For years, the "selling short against the box" technique allowed you to lock-in capital gains you currently have, but report them in the subsequent year. It was a frequent practice in December up until the late 1990s. There are still ways to make this work, however. With the currently widely divergent outlooks for 2010 and such strong market gains in 2009, many investors may be interested in selling short against the box. Some risks are involved, however... The time period from Memorial Day to Labor Day is what is referred to as the "summer doldrums." More often than not, this is when the market goes through a corrective or consolidation phase full of plenty of "whipsaw-ish" activity. It is not a cliché that the summer months are bad for the stock market -- it is a fact. The old adage "sell in May and go away" is not just a cute aphorism but is... Down or flat markets can be frustrating for most investors. The longer these corrective or churning phases grind on, the more natural it is to step away or "tune out" until the market becomes more constructive. Yet if history is any guide, these difficult periods represent extraordinary opportunity for growth investors who know what to look for. In short, the price action you see in... Selling covered calls is another way to take advantage of a slow or down market. The tactic is particularly useful when you already have a position in a stock you intend to hold for some time (at least longer than you expect the market down trend to be). Selling covered calls can take the sting out of the paper losses you must endure while continuing to hold the stock... In my time as an active market participant the past fifteen years, I have developed two distinct styles: one is that of intraday trader; the other is as a yield-focused investor/speculator. The trader role requires constantly being in front of the market, applying fundamental and technical analysts and keeping on top of a variety of industry groups. The yield side of things mostly requires... At the moment, the IPO market is facing stiff headwinds, causing the flow of new deals to dry up. In fact, there were no new IPOs for a month following Facebook's (FB) massively disappointing IPO on May 18, with just a few deals pricing in the past week. Instead of opening the door for more IPOs -- which many had expected would be the case -- Facebook's IPO has had the... The "Summer Doldrums" is commonly referred to on Wall Street as the timeframe between Memorial Day (May) and Labor Day (September) of each year. It has historically developed enough of a reputation for being a period of corrective activity for the majority of stocks, so much so, that investors will want to consider either raising cash or taking on a more risk-averse approach... High-dividend, high-quality stocks could provide relative security during what is shaping up to be another turbulent summer for the stock market. The Dogs of the Dow fit this description and frequently outperform when the stock market struggles. That was the case last year and again in May of this year. Risk-averse investors may want to consider these stocks for the intermediate term... Stop loss orders are some of the best techniques available to investors. But make sure you know the difference between a STOP and STOP LIMIT order. When you already have a position, you can place a "stop loss" order. These are standing instructions, with a time line, which direct your broker to sell your... Briefing.com utilizes custom tickers for our Live In Play® page to make it easier to search, set alerts for, and follow a specific investing or trading style. In this article we highlight Beta Trader - BETAX, authored by equity analyst Jon Henninger, who provides price-based technical setups and specific trading recommendations. BETAX coverage can be found on our Briefing... Briefing.com utilizes custom tickers for our Live In Play® page to make it easier to search, set alerts for, and follow a specific investing or trading style. In this article we highlight Blue Chip Trader - BLUEX, authored by senior technical analyst Scott Smith, who provides technical commentary on large-cap, high-volume stocks and includes specific trading recommendations. BLUEX coverage can be found on our... Briefing.com utilizes custom tickers for our Live In Play® page to make it easier to search, set alerts for, and follow a specific investing or trading style. In this article we highlight Chart Trader - CHART, authored by senior market analyst Brett Manning, who provides technical and sentiment commentary on market and macro events and also provides trading calls with a top-down, inter-market focus. CHART coverage can be... Briefing.com utilizes custom tickers for our Live In Play® page to make it easier to search, set alerts for, and follow a specific investing or trading style. In this article we highlight Scalp Trader - SCALP, authored by Chief Market Strategist Damon Southward, who provides special situations and industry relative value commentary and includes intra-day setups and... Margin is borrowing money from your brokerage house for the purpose of purchasing additional stock. How much money you can borrow depends upon how much marginable equity you have in the account. Once you purchase stock using your margin, the amount you owe is fixed and accrues interest. As long as the... With a volatile market, a fear on everyone's mind is committing new money to the market. The worry is that what you invest today may lose 5% or 10% if the market declines. How can you avoid this, but still commit money to the stock market? One possible approach to limiting downside risk is to buy a put option at the same time you purchase ... The emotional side of trading is often ignored, yet it is a critical part of being a successful trader. Whereas long-term investors can actually forget about their positions at times, traders must stay aware. Today's Stock Brief focuses on the attitudes in the middle of a trade, when you've taken a position but have not closed it yet... The secret to successful investing is learning