Hello... I`m fairly new to the stock market and want to gain some knowledge in this domain. I`m not a regular trader however with the limited knowledge i had i bought ANF, AEO, HTZ,CNNX,BTG. ANF wiped off all the goodness in my portfolio. I`m open to your suggestions and want to know if i need to let go off any of these stocks. Also it would be great if you could suggest some good picks for short term gains. I`m really happy find an active forum like this! Looking forward to be a good active part of this forum.
Welcome to the forum! When it comes to managing positions, you need to establish the parameters at the time you enter the stock. Are you buying for the long term? Can you handle some risk? Will you keep a stop loss level? In the case of ANF here, if something has fundamentally changed and the reasons you bought it are no longer valid, then cut your losses. OR, if you feel that there is a turn around coming and still like the stock, you can always add to the position. We can't really answer that for you, it depends on your risk tolerance and goals!
Welcome to the board @yoga and congrats on your 1st post. First off you might want to set a stop in the future to limit your loss or lock in a gain. On the rest of the stocks I am not familiar enough with them to tell you whether to let go of them or not. News and charts can give you a good idea of what to do and if their sector is in favor or not. Good luck...TTT
Thanks for your response Gil.. I was hoping for a turnaround and added a few more of them (at a all - time low) to my portfolio. Initially when i started trading i was hoping to keep them as a long term holding but looking at the performance , I`m hoping te break it even and let go. Also is there a good link or a website you could point me to gain some fundamental knowledge on stock factors (P/E, EPS, MA etc)
Thanks for your heads up!! I was going through this forum a month back and came across your Top picks thread . I was watching WPX since then which had a good growth story.
Yoga, I wouldn't mind getting an idea of what kind of investing style is best in what you are doing. What process did you use to find the stocks you currently own? What made you pull the trigger and buy them? What method did you use to decide how many shares to buy? Do you have a point in the future that would tell you it's time to sell? The answers could help me or others to offer pointers, tell you how we do things for our own styles (not that those are right for you) and point you to some resources to hep learn
Jerry, When i stated investing the basic motivation was to put a part of my savings in stocks instead of just letting them stay in bank with a min interest. Being a amateur,I started off buying ANF,AEO with an expectation that i could make money if i hold them for a long term. But later, I realized its a different ball game altogether and they are obviously a lot of factors that needs to be considered while getting a stock. Last year when ANF crashed almost 60-70% thats when i started actively looking into market news ,updates. Hoping to recover from the ANF dent i started investing in other stocks and so far, its worked decently and I`m looking to sell them off once i make a 20% profit. Considering all these rookie adventures i still feel there is a lot of info i could ingest and get a good insight about the market before i make any more decisions on this.
So you are describing a tend trade growth investor style. You should screen for stocks that have earnings growth of at least 10% and revenue growth around 15% and ROE (return on equity) above 10%. The screen will give you candidates. Then take a quick look at the fundamentals (I use yahoo finance a lot). I like current ratio above 1 to insure that the company has enough current assets to pay off current liabilities. Then check the analyst ratings (how many analysts rate, mean score, target price) Lastly check the chart for at least 6 month daily. Here, the trend is your friend. I has to be charting up as an uptrend. (30 day MA should at least be pointed upwards) Look at two studies, MACD and RSI or Stocastics. You can get some pretty good technical tutorials here and also at investopedia.com Investopedia will have defenitions and explanations on the terms I've used here and of course more questions can be posted. Good luck...
Oh, forgot an important part. You need to pick an exit point on the downside at least. If that trend changes you need to take a small loss and get out.
Jerry, That was pretty elabaorative. Thanks! When you said you`d like taking a look at ratio (which >1)is it PEG ratio or P/E ratio?
The one I mentioned was "current ratio" that ratio shows the ability of a company to pay off just "current Liabilities" using "current assets" It is just a test of how liquid a company is for short term. If the current ratio = 1 that means they can pay off current liabilities but have nothing left after. If the current ratio is 2 they could pay off twice. So, under 1 may not be a good sign. It means they have more current debt then liabilities.
