Recommended Readings For Financial Success

Over the years and from when I first started my journey in the financial world, I have read what seems to be hundreds of finance and trading books. Below is my list of favorites and ones I recommend others to read as well.

Education is Key, with the help of books, experience, patients and dedication anyone can be a successful well rounded investor or trader.

REIT - Real Estate Investment Trust's

In my search and readings about finance and financial freedom over the years, there is almost always a section where it says you should own property for passive rental income as a part of your portfolio.

This means having enough money to purchase investment property, maintenance, insurance, taxes and always trying to keep that house/property leased. This maybe a headache people just don't want to deal with, although the headache could very well be rewarding in the long run.

Oil is Dropping - The Energy ETF That Might Be a Great Buy

The price of OIL Has dropped significantly in the past year and has yet to see a bottom, currently hovering around $48/barrel. Some think it will go as low as $30/barrel but time will tell. With OPEC not letting up on production its only a mater of time when they decide to reduce production and prices begin to rise.

Building Positions in ETF's 2015

Starting in 2015 I have started to build positions in ETF's that I am most interested in that offer me the investments and returns that I am seeking. 

Each ETF listed is eligible for commission free at TD Ameritrade. To learn more about commission free ETF investing check this link HERE.

Buy utilizing the commission free trades, I am able to dollar cost average on each position as I am able to put money into each selected ETF. 

Market down tripple digit did you profit or get slaughtered?

Whats up Traders!

  What a day in the markets, dow down 353 points and spx breaking that 1600 level, was a huge sell off day. If you sold into any bounce and or took puts on GOOG, AAPL, NFLX ect. you were banking big. Biggest sell off in 2013, some say its a correction, some say its just a simple pull back. Just trade it!
GOOG - Gapped lower but tested that 900 level again and sold off from there. If you took puts later in the day on the 892 breakdown you banked big as goog closed at 884.

We could see a bounce in GOOG soon, will wait for confirmation. Each pull back on GOOG was bought and worked its way higher. 878.90 Good short term support, could touch it soon and bounce. Will look for puts when I see confirmation of more downside, or Calls when we see it rally back to 900. Intraday trades will be tough, but watch for opening momo after first 15min.

Find Out If Your Speculative Stock Is Being Promoted

Find Out If Your Speculative Stock Is Being Promoted

Stock Promotion

If you have followed speculative stocks for a while you should know that their is a degree of promotion or manipulation when it comes to small companies. What these companies do is higher a stock promoter to promote their stock by sending out mass e-mails, P/R, “Research Reports” ect.. Most of the time those stock promoters are compensated in freely traded shares or actual cash money. With promotion comes spikes in stock price followed by a dump, knowingly called a pump and dump.

In this article I will show you one place were you can type in your small cap, micro cap, speculative stock or if you just have suspicion in a company’s ticker symbol. This tool will bring back a listing of promoters if your stock is or has been promoted. This list will also have have dates when issued and if that promoter was compensated or not. Let me show you how.

Finding The Promoters

1.)Go to www.stockpromoters.com , I have found it best if you register to use this site, so go ahead and register an account. It takes not time at all, I also suggest using a e-mail account that you don’t care about because they will send you daily news letters with the latest promotions, if that is something you want to get then by all means use your regular e-mail account.

2.) Once registered and you verified your account, login and navigate to the left hand side of the page and look for the “Search StockPromoters.com” text box.

3.) Enter the ticker symbol that you want to check out and click search. For this example I will use NXTH as my ticker because I know for a fact it has been promoted in the past.

4.) Explanation

So here is the list of Promotions, it includes the promoter name and the date the promotion starts. What is funny is sometimes those promoters are on StockTwits and do a little promotion there as well. so as you read those lists keep an eye out for familiar names. One example form the list above is “OTC Picks” they are on StockTwits and pump there picks on there as well, just something to keep in mind when reading those tweets on StockTwits.

5.) If you are following along with me click the first link or the company name, and a list will appear with the promotions. I have pictured just one of the many promotions, highlighted are the most important aspects to pay attention to.

6.) Note

The key information is the promoter, the date, and how the promoter was compensated. If the promoter was compensated in cash then they will just do what they were paid for and push out some e-mails or a research report. On the other hand if they were given freely traded shares that promoters is going to pump really hard so they can sell into the pump and dump their shares on the suckers that bought into it.

