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Day Trading 101: When you start trading, you need a strategy. And part of that strategy will include the timeframe that you use on your trades. Obviously, your time frame for day trading is less than a day.

Popular intraday time frames are 60 minutes, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, and 1 minute.

If you choose a smaller time frame (less than 60 minutes), your average profit per trade will usually be relatively small. On the other hand, you get more trading opportunities. When you trade in a larger timeframe, your average profit per trade is greater, but you have fewer trading opportunities.

Smaller time windows mean smaller wins, but usually also less risk. If you’re starting out with a small trading account, you may want to choose a small time frame to make sure you don’t overwhelm your account.

However, if you choose a very small time frame like 1 minute, 3 minutes, or 5 minutes, you can experience a lot of “noise” caused by hedge funds, scalpers, and automated trading.

You might think that you are seeing a trend emerging only to realize that it was only a brief manipulated move and that the trend will be over as soon as you enter the market.

So I recommend using 15 minute charts. This timeframe is small enough to capture the nice intraday moves, but it is large enough to eliminate the market noise and correctly display the “true trends”.

When developing a trading strategy, you should always experiment with different time frames. A trading strategy that doesn’t work in a small time frame can work in a larger time frame, and vice versa.

Start developing your trading strategy with 15 minute charts, and if you are not happy with the results, change the time frame first before changing the entry or exit rules.

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Source by Markus Heitkoetter

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Do you like to save as much as you do camping with your motorhome? Nowadays it seems like almost everyone is looking for more value in goods and services, such as handy retractable card holders. From supermarket coupons to free emails, we’re constantly finding ways to save a penny here and there. Saving money on unnecessary expenses frees up money for other things. While an RV is one of the greatest investments we can make, the options we can save when camping with our RVs are almost limitless. Here are some tips to save some extra money on your next RV camping vacation:

1. Get an economical motor home. While an RV is an excellent investment, it becomes useless if you don’t have funds to spend on the necessary RV camping equipment, including stoves, coolers, chairs and tables, lanterns, and plastic badge rolls. You could be camping in a huge, luxury RV, but can you have fun with a used or new inexpensive RV too? Yes, and that frees up more funds for RV camping equipment.

2. Reason for the region. Certain regions in the US and Canada have specials that you can enjoy while camping in your RV.

3. Reduce camping costs. When you are camping with your RV, commercial campsites can take a big bite out of your wallet. Find better deals at RV campsites that are supported by cities, counties, states, and national governments. You can even find some places where you can park for free for one or more nights!

4. Supermarkets can be super expensive. Not only can you save money by shopping in locations other than the supermarket, but sometimes the food is fresher too. Try the following places for great food ingredient deals:

o canning factories
o Charity bazaars
o discount stores
o dollar stores
o Flea markets
o Fruit and vegetable stalls on the roadside
o Self-service orchards
o Thrift bakeries

5. Never eat out of your home or RV. There are several ways you can save money on meals when you eat out during your RV camping trip. You can eat out for lunch instead of dinner. Eat meals in diners instead of large chain restaurants. You can also take advantage of early bird specials and 2-for-1 coupons.

Probably the most economical way to save money while eating is to prepare your own meals. Buying the ingredients direct and then cooking them on your Coleman camping stove or grill can save you a lot of money. And you never have to settle for canned pork and beans at every meal! There are several excellent cookbooks available for camping.

6. Defeat the crowd. Typically, before and after peak season, you can make huge savings on RV parks, campsites, theme parks, etc. While weather conditions may not be perfect at these times of the year, they are tolerable, so RV camping trips remain as convenient year round as using Plastic Badge Reels. Plus, off-season camping can help you avoid large crowds and long lines at various attractions.

