Beginners

 How Do I Know If This Stock Move Was Just Noise Or Something Bigger? You just saw a stock increase in value by 5%. That sounds exciting, does it not? Before you rush to buy-in, there is an important number you should know: the volume. The volume tells you how many shares were traded during a certain time period. In other words, the volume tells you the difference between a legitimate price change and a false or “noise” price change. Understanding the volume has helped me to stay away from chasing after “fake breakouts,” and also given me more faith in my trades. ...

 You bought a stock at $150. It is now trading at $180, putting you up 20%. Every trader faces this question: do you sell now and take the profit, or hold and hope it goes higher? Selling too early means missing potential gains. Holding too long means watching profits disappear. There is a third option: lock in your profits while still giving the stock room to run. The Problem with “Just Selling” When a stock is up, selling feels like the safe choice. But here is what often happens: ...

 When I started trading, I made decisions based on feelings. A stock looked interesting. Someone mentioned it on social media. The chart seemed to be going up. I bought. Sometimes I won. Often I lost. I never really understood why. The problem was not a lack of research. The problem was inconsistency. I had no repeatable process. Every decision was different, driven by whatever information happened to cross my path that day. ...

 Technical indicators can be confusing. At first, I had a lot to learn. I learned about many different indicators; such as EMAs, SMAs, RSI, MACD, etc. To begin, I wanted an easy way to get into technical indicators that made sense. This is when I came across the 100-month Simple Moving Average. What is the 100-month SMA? It is just what it sounds like; the average closing price for the last 100 months. There are no weighted factors and there is no complex formula to follow. To find the average closing price simply take the last 100 month closing prices and divide by 100. ...