your own style: meaning what works for you. There is no "correct" approach that everyone should learn. However, everyone needs to learn how much risk they can comfortably handle. It is the single most important investment issue for long term success in the market... What's a good stock to buy? For an investment premise purchase, there are always two parts to this question: 1) the company's business prospects 2) the price. Unfortunately, many investors neglect the second part of the question. Stocks can be purchased for a variety of reasons. But an investment premise, which is a desire to... What do you do when a stock you own, or want to own, suddenly becomes disconnected? It's very important in this market to clearly understand whether a stock's price movement is being driven by momentum players, or by investment players. If you step into a stock using the wrong premise, you may find yourself wondering what happened to your money a month later... If you think that all stocks can be characterized as BUY, SELL, or HOLD, you are short-changing yourself. PASS is a legitimate category, and it is frequently the end result of stock research. Whenever you research a stock, the goal is to find "the perfect investment." The definition of the perfect investment, of course, differs... If you think that a target price means the price at which you sell, you're wrong. Target prices are used as the next milestone for measurement as a company grows. To understand how to use target prices, you should first understand how they are created. The logic behind creating a target price is not complicated. Choosing the right numbers to plug into... For short-term trading, volatility can provide opportunity. However, volatility also means that short-term plans sometimes go awry. Today, Briefing.com offers a few thoughts on the emotional side of investing in a volatile market. Anytime you look at overall returns for a particular stock, or the market, it's natural to make the following kind of mental... Everybody makes mistakes investing, no matter how much experience you have. But there are certain common mistakes that beginners make that don't seem like mistakes at first. Here are just three of them. Not everything you buy goes up immediately. But while the reluctance to take a loss is common to everyone, the desire... When the markets are volatile, it may be a good time to reflect on how you're doing with your investments. With that in mind, here are three brief tips for you to ponder. Many investors simply look for "a good stock" in which to invest. But. this is often a poor way to approach an investment, because it tends to blur two very different concepts... Ever buy a stock and have it go down immediately? Leaving your purchase as the high price for the day? Eventually, it happens to everyone. But not everyone reacts the same way. Here are some thoughts. How you react to an immediate decline in the stock price says something about... Almost everyone focuses on what to buy. But "when to sell" is the equally important other half of investing. Here are eight Brief thoughts on "when to sell." A perfectly valid reason to sell stocks is "needing the money." There are as many reasons to need money as there are people, of course. The problem, however, is when your need comes at a time... No one invests correctly all the time. But what do you do when you are wrong? Here are some thoughts about what to do when you have a position and, for whatever reason, you start wishing you didn't. When things haven't worked out like you originally planned, the first thing to do is check your thesis... Sometimes you just have to sell some shares to get money out of your investment account. When that happens, it's very different from a sale based upon your decision that a stock has reached its maximum value. Here are some thoughts to bear in mind, when you have to sell... One of the hardest aspects of investing is losing money. But there isn't any way to avoid it. Stick around long enough, take enough positions, and you will lose money. Plus, there are multiple ways to lose. How you deal with loss is important. Capital loss is what most people think of when they... An investment tactic is an actual routine or practice that you follow, in order to make the "buy" decision. It differs from a strategy, which is a broader approach (buy stocks in booming markets, for example.) As an example in a June 22, 2000 Stock Brief, we gave the... Technical analysis (TA) is the interpretation of data present in stock charts. Although the basic assumption of future price movements being dependent on past price movement is never certain, many traders use TA as their primary means of making tactical buy and sell decisions... Recently, we asked for some of your experiences with investing, both good and bad. There were literally hundreds of responses, with numerous informative and instructive stories. We are grateful to all of you who wrote in, and we thank you for the time you spent. We only wish we could publish them all. In the meantime... Recently, we published the experiences of readers who had stories in the "I Struck It Rich" category. This time, we have some stories from the other side of investing, the "I Got Creamed" category. Most of us will recognize some portion of ourselves in each of these stories... When Briefing.com asked readers to submit stories of their own investing experiences one reader submitted a story of how his account grew from $89,000 to $865,000 in 1999. This reader, who asked to be identified as "King Midas," sent us his entire trading history for verification. We analyzed it to help you understand what it takes to get these kinds of returns. Here's what we learned... Not long ago, Briefing.com listed a few of the "emotional" mishaps that every investor sometimes suffers. We also asked readers to share with us some of their own mishaps. We received far more responses than we expected. Here are some samples. To protect the innocent, we have omitted all names. But, in truth, any of these stories could have happened to any of...