7. Do it yourself. Several books and websites can offer excellent advice on basic repairs for your RV.

8. Save more when you stay longer. Some RV sites and campsites offer huge discounts if you stay there longer.

If you want to enjoy an RV camping trip on a budget, you can. Following a few basic guidelines can make the trip easy on our wallets and still be as enjoyable as using Heavy Duty Badge Reels. Being frugal on your RV camping trip doesn’t mean you are “cheap”. That means you have cash left over for your next RV camping trip!

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Source by Rachel Nunez

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Index services have dominated the investment markets for some time. People who have a penchant for diversity when investing venture into thematic investing. Here is the highlight on the importance of thematic investing.

It’s an intuitive investment

This means that instead of venturing your hard-earned money into something unknown, you can invest in the ideas and trends that you know well and that you find exciting. Knowing this well can give you the opportunity to make the smart investment decision. If you do your own research, this makes your position comparatively strong. It improves your ability to customize your portfolio. You can invest in areas that interest you, such as real estate, travel, and healthcare.

You can align your values

Here you have the opportunity to align the values ​​that you consider important in your investment. You can simply invest in areas that you are passionate about or that are primarily socially responsible. With your investment you can simply make the world a better place to live.

You have a huge selection

There are companies that, if you wish, will present you with a well-prepared portfolio. On the contrary, you have the option of creating a portfolio for yourself. There are a wide variety of mutual funds available to you as an investor.

Helps generate alpha

Thematic investing is the best way to get the chance to generate alpha. By implying that you will focus your investments in the hotspots where you can distribute the considerable amount of your capital, you can easily generate the alpha. You can make a decision yourself by simply analyzing the other portfolios.

Gives you flexibility and transparency

By simply creating your own portfolios, you open the gates to great opportunity. The ability to customize your portfolio is a huge advantage in itself. In addition to transparency with no hidden costs, all you need is good visibility and control. You get the clarity of your fraction as well as the penny.

It’s easily accessible

Gone are the days when only a limited group of people had access to thematic investing, as the portfolio structures were not only expensive, but also restrictive and complex, which took a long time to maintain. Most of them were available to wealthy investors. Today it is not as it has grown in popularity and is accessible to investors of all categories.

All in all, this is the importance of thematic investing. If you haven’t pushed the limits of the same, it is high time you did the same.

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Source by Kelly Sanchez

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When did an ethical and sustainable investment strategy become a serious consideration for shareholders, investors and asset managers?

The global investment focus of shareholders, investors and investment managers is shifting. We are currently seeing wealth being transferred to millennials, environmental disasters, costs and risks increasing, and the performance of operations being improved through sustainable practices.

The importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investment decisions, as the Boston Consulting Group in their recent article “Investors Care More About Sustainability Than Many Executives Believe That 75% of Investment Firm Managers are ESG” factors as essential for your investment decision. The discrepancy is evident that only 60% of companies have a sustainability strategy and only 25% have developed a clear business case for sustainability.[1]

ESG encompasses a wide variety of effects on the risk and return values ​​of an investment. These issues can be related to regulatory changes, business ethics, or a direct impact on financial, operational, strategic, or reputational risk. Examples of such risks are:

Environment: natural resources, waste, climate change, pollution and clean technologies.

Social: health and safety, local community, human rights and human resources.

Governance: compliance, regulation, reporting, conflicts of interest at employee, shareholder or board level.

The transition from purely fundamental investment approaches to taking into account the medium to long-term impact of our business decisions in the environmental, social and governance areas will affect the market from small to medium-sized companies, suppliers, manufacturers, supply chains, agribusiness, healthcare, large corporations, to listed companies up to towards multinational corporations. Investment and capital flows drive our economies, and the complex ecosystem of the global economy understands the value of a sustainable ESG strategy where they want to put their funds.

The Australian market usually has difficulty coming to terms with the assessment of environmental, social and governance business policies and often does not consider them to be cost effective. ESG reporting in Australia has not been a critical process for public companies until recently, and investment in internal ESG risk mitigation strategy is minimal.

