For bull market doubters, this relatively safe dividend strategy has provided big returns

Quantamize also used artificial intelligence to create different weightings for the stocks than traditional exchange-traded funds. That's led them to recommend smaller and more under-the-radar dividend payers more heavily for this portfolio, including shares like Mid-America Apartment Communities, New York Community Bancorp and First Hawaiian. More traditional dividend plays like an AT&T don't make the top holdings.

The back-test return for this dividend yield portfolio is 19.4% for the 12-month period ending March 31. The annualized dividend yield for the basket is about 4%.

"The S&P [500] has run so heavily over the last three, four months and the implied volatility is so muted," said Mathai-Davis. "I think the reality is after this run up driven by consumer discretionary and tech, it really does start to make sense for people to begin lower beta exposure."

The S&P 500 reclaimed its September old highs this week and an earnings recession seems to be off the table now. However, the market is missing some of the euphoria that often accompanies record levels. And it's still not out of the woods with some of the biggest risks including the ongoing trade battles and the Federal Reserve's policy uncertainty.

To be sure, Wall Street overall still holds a slightly bullish view on the market with an average year-end target for the S&P 500 of 2,950, according to a CNBC analysis.

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How to Use Stock Market Volatility Index to Manage Risks

The recent downturn of financial markets and companies around the world has made many people worried about their economic growth and security. This insecurity is followed by an active realization about wealth-building through secondary means like trading, investing and organized speculations.

Since some years, customers have witnessed certain financial bubbles which blasted numerous financial companies and their clients and share-holders, and this has led traders to explore various ways to gain financial prowess.

It is always advisable for traders, in order to better deal with their personal finances in the midst of economic instabilities, due to a volatile stock options market, to follow certain safety policies and financial habits, which would provide long term benefits irrespective of the stock options market conditions.

To start with, know the correct investment process and do not go with the flow or with the opinions of other investors. It may happen that the market is going down and low and other traders are finding it difficult to invest, but that should not hold you back from investing in case you are clear about your goals and your unfailing trading strategy. Investing in safer trades will only add to your portfolio and would help you reap the gains during favorable times.

The next thing that you should do as a trader is to analyze your capacity to tolerate the maximum amount of risk. Although time decay of options trading determines the risk factor of any particular stock, it also depends upon your personal choice or risk avoiding and risk bearing tendencies and tactics. In order to weigh your ability to bear risk, it is important to judge your asset allocation skills and the outcome of the same. If you still loose sleep over a 7% loss, you need to revise your allocation of asset and trading style and strategy.

A trader is supposed to deal with the market and the price movements with a calm mind, without reacting to each and every news and views he comes to know from various sources. Hence, it is advisable to filter tendency to gather all information from every possible sources.

The next important thing is to make sure that your family emergency fund is in a good shape and your trading decisions and practices should not disturb it. Any trading activities which requires you to invest from your emergency fund is generally not a good idea.

The most important factor that helps an options trader to maintain consistent profit and least losses, is discipline, regularity and tenacity.

Many traders ignore their job to give maximum attention to the trading activities. Well, it is still advised that a trader should pay attention to his job, as the unpredictability of the trading world is enormous, and can anytime bring upon a financial situation which can lead to utter financial insecurity.

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Why investors are careful buyers but careless sellers

JACK SCHWAGER was once a moderately successful trader who wondered why he was not an immoderately successful trader. Perhaps if he knew the secrets of trading superstars, such as Paul Tudor Jones or Jim Rogers, he might improve. So he asked them for those secrets. “Market Wizards”, his book of interviews with hedge-fund traders, was published in 1989. A second volume soon followed.

Both books have since been pored over by a generation of hedge-fund wannabes. They are full of great stories and tips covering a range of investing styles. Yet there are common elements. It is striking, for instance, how little emphasis the wizards put on getting into a position—finding the right trade at the right entry price—compared with when to get out of it. That makes sense. Deciding what and when to sell surely matters at least as much as, and perhaps more than, deciding what to buy.

The wizardly injunction to cut your losses and let your winners ride has hardened into hedge-fund doctrine. Even so, it is not widely practiced in mainstream investing. Fund managers pay lots of attention to buying decisions.

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Five Things You Need For Most Profitable Trading Strategy

Like countless other investors around the world, you might have been trying to make profits for ages without seeing results. One possible reason for this is that you might not have the right things in place while you trade. Before you go back to the trenches, you need to first make sure that you have these five elements.

Right Psychology

Psychology plays a direct and important role in trade outcomes but many investors don't even realize this. They may enter positions and get too caught up in their emotions that they end up holding on too long or letting go too early of a position. This emotional approach is the first step to losing your chance to gain trading profits. The right mental and emotional mindset is to approach trades with logic and reasoning based on an established system or plan of attack.

