Bulls To Bears: Re-Introduction of Two Species Bulls and Bears

Bulls to Bears is an Independent Stock Research and Advisory Firm dedicated to the Independent investor. Bulls to Bears lives by the philosophy “everyone their own broker”. Our service grew out of the growing trend of individuals wanting to take control over their own financial destiny. Many of these investors had been burned by unscrupulous stockbrokers looking to “churn their accounts” for commission dollars. The advent of the discount broker and the use of the internet gave individuals the confidence to rely on their own talents to pick and execute winning stock trades. Unfortunately confidence quickly turned to dismay as those individual investors learned the reality of the perils of flying solo in the stock market. Bulls to Bears provided the perfect answer to the investor dilemma. Investors could get expert advice, but from a third party who’s compensation was not tied to the number of transactions the investor did. This third party objectivity gave the investors the confidence that our only motive was to bring them winning stock trades! This paper is going to explain our investment philosophy so you can further understand the true value of the experience and knowledge that Bulls to Bears provides its members.

Experience

For new investors, dabling in the stock market, it is like when first learning to ride a bicycle. It looks real simple when you watch someone do it. It is another thing to get on and start peddling. Most online traders are apprehensive in their trading. The reason for this is they are not in the market every day. An individual investor is never going to execute the number of trades that will give them the “street smart” confidence to execute their trades with the pinpoint precision that is necessary. This hesitant mind set leads to poor trading results and sometimes even disaster.

 

The staff at bulls to bears has a decades of trading experience. We are not hesitant in advising you to execute your trades. We have a tendancy to set very strict stop loss parameters to ensure you preserve your capital. We not only tell you what stock to buy, we tell you when you need to be selling to maximize each trade.

Market Wisdom

Most professional traders make money in the stock market because they develop a strong feel for the market. They also track each individual stock and get a feel for its trading behavior. Bulls to Bears closely tracks its recommendation to learn its behaviors. We track these stocks for months and in some cases years before they become a recommendation to our customers. These actions are what philosophers have spoken about for years. Having wisdom and not knowledge. Knowledge is information and wisdom is experience. The average individual investor can never get to this level because they just can’t spend enough time in the market. Bulls to Bears lives in the financial market place and we bring this wisdom to our clients.

Picking Our Stocks

We have found that the best trading situations are found in stocks that have fallen out of favor with the market. Many times this will be due to a general weakness in certain market sectors. For example technology stocks may be getting hammered as a group, but you will always find one or two stocks in that group that are doing well, but their stock prices are getting hammered like the rest of the group. These stocks are poised for strong upward movement when the pressure is off the group. These stocks usually at or below their book value and are in an oversold territory. Bulls to Bears tracks those sectors, identifies the “diamonds in the rough” and tracks them until they meet our investment criteria.

Stock Picking Goals

One goal is to make sure our clients do not fall into the heard mentality. i.e. Currently gold is the “flavor of month”. To us, this indicates that a bubble exists and there is great risk investing in situations tied to gold.

Another goal is to pick situations that will produce 10% to 15% gains in a months time frame. Day trading for the average individual is just gambling. Long term investing has proven to be perilous when the market hits a rough patches. By setting our goals realistically, we greatly increase our client’s chance of success. Many situations we recommend have potential to show a larger gains, but with proper money management 10% to 15% will provide a bankable differential from those positions that do not work out.

Conclusion

As time marches on, it is becoming more and more difficult for the individual investor to make money in the stock market. Program trading, institutional buyers and instant execution give the professionals an advantage over the individual online investor. Bulls to Bears “levels the playing field” for our clients. Our advantage comes from our market wisdom and our ability move very quickly. This is why we have our internal instant alert systems set up. If you are an individual investor trading with a discount broker you need Bulls to Bears in your trading arsenal. If you haven't done so yet? I would recommend that you sign up to receive BullsToBears.com's  FREE newsletter to get our exclusive financial educational tips, resources and tools on various financial matters to help you improve your financial well-being.

