Like anything in life, to be successful you need a good strategy.
Something as simple as traveling somewhere you’ve never been before requires a strategy (a map on how to get to where you want to go). If you want to lose weight, you need to follow a sound food plan to do so. And if you want to make more money in the market, you should follow a proven, profitable method for picking winning stocks.
Following a proven strategy that works can help you achieve your goals. You’re also more likely to stick with it.
As the saying goes, ‘a good strategy works best when you use it’. And the more you use it, the more confident you’ll become, making you that much more likely to keep using it. And that is the recipe for success, especially in trading.
A good strategy can also help you overcome the biggest obstacle in anything you do – your emotions.
Over-Confidence and Under-Confidence
In trading, being over-confident can be just as destructive as being under-confident. Both can lead to poor decision making.
• Over-confidence: Did you know the average investor thinks they’re smarter than the average investor? They tend to attribute their stock gains to smart decisions, while attributing their losses to bad luck.
Unfortunately, the opposite is probably true. The majority of their gains could most likely be attributed to luck, while their losses are more often the result of poor decision making.
It’s also easy to confuse skill with a bull market. A lot of bad decisions can get rewarded when the market is going straight up. But, when the cake-walk stops, those bad decisions can ruin your portfolio.
• Under-confidence: Constantly second-guessing yourself is no better. Too many investors, after finding a good stock, will try to overcome their feelings of self-doubt by over-researching a stock to find additional reasons to buy. Invariably, they will come across something that causes them to feel even more uncertain, and they’ll talk themselves out of the trade altogether, only to eventually find that the stock had run up as expected, and you’ve missed the whole thing.
Vowing to not let that happen on your next pick, you decide to plunge right in after you've found your newest stock. (You don't want to talk yourself out of it like the last time.) This time, however, the stock drops after you get in, and you immediately regret your decision.
So the next time, you tell yourself you'll be more diligent, and turn over every stone before your next trade. But, of course, you find yourself back in the same position as the first time, with information overload, and self-doubt, which eventually leads to the same poor result as before.
Being sufficiently confident (not too much and not too little) all boils down to knowing what works, and then doing what works.
More . . .
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Emotion-Free Stock Formula Releases New Picks Monday, Nov. 26 at 10:05 AM ET
On Monday morning, Zacks' computer-driven "Black Box" strategy will release its next batch of stocks and trigger a wave of buying among a select group of investors.
This secret formulation of stock traits is averaging a double-digit gain every 19 trading days this year. It has produced flurries of quick winners, including gains of +15.73%, +20.66%, and +24.57% in as little as 1 week. Today you can be first in line for Monday’s picks.
See the latest computer-generated stocks >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Science of Making Money in Stocks
Nowadays, the most successful traders use computerized models to know what strategies give them the greatest probabilities of success.
Traders create algorithms (strategies) using various criteria to select stocks. Through backtesting, they are able to see how their strategies would have performed in the past so they’ll have a better idea as to what their probability of success will be now and in the future.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But what else do you have to go by?
Think about it. If you saw that a stock picking strategy did nothing but lose money, year after year, stock after stock, over and over again, there's no way you'd want to use that strategy to pick stocks with. Why? Because it has proven to pick bad stocks.
On the other hand, if you had a strategy that did great year after year, trade after trade, over and over again, you'd of course want to use that strategy to pick stocks with. Why? Because it has proven to pick winning stocks. And while it could start picking losers all of a sudden (now that you’re using it, right?), it may also continue to pick winning stocks, just like it had been doing over and over before.
Of course, a winning strategy won’t preclude you from ever having another losing trade. On the contrary, even the best strategies 'only' have win ratios of 60%, 70% or even 80% (not 100%).
But if your strategy picks winners far more often than losers, you can feel confident that the next stock it picks will have a high probability of making money. And you’ll have the confidence to take it.
He Who Hesitates Is Lost
Once you know all the ins and outs of a strategy, you never have to second guess yourself.
And why would you? If you have a proven strategy that has outperformed in both bull markets, bear markets, and everything in between, you can feel confident that the best research has already been done to put those stocks on your buy list (or sell list) in the first place.
Because the 50-100 hours of testing that went into creating that strategy, is unlikely to be outdone by reading one extra news story, or looking at one more chart, or stressing over something in the market.
And that’s the point. Imagine devoting 100 hours of your best thinking to EVERY stock you thought about buying. You’d feel pretty confident about that pick. And that’s what a thoroughly tested strategy can provide – the best time-tested analysis applied to every stock that comes through, each and every time.
