Short ETFs

By Ahmad Hassam

You can short stocks. You can even short ETFs. Have you ever heard of Short ETFs? The ProShares Short Dow 30 ETF (DOG) will return the inverse of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on daily basis. If the DJIA falls by 2%, DOG rises by 2% and if the DJIA rises by 2%, DOG will fall by 2%. Short ETF returns the inverse of the index it is linked to.

Short ETFs are also known as Inverse ETFs or Bear ETFs. During the past few years, the number of Short ETFs has risen dramatically. Short ETFs not only cover the major stock indices like the S&P 500 or the DJIA but also different sectors like the energy, utilities or technology. You will even find Inverse ETFs on currencies now.

Most of the ETFs are designed around some market index. ETF shares trade like ordinary stock shares. You can buy them. You can sell them unlike the mutual funds that can only be sold at the end of the day. The ProShares UltraShort Dow 30 ETF (DXD) rises 2% when the DJIA falls by 1%. So you can even find leverage short ETFs. A leveraged short ETF gives the trader leverage without the use of margins.

So short ETFs move in exact opposite direction to the index on which they are based. Short ETFs give you an excellent opportunity to profit from the volatility in the market and the major indices. Over the years, short ETFs have risen in popularity with the investors and hedge funds.

If you have been trading currencies, then you should know that inverse currency ETFs are a great way to profit from the volatility in the underlying currencies. Short ETFs are a great product as they have created new opportunities for traders. A trader had to actually short sell stocks to take advantage of a market drop before the introduction of short ETFs.

ETFs have opened up a whole new way of profiting from the markets. The trader had to go against the trend and buy or else move into cash or fixed income in the past if the market was dropping. Traders are not allowed to sell short stocks or ETFs in their retirement accounts. Short and leveraged ETFs provide traders with new opportunities.

ETFs also provide you with the opportunity to take advantage of the global market swings. China is one example that garners a lot of attention. The Shanghai Index in China rose 100% in 2007. In the first quarter of 2008, the Shanghai Index was down 35%.

The ProShares family of ETFs introduced the Ultrashort FTSE/Xinhua China 25 ETF (FXP). Now if you want to trade the fall of Chinese stocks, you can trade FXP ETF. In the past, traders who wanted to benefit from the fall of Chinese stocks could only short Chinese stocks that were traded in US Stock Exchanges.

Short ETFs can be used for other purposes as well. Assume you have a portfolio of $100,000 composed of 75% stocks and 25% money market fixed income. As a long term investor you can take advantage of short ETFs to hedge your portfolio position.

The forecast of the market for the next six months is not good. But you are reluctant to sell your stocks due to tax reasons. Suppose the market falls by 10%. Your stock portfolio falls by 7.5% assuming the same ratio between the market and your portfolio. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This Cash Printing Forex Signal Service From Heaven! Learn Swing Trading!

Trading Systems (Part II)

By Ahmad Hassam

In simple terms, it is very difficult to adjust a mechanical trading system to a different market conditions if you are not the author of that system. It is very difficult to develop a trading system that can adjust to different market conditions.

You must know this that technical indicators also lose their effectiveness overtime as the market conditions change. So how do you cater for this fact that markets keep on changing all the time. By developing a trading system that uses different trading strategy under different market conditions. For that, you will need to develop a diversified trading system consisting of a set of trading systems that can be used as a basis for a specific trade tactics at any given moment.

Such a diversified trading system can be used according to a trader's free choice and considering the individual situation. Trading systems based on these principles can be complex and adjustable.

This optimization can provide an effective evaluation of market shifts and trends at any given time. Such a diversified trading system can be optimized for current market condition and the trader's resources at any given moment.

The only thing necessary is to find the tools for the probability evaluation for the trading system with maximum accuracy and minimum time. The optimal solution could be a diversified trading system based on the natural market features and regularities. A trading system needs to be evaluated by calculating its win ratio over let's say at least 100 trades.

Developing a mechanical trading system with a set of trading rules that you can apply rigorously in making your trading decisions in any market condition should be your goal. Mechanical trading is good in the sense that it helps you avoid emotions in making your trading decisions. Emotions are your biggest enemy in trading. Fear and greed will always force you to make wrong trading decisions. Have you ever heard about the turtle trading experiment?

