Tag: Loss

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How Can an Investor Read The Future?


Investing is not only an intellectual enterprise. It challenges all dimensions of an investor’s personality and character. That’s why it is an inner job, before it manifests in the outer.

Nonetheless, an investor is not a fortuneteller, a speculator, or a gambler. He or she sees the activity as a business, which is prone to loss and profit, rise and demise.

Human beings are bound by the laws of cause and effect, and governed by the flow of time. Is that so? We tend to “like” to surrender to such determinism because our minds need to find closure on everything. Without such “unconscious” obedience to these laws, without time, the mind gets lost.

Within each and every one of us is a potential greater than the mind. Tapping into that potential requires awareness and inner work. You may start by paying attention to the mind’s ceaseless thinking, and train yourself to be an observer, not a participant in the thousands of thoughts the mind conjures up everyday! You can reach a stage where you “choose” what serves you and add value to your life, while releasing that which confuses or troubles you.

The mind can’t stop working. This is a blessing. Nevertheless, it could turn into a curse when the mind starts using us to “entertain” itself, especially as it finds itself “free”. Keep it busy with something suitable to its nature, and useful to you and to the world around you. Apart from that, practice the art of “un-participation”. You are not your mind!

Here you might say: I’m confused! Are you telling me to be mindless?

Not at all. I’m asking you to be “mindful”. To be the master of your mind not its slave. There is a huge difference between the two worlds.

How is all of that related to investing? Surprisingly a lot!

When you become in command of your mind, and hence your life, all your activities start flowing effortlessly. You bypass the mind’s resistance to the new in favor of the old and familiar.

That leads to a very important fact, which sets the stage for the rest of this discussion: History does not repeat itself! Each and every moment is independent and new, and it may surprise you.

Does that make me read the future? You might ask.

Not literally. However, it advances you light years ahead in your ability to engage the moments while they unfold, which is, in my humble opinion, better than reading the future.

As you rid yourself of a troubling past, and be fully present here and now, you become “aligned” with true universal principles. Time becomes your friend. Cause and effect your servants. You are no longer asleep, spiritually. You start to “see”. You begin to “know” without thinking. You step into a new realm that has already been within you, but now you’re “awake” to its existence and brilliance.

From this new foundation, your investment decisions (and all your decisions) will change, for the better. You have on your side the best advisor ever, you! The real you…

This can only be proven through direct experience. Do not believe any of the above, but try it and practice it, honestly.

After all, whose life and whose money are we talking about? Doesn’t that deserve exploring something new? Haven’t we had enough of resigning to the old, only because it is familiar? And we all know, too well, that “familiar” does not equate to “successful”. Most of the time, it leads to the opposite.

Any breakthrough, throughout human history, has come about by challenging habitual thinking and exploring the frontiers that laid dormant behind the mind.

Gravity isn’t only physical!

The Wealth Maker

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Online Investment – Binary Options


 

Binary Options (BO) trading is probably the furthest from Value Investing (VI), when it comes to investment fundamentals. While in VI we focus on the business behind the symbol, A BO trader is almost completely concerned with current price movements. Some BO platforms offer options with a 15-minute life span!

BO is a relatively new version of day trading. Most BO transactions finish within an hour. Recently, some platforms started giving the trader the option to choose longer expiration periods.

The basic concept behind BO trading is to “predict” if the “asset’s” price is going to move up or down relative to the entry price.

Here’s an example: Let’s assume the trader is interested in crude oil’s price movements. The trading platform offers crude as one of the available BO assets. The trader needs to have some funds in his or her account in order to trade. The minimum amount per BO trade varies from one platform to another. Usually between $10 and $50.

Let’s say the platform in this example requires $30 to trade one BO asset. The trader selects crude, enters the minimum trading value, which is $30, then he or she has to decide, or “predict”, whether crude price will go up or down from the current price, say at the top of the hour.

From looking at the charts; trying to forecast price movement trends, reading the latest news, and using his/her best judgement and “gut feeling”, the trader decides to choose the “UP” option. Once he hits “Buy” or “Submit”, the platform registers the price at which the trader “entered” the trade. Let’s say the price was $91.5 per barrel, and the entry time was 10:15 AM.

The trader can either wait, or look for other trades, if he or she still has funds in his/her trading account (because the $30 for the crude trade has already been deducted from the available trading balance).

Now let’s fast forward to 11:00 AM. It’s the time when the BO trade expires. If the price was above 91.5, say 91.51, or more, then the transaction is said to be “In the Money”, and the trader would gain a percentage on top of the original $30. That percentage ranges between 70% and 85%. Let’s use 80%. This means: 30 *1.8 = $54, would be returned to the trader’s BO account balance, with a net profit of $24.

On the other hand, if the price was below the entry price at the expiration (11:00 AM in our example), say 91.49, or less, the transaction is said to be “Out of the Money”. The trader would lose the trading deposit ($30), but some platforms return between 5% to 15% to the account balance. If the trader had started with a balance of $100, he or she would end up with $74.5 (assuming the returned percentage was 15%).

In rare cases, the transaction expires “At the Money”, which is exactly $91.5. In that case, the trader gets back the $30, without any gain or loss.

From the above example, we can see why this kind of short-term investment is called binary. Because it has only two possible outcomes at the expiry of the trading transaction.

BO trading is stressful. Although the potential of making huge returns rapidly is obviously there, so many traders lose all their capital, especially when they get emotional, and try to retaliate, by investing even more to recover their loses.

There is also a factor of luck, and another of speculation here. That’s why experienced traders enter several transactions simultaneously, with the hope that more than half of the trades would end in the money.

Another aspect of BO trading is its heavy reliance on technical analysis. If you lack that skill, the process becomes closer to gambling than trading.

Most, if not all, BO platforms require a minimum deposit of $100, or more, just to start trading (this is different from the amount required per trade). They also run strict verification procedures, before a trader can withdraw any profits, especially if the platform was regulated.

Before engaging in this risky investment, you should research the provider (the BO platform) extensively. Read the FAQ. Evaluate your technical analysis capability, and only use money which you’re prepared to lose! Never use your milk or bread money…

I strongly suggest that if you’re a novice trader, you should steer away from BO trading.

All the best,

The Wealth Maker