Profiting From The Promotions

So if you find your stock is being promoted how could you profit from the promotion? Well I do not recommend buying into the pump fore you do not know when it dumps, although some have gotten lucky buying in. So, we wait for the signs of selling when the promotion is over and short the stock! I mean we know it will not hold those $1 plus spikes, we do know it will sell off and crash, which is the only predictable thing we have. When you spot a promotion and see it spiking hold back that trigger finger and gut felling to buy into it as this is your first instinct. Do not think you are missing out on easy gains, the easy gains come from the fall of the stock, have patients. The hardest part of profiting from the sell off is finding shares to reserve so you can short it. If you can get your hands on some shares then you are set when the sell begins.

You can also see theShort Interest in a stock to see just how much of the float is betting against the stock in the first place. So when the dump is on you will know, it usually will be the first sell/red candle day as well as the volume starting to fade as buyers leave. All signs setting up for the sell off.

This is what happens!

The promotion, nothing but green days, then out of no where the huge dump!!! This chart is classic and is ridiculously funny, which makes for a prime example.

Combine This with….

Combine this tool added with my ways of finding those spec stocks and you have built your self a speculative stock strategy with an edge!

Check out these 2 articles:

Finding high growth speculative stocks

Finding the latest HOTT stock picks!

Hope you enjoyed, please share your thoughts below

How To Find Speculative High Growth Stocks

How To Find Speculative High Growth Stocks

Finding High Growth Stocks

Well we learned how to find those hot stock picks already, but how do we find those speculative high growth stocks or what might be called “Diamonds in the Ruff” just waiting to be discovered and traded? I will once again reference a great tool yahoo finance offers, that allows us to screen for those types of stocks and hopefully profit from them. We are talking about stocks that have a high 5yr growth percentage of 50% – over 500% in speculative growth, no we are not talking about those lame sub-penny stocks that are almost impossible to forecast. We are talking about actual companies that have a lot of potential and are on the move. One warning though, some of theses companies may pay for promotion and might be involved in manipulation in the goal to help promote and raise money ( I will do a how-to later on how to find out if those companies are being promoted or not), but with good research you can determine what is good or not.

Enough Show Me How!

1.) Go to the Yahoo Finance page.

2.) Hover your mouse pointer over the investing tab, pictured below.

3.) The select the “Stocks” category and click it.

4.) On the left hand side you will notice a text box that says “Inside Yahoo” Click the “Stock Screener” link.

5.) In the section called “Launch screener” select the “Launch HTML” link I highlighted it in the picture. The application version is a little complex and I like to keep things simple and stick the the HTML version.

6.) You are now brought to the screener section. You could just bookmark this link as it takes you right there, but it is nice to see how you actually can get there from the home page.

- Above you see where I highlighted the important factors when doing a basic screen, you can however use other parameters to fine tune a search but for this tutorial I will show you what I use.

- For a simple search in the “share price” section I selected the 1$ as a minimum and left max as any, just to get a nice long list.

- Under the “Analyst Estimates” section, look for the 5yr EPS Growth which I also highlighted.

- Click the drop down menu and select “Up more than 50%”

- Click the button that says “Find Stocks”

You are then brought to a page that looks like this -

- As you can see you are given a great big list of a lot of speculative stocks

- Notice under the 5yr Growth column the high percentages *Note, to arrange by highest to lowest just click the 5 yr Growth link at the top of the column and it will arrange them however you would like.

The List

Here is a list of stocks where you can start your research and analyze them to determine if they can become potential plays in the market. I have found a lot of good stocks this way that have made me a nice chunk of money.

Please feel free to comment on using this method, maybe you can teach me something I don’t know. :)

Van K. Tharp’s “Super Trader” Book Review

Van K. Tharp’s “Super Trader” Make Consistent Profits in Good And Bad Markets

Wow, this book was a great read it truly was. It was definitely different from all the rest of the trading/investing books I have read. When I first came across the book, the words “super trader” caught my eye, well cause you know I want to be a super trader.. I picked it up and skimmed threw it and found it to be different from a lot of the trading books. This one focused on 3 topics, topics that I think are the most important and overlooked in the trading world. The topics were, the psychology or mindset of a trader, the trading plan one needs to be successful and position sizing. All of which he covered in great detail. This book was a very very easy read without to much jargon, it really kept you wanting to read more.

