitalism which rewards the successful, and punishes the headless and the unsuccessful. This same power is an integral part of the globalization that is arriving in all its controversial, disruptive and historic glory, to quote Sam Palmisano, the esteemed former chief executive of IBM. Nowhere are these qualities more apparent than in the emergence of the Asian and BRIC (of Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies as the new drivers of a still-vibrant and dynamically-changing world economy.

Whether for their superior (to fixed-income) yields, inflation protection and the stakes they provide in TODAY’S THRILLING global economy, equities and equity products must now be the way for all investors to go. It’s also the way they should want to go for in these ever-growing equity markets could also lie extraordinary investment opportunity to more than provide for the independent financial futures our fiscally-strapped governments can no longer be counted on to help provide us with to anything like the extent we or they once hoped. Instead, we must be on board as investors.

In a dynamically changing world arena there can be few countries better-positioned or more attractive than today’s “energized”, fiscally-sound and highly invest-able Canada. Long gone is the spoilt, deficit-ridden, debt-bloated Canada of the 1990’s: in its place a leading edge economy that can rank and compete with the world’s best, and provide the developing Asian market like few others.

While Canada’s recovery future is not locked down in what is also an increasingly interconnected world, the economic agenda of the majority Conservative government is achievable, credible and investment-friendly – not only in the natural resources for which we have long been famous, but now also a whole lot more besides!

I cannot over-emphasize Canada’s emerging superpower status across the entire energy spectrum to – hydro carbons and other. In addition, modern-day Canada offers the widest array of world class non-resource leaders in banking and financial services, our consumer and manufacturing sectors, communications, electronics, et al.

Furthermore, I’m convinced that the remarkable trend changes in Canada favour vis-à-vis the next-door U.S. over the opening decade of the 21st century are here to stay. America may be cheaper shorter-term, and right now could be the cheapest and best-performing market in the world in stock market terms, as it was in 2011. But when you get your hands on trend changes like those currently gaining momentum, that modern-day Canadian “train” is still just leaving the station.

As I look forward to keeping MGIS clients and subscribers posted, I confidently continue recommending today’s Canada for growth and safe passage in an enthralling world in which one must own rather than loan in which Canada stands out for its exceptional investment perhaps as never before!

Michael Graham is a 50 year veteran of the Canadian investment industry and President of MGIS (http://www.michaelgrahamis.com/) through which he offers his experienced and distinctive presentations and subscription services. A long standing contributing editor to The MoneyLetter, a columnist for Advocis’ Forum magazine and a frequent radio and television quest, he can be reached at: Michael@michaelgrahamis.com