So this post will be a quick ‘n dirty ETF Guide for you.  Let’s get started.

ETFs are like mutual funds, so the pool of investment risk is shared by many people. However, they are traded just like stocks, and thus certain advantages that stocks have over mutual funds such as allowing investors to collect dividends, do intraday trading, and pay stock broker commissions instead of high management fees. Also, ETFs are used for “passive management” investment strategies, notably the ETF Wrap, where all invested monies are in ETFs, allowing an investor to have an “autopilot” investment strategy that uses indices instead of relying on the fallibility of active trading.

But, it is important that the fundamentals of ETF investing be observed. Just because there is an automated aspect at the core of this strategy, that’s not to say that you don’t have to know what you are doing for making the strategy work. You will have to begin with figuring out the right allocation of your funds first.

*What is your investment objective, and how would ETFs fit in with all of your financial plans to help you achieve it?

*What is your risk tolerance?

*How much, in general, are you looking to make?

*What’s your investment horizon? Do you need to make more money faster or do you have plenty of time?

*Do you need to use the ETFs to make a steady income?

*The riskier the investment, the greater the potential rewards. This means that “value stocks” outperform “growth stocks”, but they need sufficient time in which to do that as they are more volatile in the shorter term. The very same thing holds true for “small caps stocks” vs. “large cap stocks”.

Next, you must consider your trading and investment strategy carefully. But, with ETFs, there are just two basic, elemental things that go into this strategy, once you know how you must allocate your funds.

*Choose the ETFs that would be the best at meeting your financial and investment objectives.

*Choose those from among them that have the best expense ratio prices.

Finally, once you are in your ETFs:

*Monitor their performance. Do this at least once a year, but don’t overdo it or else you may worry yourself needlessly and make dumb choices.

*Don’t make any changes too hastily. The markets are going to fluctuate. Just monitor how your allocations are doing in the long run.

*Re-balance your portfolio once per year so that your allocations remain true to your original financial plans and strategy.

*If your goals or personal situation have changed, re-assess your portfolio and make needed changes.

ETFs are working well for a great many people. You could be the next one of them.

Learn how you can earn 6% monthly returns in just 5-10 minutes a night with ETFs

By “trend” we mean that the stock is moving in a particular direction without much back-and-forth (that is, up-and-down) movement. A trend trader is assuming that the stock in question is going to continue in its particular direction for a significant enough amount of time to make it worthwhile to invest in that momentum and profit from it.

What that significant time frame is all depends on the trader in question. In fact, that time frame can be as short as, say, 15 minutes or as long as a few months. But however long his chosen time horizon is, the trend trader will remain in the position he opened until he feels that the stock has reached its resistance and is about to reverse its trending. He then closes his position and takes profits.

Clearly, the great risk with trending trading is that the wrong assumption has been made. This would mean that the stock is not going to continue in its particular direction, at least not for a significant amount of time. If there is too much volatility, it can be hard to read a trend, or easy to misread one (see one that doesn’t exist).

Trend trading is one of the most widely used of all stock and options trading strategies. Institutional fund managers routinely use it to try to get the biggest gains for their clients (and the biggest fees or commissions for themselves at the same time). The most commonly used tool for trying to spot these trends is the A-D Index, or the Advance-Decline Index. The A-D Index represents the total of the difference between the number of advancing securities and the number of declining securities. The simple formula that is used to calculate it is:

(Advances – Declines) + Previous Advance/Decline Index Value

An “advance” simply means that a stock has ended the last trading session up for that session, while a “decline” is the opposite. Traders follow these sessions and how they ended up by plotting an A-D chart, and this creates an “Advance/Decline Line”. In this way, they seek to avoid being taken in by any day-to-day market mood swings–either too much greedy enthusiasm or too much unwarranted fear.

It’s pretty easy to interpret the A-D Index or Line:

*Market down but A-D up means strong uptrend
*Market down plus A-D down means weak uptrend
*Market down plus A-D down means strong downtrend
*Market down but A-D up means weak downtrend

So, trend trading is a way of seeking to make money from a rational approach to an irrational environment. Other people create the trends, and then as the trader you simply leverage them for your gain.

Learn how you can get 6% gains each month in just 5-10 minutes a night taking advantage of trends and ETF Trend Trading.