The Mindset

Tharp is not only a very good investor but he also has a great wealth of knowledge in the art of NLP(Nero linguistic programming), which goes hand and hand when dealing with the thought process or the psychology of trading. He knows exactly what one goes threw when trading, exactly the thought process, the emotions, stress ect. The part dedicated to psychology was the longest and most in-depth, he really wanted you to figure you who you really are threw various questions he would ask, or exercises he would ask you to do. Now, it did take some getting use to when reading, on the fact most people would pick this book up and immediately expect to read about trading/investing or how-to’s ect. Not this book, this was strictly a book on honing in on the true details and foundation one must have in order to be successful in the markets. This section really was a life lesson on the thought process of an individual and he does tie it into trading psychology which makes it very unique and interesting.

Building a Trading Plan

This has got to be the most over looked and undervalued thing regarding trading. A lot of other traders I have met never really sat down and drawn out a trading plan a guide to how this individual was going to trade and be successful at it. Most just want to get in and make as much money as possible, come to find out they become a statistic in the 90% of traders who lose money. Tharp hammers this into your brain that you must have one in order to be successful. He will also walk you threw and help you build one by asking a series of questions and jogging your mind about who and what kind of trader you are. This in turn will jump start your ability to write out a trading plan and actually following it no matter what!

The importance of position sizing

Out of all the topics I think this one really hit home with me, I truly got the most out of this section. I actually never realized the importance of position sizing and how it can effect your profits. I mean I know about it and i know what position sizing is, but not the way Tharp put it. He really broke it down and it explained it in great detail, aswell as giving you a formula to come up with for deciding your position in the market. ie: number of shares you should buy determined by the amount of risk you are allocating to the trade ect.. Now that does sound easy and I’m sure everyone does it but not like this. I guarantee he will open your eyes when he explains his method and the reasons behind it, it makes complete since.

Overall

If you are looking for a how to book or a book to teach you how to trade or start investing, this book is not it and I would direct you to this one. On the other hand if you have found yourself struggling in the market or need some guidance or just want to gain insight on a different perspective of trading then this book is a must read for all skill types. I strongly encourage everyone to read this book!

You can grab this book here: Super Trader, Expanded Edition: Make Consistent Profits in Good and Bad Markets

ThinkOrSwim (TOS) Broker Review

ThinkOrSwim (TOS) Broker Review

First Impression

When I was on the hunt for an online discount broker I had really no Idea what to look for. I came across what had seemed like hundreds all with different rates and claims, which was all just a load to get you to dump your money in their account and trade with them. I wanted the best but not pay all the platform fees and other hidden fees and outrageous commissions. I then kept hearing about this broker called “ThinkOrSwim“, to me I was like “wtf is thinkorswim, does not even sound like a broker”. So I checked them out and for about an hour on their website reading about them and what they have to offer I was pretty blown away. One problem, they wanted $3500 minimum to start your account with. For me at the time I did not have that kind of cash sitting around just to put in a trading account. Although I did register on the site and downloaded their trading platform to get a feel for it while paper trading. More on the platform later… I was itching to sign up with ThinkOrSwim for what they offered and so on but I just did not have that exact amount to start with so I decided to e-mail ThinkOrSwim to kindly ask them to make an exception for me :) . In the e-mail I simply told them how much I have heard about them and the reviews they were getting and blah blah blah. I then asked if the minimum to open an account was strict and no exceptions, that I only had $2500 to start with and would I be able to trade and be excepted if you will. To my surprise I got a prompt e-mail back less than 24hrs later stating that they would love to make an exception and allow me to trade with that amount. AWESOME, where do I sign?… The point to all this is how fantastic the customer service is over at ThinkOrSwim I could not be happier.

Commissions

ThinkOrSwim has a pretty decent commission base. They advertise $9.99 a trade or a per share commission with a minimum of $5. Which I will admit the commissions have eaten me alive lately but that’s no one’s fault but my own. **Side note, I have heard a rumors that if you talk to ThinkOrSwim and tell them that their commissions are high and that you are thinking about going somewhere else that they will cut you a deal. From what I have herd they will give you like $4 a trade unlimited shares. Which for a day trader this could be a very nice deal! I have not tried this out, I have heard of several people doing this, the only down fall is that it does not last forever, I think they give you a time period at which you can get that commission for like a few months or even a year. The point is ThinkOrSwim will work with you :) .