So, sign up today here and we will show you how to start making some positive financial changes in your life.

Till our next blog... Happy Trading!

Bulls To Bears: Good Traders Vs. Good Stock Pickers

As we have mentioned previously in this blog, trading stocks is a skill. It is not luck, or chance or some type of alchemy. If you learn the skills and practice them, you can be a good trader. What do we mean when we say Trader? We mean that you are someone who can consistently extract profits from the stock market.

To do this requires you to master two sets of skills. The first is the ability to trade the stocks. This skill is a combination of learning the rules of the game and then being able to follow the rules. It also involves learning the various tools that you have at your disposal to do this. This includes learning how to read charts, examine volume indicators and get a “feel” for the market action. 

The second set of skills you need are the ability to pick high probability stock plays. This skill involves more of the “heavy lifting” of trading. It involves continually monitoring multitudes of stocks. You must do your due diligence on these stocks and come up with solid reasons not only to buy them, but to buy them now. It also involves tracking the indexes that have an influence on the individual potential trades. In all, there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into being a good or even great stock picker

Here at Bulls to Bears we have a two-pronged approach to trading. We are going to try to use our blog and our newsletter to teach you how to be a good trader. It is free because the large amount of work including learning is incumbent upon you. Also, we know that if you do become a good trader, it makes our products more effective in your hands. It allows you to apply what we give you to make money for yourself and your family. 

The second part of our approach is our stock recommendation service. This you do have to pay for. Why? Because this is where we must do the heavy lifting. We must do the hundreds of hours of due diligence. We must track hundreds of stocks and indexes. We have the burden of finding the high probability situations so our clients can focus on what they need to do: learning to become good traders.

If you look closely at many highly successful stock traders, they all posses similar mindsets that separates them from the rest of the herd. Below we have listed a dozen unmistakable skills-sets that the most successful traders possess, that most people don't understand.  They tend to:

1. Keep Emotions in check. - good traders understand how their emotions can influence their trading performance. balance and temper thoughts and emotions.

2. Being confidence - change is all around us, not just in the markets; it’s always happening and there’s no controlling it. Good traders know that and are better at adapting to change, rather than resisting it

3. Mistakes, although uncomfortable - don’t punish yourself and others for them, good traders take responsibility for their every action in the markets and their focus on optimistic growth

4. Appreciate other people’s successes - Trading is a tough profession. Losses and drawdowns are challenging periods that cause many to break. Good traders never compare their own results with others. They don’t feel as though other people’s success somehow diminishes their own achievements. Losers think like that, and in return, losses and disappointments is what they keep reaping in their lives.

5. Sticking to the rules. - Good traders make decisions with relative ease because they understand their rules and what they are trading and looking for in the markets. They do not let other people’s opinions affect their judgment. They’ve learned to trust their own - essentially catching their own fish. 

6. Focus on sharpening your skills, rather than showing them off. - some people seek validation or recognition from other traders on Social Medias (especially twitter) for the trades they take, good traders are less concerned about gaining recognition. Instead, they’re intrinsically motivated to become better.

7. View trading losses as opportunities for growth. - Good traders don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves, they make good traders grow better.

8. Practice delayed gratification. - great traders view their trading goals as a marathon, not a sprint. They’re willing to tolerate short-term pain when it can provide long-term gain.

9. Bounce back from failure - Good traders don’t view failure as the end of the road. Instead, they use potential failures as opportunities to refocus and gain new knowledge and adopt new behaviors that will increase their chances of success in the future.

10. Express gratitude - Rather than exclaim you need more, good traders take whatever the markets are offering them in the moment however small the gains are. If they followed their plan to the letter, then what should or could have been doesn’t matter.

11. Focus on what you can control - Good traders are effective in the markets for the mere reason that they devote their resources to that which they can control - and this does not include controlling the markets but their own behavior.

