Market has been rallying for past several sessions in a row now. Whatever the reason might be, this is probably the toughest time to navigate the market. Again in such situations, cash might be the position to take for conservative investors.

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If you reached here, that means you do want to figure out how to navigate in the market like this. There are two common behavior that one can see in the market, well one of the two outcomes I am going to outline:

1. A sharp spike down
2. A period of consolidation

If you are a bullish on the market right now given all the positivity that is flowing through the news, you want to have a pullback on low volume. That will indicate a bullish move. That got to happen because people will start taking profits. However if there is panic selling, you know to get the heck out of the market and wait on the sidelines again.

If you are bearish investor right now, you are waiting for a major downward movement. You might be sitting on or planning to buy reverse ETFs such as SDS or might be buying put options!

Honestly speaking, I would NOT take the bear attitude just yet. Because right now market is extremely bullish, however the pullback is imminent. So you might want to just wait and see the magnitude of profit taking or selling. If selling is moderate, I would imagine that as a buying opportunity.

Make sure to book your profits

In a economy like this, you never know what is going to happen. No one can predicts a news item coming out of Europe that will take the entire market down again. So its critical to confirm your profits while they last and be ready to hit the market when you see the opportunities.

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Among all the positives that are making rounds in the stock market currently, one thing thats bothering the market guru is the trading volume. There doesn’t seem to be a huge interest in trading currently. Volume has died down once again since the market took a downward swing in May.

S&P closed above its significant 1100 mark. However due to low volume, I am still not ready to dive into the market. What should someone do in such a market condition? Let me list a few things that one should do in such market conditions:

1. Keep plenty of cash: Cash helps you to take advantage of downturn. Downturn is not always bad. If you see strong catalyst in the horizon while the market is tanking. That might be the time to throw some money in and it will return some nice $$
2. If you expect a bear market, shorting is a way for you to still make money if the market is tanking. Another way to invest in bear market is to take a look at reverse ETFs such as $SDS
3. Keep money in mutual funds and CD while you are not ready. So that will make some money while you are still pondering over the opportunities

Anyways seems like $aapl, $crus, $goog, $msft, $jazz, $arna are seto move up in next week or so. Be sure to have tight stops in place to prevent any unexpected reversal of the rally.

This week has been extra good for the market. Several big positives came into limelight:

1. $BP’s oil spill is finally seems to be getting close to fixed
2. $Apple recorded record earnings due to more than expected strong sales of iPad and early sales numbers for iPhone 4
3. $F, $MSFT all recorded awesome earnings

European bank’s stress test result come out today. Different investors have different views about these tests. Some think they are pointless and most of the banks will pass the test. Others tend to disagree and are actually contemplating the future of economy based on the stress test results.

Germany and UK both reported much better numbers than everyone had in mind. Check out this latest article which details out the earnings for major companies in the past week or so:

Stocks May extend rally this week

So in the wake of all this positive news, one has to wonder whether we are out of the cursed spell that brought all of us down since April. I sure hope so. Jobless claims continue to rise despite the awesome earnings reported by fortune 100 companies. However it is very important to understand that jobs are always created AFTER the market has turned around a good bit. Companies do not want to hire new people if there is too much uncertainity regarding where the economy is headed. So while it definitely helps to see green on my portfolio and it is also rewarding to know that people who are looking for jobs are able to find jobs to support their families and send their kids to school.

People are saying if somehow DOW can get back to 11,000 range, we can sit back and enjoy the ride all the way out to the promised land. Lets sit tight for trading session to see where we are headed

So Apple reported their earnings on Tuesday night on 7/20. Highest ever earnings reported by Apple. Apple rose almost 20$ within a matter of 1 day and then during the day entire market decided to take a U turn. Apple could not contain its gain during After hours trading. Apple however did move up from its last close on Tuesday right before earnings. So is that good sign or a bad sign? No one really knows. Technical traders will out claiming one thing, fundamentalists will tell you another thing, Apple lovers will describe a whole another story.

Best way to trade any stock is usually based on your guts. You have to gather info from various sources and then call the shots yourself.

Lets look at what major factors Apple has currently:

Positives about Apple during Q3

1. Record sales for iPad & iPhone
2. Upbeat market sentiment about $aapl after earnings
3. Superior products
4. Steve Jobs did an awesome job by retaining Apple lovers by admitting to slight problems with very limited number of iPhone 4.
5. Continued research into product improvement
6. New product line up – This is unannounced as of right now. This will unfold in near future on its own
7. Potential Introduction of iPhone with other careers like Verizon & T-Mobile
8. Launch of Apple products in other countries

and the list goes on and on and ……

Negatives about Apple during Q3

1. Consumer Reports claim about Antenna problem with iPhone 4: Well as Apple has reported, problem is limited to very few people. Less than 1 percent of total iPhone 4 owners. So this probably not a such a huge deal
2. Apple has become too big. Now its time for others to try to bring Apple down. There will be several companies conspiring. If Apple is truly Amazing, it will come out even stronger. If $aapl breaks 273-275 range, it appears it might soar to 330$ very soon. It will be fun ride thats for sure.
3. Overall economic conditions: Well no one can do anything about that. But can you really stop a company expanding 78% year over year from reaching new highs every day, every month?