Trading Platform

ThinkOrSwim Platform

I think their trading platform is phenomenal. They update it all the time, constantly giving you more and more features to use. Please go and download it and try it out for yourself here.

They do offer a web style trading where you can trade threw an internet browser, which it looks and feels just like the platform.

The charting on the platform is just incredible, any feature or indicator is offered and they are always coming up with new things to add.

The only down fall to the whole platform is there Level2 quote system, which in my opinion is garbage compared to a lot of other brokers level2 systems. On the other hand the rest of the platform makes up for it. Hopefully they will upgrade that system soon.

Short List

ThinkOrSwim is widely known for their great list of Easy to borrow stocks and having plenty of shares to go around. Although some have noticed ever since TD ameritrade took over that list has gone down some and is not as good, which I think is not true. In order to get those shares to short, you must open up a live chat with one of TOS representatives and ask if there are shares, if there are you can tell them how many you want and they can place to order for you or you can just reserve them until you would like to use them. Now on the platform when you enter a ticker symbol in, on the top right hand corner will be a spot where it will say “ETB” or “HTB” which will say whether shares are available to borrow. **Side note, even if it does say “HTB” i still make an attempt and ask anyways which i have been lucky a few times and gotten shares to short.

Overall

I could spend hours detailing every feature that ThinkOrSwim offers but I won’t since you can download it and try it out for yourself :) .

This is the broker I use and highly recommend for any level trader. Also if when you do register and fund your account they will send you a ThinkOrSwim monkey in the mail, no not a real one but a cool stuffed animal.

ThinkOrSwim Monkey

How To Find HOT Stock Picks!

Finding those stock picks can be a tough task.

I am very familiar with the frustrated feeling that you can get when starting your trading/investing career, that feeling of being clueless when it comes to finding those stocks that are skyrocketing and on the move, and not just sticking with the boring ones we all know, ie:Google, yahoo, Walmart ect…

So how do you find those stocks that have had huge gains, breaking out or coming across those good momentum plays or finding stocks that have been on the run for several days? I will show you one small simple tool that you can check on a regular basis that is free and is pretty darn handy! It is right here at yahoo’s finance page, Located in a small section called “Market Movers”.

Go to Yahoo’s Finance page.

Scroll down and on the left hand side of the screen you should see this-

Click the Most Price % Change link, which i highlighted in the picture.

You are then taken to a screen that looks like this one below (this is a sample and not real time).

The List!!!

Presented here is list of the top market movers through out the market day. As you can see it creates a list with 6 columns, to me the most important columns to pay attention to are, they ticker symbol(the company), the percentage change, and most important the volume. They key to using this list is paying attention to how many shares have been traded and the gains the stock made that day. Let’s pick one from the list as an example, i will choose “Zygo Corporation (ZIGO)”. ZIGO made a huge 45% gain or $3.34 “dollar gainer” move today. Now as i mentioned earlier the most important factor to look at is the volume or the amount of shares traded in that day. In this case ZIGO traded 1,381,709 shares which indicates this stock is liquid and can be easily traded in and out of if you wish. If you take a close look at “Community Central Bank Corp (CCBD)” they made a 38% gain BUT only on 2,097 shares traded, that is way to low to trade in and out of and not a popular stock to get in on unless you like to watch your money sit there and do nothing.

How can this make you money?

These high percent gainers did not make there huge gains from thin air, they obviously had something happen for this to take place. This list is the starting point in the research process. Take those tickers and plug them into your favorite charting software and do some technical analysis on them, or plug that ticker right back into yahoo finance and do some fundamental research and find out what others think looking at there message boards, all this to determine if it is worth trading or not. Before you know it you will have a nice watch list for the next day with stocks you know will be moving.

This tool is one of the ways i find my stocks and build my pre market watch list, this could be very helpful with yours. Stay tuned for more tips and tools you can use when searching for stocks.  :).

How To Find The Short Interest In a Stock

Have you ever wondered how many shares are short in a particular stock?