12. Be open to learning - Learning is a paramount and an important tool and an ongoing quest for great traders.

We stress that you don't just practice good trades, practice good trading skills! Bulls to Bears uses a developed hybrid approach of both technical and fundamental trading disciplines to come up with a majority of our stock picks. In doing so we have developed a tremendous track record. Our service is literally designed so you can earn, while you learn. Use our stocks picks to make money and at the same time you are practicing and learning the skills needed to becoming a great trader. Think of it as a work study program for Stock Trading.

If you didn’t recognize yourself in any of those 12 statements above, rest assured, you can develop these qualities in record time. For starters, I suggest getting our investment newsletter here.

In the end it will boil all down to one key quality and that is behavioral change and we can help you with that too!

Bulls To Bears: Being Coachable - Your Money or Your Ego?

 

When I first started trading stocks on Wall Street, the number one criteria firms used in their hiring was something called “coach-ability”. If you were not coachable, you were not getting a seat. These firms did not have the time or the patience to work with you unless you were going to listen and do the things you were told to do. There was nothing worse than some kid just coming out of school and acting like they knew more than you. In the stock trading world, it was a quick way to find yourself ejected from your seat and from the building.

The same thing applies to our business of training people to trade stocks. The only difference is that these people are now paying us for the knowledge. The problem is that since they are paying to teach them to trade stocks, they tend to feel they should have more say in the process. While that would be nice in a perfect world, it just doesn’t translate into the real world. So, in that vein, we thought we should lay out some of the “rules of the road” for getting the most out of the Bulls To Bears stock market training program. These are basically guidelines as to how to be a good student of the game. This blog is written with the intent of making you a better or even great stock trader. So here it goes. 

• Check your ego at the door: the stock trading principles we teach are based on long term trial and error. We made the mistakes so you don’t have to. These principles are tried and true. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. It is truly better to be successful than “right”.
• Prepare like your financial life depended on it: it probably does. We give you the tools but you need to do your preparation work. Remember we can’t trade the stocks for you. All your good intentions can go right out the window by not applying the basics as taught.
• Be honest: with both yourself and with those training you to trade. Most people are not honest with themselves. They lie to themselves and then believe it! When you make, a mistake, admit it to yourself and learn from it. Radical honesty is a prescription for success when trading stocks.
• Adopt a mindset of self-accountability: when you get a good recommendation and you mess up the stock trade you must take responsibility for it. You can’t blame others. You can’t blame circumstances. You can’t blame the weather. Only by taking full responsibility will you start to adopt the mind set of an elite stock trader.
• Keep it light and have fun: if you are trading stocks correctly, you should be using position size and limit the number of positions to be in line with your financial resources and your current stock trading abilities. If you find yourself totally stressed out, you are doing something wrong. At that point cut back and get your fear under control and give us a call. 

Remember the old saying: And if you can’t keep your ego under control, it’s going to cost you a lot of money. 

 

A recent study suggests that Men tend to achieve lower returns than women. It's not because the ladies are better at stock traders. Rather, women are better at NOT picking more stocks than men. They have less of an ego and trade less frequently when the market makes bigger swings. As a result, ladies trade less, are more patient, saving money along the way on investment fees and boosting their overall returns.

Your great advantage as an investor is that you can be boring and trade frugally; rising slowly with the overall market and not wasting money on costly trading that tends to underperform the market.

 

Even us GREAT stock pickers occasionally get it wrong and issue a loser a “dog with fleas”. No one gets it right 100 percent of the time trading stocks and options. The trick is to know when to cut the losses instead of wishing for a turn around that might never come.

The biggest mistake a beginner investor can make with our program is not following through when the going gets tough. Many times when things get a little crazy in the market, as soon as the market moves bearishly they begin to start trading solo again, on their own impulse, to buying or selling when they don't need to do either. They forget our proven program in place and they revert to trades based on fear trading. Fear of losing money.