The range of environmental impacts on businesses and their operations can vary significantly, and some organizations are better able to make better use of them than others. Quantifying environmental risks is a difficult process in terms of monetary value, but the transition to a low-carbon economy is a major driving force. Achieving a low carbon economy requires investment in improving operational efficiency in energy, waste and water use through the use of clean technologies.

Social impact and risk require an analysis of the intangibles of a company that cannot be found on the balance sheet, such as culture, employee productivity, customer relationships, health and safety, community engagement and sustainable supply chains. Social business decisions are often associated with ethical issues related to profits. While not often having a direct impact on company performance, social affairs and ethics are an important process in modern business practice.

External analyzes of business governance processes can also present challenges. Company behavior, decision-making, and policies require extensive reporting from public companies, which is usually packaged in large amounts of data. A clear example of governance risks was Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal in 2015. The EY report Tomorrow’s Investment Rules: How global institutional investors are use ESG to information decisionmaking in 2015 (2015) mentions that “almost two thirds of respondents believe “that companies do not adequately disclose ESG risks.”[2]

Harvard Sustainability Review (2012) conducted a head-to-head comparison between high sustainability and low sustainability organizations of similar size, activity and sector. ‘In particular, we have been tracking corporate performance for the past 18 years and have found that companies with high sustainability outperform companies with low sustainability in terms of both stock markets and accounting.[3]

The ability to improve ESG performance is critical for both public and private companies. Investing in sustainable practices improves long-term results, mitigates risk and is an important part of business today. Although investor-driven, companies need to understand the importance of comprehensive ESG reporting, develop a sustainable strategy, and build an ethical business culture. The educated, ethical investor and consumer of the 21st century is there and values ​​sustainability.

[1] Unruh, Kiron, Kruschwitz, Reeves, Rubel, Meyer Zum Felde, GU, DK, NK, MR, HR, AF, 2016.Investors attach more importance to sustainability than many executives believe. 1st edition Global: Boston Consulting Group.

[2] Bell, Gordon, MB, JG, 2015. The Investment Rules of Tomorrow: How Global Institutional Investors Use ESG for Decision Making in 2015. 1st edition Global: Ernst and Young.

[3] Eccles, Ioannou, Serafeim, REIIGS, 2012. The influence of corporate sustainability on organizational processes and performance. 1st edition USA: Harvard Business School.

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Source by James Cronan

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Once you have completed Level I (Tackle Bad Debt) in the game of Financial Freedom, move on to Level II – Retirement Planning. There are a number of things to consider when designing your pension plan successfully. At this stage we only cover the accumulation portion of pension planning, not the distribution phase (which happens when you retire). When creating your retirement plan, start with three main factors: Determine your goals, the number of years remaining until retirement, and your risk tolerance. The goal of this initial process is to establish the average glide path of how contributions and appreciation add up to enough money that you can convert into income upon retirement.

When I opened a retirement account it was 1998 and I believe Roth IRAs had only just been formed. So I went through the whole process with a financial advisor who was also my neighbor. I wanted to retire at 65, I wanted $ 3 million, and I was high risk tolerance. I’ve always assumed that any chance of big win requires high risk. I don’t think so anymore! When the “dotcom” bubble burst in 2000, I had a new sense of my “high risk tolerance”. After paying all of the brokerage fees, I’ve lost about 50% of my investment this year. Because of this loss, I was forced to re-evaluate, which meant high risk tolerance. Since then, I’ve learned that you don’t have to take high risk to get good, consistent returns. In fact, it’s probably better not to.

Many people don’t seem to get satisfactory answers to these 3 planning questions. So I would say that the main point in determining your goal, time horizon, and risk tolerance is determining the asset allocation of your portfolio. Your asset allocation is the percentage mix of different asset classes (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) that you target. Higher risk tolerances enable higher volatility. Since stocks are more volatile than real estate and bonds, a higher risk tolerance would build a portfolio with a higher equity component. Lower risk tolerances are intended to reduce volatility and are therefore aimed at more fixed-income securities in the asset allocation.