Maybe you did not even know this information exists, well it does and can be useful stuff! Finding out how many shares are short of a company can be vital information when looking to trade a stock, pretty much this information will tell you how many people are betting against this stock and want’s to see it drop like a rock. On the other hand this information can let you know how much the stock price can squeeze higher if all those individuals suddenly want to cover those short positions, which will make the stock price spike very rapidly. Some instances for those who short the stock want to cover will be, a positive P/R, Good earnings news, a big buyer coming in and pushing the price higher ect… All of which will force shorts to cover and in turn spike the stock price and if you have a long position when it spikes you could see a significant jump in your percentage gain, it might be in your interest to sell into that spike to hold on to those profits!

In this article i will tell you places to find this information as well as show you some chart examples of a blatant short squeeze!

lets get to it!

1.)The first place i will show you is of course yahoo finance. So open up a new tab or browser window and head on over there.

Once there enter in the company or ticker symbol in the “Get Quote” text box located on the top right hand side.  get qoute box

2.)For this rundown i will use a familiar company “Amazon (AMZN)”. Once you enter in your ticker or the company name a new screen will appear with the stock quote information. What we are looking for is a small link under “Company” section called “Key Statistics”, which will be in the left hand column next to the quote information. I underlined this link with a red line in the picture.

Key statistics

3.)Now that you are at this screen, wonder over to the right side and scroll down some untill you see a section Called “Share Statistics” this is what we want!

Share statistics

This is were you will find the short interest in a stock at that given time. Notice in the picture i highlighted the key areas that will be of most use, Shares Outstanding, Float, Shares short ect… In this example you can see that amazon has 13.68 million shares short of the float which is 332.18million shares. If don’t know what the float is, well it is the number of shares that is publicly traded. So 4.90% of the float is short this stock. And you can see that this number has risen since the prior month which was 17.5 million shares short. This will let you know that a lot of people are betting against this stock and think it has gone up to much, only you can decide if they are wrong or wright and go against them or join them.

Alternative way of getting this information.

Now remember i mentioned this is one of many ways to get this type of information. The second way is a little bit easier to get to and has a tiny bit more information on the short interest.

1.) go to the ShortSqueeze website.

And as before enter the ticker symbol into the text box and hit “short quote”.

short quote text box

2.) Now it will bring up the short interest in this stock with a lot of extra information. This site also has some proprietary information regarding the short intrest, like there “Short Squeeze Ranking” ect.. which they have other things as well but you have to be a premium member to get a hold of that stuff, which in my opinion is unnecessary info.

This is all the info you need here.

short intrest

Conclusion

Both of these sites are free and provides useful information. I just wanted to present more than one option so that you can decide which one you like better. Now you know how to get short interest information on a particular stock and use it to your advantage! Good luck! :)

Examples of some Short Squeeze’s

Stay tuned for more Tutorials, if you have questions or want to give feedback please comment below! :)

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) Analysis

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) – This company offers software, services, information, and connectivity solutions that enable physicians and other health care providers to deliver patient safety and clinical outcomes primarily in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Clinical Solutions and Health Solutions. The Clinical Solutions segment includes enterprise business for large physician practices and integrated delivery networks, and professional business for smaller or independent physician practices. It provides clinical and practice management software solutions and related services. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. is a subsidiary of Misys plc.

IT in the health care industry is booming right now and Allscripts-Misys Healthcare is just one of the leading companies providing IT infrastructure to the health care industry. This company is a diamond in the ruff with a current trading price of less than $20/share(1-7-2010) and a growth multiple of 82! Allscripts has huge potential for growth and inovation in health care, with it gaining new customers from all over the country. It’s most recent news came from Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) when it “Selected the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management (PM) solutions for 300 employed and affiliated physicians and mid-level providers to enhance the quality of patient care, improve patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery.” and will provide this service across a Four-Sate area. Read the full P/R here. This goes to show how in demand these services are especially with how the country is turning over to an entire electronic health care record database.

