Train Yourself, Train Your Money

Have you ever considered how much money you could make if you took the time to gain some insight about your investing options and had access to sophisticated and up-to-date resources? Do you feel like you have worked out a dynamic plan for the future that will allow you to maximize your potential profits and maybe even enable you to retire several years early?

In a nutshell it boils down to working out and setting aside from your monthly earnings a figure that you feel comfortable dedicating to a designated purpose, be it your retirement or to generate extra cash, perhaps both.

Let’s consider security and retirement needs. If you happen to be in your late teens or early twenties, that is the ideal time to purchase a term life insurance policy and lock in the very low monthly premium. Unfortunately, money put into a savings account will not collect enough interest to keep up with the rising cost of living. Buying mutual funds is a wonderful way to indirectly invest in the stock market. They can range from aggressive growth to a more balanced portfolio: The latter reduces both potential risk and return. If you follow this route for generating retirement income and even if you use a financial advisor it is still vital to routinely monitor the performance of your portfolio and make adjustments when necessary. A more involved and assertive approach still, is to allocate for both retirement and extra income.

A Chicken In Every Pot, A Car In Every Garage

Be goal-specific when planning for the future and don’t be afraid to dream big. Create a vision board and gaze adoringly at it before you go to bed each night. This generates the incentive to work on and stick to your financial goals. And if you sincerely want to train your money and not have other people train you then it’s never a good idea to rely on credit cards to bail you out in an emergency. The interest rates are too high to use them for any balance that can’t be paid off by the end of each month. Save a few thousand dollars for an emergency fund and let your credit cards establish a good credit rating for you. With your emergency fund in a high interest savings account you’re ready to trade.

There are countless trading instruments available that are compatible with every investor mentality and temperament. These instruments can be easily traded online with the help of derivatives dealers like CMC Markets, initially based in the U.K. with locations worldwide. Here, commonly traded are North American Exchange traded stocks, Foreign Exchange stocks, Spread Betting and Contracts for Difference (CFD). In addition online brokers may also trade Over The Counter, Pink and Yellow Sheets or Small Cap stocks, Commodities, Futures and Options and Stock Options, to name several.

Try It On For Size

A relatively new and brilliant development with online brokers or dealers is that they will allow you to open a demo account free of charge. This will allow you access to historical data, charts and trading platforms so you can “paper trade” or test some strategies without using real money. The set-up is easy and you obtain experience and insight and simulate the total processes from start to finish, including the crucial end results which are your closing trades, your round turns.

Depending on your risk tolerance you can go long or short a market, or conduct more elaborate strategies such as hedging and using spreads and straddles. Regardless of your instrument of choice, the volatility of whatever it is you are trading on a short term is important to your strategy because you can’t make money on something short term if its price doesn’t fluctuate. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the sake of simplicity on a subject that can be as complicated or simple as you want to make it, a market that moves to your prediction is what you are looking for.

With the investment of time, experience and some consistent effort you can develop successful strategies that familiarity will afford you. Both you and your money will be trained for success.