The other day when the stock market went through a correction period, I remembered when I was able to minimize my losses by just dumping everything in the morning hours. Waiting until the “panic” and/or profit taking was finished to get back in to the stocks that I feel had no reason to lose value. It will happen to some great companies that are fundamentally sound when the market as a whole take a dive.

A couple of years ago I was listening to CNBC in the pre-market hours, they were say that things looked pretty grim. I went on to a few message boards as well as many different blogs that expressed the same news. According to the streamer that I use to follow my portfolio, the value of the portfolio had already lost about 2-3% of it’s value. I wasn’t comfortable with the overall message that was being put out there by the many different sources, so I dumped my entire portfolio at the opening bell.

I wasn’t happy about the fact that I did it, but I thought it was the best thing I could do at the time. As the day went on, the DOW, NASDAQ and the S&P 500 all fell another 4% or more. My thoughts were correct and what turned out to be a $2000-$3000 loss, could have been a $10,000 loss instead.

Of course that type of situation doesn’t take place every time the markets look grim in the pre-trading hours, but there will be days where you will see the writing on the proverbial wall. I didn’t like the small loss I did take, but I look back on it now and see that later on when the dust cleared in the final hours of that day, I jumped back in a made that money up and then some.

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In the beginning of 2008 I had to learn to look for signs that I never really had to before and because of that I took a beaten during that time. I started to seek out sites and tools to assist me with the education that was needed to recover from my losses.Frankly, I felt like a beginner investing in the stock market all over again. Over the next few months I worked hard to find the right tools and of course with so many of them out there, It took awhile to find the one that helped me the best.

One that I found myself going back to time and time again was ADVFN. Their site had pretty much everything that I could have found on several different sites, but they had it all in one place.

ADVFN offers a FREE service for anyone who wants to trade stocks, bonds, futures, as well as FOREX. Their site helps traders with research, technical analysis, charts along with a large community of traders on their message boards to assist you in making the right decisions. ADVFN is the one of the worlds largest stocks and shares websites. Offering the private investor FREE streaming prices from NASDAQ, NYSE, Dow Jones and many more indices from around the world.

Included in their FREE membership is a steady flow of press releases of the day. Hundreds of news releases every hour to keep you informed of what’s going on in the stock market world. The news is reported on all stocks that are traded on any trade floor including foreign and pink sheets.

I’ve been using this site for some time now and the longer I use it and the more I poke around on the site and see what the FREE membership offers me, the quicker and more thorough my research is being done.

The streamer that is part of the FREE service is 15 minutes time-delayed and you can upgrade your service to include real-time streamer, but if you have an account with a online broker, it doesn’t matter.

If you are looking for a better way to get your information and make better trades then why not give this FREE service a try. Just click on the banner below (or the one that’s in in right sidebar).

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Earnings reports are quarterly releases that a company will put out to their shareholders to inform them of their progress over a period of time. The period of time is three months (henceforth, quarterly) where the company did business and either made or lost money during that time.
Along with them reporting their past three month performance, they also give guidance to where they believe the company is going.

Wall street analysts who follow the company will put together their estimates as to what they think the company will announce in regards to their earnings. They look at the company’s past report to see if their estimations were correct and also take into consideration what the economy is currently doing. They look at if the company has had a new product come out during that time and how well that product is moving. They will also look at the company’s competitors to see if they are taking business away from them.

After all the information is put together, they release their estimate on what the earning per sharewill be for the company. If the company’s report is in-line with the estimate, it’s looked upon as a good thing providing that the guidance for their next quarter is a favorable one. The company can also, what Wall street refers to as “miss” their earnings report, which means that they made less than what the analyst predicted. When that happens Wall street will look unfavorable towards that and you will see the price of the stock drop and in some cases drop a large amount. If the company “beats” the estimate and gives a great guidance report as well, you will see the price per share jump by a big percentage gain.

This is where you can make some big money within your portfolio.

In the fall of 2007 a company by the name of Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) was about to release their earnings report. If you’re not familiar with the company, they are the manufacturer of the BlackBerry cell phones. I was following the company for a few months already and knew the the report would be a great one. The company didn’t miss their last four earnings report and their phones were selling like crazy during the summer months.