Now your ego prompts you into wanting revenge, because your losing, as if there were someone that you could ‘hurt back’ and it will then make you feel all better. Oddly enough, this sadly hurts only you, and not to fun for your ego either! So DON’T let your ego play tricks on you into ignoring your better judgment and doing things you later regret.

Be Coachable! Remember we are the professionals. Our collective has been doing this for decades for others. Bulls To Bears trading program offers a straightforward, very sensible way to get your trading working the way you’d like. If you want to know more about how to pick winning stocks, I recommend that you subscribe here to our newsletter. Everything you need to learn to begin your trading journey starts there. Take the information seriously and focus on learning.

When you begin with us and trade our stocks, focus on learning and understanding trading not on winning or trying to fast track your way to profits. Whether you’re a current Bulls to Bears member or not? or considering joining? We welcome all your feedback. Send us your comments at service@bullstobears.com.

As we have mentioned before, our goal is not to have you make great stock trades, it is to help you become a great stock trader. Till next time, be smart and have fun! As always, happy trading!

Bulls To Bears: Rules Every Trader Should Follow To Survive The Long Haul.

If you want to be successful in stock trading and investing in general, you need to understand the importance of and adhere to a set of rules that have guided all types of traders, with different trading account sizes. Every rule alone is an important one, but when you use them all together the effects are life changing.

 

Trading with these rules can greatly increase the odds of making money in the stock market. Very successful traders have a carefully thought out trading system with specific rules to maximize their odds of success. If you're interested in becoming an active trader, BullsToBears.com's Trading Program will teach you everything you need to know to get started. You'll learn the basics and how to develop a trading plan that aligns with your risk and financial goals.

Think of it as a continuing education - traders need to remain focused on learning more each and every day. It is important to understanding the markets, and all of their intricacies, is an continuous lifelong process.

 

Great research allows traders to learn the facts, like what the different economic reports mean. Focus and observations allow investors to gain instinct and learn the nuances. This fundamentally helps traders understand how economic data affect the markets movements. Politics, world events, economies, tragedy - including the weather - all have an dramatic impact on the stock market. The market environment is dynamic.

 

The more traders understand the past and current markets, the better prepared they will be to face the future. An ineffective trading plan yields greater losses than expected in historical testing. Markets may have changed, volatility within a certain trading instrument may have lessened, or the trading plan simply is not performing as well as anticipated. It might be the time to reevaluate your trading plan and make a few adjustments, or to start over with a new trading plan.

An unsuccessful trading plan is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It should not necessarily be the end of your online trading dreams.

 

Here we have outline 10 rules every trader should follow to survive the long haul. These are everyday Rules That Work! To be successful, traders need lots of encouragement, support, and practice in applying these habits, these rules to a wide variety of trading situations.

Simply apply and adapt these 10 simple rules and you will make more money trading!

 1)  Be flexible and go with the flow of the markets price action, stubbornness, egos, and emotions are the worst indicators for entries and exits.

 2)  Understand that the trader only chooses their entries, exits, position size, and risk and the market chooses whether they are profitable or not.

 3)  You must have a trading plan before you start to trade, that has to be your anchor in decision making.

 4)  You have to let go of wanting to always be right about your trade and exchange it for wanting to make money. The first step of making money is to cut loses short the   moment it is confirmed that you are wrong.

 5)  Never trade position sizes so big that your emotions take over from your trading plan.

 6)  “If it feels wrong, don’t do it.”

 7)  Trade your biggest position sizes during winning streaks and your smallest position sizes during losing streaks. Not too big and trade your smallest when in a losing streak.

 8)  Do not worry about losing money that can be made back worry about losing your trading discipline.

 9)  A losing trade costs you money but letting a big losing trade get too far out of hand can cause you to lose your nerve. Cut losses for the sake of your nerves as much as for the sake of capital preservation.

10) A trader can only go on to success after they have faith in themselves as a trader, their trading system  as a winner, and know that they will stay disciplined in their trading journey.

As always were here to help you become a better trader not only help in placing great trades. If you need help with your trades just contact Bulls to Bears today and get your investment plans back on track.

