TheRiskBlog

Is it, that sometimes you find yourself making a statement like this: “That’s the last trade for today!”?
If Yes, then you also know that often this won’t be the last trade.
We close our “last trade” for the day and after that it doesn’t last long until we see another big chance in the market. And without hesitation we jump into the next trade. But, WHY?

Sometimes you get carried away by a moving stock and since you want to participate you add it to your portfolio. Most of the times you have watched the stock for a long time but didn´t have the guts to invest in it. Or you did invest in it only to find out that it turned south the very next moment. The market had just waited for you to jump in. Once in a time though you find that magic stock, you invest in it and to your surprise it goes on and makes money, lots of it. Shouldn´t you be a bit suspicious? Here is such a stock

I stumbled over a very interesting project today. The guys at the Planet Money Blog recently bought  their own Toxic Asset to visualize the financial crisis the best way. And we, the readers, can track what happens with it. So we can see, if this Toxic Asset dies or if they even make money with their investment.

It’s all explained in this article, which features a very nice cartoon. And after you know how the project of Planet Money works you are able to track the destiny of this Toxic Asset right here.

And by the way, they are still searching for a name for that Toxic Asset.

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For most investors and traders risk is something they need to accept in order to come up with decent returns. Most of the times risk is measured in your account by how much you are losing when trading different positions. But sometimes risk shifts and it is not measured in the account any longer. When this occurs some positions can be made bigger without risking more but you need to know how to find out when this happens.

Very often a customer wants to learn all there is about the futures markets. He is not interested in the opportunity to make money in equities, all he wants is to trade futures. Now, there are a few things to know about these markets and how to deal with risk when trading futures. Here are things you really need to know…

Days like these are most interesting as far as risk management goes. Most of the times stock prices follow a chaotic pattern. Forecasting them is not easy if at all impossible but sometimes subtil changes in the surroundings make things forcastable. This happens when

What can I say about the book?
Jack Schwagers “Market Wizards” is without a doubt one of the most important books about markets, trading, traders and risk management and therefore   you should read it.

The reason is very simple.

There is quite a bit math involved with risk management. To be on the safe side we have to cope with ratios, P&L equations, risk engines, no trade zones, beta, volatility and so on. Most of this stuff is straight forward though and can be done with only a little knowledge of the formulas behind it. But here is an article about something that has not yet found its way into risk management.

When people start out as traders they always have one goal. And that is to make money - preferably lots of it. People have different ideas but most often we hear something along the line: “..i want to be able to make a living trading…”, and “…i have this amount x right now but at the end of the year i would like to have doubled it…”.

Now this is all fine but how do you reach such a lofty goal? Let´s have a look at a few ways:

Maybe you know those days, when you start with positive expectations and a big portion of optimism into the trading day. The news are good, the futures pre-market are in the green and some of your favourite stocks gained some points overnight. And you can’t wait to hear the opening bell.