Turtle trading experiment was conducted to demonstrate the fact that it's not the trader that matters; it's the trading system that matters. If you have a good trading system, you can become a highly successful trader.

What you need to do is learn from successful traders and try to copy their trading systems. As a young person you must have learned that just by observing good players play their games you could improve your level of playing tennis, golf, badminton, swimming or for that matter any type of game.

The same principle applies in trading. You need to take a look at these 25 forex trading systems that had emerged on the top of more than 5000 traders who had taken part in a recent forex trading championship. The best forex trading system had an ROI of almost 3000% in one month. By observing the trading systems of successful traders you can also develop your own highly successful trading system. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Discover a Revolutionary Forex Robot Trading System. Read about a Forex Trading System with an ROI of 3000% per month.

Short Selling Stocks

By Ahmad Hassam

An investor who is short selling is borrowing stocks from the brokers and selling them to another buyer. The sale money goes to the account of the investor. At some point, the investor has to buy back the stock ideally at a lower price to make profit and return it to the broker.

You must be proficient in using technical indicators if you want to become a trader. Without learning technical analysis, you will always be doing trading on your hunches which is a bad thing. Suppose you are using the RSI technical indicator that is giving a crossover sell signal. All signs are pointing towards at least a small pullback. You feel that the stock ABC is overvalued at $60 and at some point in the near future the market will make a correction.

You place an order to short 1000 shares of ABC stock at $60. 1000 shares of stock ABC are sold at $60 and $60,000 is placed in your account. Over the next week, you are jittery as the stock ABC instead of going down climbs to $65.

Stock prices can go up as well as down. Technical indicators can give you a likely direction of the market but they are never 100% right. Did you cater for the situation when the stock price rises instead of falling? However, you have catered for this eventuality by placing a stop loss at 10% of your account. This comes out to be $6,000. So the stop loss is not triggered and you are still in the market hoping for the price to stop going up.

If the price goes up to $66, your stop loss will be triggered and you will be out of the market. You are prepared to lose $6,000 in anticipation of a stock price tumble as your technical indicators are giving you the sell signals.

Every quarter companies are supposed to release their earnings reports. You can time your trade around the release of such a report. Now most earnings mishaps last a few days. So you wait and don't cover your short position for the next few days. Suddenly on the release of a disappointing earnings report, the stock price tumbles 20% in one day.

Market hates sudden surprises. Anything that is already known to the market is already included in the price of the stock. So this negative earnings report was a sudden surprise. You decide to cover your short position, stock ABC price falls to $45. You need to buy back the 100 shares of ABC that were sold short earlier at the market price of $45 in order to close your position.

Now should be able to understand short selling as easy as long buying. With this simple example, you should be able to understand the mechanics of short selling stocks. You pay $45,000 to buy back 1000 shares of stock ABC and return them to your broker. So your net profit in this case is $60,000-$45,000= $15,000.

Assume that you had bought the stocks for $45 per share and sold them at $60 per share, the same profit would have been made. In reality, you paid $45 per share to buy ABC stocks and sold them at $60 per share giving you a profit of $15 per share.

The goal of buying a stock is to sell it at a higher price in the future. When you short a stock, the goal is to sell it at a higher price but in the case of short selling stocks, selling takes place first instead of buying. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try This Cash Printing Forex Signal Service From Heaven! Learn Swing Trading!

What Are LEAP Options?

By Ahmad Hassam

Great Britain was finding it difficult to stay within the tight exchange rate band set by the European Monetary Union (EMU) in the early'90s. One person who made history with options was George Soros who is famously known as the man who broke the Bank of England.

George Soros had this intuition that the Bank of England would be forced to devalue British Pound. So he bought call options on German Marks and put options on British Pound. He made a bet of $10 Billion by leveraging all the assets in his hedge fund.

Bank of England had made a number of public statements regarding its intention of staying within the EMU. However, within a few days of the speculative attack on the British Pound, Bank of England was brought to its knees as it was unable to sustain the immense selling pressure on the British Pound. Bank of England was forced to devalue British Pound in view of the speculative attack on the British Pound.

In a matter of a few days, George Soros made a cool $1 Billion profit on his bet. Can you make such a bet? Maybe not but this one example show the immense power options have if used correctly. Options are risky; there should be no doubt about it.

