The twin temptations of online stock market trading

Article Excerpt

Our three-part investment approach focuses on where you should put your money. Our advice is to invest mainly in well-established companies, spread your money across the five main economic sectors and downplay investments in the broker/media limelight. Investing this way takes a lot of the risk out of the more difficult question of when to buy and sell. Still, it’s a question investors spend lots of time contemplating. Timing your buys and sells is tempting with the ease of trading that online stock market trading provide, and always seems so obvious in hindsight. Keep in mind that if you always (or even frequently) knew just when to buy or sell, you’d acquire a large part of all the money in the world, and nobody ever does that. However, you can greatly improve your market timing by avoiding these two temptations, which are essentially mirror images of each other: 1. Avoid the lure of plunging into a risky stock or investment situation, even if…