And it also strips away the human bias that hurts so many traders out there. No more stressful emotions and no more indecisive ‘hemming and hawing’.
Peace of mind. And a more profitable portfolio.
Emotion-Free Trading Today
We’ve created such an approach with our strategy that incorporates the best Zacks Rank stocks, the top Zacks Ranked Industries, and a special combination of various Growth, Value, and Momentum style inputs that have shown extreme profit potential.
We call this secret formulation the Zacks Black Box Trader.
Best of all, there is no human bias to this computer driven and operated strategy. Just a straightforward, quantitative model that has tested off-the-charts, with an average annual return more than double the S&P, and with less risk while doing so.
Black Box applies the best time-tested analysis to every stock that comes through. And it automatically does this each and every time so you don’t have to. Every Monday, you’ll be signaled which stocks to buy (and which to sell) with the highest probability of success. Remarkably, it only takes a total of 5-10 minutes trading each week to enjoy the gains.
Whether you’re a seasoned trader or you just set up your brokerage account yesterday, I know you’ll enjoy approaching the market in this entirely different and unbiased way.
The proven Black Box strategy has produces flurries of quick winners. Recently, we’ve seen gains of +15.73%, +20.66%, and +24.57% in as little as 1 week. In fact, the portfolio has averaged a double-digit winner every 19 trading days in 2018.
On Monday, November 26 at 10:05 am ET, its next batch of high-potential recommendations will be released – and you can be among the first to see them.
When you look into Black Box Trader, you’ll also be invited to download our just-released special report 7 Stocks Set to Double, absolutely free. This report is a perfect complement to our fast-paced Black Box picks. Our research team selected the 7 stocks they believe have the best chances of gaining 100% in the next 12 months.
Please note that this opportunity ends on Sunday, November 25. I encourage you to take advantage right away.
Check out Black Box Trader and download 7 Stocks Set to Double now >>
Thanks and good trading,
Kevin
Zacks EVP Kevin Matras is our stock screening expert. He developed many of Zacks' most powerful market-beating strategies and created the exclusive Black Box Trader.
Image: Bigstock
Master Your Emotions to Beat the Market
Like anything in life, to be successful you need a good strategy.
Something as simple as traveling somewhere you’ve never been before requires a strategy (a map on how to get to where you want to go). If you want to lose weight, you need to follow a sound food plan to do so. And if you want to make more money in the market, you should follow a proven, profitable method for picking winning stocks.
Following a proven strategy that works can help you achieve your goals. You’re also more likely to stick with it.
As the saying goes, ‘a good strategy works best when you use it’. And the more you use it, the more confident you’ll become, making you that much more likely to keep using it. And that is the recipe for success, especially in trading.
A good strategy can also help you overcome the biggest obstacle in anything you do – your emotions.
Over-Confidence and Under-Confidence
In trading, being over-confident can be just as destructive as being under-confident. Both can lead to poor decision making.
• Over-confidence: Did you know the average investor thinks they’re smarter than the average investor? They tend to attribute their stock gains to smart decisions, while attributing their losses to bad luck.
Unfortunately, the opposite is probably true. The majority of their gains could most likely be attributed to luck, while their losses are more often the result of poor decision making.
It’s also easy to confuse skill with a bull market. A lot of bad decisions can get rewarded when the market is going straight up. But, when the cake-walk stops, those bad decisions can ruin your portfolio.
• Under-confidence: Constantly second-guessing yourself is no better. Too many investors, after finding a good stock, will try to overcome their feelings of self-doubt by over-researching a stock to find additional reasons to buy. Invariably, they will come across something that causes them to feel even more uncertain, and they’ll talk themselves out of the trade altogether, only to eventually find that the stock had run up as expected, and you’ve missed the whole thing.
Vowing to not let that happen on your next pick, you decide to plunge right in after you've found your newest stock. (You don't want to talk yourself out of it like the last time.) This time, however, the stock drops after you get in, and you immediately regret your decision.
So the next time, you tell yourself you'll be more diligent, and turn over every stone before your next trade. But, of course, you find yourself back in the same position as the first time, with information overload, and self-doubt, which eventually leads to the same poor result as before.
Being sufficiently confident (not too much and not too little) all boils down to knowing what works, and then doing what works.
More . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emotion-Free Stock Formula Releases New Picks Monday, Nov. 26 at 10:05 AM ET
On Monday morning, Zacks' computer-driven "Black Box" strategy will release its next batch of stocks and trigger a wave of buying among a select group of investors.
This secret formulation of stock traits is averaging a double-digit gain every 19 trading days this year. It has produced flurries of quick winners, including gains of +15.73%, +20.66%, and +24.57% in as little as 1 week. Today you can be first in line for Monday’s picks.
See the latest computer-generated stocks >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Science of Making Money in Stocks
Nowadays, the most successful traders use computerized models to know what strategies give them the greatest probabilities of success.
Traders create algorithms (strategies) using various criteria to select stocks. Through backtesting, they are able to see how their strategies would have performed in the past so they’ll have a better idea as to what their probability of success will be now and in the future.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. But what else do you have to go by?
Think about it. If you saw that a stock picking strategy did nothing but lose money, year after year, stock after stock, over and over again, there's no way you'd want to use that strategy to pick stocks with. Why? Because it has proven to pick bad stocks.
On the other hand, if you had a strategy that did great year after year, trade after trade, over and over again, you'd of course want to use that strategy to pick stocks with. Why? Because it has proven to pick winning stocks. And while it could start picking losers all of a sudden (now that you’re using it, right?), it may also continue to pick winning stocks, just like it had been doing over and over before.
Of course, a winning strategy won’t preclude you from ever having another losing trade. On the contrary, even the best strategies 'only' have win ratios of 60%, 70% or even 80% (not 100%).
But if your strategy picks winners far more often than losers, you can feel confident that the next stock it picks will have a high probability of making money. And you’ll have the confidence to take it.
He Who Hesitates Is Lost
Once you know all the ins and outs of a strategy, you never have to second guess yourself.
And why would you? If you have a proven strategy that has outperformed in both bull markets, bear markets, and everything in between, you can feel confident that the best research has already been done to put those stocks on your buy list (or sell list) in the first place.
Because the 50-100 hours of testing that went into creating that strategy, is unlikely to be outdone by reading one extra news story, or looking at one more chart, or stressing over something in the market.
And that’s the point. Imagine devoting 100 hours of your best thinking to EVERY stock you thought about buying. You’d feel pretty confident about that pick. And that’s what a thoroughly tested strategy can provide – the best time-tested analysis applied to every stock that comes through, each and every time.
And it also strips away the human bias that hurts so many traders out there. No more stressful emotions and no more indecisive ‘hemming and hawing’.
Peace of mind. And a more profitable portfolio.
Emotion-Free Trading Today
We’ve created such an approach with our strategy that incorporates the best Zacks Rank stocks, the top Zacks Ranked Industries, and a special combination of various Growth, Value, and Momentum style inputs that have shown extreme profit potential.
We call this secret formulation the Zacks Black Box Trader.
Best of all, there is no human bias to this computer driven and operated strategy. Just a straightforward, quantitative model that has tested off-the-charts, with an average annual return more than double the S&P, and with less risk while doing so.
Black Box applies the best time-tested analysis to every stock that comes through. And it automatically does this each and every time so you don’t have to. Every Monday, you’ll be signaled which stocks to buy (and which to sell) with the highest probability of success. Remarkably, it only takes a total of 5-10 minutes trading each week to enjoy the gains.
Whether you’re a seasoned trader or you just set up your brokerage account yesterday, I know you’ll enjoy approaching the market in this entirely different and unbiased way.
The proven Black Box strategy has produces flurries of quick winners. Recently, we’ve seen gains of +15.73%, +20.66%, and +24.57% in as little as 1 week. In fact, the portfolio has averaged a double-digit winner every 19 trading days in 2018.
On Monday, November 26 at 10:05 am ET, its next batch of high-potential recommendations will be released – and you can be among the first to see them.
When you look into Black Box Trader, you’ll also be invited to download our just-released special report 7 Stocks Set to Double, absolutely free. This report is a perfect complement to our fast-paced Black Box picks. Our research team selected the 7 stocks they believe have the best chances of gaining 100% in the next 12 months.
Please note that this opportunity ends on Sunday, November 25. I encourage you to take advantage right away.
Check out Black Box Trader and download 7 Stocks Set to Double now >>
Thanks and good trading,
Kevin
Zacks EVP Kevin Matras is our stock screening expert. He developed many of Zacks' most powerful market-beating strategies and created the exclusive Black Box Trader.