Remember to sign up for more exclusive trading tips, tricks and secrets by joining our FREE newsletter here. 

Bulls To Bears: Trading Exercises Control Your Brain.

One of our main goals at Bulls to Bears is to get our members to be a great traders, not just teaching them how to make great trades.

 

Trading is a skill to be learned. The only way a skill can be learned is by doing, not just learning. So whether you are day trading, swing trading or long term buy and hold trading, you must get as much real world experience as you can to become good. "Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind" - Dale Carnegie 

 

All traders should have a good trading habits. One of the worst habits a trader can have is trading on impulse without direction. Traders who make trading plans are more likely to succeed, but even with a good plan in place you have to develop good trading habits.

 

Human nature, is human nature and people make impulsive trades even with their outlined plan taped to their forehead. They exit winning trades too quickly or let losses go longer than their plan states they should. In order to break bad trading habits, traders need to base success or failure on each trade by how they stick to their trading plans. Not simply on whether they make or lose money. 

 

That being the case we like to have our students get into the flow and feel of the market. 

We do this by asking some of them to do exercises which allows them to feel the market. These trading exercises force you to focus on the market auction process, order handling and other core market components that will enhance your trading skills.

The objective of this assignment is to motivate student interest in financial markets

 

Complete these exercises when possible.

You will learn a significant amount of practical trading information for the market when you complete these stock trading exercises.

 

Start exercising your trader brain and put it to good use! 

 

Here is how it goes:

1. Pick a stock you are going to track every day.
2. Pick a stock index that relates to that stock.
3. Identify the stocks industry group and what other stocks are in it.

 

Your job is to follow the stock for the next week. We want you to make observations about how the stock acts.

 

Specifically answer the following questions:

1. When the S&P Index is down, what is the stock doing?
2. If the index has a heavy volume day, how is the volume of the stock?
3. When the stock is up or down significantly, what are the other stocks of the groups sector doing?

 

The goal here is to get a feel for the stock. If you partake in this exercise, We ask that you email us your observations so we can comment and give you pointers. Send your emails to service@bullstobears.com.

 

If you continue to do this on a long term basis you will start to get a much better feel for the market. You can then pick target stocks and groups and learn to get into the “feel” of the stock market  much faster.

 

Understanding the ebb and flow of a stock compared to the market will make your path to becoming a profitable trader and a much smoother one. Don't forget to Sign up here for BullsToBears.com's free newsletter today for more trading tips!

Bulls To Bears: The Bull Market? You Didn’t Miss The Boat!

It has now been 15 months since Donald Trump became president. We knew better yet, contrary to what most “experts” believed, as soon as he took office, the stock market exploded. The upward movement was, without debate, record setting. Every American with a 401K applauded and everyone was happy! Or were they? Professional Stock traders like us have a bit of a different view. With an extremely fast one sided move higher, it was still difficult for investors to have made significant amounts of money. Why? Most traders tend to do better in volatile choppy markets, with swings up and down, just like the one we are in now. So, If you feel like the road to becoming a successful trader is like a roller coaster ride of ups and downs you're not alone. 

If you have been following the market as of late (we are referencing to the Dow Industrials for an understandable point of reference) you will have noticed that volatility has been re-introduced into the market. The current swings are considered by some to be “big” although you should consider that the Dow in much higher than it was just 12- 18 months ago and "percentage wise" these swings are not as big as they may appear. Any great trader will tell you, these big swings up and down are your greatest friend and not your enemy.

We say this realizing though that if you manage to be on the wrong side of one of these big down swings, it could be a bad situation for you monetarily. This is where being a student of the stock market is extremely important. You must get into the movement of the market much like a hitter in baseball. A great hitter  studies the pitcher he is facing. Not just when he’s up, but with every batter that steps to the plate. A great hitter starts to time the pitcher, he starts to feel the rhythm of the pitcher. He notices the pitch selection. He notices what the pitcher usually does on a 3-2 count. He notices if the pitcher is throwing first pitch for strikes or testing the batters with balls on the first pitch. The best hitters in baseball history are those who not only hold the all-time hitting records, but changed the game as we know it. They are uncoincidentially among the greatest baseball players of all time.

