Stock market volatility fluctuates all the time, some days more than others. Volatility in the markets grow as the gains increase along with those times when uncertainty rises.
Since the markets have risen as high as they did and the condition of the economy is still on shaky ground, I’m not surprised to see that the VIX (volatility index) jumped 20% in just one day. What does surprise me is the fact that it took so long for it to happen.
In the last fourteen months, the Dow Industrial Average (DJIA) has increased by nearly 80% and over 10% in the last three months. I’ve been saying for quite some time now about the fact that the DOW sitting at over 10,000 points has no real reason to be there. Of course many investors are still riding the wave as long as they can. Unfortunately many of them won’t see it coming when the markets take the next plunge.
Unemployment is at 12% (officially), but it is estimated to be at 17% since most people who were receiving unemployment benefits last year are no longer eligible. Many companies are holding off on hiring until they get a good look at the new tax laws that the present Administration has passed. Add on the fact that the foreclosures in the United States are not shrinking, instead they are holding steady in most areas.
The VIX is one of the indicators that should be watched on a regular basis as part of your stock market strategies. As the uncertainty in the markets rises, the VIX will climb. Many average investors lose money in the stock market as this happens because the price per share of most companies will rise and fall with large swings. If you are a veteran in trading stocks, most likely you’ve learned to read the VIX and play it accordingly.
For those who are not familiar with VIX, there are a few stock market books that will help you understand much better. In many of Jim Cramer books, you will find information about the volatility in the stock market and how to play it.
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If you spend any time researching the companies that you are thinking of trading stock in, I’m sure you’ve seen the advertisements, the pop-up windows and the e-mails informing you of different websites that will give you alerts on penny stocks that they believe that will make you some great gains.
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The only problem that I see with that is you really don’t know the person who is running the website. Quite a few of them are actually fund managers that use you to help pump up the price of the stock to help them make more money. Of course I’m not saying that all of them are like that but you need to be aware of you might be dealing with.
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I myself subscribe to many different alerts from websites just to see what is going on. In many cases I watch their picks to see if they are going to be right or wrong. Unfortunately many of the picks don’t really go anywhere after the initial jump. How I see it, many of these website/traders position themselves in a company, start hyping it up that it will do great for their readers/subscribers. As the price goes up they start scaling out their position. Most of the stocks that I’ve been watching over the last two months from these alerts would have lost me thousands of dollars. Don’t get me wrong, I would have made money on some of the picks, but not as much as I would have lost.
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The latest stock that I’ve seen being pushed is Biocentric Energy Holdings (OTC:BEHL.PK). I saw this being pushed by several different websites. I figured that this too would be another pump-and-dump fiasco as I’ve seen before. The stock price was $0.023 per share when I first received the alert, after three positive days where it went to $0.07 I was waiting for the price to fall. To my surprise, it still hasn’t started to lose momentum. As of this morning, the price per share was to to $0.14, a gain of over 500% in just a week or so.
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I’ve talked about it before and said that buying penny stocks can be very rewarding, but at the same time you can lose a ton of money. Be careful when you trade penny stocks, even more so than you would with bigger cap companies.
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I’ve said it many times, and I stand by it; Stock Trading Is Not A Game. It doesn’t matter if you’re a trader or an investor, you must do your homework by researching every stock you plan to invest in or trade But what if you could play a game and practice investing without risk? You could have fun “playing”, while learning and understanding the stock market even more.
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I stumbled upon a free website where you can trade stocks on a virtual Wall Street. UpDown.com is a free fantasy investing site. People join UpDown to practice investing and can earn money for winning contests. Start with a $1,000,000 cash reserve and start trading stocks immediately after registering and creating a profile. With up-to-date news information along with an active forum for members to share ideas and investment strategies.
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The UpDown is a community for people interested in investing in the stock market. If you’re new to the stock market or have a few year under your belt, this site will give you the chance to try different strategies without any actual loss of money.
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UpDown.com provides a platform where investors can view, share, and rate high-quality stock analysis and investment ideas. They then filter, aggregate, rank, and present the community’s investment recommendations for the benefit of all UpDown members looking for valuable investment advice.
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Click the banner below, or the one in our sidebar to join. I just joined myself and it looks like a good place for me to test out new strategies that I normally wouldn’t, with my own money.
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