Articlr

During my 15 years as a stock trader, I've met a wide variety of stock trading experts. Although most of them have been really great, as in any field there are always some that really wreck the profession's reputation. Sadly, this unfortunate minority of stock traders do the most damage with new investors and turn a lot of people with potential off of stock trading altogether. I would like to try to forewarn you about some of the slimy stock traders out there in the hopes of keeping you from having to go through what I did. So here are a couple of my stories, with a few here are a few of my experiences, and a couple pointers to avoid the same things yourself.

My worst experience was with the ultimate in slime, an encounter that changed my entire career. Through it, I learned the most influential lesson in my life: that some folks don't care who they hurt along the way, they are just in it for their own benefit. I also finally discovered that I could not be the same as that, and I established a core value through the experience: pass up any business opportunity that resulted in someone else getting hurt.

It was a stock trading service that provided the subscriber list a group of recommended stocks to buy or sell short every day. Like many other services of this nature, they provided lots of facts and figures to confirm that their recommendations performed as predicted a large percentage of the time. I was impressed by their presentation and signed up right away.

But, unlike many others, this particular service had an ulterior motive I was not aware of at the start. Turns out, the folks running the service were making recommendations to their subscriber group for the sole purpose of manipulating the prices for their own profits.

Let me give you an example. First, the owners of this service would buy IBM stock through their account. Then, they would send out a recommendation to the subscriber group, telling us to buy IBM. Once the 3000 + members started buying the stock, the stock price would rise as a result of the activity. When the price per share increased to a point that these slime were satisfied, they would cash in for a profit.

It was a blow to realize that the stock trading service I had placed my faith in was using us subscribers to front run their own trades. They could care less about the success of their subscribers as they had led us to believe, but only their own profit. And, on top of all that, we were paying the slime subscription fees to do it! I just couldn't believe it.

It is true that most stock trading services will not conduct business in such a slimy manner. But there are less insulting, but no less slimy ways for a stock service to take your money and run. I really hate those services that convince a new investor that stock trading is just too risky to do alone. They put on the hard sell to sign up for their expensive monthly plan so that they can do all the work.

Don't get me wrong, stock trading is tough at the beginning, until you find a process that works for you. But any service who tries to convince you that you can never know enough to do it yourself at some point is just trying to cash in on your monthly subscription fees. And their systems are generally one size fits all and won't consider your personal risk tolerance or trading preferences.

There will always be some investors out there that don't want to trade on their own, and for these folks the monthly stock trading service might be the way to go. They will receive solid trade recommendations that are right some of the time. The return is usually tolerable, but I have found that if you can find a system that works for you and your risk level, you will realize higher returns in the long run and a more satisfying experience.

It does take some investigation to find a resource that will get you started without taking over. They are there, however, and you will be happy to find that they will take the slime out of the profession and help you gain the skills you need to achieve success at stock trading. Follow this advice, and you will appreciate the outcome for many years to come.