The Unfaithful You

So you want to increase your wealth by investing in ASX Shares? Start out on the right foot and you could eventually supplement the income from your job. But make one of a few fatal mistakes and you could see yourself right out of the market, never to trade again.

What do I mean? Let me give you an example: Let’s say you started putting $150 a month into ASX Shares in 1980. That’s around $5 a day. It earns an average of 15% per annum over the years including dividends. If you re-invested all your returns, today it would be worth over one million dollars – $1,038,490 to be exact.

But not everyone makes it that far. In fact statistics show that over 82% of traders lose a large portion of their capital and never trade again. If you are investing for the long term, your odds are slightly better (although 2008 scared a lot of investors out as well). But the thing is – now they miss out of the rest of those gains, on that million dollars that we discovered.

So if you are trading in ASX shares, there is something important you should know. One of the first but most overlooked essentials in investing is making a solid trading plan. In fact, without it you simply shouldn’t be investing. But how do you find a trading plan that suits you, and helps you make the most from your money?

Well, there are many different ways to invest – in fact as many people as there are investing. But there are a few solid ground rules that will definitely help you out. Therefore, your trading plan should have the following:

1: Your Rules for Buying and Selling – these are the rules you have tested that determine when you buy and when you sell a share. Whether it is buying for fundamental reasons, like company earnings or book price, or whether it is for technical reasons like crossing a trend line or Dow theory it doesn’t matter: so long as it suits you.

2: Your Money Management Rules – these are the rules for how much you will invest in a single position, and then in your total positions. This means you decide how much is right for you when putting money in a share. Obviously, if you put too much into one share on the ASX, you will lose all your money if it disappears. But also, if you put your money into too many shares it will be hard for you to outperform the market. Usually between 6 and 12 positions is optimum.

Having these in place will set you on your way to a solid start in ASX Shares.

Visit www.asxmarketwatch.com for more information on ASX Shares, including a free course and free market research on Australian Stocks.