The Bull Hunters Guide

Funny thing… life. Just when you think you have it all together it comes up with another challenge. I am recovering from a bout of the flu which has kept me from my work here which is to help guide you through understanding the basics of the US stock market with the writings of Sean Rasmussen and his ebook.

I am meeting with Sean tomorrow evening to discuss what else but the Bullhunter, and I will needle him to find out where the next installment is to The Bullhunters Guide. Yes, he has flown from Perth to Melbourne to meet with his web designer and catch up with me too. It’s so good to make contact in person rather than emails and chats every now and again. Working on the web is so cool though as your office is wherever your laptop is.

So back to emotional intelligence…

Dictionary meaning of emotional :

actuated, effected, or determined by emotion rather than reason

Dictionary meaning of intelligence :

the faculty of understanding

Jamie McIntyre states in his seminars that the sign of intelligence is the ability to entertain a new idea.

If you are a trader already and have money in the stock market then you know how you react or respond when your trades don’t happen the way you want them to. It is just a matter of learning from your trades and not being attached to them. It is a good idea to have some money to donate so that when the market hasn’t gone your way, you know that the loss is not really a big deal and that you can make it back.

If you happen to react and start kicking and screaming and feeling sorry for yourself, then you have not learned the lesson. If this happens you can make some bad choices. Rather, if you respond and change the way you view the situation, you will do even better the next time.

If you are trading for cashflow, then you really have to have a plan in place. I am not here to advise you on your rules for trading as everyone eventually finds the way it works for them. It’s like learning anything new, you try a system and then tweak it to suit your personality.

So its a little like when you are in your car driving along… do you focus on the bugs on the windscreen or on your destination? If you let the little things in life get in the way and focus on the trades that didn’t go your way, that’s what you will keep on getting. Take charge of your emotional intelligence today and focus on your destination with a sense of certainty. You will be a whole lot happier on your journey

To Your Success

Angela Recchia
Graduate Support
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2007

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Bullhunters Guide

Well Bullhunters… we have come a long way in the short time since the Bullhunters Guide blog started and I wanted to re-cap for you as there have been many new learnings in the understanding of how the US Stock Market works.

Firstly there was the fictional account of Wal-Mart’s founding which showed us how a business is incorporated and the getting of private financing for this to be made possible. Then we discussed how a corporation operates, what its objectives are and what gives shares of stock their value.

The components of the DJIA which is made up of 30 stocks and the understanding that when someone talks about the market being down 50 points they are generally talking about the Dow Jones in particular. The components of the DJIA were created by Charles Dow to simplify market watching.

21st Century Academy Graduates

Sean then came along and posted the wonderful story about Maria and Pierre retiring to the Stock Market. If you missed it, its well worth the read of how two of the 21st Century Academy graduates took on the renting shares strategy from the Jamie McIntyre homestudy program and ran with it. Within 10 months they sold their business and retired to the stock market so now they can work from home. Doing these strategies as you know does not take up a whole lot of time.

More DJIA

We then discussed the components of the DJIA and how some stocks are cyclical and some non-cyclical meaning that the cyclical stocks perform best when the economy is in the early stages of the business cycle and the non-cyclical stocks perform best when the economy is in the later stages of the business cycle. This is a case of needs vs wants.

The opposing investment strategies was about the capital gains and price to earnings ratio in which we learned of just two of the strategies that you can use when investing in the stock market. We also looked at more advanced strategies like trading options. There is so much to know before you even get started with trading.

Have a great week everyone and happy trading to all

Angela Recchia
Graduate Support
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2007

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Hello fellow Bullhunters

This post will be the final excerpt from The Bullhunters Guide to the US Stock Market so I would like to hear your thoughts and what you have learned from this experience. I know for myself that it has been very helpful in understanding the stock market in a bit more depth. Although the ebook is a summary of the goings on of how the stock market works and how a share is valued, this tool is useful for the newbies starting out in the stock market and wanting to develop a trading system that will work for them. So let’s look at Intrinsic Value and Time Value and how that factors in to trading options…


Intrinsic Value and Time Value

Options are valued based on intrinsic value and time value. Intrinsic value is the positive difference between the stock’s current price and the option’s strike price. Since the strike price in the above example (previous post - Trading Options) is higher than the underlying stock, the options have no intrinsic value (intrinsic value cannot be negative). Therefore all $0.10 of the option’s value is time value.

As options get nearer to expiration, their time value erodes. Its like making a bet that you will run a marathon in the next 365 days. By day 100, it is less likely you will do so, but not entirely impossible. By day 364, the odds are you are not going to do it. The same is true of stock options, so as the expiration draws nearer, investors are willing to pay less and less for the time value.

But imagine Microsoft hit $35 a share on December 26. Now the $32.50 calls would have $2.50 of intrinsic value plus some time value. Instead of exercising your options - which would require you to buy 3,500 shares of stock - you could simply sell your option to a market for $250-plus per contract.


Options Go the Other Way Too

In addition to calls, there are also puts. Puts give you the right to sell a stock at a specified price within a specified period of time. This way, you can make money when a stock goes down, without taking on the risk of shorting.

For a real mindbender, you can short a put contract. This means you are selling the right to sell a stock at a certain price within a certain period of time. Confused yet? Don’t worry. In this book, I only want to cover the basics of the stock market. We can talk about derivatives in more detail in another book. Stay posted.

More Bullhunter on the Way

So there it is. The Bullhunters Guide to the US Stock Market first installment. While boring at first glance, following the financial markets can be the most entertaining hobby in the world. Once you understand the basics and begin to dig in, it is like following a sport that has no off-season.