4 day week following July 4th proved to be a strong one after market gave in to bears for 10 trading sessions. Weak job market, continued European debt crisis seem to have done the trick during the trading sessions when everything looked bad. But last week seemed like bulls are back, they seem to have taken over the market. Death cross was observed by analysts and much bigger drop was predicted. However that does not seem right anymore.

Now that the second quarter is finished, a big focus is going to be on the earnings by various companies. Everyone is going to be watching these announcements. As we have seen from various reports such as Jobless claims etc, it does seem like recovery is slowing down. That is not necessarily a bad thing in my honest opinion. Expecting a steep recovery was like fool’s dream come true. Road to recovery is always bumpy and it takes a while for the jobs to get created. That is because of the uncertainty in the economy.

Bottom line is next few weeks are going to be very interesting given all the earnings. I am going to keep plenty of cash available to jump on the train on either side. But right now, I am sitting on the sidelines.

Its very depressing to see your portfolio in red every day five times a week! Obvious question in everyone’s mind right now is what to do! People have the tendency. There are several ways to make money in a bear market, some of them are listed below:

Short stocks: Shorting can be very profitable in a bear market like this. However keep in mind to be vigilant. You need to always remember that MOST people lose money in trading, specially in their first year of trading. So if you decide to short a stock, be sure to keep an eye on the stock price on a regular basis. One good news is all it takes for the market to rally. If you see signs of bounce play, thats a sign for you to check out!

Invest in Reverse ETFs: These ETFs are inverse of the popular stock indexes. Shares of these ETFs are traded just like any other share. SDS is a very popular reverse index ETF to look at. Its actually double inverse of S&P 500. So it doubles the drop in the S&P for you. You can make really good money if you play it carefully. Again remember, market is for losers!

Buy at dips, sell on news: Thats the old tested techniques. Buy after a stock with good fundamentals has dropped in few sessions and see on the immediate bounce. Do NOT hold stocks for too long when market is volatile.

Cash is the king: Be sure to keep some cash in your account so that you can use it when the unexpected happens and you have a lifetime opportunity to go “all in”!

After almost a month of bear market, it seems like we are heading towards the green land again. No blood on the street does look awesome. However investors are still being very careful. Job loss claims seem to be rising once again; that could be an indication of economical growth slowing down again!

Europe seems to be coming together with Spain being able to pay their debt on time. BP’s fate has been decided after them depositing 20B USD in escrow account. There is a good chance that BP will get bought over by a large oil firm. Their stock has gone down almost 50% in past few weeks, which does not reflect nicely on their cash position either after cutting out the scheduled dividend.

There might be some more sell off planned for next few trading days but overall market sentiment seems to be good. That is purely based upon strong US economy indicators such as retail sales.

Lets keep cash in the account to take advantage of any unforeseen dips in the market! Be sure to chase the solid stocks with promising EPS. This is the time for strong companies to become even more stronger.

Per Wiki, Binary Options Trading can be defined using following definition:

In finance, a binary option is a type of option where the payoff is either some fixed amount of some asset or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The cash-or-nothing binary option pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the asset-or-nothing pays the value of the underlying security. Thus, the options are binary in nature because there are only two possible outcomes. They are also called all-or-nothing options, digital options(more common in forex/interest rate markets), and Fixed Return Options (FROs) (on the American Stock Exchange).

Source: Learn Binary Options

CompareBroker team has decided to dedicate some time researching and producing educational material about Binary Options Trading. Lot of people think binary options is scam which is not really the case. If you are seriously interested in trading, you will know binary options is a very popular form of trading. Just like everything else, it comes with its own pros and cons. So as a trader, you need to pick your own battles and decide if this is for you or not. Anyways I am going to write a series of articles discussing Binary Options, various aspects to it. Given the speculative nature of this trading, I went ahead and wrote an article about risks associated with this form of options trading. The post is featured on main site, please visit using following link:

Risks Associated with Binary Options Trading

TD Ameritrade has once again come in my way, very annoying! It is not letting me buy options for BP!

Damn you TD Ameritrade! It keeps saying system unavailable!

With Asian Markets shooting up in early trading, can we expect some quick respite from the free fall that we experienced in the past two trading sessions? At the time of writing this article, Nikkei 225 is trading 19.66 points up which is 0.21% up. BSE Sensex is 81.03 or 0.48% up. That is definitely a bullish sign.

However I would not start pumping money just yet. What happened in the US market in the past two sessions is alarmingly scary! On Friday markets fell on the news of weak hiring in May. Monday morning markets opened slightly up but then towards the end of the day, markets dipped into red zone. That has been a pattern of late. Many investors have recognized that pattern and they secure their profits in the early trading and sell off in the afternoon if the market shows bear signs. That in turn has been driving the markets even more.

European crisis are supposedly the biggest culprit in driving the markets down. I am sure US investors would let Europe sort out their own problems. However the media is not allowing people to focus on the right source of info. US has been showing signs of improved economy, however due to media instilling fear in people, markets are not able to find a solid support!

I am about 40% cash right now and depending on the market direction, I might get in sometime this week or next week. But I feel media is too doing too much damage to investors’ confidence by publicizing negative reports every day! So its better to stay off the front line and watch the fire drill.