Options contract give you the right to buy or sell an underlying security like stocks, futures, commodities or currencies at a price before a certain date. This price is known as the Strike Price. This date is known as the Expiry Date. However, in European Style options you can only buy or sell on the expiry date not before that. Most people who trade options lose money, plain and simple.

Time factor is very important when valuing an option. Further out the options contract is from expiration, you will have to pay a higher premium. As the options contract approaches the expiration date and if it is out of money, it loses its value very fast.

Have your heard about the LEAP options? LEAP stands for long term equity anticipation. It basically means that the option is much like the regular option except that the timeframe to expire is greater than 1 year. LEAP options are basically long term options. Leap options can help you profit over the long haul. You can use LEAP options in options strategies like the covered calls, straddles, spreads and so on.

LEAP options are risky because the option writer usually demands a hefty premium for taking on the long term risk. However, LEAP options can be incredibly profitable if used correctly. The buyer of the LEAP options has the right to exercise the option prior to expiration should the price of the underlying stock move in the money.

Far away from expiration, the higher the value of the options contract! Closer the out of money option is to expiration, faster its value drops. What this means is that the buyer of the options loses the premium that was paid for getting the right to buy or sell the underlying security. LEAP options can be a great trading vehicle for swing traders as they mitigate some of the time decay that is inherent in short term options. If you need to learn options trading than you should consider joining the Live Options Mastery Classes online at the Options University. Learn options trading from a former options floor trader for safer and better investing! - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Learn Candlestick Charting! Know Fibonacci Retracement!

Trading System Essentials (Part I)

By Ahmad Hassam

You need to develop your own forex trading system overtime. Using someone else's trading system won't help if you really want to become a successful trader. At one point in your trading career that might come soon rather than later, you would want to switch over to a mechanical trading system. Using a mechanical trading system not only helps traders to make decisions and increase profits but it also provides great psychological comfort to the traders.

You will find most of the trader using a trading system approach to trading. Some of them may use a discrete trading system while others prefer a mechanical trading system. You will realize the necessity of switching over to the system trade in order to lower the psychological pressure experienced when making every market transaction.

Once you have a mechanical trading system you can easily develop it into an automated trading system. The mechanical trading system set of rules may be translated into a computer program for automated trading. However, the mechanical trading system lacks fundamental analysis capacity.

The trading system then generates trading signals that can be used by traders having access to the trading system. The creator of such a mechanical trading system then becomes just another user of the trading system monitoring the computer generated signals.

Many traders over their trading careers develop their own trading systems. Besides the traders using their own trading systems, there are now many actively developed trading systems for sale as computer programs. These trading systems may be taken as grey and black boxes. Their prices might vary from a few hundred dollars to hundred of thousands of dollars.

Sometimes these trading systems are developed for big banks and corporations. The most significant thing about these programs is that the traders should be able to accomplish transactions in accordance with the signals generated by the trading system.

Majority of the successful individual traders use self developed mechanical trading systems. However, it is very difficult for a mechanical trading system to cope with different market conditions.

For example, many trading systems that are satisfactory in trending conditions become highly ineffective in nontrending environment. Change of market behavior leads to negative results from a previously effective trading system which obviously would require replacement.

The most common disadvantage of these trading systems is the negative balance between the profitable and unprofitable trades. Many trading systems now depend on complex mathematical formula which is not understandable by the trader if the trader is not the author of the trading system.

Obviously the trading system can only be profitable in the long run if the ratio of the profitable trades is higher than the non-profitable trades. In other words the average profit of each profitable transaction is greater than the average loss of each unprofitable transaction.

The trader must accurately and unconditionally follow the trading system without making any attempt to adjust it to the market conditions. Making correction in any mechanical trading system in the process of the trade is almost impossible. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Discover a Revolutionary Forex Robot Trading System. Read about a Forex Trading System with an ROI of 3000% per month.

Shorting Stocks

By Ahmad Hassam

Many beginning investors get confused when they realize that it is possible to make money when the stock falls in price. In practice, shorting a stock is as easy as buying stocks once you get hang of it. When the market is falling, investors sell short a stock with the goal of profiting from the fall in the price of that stock.

Short selling is confusing for new traders. It shouldn't be. It is simple. The difference between the selling price and the buying price in case the price goes down is your profit. You borrow a stock from your broker and sell it with the intention of buying it back at a lower price in the near term future and returning it to your broker when you short a stock.