The companies CEO Glen E. Tullman is really taking this company to new levels, he has been with the company since 1997 and has a wealth of knowledge in the industry. Glen has been on Jim Cramer’s Tv show “Mad Money” several times describing what his company does and were it is going. Although Jim recently gave MDRX the “Sell Sell Sell” When he said “I’m saying ka-ching, ka-ching… let’s ring the register and bring home some profits. Healthcare reform may very well be history.” he made this statement on 12-1-09. I really could disagree with Jim here, with it’s trading price at $19.60(exatcly as i write this) is down from it’s 52 week high of $22.21/share this could be a nice place to start getting in. I would wait to see were it starts to level off, and see the first qtr report of 2010 and make my decision.

Technical Analysis.

MDRX_Chart

As you can see from the chart this stock has been on the steady rise since it’s low of $7.61 in February and hit a 52 week high in October at $22.21. It looks as if that $22 mark is resistance and as you can see it tested that mark at the end of October and failed to break it. It does have some good support around the $18ish area were it most likely will hit and bounce off of. The volume is pretty low with an Average Volume (3 month) 905,897 shares traded. I did get a MA(4.9) cross to the down side with an ADX below 20 signaling that it is selling off and headed lower. This needs a good momentum push to the upside with a good amount of volume to break the resistance barrier.

Overall

I like Allscripts Fundamentally but Technically it needs to improve. Although this would be a great opportunity to pick up some shares for cheap.

Quick Glance at Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (MDRX) Fundies….

Market Cap – $2.86B

EPS – 0.24

Growth Multiple – 82 (current market price / eps = M)

P/E ratio – 83.22

Total Cash – $84.85M

Debt – $41.19M

Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy): 77.70%

Shares Outstanding – 145.13M

Float – 61.94M shares

Recent Analyst Coverage.

18-Dec-09 Maxim Group Initiated Buy

18-Sep-09 Caris & Company Initiated Above Average

18-Sep-09 Piper Jaffray Upgrade Neutral

References: yahoo Finance, Finviz.

Using StockTwits

How did i find out about StockTwits?

I knew nothing about twitter until i found StockTwits. I wanted to talk to other traders/investors and was desperately trying to find the right forum,blog or community, and nothing was striking my fancy until i came across StockTwits. When i found that this place had a streaming IM type of communication that was real time and talking about the subject i loved, heck were do i sign up? Heh, well apparently i have to get a twitter account in order to participate. So i signed up threw twitter and got into StockTwits. But when i was reading the “Tweets” i had no idea what some of the syntax was or how to even post. Well after trial and error and reading a bit on the net i found out how to. Some basic syntax is:

@

$

$$

The ‘@’ symbol followed by a user-name, will be a reference to a particular user with your message attached to it.

The ‘$’ is the most used and well known, it followed by a ticker symbol will display your tweet in the StockTwits view which usually you tweet this and ananalysis.

The ‘$$’ is used when you just want to be shown on the StockTwits interface without talking about a particular stock, but this message must be Finance related.

More on syntax here.

So what are some of the benefits of using StockTwits?

You can use StockTwits as a means of communication between others interested in the markets, or you can use it for some good information :) .

What i mean by information is, news alerts, stocks breaking out ect… This could be very useful since you cant keep your eyes on lots of stocks at one time, or if you are unfamiliar of the stock itself that just did not make your watch list. As everyone knows news can be hard to come by, especially if you don’t have some super high speed super expensive news alert subscription, but using StockTwits you will be able to capture that news fast because you have the fast majority of people on StockTwits wanting to be the first to announce the news. Why not just wait for all those tweets, that way you don’t have to do any work besides typing that ticker into your trading software and validate whatever is going on. ahh ha!

How not to use StockTwits.

Now there are some things you should keep in mind when using this service(which i should mention is free). A lot of people that use StockTwits are regular traders/investors and are not professionals or registered advisers. So any information or advice that you may read on the interface such as, Buy or Sell alerts should not be considered unless you yourself do your own due diligence and decide if you want to take action on that or not.

Also StockTwits should not be used as a place to promote your trades and spam the interface with pennystock alerts and so forth, StockTwits will contact you and warn you and eventually ban you, so don’t get into that.