I went ahead and bought 200 shares of the RIMM stock a couple of days earlier when the priced dropped for just a day and waited for the report. When the report was released, it not only gave a great earnings, but also stated that it would exceed their previous predictions for the next quarter. In that day alone the stock went up $12 per share and continued for to climb for the next two days.

The reason I shared this story with you isn’t to show off, but to let you in on the different ways to make money in the stock market. Like I stated in the beginning of this post, there can be some costly mistakes as well and I’ve lost thousands of dollars in some of my other earnings report plays. The only way that I feel comfortable with trading on the results of earnings reports is during a bull market. My advice is always to do your research and due diligence on every company that you want to invest in.

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I worked with someone that had the trade of a lifetime. He was telling me that there was this company that was in the commodity sector (which in regards to penny stocks, means nothing) and that they were about to hit pay-dirt with a new ore vein discovery. I really wasn’t too sure about commodities and knew even less about how the engineers calculated the potential find of an area.

He talked to another co-worker and myself about getting in on the deal. I was hesitant but this co- worker said that he would research it and get back to us with his findings. I had known this person for about four years and knew that he’d made some decent money in the stock market. About a week later he came back and said that he couldn’t believe what he was finding out. The company was actually going well and was on the verge of the “mother load” of discoveries.

I went ahead and took a chance with the only money that I was able to put together in a short period of time. I invested $200 into the company, but the other co-worker decided to liquidate some of his holdings to get in on the deal in a big way. He invested $50,000 in to this company.

I’m sure by now you know where I’m going with this story. Yes, the company was a scam. They were based in Africa and weren’t subject to the same laws as others that traded on the big boards.

What I mean by the big boards is NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), NASDAQ, CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange). This stock was trading on what is referred to as the OTC pink sheets, which means it’s an over the counter type stock.

I share this story not because I enjoy talking about my failures, but I will discuss the mistakes I’ve made here for two reasons.

1. You can learn from my mistakes.
2. I learned from my mistakes.

My point of this story is that when you trade stocks, you need to do your research and due diligence in finding out everything about a company that trades on these smaller boards. If they trade in a different country they may not be held to the same standards as the ones traded in the United States.

Penny stocks can make you a lot of money, but you can also lose it just as quickly. Be careful in how much you invest in what is referred to as penny stocks.

A penny stock is a stock that has a share value of less then $5. That doesn’t mean that some of the financial stocks that have been beaten up lately are considered a penny stock. I refer to stock of companies that are relatively new and are trying to raise capital to increase their company. Many of them are legit and will become a major player in years to come, but you need to do your homework to help steer clear of the ones that won’t make it out of the gate.

This post is part of the Carnival Of Money Stories

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When I find a web site that offers many different tools to properly analyze and chart stocks it keeps me coming back. One of the free sites I belong to is a great resource for many different types of stock market investing. No matter what you use as your trading option, this site will help you benefit from their tools and other programs that they offer.

ADVFN is the one of the worlds largest stocks and shares websites. Offering the private investor free streaming prices from NYSE, NASDAQ, Dow Jones and many more indices from around the world.

To join ADVFN all you need to do is register a free account.

As a member, you will be able to set up portfolios which you can monitor for changes in the markets. You can also watch other markets around the world including Japan, Russia and the FOREX. You can watch each of the indicies and certain stocks that you are following.

When you set up all the stocks that you are following, it will give a detail view of whats going on with them. Not only the price at the last trade, but everything that you need to see during the trading hours. Other pages include watching the top gainers and losers of the day, which stock have the highest amount of volume, viewing charts, news releases as well as seeing the latest financial report on any company that is traded in the U.S. markets.

One of my favorite options is setting up my own alerts on any stock or indicies that I want to keep close tabs on for when they will hit certain key technical levels.

They have two active message boards that are included with your free membership. One that has over 450,000 members with over 25 million post from mid and large cap investors. The other message boards consists of over 100,000 members with over 15 million post from micro and small cap investors.

There is so much that this site can offer to you. There are other offers that will cost you money to be a member, but the areas that I covered in this post are absolutely FREE. Click the banner below, or the one in our sidebar to sign up.

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