You are anticipating further fall in the price of the stock when you short a stock. When the price of a stock goes down, you make profit. However, if the price of the stock instead of going down starts to go up, you get a loss.

Theoretically a stock price can go up and up making your loss as big as infinity. So shorting a stock without proper risk and money management is not wise. However, before that happens most probably you will receive a margin call from your broker that leads to a forced sale before your losses reach unmanageable proportions.

Short selling can play havoc with companies. If there is a short selling attack on a company's stock by speculators, the company can easily go bankrupt. This is precisely what happened in 2008. Short sellers were responsible for bringing many blue chip companies down. In the stock market crash of 2008, many financial companies went bankrupt due to the short selling of their shares by the speculators. Some people are against the strategy of shorting stocks. A temporary ban was put on shorting for sometime during that period.

However, the goal of short selling is not to drive the price of a stock to zero and put the company out of business. In swing trading, we are simply looking to profit from the ups and downs of stock prices. When the price of a stock goes down, short selling is the best swing trading strategy.

One reason why swing traders love short selling is due to the velocity of the moves! Negative news like poor earning, credit rating downgrade or a poor product launch can bring down a stock price in a matter of minutes and wipe out the steady gains made in months.

Shot selling can be a good hedging strategy for long term investors too. So if you a long term investor, you can lessen the impact of the sharp price drop on your portfolio by using a short selling hedging strategy. Swing traders always look for big winners and this brings them to the short side of the market. When the price of a stock starts to fall, chances are it will fall more before the market stabilizes and the price starts to rise again. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam has done Masters from Harvard University. Try This Cash Printing Forex Signal Service From Heaven! Learn Swing Trading!

Backtesting Explained (Part II)

By Ahmad Hassam

Automated Backtesting is easy. The second method of Backtesting is performed manually and visually by the trader. Why would someone do a manual backtest? There are difficulties in doing Backtesting manually but at the same time there are a few advantages of Backtesting. The trader would take the historical data and scroll back in time on a chart and manually apply the trading strategy as if it was in a real time environment.

The trader would advance the chart bar by bar in order to refrain from seeing price action subsequent to the trade at hand. This eliminates trading in hindsight that is detrimental to an objective backtest.

The major disadvantage of Backtesting as compared to automated testing is the significant potential for human error in executing simulated trades and recording performance results.

Additionally the normal range of human emotions and biases that often interfere with actual trading can be a detrimental factor in achieving objective backtest results. Furthermore, it takes a great deal of work and discipline to simulate trades manually over a large data set without straying from the strict rules of the trading strategy.

However, Backtesting manually can provide the trader with the real feel for actually trading the strategy. This provides valuable trading experience although simulated but still a valuable trading experience that no automated backtest could possibly provide.

No matter whether you do Backtesting manually or automatically, Backtesting can save traders a great deal of time and money that might otherwise had been wasted on trading unprofitable strategies. Backtesting whether done manually or automatically can be one of the most important elements of building a solid trading strategy. Backtesting is now an important element of testing a trading system performance.

Autotrading is the latest fad especially in forex where the number of major currency pairs is only six and this makes programming autotrading easy. Any mechanical trading system can be backtested. This leads us to the important question of autotrading. These autotrading systems are popularly known as Expert Advisors or Forex Robots.

The US Stock Market has got more than 50,000 stocks listed with them as compared to the forex market where there are not more than six major currency pairs. This makes programming a stock trading robot a bit complicated. However, during the past decade major breakthrough in computer programming has been made.

Backtesting is one of the most important components of testing an autotrading system. Big institutions like banks, corporations and hedge funds have always been taking benefit of these autotrading systems.

Backtesting and autotrading are two important components of implementing trading strategies that generally do not rely upon the trader's judgments or discretion. These types of strategies are primarily technical in nature, and they must necessarily have rules and criteria that are unambiguous.

Backtesting gives you the benefit of testing your trading system on a large historical dataset. Backtesting allows the trader to determine if a given strategy would have been profitable using past price data, which is an indication of how it might potentially perform in the future. In contrast, autotrading actually executes real trades automatically according to a pre - programmed set of instructions that sets trade entries, stop losses, and profit limits. - 32177

About the Author:

Mr. Ahmad Hassam is a Harvard University Graduate. Try This Cash Printing Forex Signal Service From Heaven! First practice on your Forex Demo Account!