Appropriate Investment Market

There is more than one kind of market that you can choose to invest in. There are traders who imagine that they can make more if they invest in all. This is a huge mistake you wouldn't want to make. It is true that high earning traders have diverse portfolios. As a neophyte though, you can't expect to meet with much success with this strategy. It is in your best interests to zero in on one market with the aim of mastering it. This is the first true and wise step towards profitable trading.

Solid System

Every business needs a good system for it to succeed. The same can be said for trading. This should really be your first priority. A trading system or plan is a guideline containing policies that will guide your every trade entry or exit. When you decide to follow a plan, it is crucial that you follow it through and through regardless of whether you're winning or losing. This is the only way you can get rid of emotions when trading.

Guidelines For Money Management

Every trading system should dedicate a section to money management. The rules for this are so critical that the need for them has to be mentioned specifically. Money management is what you need so you can protect yourself from big losses. With established rules, you won't have to suffer losses that you can't bear. Usually guidelines encompass such concerns as trading float, stop loss and trade size.

Charting Package

You will not be able to make it through one trading day if you don't own charting software. You might have to spend a considerable amount of cash for one. This is why you'd want to purchase the correct one right away. Choose a package that has been in the market for a very long time because this will increase its chances of sticking around for more years along with its support base. Also, an ideal charting package should be flexible and should allow for the use of independent data providers.

You are capable of achieving profitable trading. That is if you have all the right tools of the trade in front of you. Begin by establishing a good frame of mind and then go on to develop a solid trading plan that you can use with a charting package in your investment market of choice.

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Five crucial money mistakes rich people never make

The ultra-wealthy don't get caught up in the latest fads, pouncing on the next "new" thing.

Take bitcoin, for example. The cryptocurrency took off in 2017, making instant millionaires out of some early investors. That spurred a lot of people to jump in and try their hand at making a fortune.

That could be fine — if you're a professional trader or just want to play around with a little gambling money. Yet fads like bitcoin are risky business: The cryptocurrency has since fallen a stomach-churning 70% in the past year.

Warren Buffett, who is famous for his philosophy of investing in what he knows and then holding on to it for the long haul, told CNBC last year that "in terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending."

The legendary investor, who is worth $80 billion, according to Forbes, believes you have to know what you know — and stay the course.

"What counts is having a philosophy ... that you stick with, that you understand why you're in it, and then you forget about doing things that you don't know how to do," Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2018.

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SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son reportedly blew $130 million in a bitcoin bet gone wrong after failing to heed Warren Buffett’s advice

Koki Nagahama/Getty Images

 

• SoftBank's founder, Masayoshi Son, might have saved $130 million if he paid attention to Warren Buffett.
• The famed tech investor lost that amount on a bitcoin bet gone wrong, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
• Watch bitcoin trade live.

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"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful," said the legendary investor Warren Buffett in 2004. In other words, buy low and sell high — and don't follow the herd.

If SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had listened to Buffett's advice, he might have saved $130 million on a bitcoin bet gone wrong. The technology investor lost that money by buying bitcoin near the height of the digital currency's mania and selling after it crashed, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Son invested near the peak of bitcoin's speculative craze, when the cryptocurrency traded as high as $20,000 a coin, according to The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, though the exact prices that Son bought and sold at are not known. Bitcoin is now trading near $5,500.

While the bitcoin bet was done with Son's money and not SoftBank's, the reported investment contrasts with his lofty reputation.

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Why Setting Trading And Investing Goals Can Improve Performance

Goal setting in trading and investing, and indeed in any area of your life, has two vital items involved in goal setting and goal attainment: i) perceived difficulty of the goal; and ii) how specific your goal is.

The more perceived difficulty in the goal and more specific the goal is, the more likely you will raise your level of performance to achieve your goal. This is because with these two elements of challenge and focus, people are more likely to try harder, achieving a higher performance which produces better overall results.

In a trading example a goal to earn $50,000 next year through your trading activity is good. However, a goal to achieve, say $51,600 will likely produce better performance as it is perceived by your brain as more specific.

Setting difficult and specific goals provide a better outcome than setting goals you know are easily attainable. So, if you believe that you can comfortably achieve $51,600 through your trading, then raise the level to something more challenging like $72,400.

But your goal has to be realistic to be achievable. You need to believe your goal is attainable through your past experience, knowledge, training and/or skills that you can make it happen. So to perform against your goal make it realistic.

So that is the setting of your trading goal. What about along the way…on the journey to achieving the goal? You will be most committed to achieving a goal when you believe that achieving the goal is important. Also when you can see that progress is being made towards achieving the goal, you get the best results.

A way of measuring your trading progress, can be done as simply as keeping an ongoing running tally of your trading outcomes for the year. For example, if your goal is to earn $72,400 from trading for the year and by half way through the year your trading tally is $38,100 you can measure how well you are placed to achieving your goal – you have more than half of your goal achieved.