How does asset allocation work? It works two ways. One option is diversification. Because asset classes react differently to the changing environment, diversification over time leads to better results with less volatility. Why this? All investments are influenced by 4 main factors:

1) Raw material prices as input prices, especially oil,

2) Interest rates as borrowing costs,

3) Inflation (or deflation) as a combination of federal policy, monetary policy and general pricing, and finally

4) the economy in terms of growth (business and economy).

Investments are influenced by the nominal numbers for each of these 4 factors as well as the rate of change. For example, you can have low interest rates, but if those interest rates suddenly rise rapidly, the market will devalue that change. The rate of change can have a major impact on market pricing and volatility. Remember, the ultimate goal is that the market is a future discount to profits, and any big change in any of these four areas will have a big impact on the calculation.

The second way that asset allocation works is through “realignment”. The realignment enables a systematic process of buying low and selling high. If you rebalance your wealth at set times during the year, such as twice a year, you can sell the asset classes that have grown above their target allocation percentage and buy asset classes that have fallen below their target asset allocation. This provides a process that automatically and systematically buys low and sells high.

Why are we talking about this now at Stage II – Establishing Retirement? I recommend finding a service that will do all of this for you as cheaply as possible. I recommend checking out the Robo-Advisors – WealthFront, Betterment, or Personal Capital. These companies guide you through the planning questions, set a risk tolerance number from 1.0 to 10.0, and then set up an asset mix based on your profile. They allow you to set up automatic posts and they will do the redistribution on a set schedule. The important point is to have all of this in an automated system so you don’t even have to think about it. You can also buy the index ETFs directly and free of charge from a broker like TDAmeritrade. They offer 100 free index ETFs. Note, however, that ETFs are not as automated as the robo-advisors. I would start with a robo advisor account and later tweak and improve it as you start to improve in investment skills.

So, to get to Level II, you need to set up a retirement account and automatically deposit 10% of your income. In general, I’d stay away from the company’s 401k plans unless they offer a match. If they offer a match then it’s free money and you can start Level II by setting up your 401k, but only up to what the company can match. Why? Because 401k plans have a lot of hidden fees and are quite expensive to manage. Most of the people who get rich in the 401k country are the providers, not the participants.

Also, how do you know you are on the right path to retirement? I would use these very general statements. You want “four digits” in your 20s so one day you can hit “five digits” in your 30s. And you do this so that sometime in your 40s you can hit “six figures”. If you do, you’ll want to go into “seven digits” sometime in your 50s. And if you want extra credit, you’ll hit “eight digits” sometime in your 60s or 70s. If you are 27 years old and have $ 4,000 in your retirement account, you are on the right track. If you are 38 years old and have $ 55,000 in your retirement account, you are generally on the right track. If you are 44 years old and have $ 145,000 retired, you are on the right track.

The main point here is that you need to have a “four number” portfolio before you have a “five number” portfolio and so on. And that a bond portfolio uses the power of compound interest and a long time horizon to generate high returns. This is a very general rule that does not apply to everyone. This also does not allow skipping the “Objectives” section when creating a risk and investment profile. It should be used as a very general rule of thumb. I’ll give another rule of thumb in the following articles. For now, I hope you found this point somewhat helpful and enlightening in order to win at Level II of the game of financial freedom – setting up a retirement account and investing process.

So are you ready to complete Level II – Setting Up a Retirement Account – and save 10 percent per year? You could do the entire Stage II in one step – set up a Wealthfront account and set up an automatic monthly contribution to a traditional or Roth IRA. OR you could set up your 401k in your company as long as there is a generous matching policy in place. OR you could set up a TDAmeritrade account, set up a monthly auto contribution, and invest with their free indexed ETFs. All of these approaches put you on your way to retirement planning. You can improve it later. The goal is to just start and then do the administration automatically.

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Source by Jake Ryan