I wouldn’t mind some feedback just to know how you are traveling and how you are getting along with the stock market and whether you are trading. How have we helped you with this blog and the ebook download. The reason I ask is because in order to give you what you want specifically, I need to know what it is.

To Your Success

Angela Recchia
Graduate Support
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2007

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Hello fellow Bullhunters

Well I am getting my head around all of this and we are nearing the end of The Bullhunters Guide to the US Stock Market which I know you have all downloaded by now. This resource will help you in your endeavour to comprehend what the stock market is about. Today we discuss some more about Options Trading and the reasons why some traders buy calls. So here is the excerpt…


Options Trading

On the other side of things are people who buy options. Someone buys calls because they believe a stock is going to go up. Imagine you were convinced that Microsoft stock was going to have a $5 per share gain by Christmas, but you only had $3,500 to invest. At $28.37 per share you could only buy 123 shares. If the stock went up to $33.37 as you expect, you would only make $635 in profit. Instead, you could leverage your money by buying calls.

You go online and discover that there are several expiration dates for Microsoft options - October, November, January, April. There are even options for January and April of the following year, but thats too far in the future for your Christmas strategy. You decide to look at the January and April calls.

You see that the strike prices are available starting at a low of $15 and going to a high of $37.50. Since Microsoft’s stock price is $28.37, any strike price under that would be considered in-the-money and any strike price higher than that would be out-of-the-money. The Options Clearing Corporation determines what strike prices are available for each stocks trading volume and current price.

You think that Microsoft is going to go up at least $5 to $33.37 so you look at the strike prices near that level. You see that January $32.50 calls are selling for $0.10 ($10 per contract) and April $32.50 calls are selling for $0.30. With your $3,500 you could either buy 350 January contracts or 116 April contracts. Obviously the April contracts cost more because there is greater chance that Microsoft (or any stock) will go up (or down) the longer the duration of the contract.

You decide to go with 350 January contracts. This gives you the power to control 35,000 shares of Microsoft - nearly $100,000 worth - for only $3,500. If the stock fails to reach $32.50, your contracts will expire worthless and you will have lost your whole investment. If it reaches $32.60 or more, you are guaranteed to break even. But the good news is that you don’t need to exercise your option (which would require upwards of $99,000) - you can simply sell it.


Trading for Cashflow

As you can see from this summary of buying calls, it can be a great way for you to produce a monthly cashflow with this trading strategy. It’s all about leveraging your money to make it work for you. So you could choose to make the small profit if the stocks go up or you can mulitply it to give you an even bigger return by buying calls.

This strategy is more advanced and to attempt it you need to be at least comfortable with writing covered calls and have your trading system and emotional intelligence in place to be able to deal with the outcomes of your trades. It is not for a beginner and you can build up to this slowly and gain confidence with every step you take in educating yourself.

Some of the graduates of the Jamie McIntyre homestudy have been very successful in learning how to rent shares (in Jamie speak) and have progressed to this strategy by learning how to cover themselves if things don’t go their way and the market happens to drop. Education for Life is the what Jamie teaches in learning how to become financially free and setting your own goals on how to achieve this.

To Your Success

Angela Recchia
Graduate Support
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2007

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I am going straight into another excerpt from The Bullhunters Guide to the US Stock Market today discussing the renting shares or more commonly known as the Covered Calls strategy.


Covered Calls - Renting Shares

Say your Grandma left you 10,000 shares of Microsoft. You held it for a few years and the stock basically did nothing. Microsoft doesn’t pay a very good dividend so you consider selling some of the stock to get some cash. But instead your broker recommends that you write covered calls. You say… What…

By writing a call you are selling an option on your stock. An option gives its owner the right, but not the obligation, to take action. In the case of calls, it gives the holder of an option contract the right to buy 100 shares of Microsoft at $30.00 per share any time between now and November.

Just as with stocks, you don’t really sell an option contract directly to another investor, but instead to a market or specialist. He then sells the contracts to individual investors who want them. Of course there is a spread between the bid and ask of an options contract as well.

Keeping with the Microsoft example, you could sell the contract mentioned above with a strike price of $30, expiration in November for $0.05 a share. Since each contract is for 100 shares, this would equal $5. That’s not a lot of money so you decide to sell 100 contracts, which covers all $10,000 of your shares (100 contracts*100 shares each). In this case you get $500 no matter what. Microsoft’s current stock price is $28.37 but if it reaches $30 or more, your contracts will probably be exercised. This means that you will be obligated to sell all 10,000 shares for $30 each - even if they reach $35, $50 or $100 per share. If instead the stock stays around $28.37, goes down or goes up but not to $30, the options you sold will go unexercised. In this case, you will keep the $500 and all of your shares.

When you write calls for which you own the underlying stock, they are said to be covered calls. In this example you owned 10,000 shares of Microsoft so you could write 100 covered call contracts. If the contracts were exercised, you had the stock to sell.

A more aggressive (and very dangerous) strategy is writing naked calls which is when you sell contracts for the stocks that you don’t have. If the contracts get exercised, it’s up to you to go out in the open market and buy the stock.


Trading for Cashflow

In the above excerpt, remember that Sean wrote the eBook last year so the prices and months that he mentions is because of this reason. This is only a brief summary of the renting shares strategy and it is a great one to use when you are trading for cashflow. Remember that with any new strategy that you take on , it is wise to paper trade for a minimum of three months until you get the hang of how it all works.

Many of you requested that Sean put some real live renting share trades in his next eBook as you are eager to learn the strategy. This Sharelord® strategy will be discussed in more detail in the next installment to the Bullhunters Guide. I trust that the articles here are of use for you in your endeavour to master the US stock market.

To Your Success

Angela Recchia
Graduate Support
Universal Wealth Creation © 2004 - 2007

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