Conlusion

StockTwits is entertaining and could be used as a tool, but always use your brain when reading some of that stuff. I will mention that there is an application out there that uses twitter and StockTwits in a nice and fancy setup, called the StockTwits desktop app, I on the other hand tried it and could never get into it, i just stick to the browser. So check out StockTwits for yourself and see what all the fuss is about.

you can follow me on StockTwits here.  :)

Jim Cramer’s Getting Back to Even Book Review

Booya Jim Cramer

A lot of people have their own opinion on Jim Cramer, some good some bad. I on the other hand think he is a great entertainer with his show “Mad Money”. I also love his books that he writes, they are very informative and his methods he uses are Genius in my opinion. Now mind you they are for what he calls “Home Gamers” that do not have professional market experience nor the time to dedicate fully towards the market. I use Cramers books as a means of learning new strategy, or gain a different perspective of the market and how it works, i mean the guy did run a half a billion dollar hedge fund. I also do not solely use his methods and nothing else, i try and learn every strategy or method possible and Frankenstein them all, this way i take what i want out of it and come up with my own working strategy.

Cramers latest book “Getting Back to Even” is very well written and geared towards individuals that have lost a substantial amount of money in the not only the market, but IRA’s, 401k’s, and the Housing market. His tone when writing this book is very positive and encouraging, makes you feel that you can “get back to even”. I literally read this book in a week, only because i love learning this stuff and cramer makes it interesting. Listed below are the chapters in the book, and as you can see he covers just about everything.

Chapters:

Don’t Give Up!

Crossing the Stock Market Minefield

Putting the Pieces Back Together

Dividends: The Best Offense Is a Good Defense

How to Invest in the Recovery: Twelve Stocks to Watch

The Next Big Thing: Regional Banks Poised to Grow

Getting Back to Even Like a Pro: Using Options to Replace Stocks

Taking Options to the Next Level: Advanced Strategies

How Your Generation Should Respond to the Crash

Twenty-five New Rules for Post-Apocalyptic Investing

Coping with the New World Disorder

Afterword

Acknowledgments

I wont go chapter to chapter detailing what i like and dislike, but i will inform you of my favorite parts, just to hook you so you go out and read it yourself. This book is well worth the time and effort you put in to reading it.

1st Favorite section: Dividends, you think you know but you have no idea… :)

Jim as we all know from his show preaches diversification, well of course he does it again in this book. This time he goes in more detail as to why and how important it really is. One of the main benefactors of being diversified are the companies that pay you to own their stock, we are talking dividends. I always new about dividends and how they somewhat work, but after reading his chapter on them, well i thought i was a pro after it. The methods he presents about dividends and how to play the company that pays them are truly gold and makes complete sense. He helps you not only find these good company’s paying those juicy high yield dividends but also what to look for when you are doing your homework, which what he says is up to date with this new market we are in. The explanations he gives are in plain English and in such rich detail, which makes you feel as if you know dividends and could teach them to someone else.

2nd Favorite: Options

Now i have always been curious about stock options and how they actually work, but when reading about them i just kinda through up my hands and stick to the regular common stock. Well one of Jim’s tactics to getting you “back to even” is playing with options, he does a great job of getting you to read those chapters even if you are not interested in options. So i take a dive into them and see what he has to say. Jim gives a excellent description of options and explains exactly what they are without giving you a bunch of useless terms or jargon. I truly and finally understand options and how they work just by reading this chapter and feel that much smarter now. His second chapter on options titled “Taking Options to the Next Level: Advanced Strategies” gives you a very sneaky yet cleaver way of using options to your advantage with very minimal risk if any risk at all. I wont give his tactic away but i will say it involves both options and common stock in the same company, which if you apply this strategy correctly it could bring a nice return your trading account. I will be experimenting with this tactic in the new year and am excited to see the results, all else fails it will be a great experience.

Overall message behind the book

I can honestly say that Jim Cramer does care about the regular investor and i am very appreciative for him to share is wealth of knowledge and wisdom with his readers and viewers. With that being said you as the reader can find this book not only entertaining but very informative. Cramer iterates over and over how much he thinks this is a golden opportunity in getting back in the market and buying up those beaten down stocks and recovering your account. I believe this is his best book yet and recommend it to everyone!

Side note

It is funny how after reading all of his books, he literally recites all the information in his show which to me is kinda cool because i can pick that out and think to myself which book he said that in and what section, or at least i do :) . For those of you who have read his books should know what i am talking about. ;)

Pick up your copy of his new book here:

Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even

Cramers other books that I enjoyed reading:

Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World

Confessions of a Street Addict

Related posts:

Van K. Tharp’s “Super Trader” Book Review

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