Not just being in the market but understanding it are parallel. By continually keeping your pulse on the market you begin to identify the ebb and flow and eventually making money through trading becomes easier and more predictable. When that happens and you have swings like we are seeing NOW in the current market, you can make large amounts of money. Your job is to see the market as a great hitter does! Don’t only look at your trades. Do some paper trading. Look at various sectors to see how they are acting in different market conditions. Look at other types of sector securities and see what they are doing. What is gold doing while the market is having a down trend? What are the bonds yields telling you by what they are doing?

If you truly become a student of the market, the opportunities for you to make money will jump right out at you. If you don’t, trading will remain like gambling. Gambling is not a long-term wealth strategy. Remember you don’t just want to make great trades, your main goal is to become a great trader.  

Being a great trader is about developing certain mental qualities. It is the process of constantly pushing yourself to grow stronger and better. A profitable trader is not necessarily a good trader. Likewise, a good trader is also not necessarily a profitable one, yet a good trader ultimately finds himself with a much higher probability of being profitable and finding success in the long run. 

In conclusion - we are still in a bull market! Just more choppy and much better for traders. So if you want to learn how to become a 300 hitter with stock trading and not someone who just wants to hit 300 once? Start with our FREE newsletter and we will provide you with our perspective, inspiration, and appreciation for our game which is the stock market. 

We are more than happy to provide you with tips on how to be a better hitter when stock trading when your up at the plate. Learn the trade. Be the change!  Sign up here for our free newsletter today!


Bulls To Bears: Welcome to Our Revamped Investment Blog

Calling all Investors!

 

Welcome to BullstoBears.com's new and improved investment blog. It’s an exciting time here at Bulls to Bears. We are in the process of creating a wealth of new resources and an array of tools to help our newsletter subscribers and members take advantage of this historic time in the stock market.

Our blog has been re-designed for both new and experienced active traders alike who are looking for stock picks, stock ideas,  stock and options trading how to's  and overall stock market education with 100 years of combined trading expertise.

 

When we started our 1st newsletter back in the day, 2003, our prospects began subscribing to it immediately.  It was printed on paper and mailed  out through the United States postal service. At first they subscribed to Bulls To Bears to get a few good stock tips.  As they learned to trade and as time went on they used  our methods and services we taught to produce winning trades. Then they  joined our cutting edge advisory service as a paid member.  They quickly began to find weekly stock situations which they acted upon that enabled them to trade like a pro with a higher rate of return. They began to rely upon Bulls To Bears to get up-to-the-minute analysis of the news that was shaping markets and the financial topics that affected the stock market's movements.

We are excited today to be re-launching our investment blog and have the opportunity to share our stock market trading successes and insights with you!

 

Upcoming installments of our blog will include: 

 

·         Trading account basics
·         Accounting issues and taxes
·         How to use margin
·         Understanding charts
·         Understanding Chart Patterns
·         Understanding technical indicators
·         Basics of Fundamental Stock analysis
·         Trading on news events
·         When to use stop losses

 

Investors today have a huge number of resources to gather information. So much so that it sometimes becomes overwhelming and frustrating. Bulls to Bears plans to be a filter to eliminate the noise and allow you to focus on being the best, most effective investor you can be.

 

We look forward to providing you direct access to our investment team's latest thoughts and perspectives on the stock market arena and the global economy.

 

If you haven’t done so already, make sure you sign up for our free mailing list to make sure you get notified each time we update our blog with important information.

 

We welcome you to be a part of a friendly community of traders who all strive towards the same goal – to become consistently profitable.

 

You will also get lots of other free stuff by being a subscriber to our mailing list. We look forward to being on your team. Exciting things are coming. As always, Happy Trading!