Investing Education Stories

When you first hop onto a charting platform and look at the tools, you will note the various types of moving averages. You can essentially pick any average type for any given length of time. For this article, we will specifically go over the simple moving average and how you can use it in your investing and trading techniques. How the moving average is calculated is by adding up all the closing prices for the period you determine, and dividing them by the total number of periods you have chosen. Not that you will ever need to do this, it is nice to understand how the tool you are using works.

As simple as the title says, the potential upside is how much further you believe a stock or other asset is going to increase. There are many different ways to calculate this and decide on how much potential there is to the upside, so we will go over several. It may be easy to decide a company will grow and increase in stock value, but how much or how far is a little trickier.

The Aroon Oscillator is another in the long line of oscillators that many people have heard of and utilize. This particular indicator ranges between negative one hundred and positive one hundred, using zero as the mid point. As you can guess, a positive oscillator will indicate to you a bullish trend and a negative oscillator will indicate to you a bearish trend.

When looking at a stock or equity, there are several data points to keep in mind, from dividend yield to current ratio. Another data point you should pull into your research is the annual yield, which simply put, is how much money to company made per share, including dividends and other returns on that investment. Many people look at this as a way to gauge the company against others in the industry, but it may not tell the whole story. The company could have had a subpar year, but it could have been due to marketing efforts or restructuring.

When looking at a candle chart, it can be confusing and difficult to determine where the chart may switch, but by looking for a hammer formation, it could boost your predictability. A hammer pattern is when a candle forms and trades lower than the open, usually significantly, but later closes near or sometimes higher than where it opened. This does not indicate a trend change necessarily, but it could indicate that the opposite side is gaining momentum and the trend could change at any moment.

When looking at a chart, there are many different ways to evaluate your options, and the linear regression slope can help you indicate the current trend of the chart. The data is plotted as a line and fluctuates between positive and negative numbers, indicating where the trend currently lies. If the line is in positive territory, that would indicate the market is in an upward trend and if the line is in negative territory, that indicates the market is a bear and trending downward. This tool may resemble momentum tools and can certainly be used in conjunction with those tools.

EBITDA or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, helps to gauge how a company is operating and performing. When looking at this, you can evaluate how an company is preforming without taking into account decision related to finance or tax. Another way to look at it is net income with everything from interest to tax. Many valuation firms will use EBITDA in the numbers to help people gain an understanding of how the company has been doing compared to years past.

When looking at stocks and the companies behind them, many of us take a look at items such as shares shorted, current price, and other data points to help formulate an opinion. One area many don’t consider and that is the amount of shares owned by insiders, and this is just as important as any other data. An insider is an employee or executive of the company, and why it is important to know how much they own is as follows.

When looking to invest in companies, and item you should be looking for is dividends. A dividend is simply money returned to shareholders and is usually paid when the company is performing well. Not all companies give dividends, but it certainly is a welcomed addition many investor seek.

True range or the average true range measures volatility and is an indicator used in charting. Welles Wilder introduced the average true range and it was initially used in commodities but is not exclusive to this equity type. When that average true range of a stock or equity is low, that means volatility is low and if the average true range is high, that means volatility is high. Many people use it to exit and enter trades, and this can certainly be used in conjunction with other indicators to help you locate the appropriate times to enter and exit positions.