Often when starting something new, we don’t bother to set goals. When starting in trading and investing, often it is good just to see a result. But imagine how much more meaningful this would be if the result reflected a set goal which was difficult, specific and important. We would be able to measure our progress which would add to our performance in achieving the goal at hand. Very satisfying and very positive.

Start by setting a difficult, specific, and realistic trading/investing goal and start measuring your progress. But make sure you understand why you want to achieve your goal; you need to know why it is important for you to achieve your goal.

In his excellent text book “The Psychology of Persuasion”, Kevin Hogan talks about “the least acceptable result”. What is your LEAST ACCEPTABLE RESULT from your trading? Think about this very carefully because this is the true goal that most people WILL achieve from any activity. You must move your Least Acceptable Result up to the level of your goal.

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Option Trading With Example

Stocks have been on a kind of wild ride for the past year, with volatility that no stock trading course could have prepared investors for. The up-and-down, whipsaw motion of the major indices has meant that good stocks have been hurt and bad stocks have been devastated. An options course will show how to benefit from the downturns in the markets where the stock trading courses cannot. That is right, when stock traders are losing money, you will be able to use your stock options training knowledge to make more money! Understanding the two most basic options strategies can help you make bigger returns for a lot less capital. First, there are call options, which are securities based on underlying stocks. Call options profit when stocks move up, so they’re pretty easy for most traders to understand.

A call option gives the trader the right to purchase a stock at a fixed price for a set period of time but does not obligate them to do so. The trader can trade the value of the options contracts or can use them as a vehicle by which to purchase a favored stock at a discounted price. Call options are often referred to as ‘surrogates’ for stocks because you can benefit from the upward movement of a stock at a fraction of the price. However, the often overlooked profit player is a put option, which is also based on an underlying stock and increases in value when that stock goes down. You can also trade put options for the value they carry inherently, but they also afford you the right, but not the obligation, to sell a stock at a set price. That means you can sell a low-valued stock at a premium price.

In addition, put options can act as a kind of insurance to protect any stock that you do have. Let’s say you have 100 shares of stock XYZ, which is trading at $10. If you purchase 1 put option contract at the $10 level, that means is if XYZ drops down to $5, your put options will afford you the opportunity to sell the stock for $10; even though it’s trading for half of that. While the most basic tenet of a stock trading course will tell you to ‘buy low and sell high’, day-to-day stock trading has lost any sort of rhyme or reason and there are few, if any, fundamental reasons for the huge intraday swings we are seeing. The fortunate thing is that this kind of frenetic atmosphere is when stock option strategies profit most. Online training with a basic brokerage account will allow you to make terrific profits from put and call options trading that the stock trader would not realize. Options are not limited to individual stocks either as you are able to trade options on the major indices as well as exchange traded funds (ETFs). This translates to your being able to trade an entire sector or index with less capital. Do not limit yourself to trading just stocks in today’s volatile market by taking a stock trading class; increase your opportunities by adding options trading to your portfolio today!

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Swing Trading vs Day Trading

Nothing would be more volatile and unpredictable than a trading market. Market trading has its own ups and downs. While, sometimes it can get you unexpected gains, they can also lead you into great losses. How much of profit you make and how far away you stay from market losses depends on your style of trading. Amongst the best ways of trading is swing trading. Though, swing trading ensures better market returns, make sure you master swing trading strategies from those who are experienced in the market.

The best and worst part of any kind of trading is risks. They give you adrenalin push, but sometimes being careless with risk could cost you a great deal. Risk management is thus a vital key in any kind of trading including swing trading. Though swing trading offers very low risk possibilities, it is always better to have a thorough knowledge of your style of trading. Those who have been into markets for a very long time do not need any swing trading guides. However, for those who are fresh in trading or are still to stabilize in the market, guidance is a must.

For those who are just starting, knowledge is vital. Make sure you have all the possible swing trading information that you need to get going. The good thing of this type of trading is that it is perfect for beginners. It helps get you good profits without placing much stress on yourself.

To polish yourself in all the possible swing trading strategies, you have a wide variety of options available. Depending on your need and the amount of time you can invest, you can choose the one that suits you best.

Among your varied options, you have swing trading books, swing trading guides and also swing trading courses. Whether a book or a course, it is absolutely essential you choose the right one.

Only a person, who has been into swing trading for a very long time and has also been successful in it, can prove to be a good swing trading guide. Always choose a guide, book or course, written or formulated by a person from the industry.

Many believe one thing that can make you the king in swing trading, is to be in possession of all the market trading secrets. However, more important than knowing is to understand the reason and implementation of these secrets.

Along with practical preparation, winning in trading also requires mental preparation. Trading surely is not for the impatient and weak hearted. There is a great deal of risk involved in this profession. You need to be patient until your work starts showing results and be ready for some difficult situations.

In spite of uncertainty and risk involvement, markets are fun. Trading is an art similar to rowing through water. The more you practice, the better you master the skill. However, it is always better to enter the uncertain waters of trading with some good swing trading information.

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