A month ago I posted my long term stock trading analysis on the Greek Stock Market and explained why it seemed like a good investment to buy Greek stocks. Today the Greek stock market's index is 17% up since that day and if you had followed my investment advice to buy stocks, there have been Greek stocks which almost doubled their price! However, if you haven't invested in the stock market in Greece yet, I suggest you wait for a retracement.

According to Yahoo Finance, all major European indices are rising indicated by their green color. Significant stock prices that is worth mentioning are BARC stock at London Stock Exchange top performing the FTSE100 (+6.35% now) followed by LLOY stock which stands for the LLOYDS Banking stock (+4.59% now). FME stock is top performing DAX and we have already posted a story about the FME stock moments ago.

FME stock's performance leads all other DAX stocks in German stock market. The Fresenius Med Care's stock is up 5% at the time of writing, verifying the long term uptrend of the stock in the best way. After the FME stock retraced the last month from €45 to €41 per share, today the stock opened at €42.34 and is now trading at €43.00. The 1-year FME stock chart is the best proof that the German company is well performing, having increased their shares' value by almost 50% in the last 12 months. Expect to watch the stock prices climb to €44 in the next days.

Euro is trending upwards the last month and is now challenging the previous 3-month high at 1.3025. However a major resistance level is to be verified at 1.3250, which was the resistance level when EUR/USD was dropping fast in the first months of 2010. Usually a resistance level becomes a support level when overcome, and 1.3250 is a support level if we are accepting that the currency pair is still in a long term downtrend. However there are quite a few signals that EUR/USD downtrend has reached rock bottom at 1.19 in June and considering the Euro's last month uptrend, we'd better expect an imminent high above 1.3025 and a real challenge at 1.3250. Should we expect a retracement there and an uptrend resume, or would EUR/USD fall back to 1.20 level?

Ninja Trader, a powerful stock trading technical analysis charting software, and Betfair, the leading sports betting exchange, can now be combined to help sports traders predict odds movements. Technical analysis has been difficult to be applied in Betfair graphs and traders have been using third-party trading software to plot technical analysis indicators. Now Quantsports fills the market gap as the bridge between Ninja Trader and Betfair, bringing the ultimate trading charts to sports betting!

Ford is introducing the new 2011 Ford Explorer and the marketing campaign started on Monday. The F stock reached $13 per share yesterday, trying to touch the previous high of $14.50. The new Ford Explorer, built on a car platform, hitting the market in winter and priced at $28,190, could be the helping hand for the F stock price to continue trending upwards, but it will require a lot more to climb up to $35, the all-time high of the stock in the last 35 years!

This is the final article of the series on online stock trading for beginners and I will be sharing some stock investment advice. I will discuss about simple money management mainly and a couple of trading tips I found out along the way by forex trading and buying stocks with real money.

After discussing about why an ECN online stock broker is best choice, it's time to compare their online trading software and commissions. If we want to make money by stock trading, we do require the best trading software available and the lowest commission. As the trading interface is a personal preference and what makes me comfortable trading, may make you unconfortable, my investment advice is to make your own decision. Commission does play its role, but in the end if we can't trade efficiently due to the trading software, commission does come second.

Trader Workstation is the stock trading software of Interactive Brokers, my online stock broker. While I was stock trading yesterday, I video recorded the order management window for about half a minute to show you how a portfolio looks like while trading. The order management window of the trading software includes all stocks and currency pairs I had traded, showing long and short orders, bid and ask stock prices and most importantly the number of shares and P/L of each instrument. A stock trader is also able to watch the overall P/L of the day trading either stocks or forex.

The online stock brokers are usually characterized as ECN or bucket shops. In short, an ECN broker isn't interested if you are losing or making money day trading stocks or forex, whereas in a bucket shop you are actually trading against the broker. If you lose money, they win and vice versa. You obviously see that if you make money trading using a non ECN broker, you probably will encounter several kinds of problems. That is why my investment advice is towards an ECN online stock broker. Online investing is a risky business, don't add more risk.

So, you are a beginner to stock and forex trading and wonder how to buy stocks and trade forex from your home. I'll save you time and share what I have found searching online the last months before I finally began trading online US stocks and forex. Because there are a lot of issues to discuss, I'm going to post a series of articles in the next days, each addressing a different aspect of trading. In the end you will be able to setup you trading account with an online stock broker and paper trade your online forex trading system.

Buying stocks and currency trading may seem attractive and something to brag about among friends, but you must be sure you have the discipline to handle variance, drawdown and loss of money. As you have most probably heard, you should always trade with spare money, money you won't need to pay bills and your family won't miss. At first, before even depositing any real money, the best investment advice anyone can give is to paper trade your trading system. Don't get arrogant and think you will make it from the beginning. Perhaps you get lucky and never look back, but we are talking about a very small percentage of online traders and I guess they already had some experience from some other field of gambling.

EUR/USD has gained more than 1,000 pips since June and technical analysis suggest we might see a short term downtrend this week. As I am going to trade forex this week, I will be looking for sell signals mainly and I will always keep an eye on different timescale forex charts, so that I won't get surprised. I believe a bounce at 1.3250 is more than possible and a retracement may evolve afterwards. However I do think we have seen the lowest price of the currency pair and all that remains is to find out whether it will fully reverse in a strong uptrend or trade sideways.

Bfexplorer Pro and BetAngel Pro are well known Betfair trading platforms. These pieces of Betfair trading software offer enough features for the most experienced Betfair trader, such as a trading ladder, quick refresh times and one-click betting. I have been a BetAngel Pro user for many years and decided to make a video of both trading platforms showing the same horse race betting odds along with the trading charts.

In the video, which was recorded quite a few months ago, I trade the betting odds of a UK horse racing market, although that was not my intention. My primary goal was to compare the trading software and their response times. My conclusion is that both trading platforms are fast enough for order executions and their trading ladders refresh quickly. For a more thorough test you can trial both of them and make your own software comparison. Either way, BetAngel Pro and Bfexplorer don't lack anything if you are serious about Betfair trading.

I've recently bought a couple of stocks in the Greek stock market and one of them fell suddenly far below my stop loss point. Although I should trade out, I did what seems like suicide for most traders following a trading system; I bought more shares! In fact, I doubled my position on that PPC stock, the national power company. Why did I do that? Not because I chased my losses but because I wanted to save money and minimize my loss. In the end I actually showed a profit! However, that was the exception of the rule: Always close your position when the stop loss is hit.

The PPC's stock chart above indicates that the stock's price had entered a sideways channel and my entry point is shown by the green arrow. I had set my stop loss point right below the latest low, but I was quite surprised to witness an almost 10% fall in a day a week ago. The gap that was formed in the stock graph didn't help my confidence either and I was meant to trade out according to my trading system. Looking though to the rest of the stock graph, I saw that the stock had fallen right at the bottom of the channel the stock is trading all year long! The support level had shown tremendous strength and I decided that it was a very good opportunity to buy more shares. But what about my already bought shares?

Scalping the US stock market and FOREX was what I did yesterday afternoon before the World Cup semi final. Scalping as a trading system requires a lot of concentration and speed. I scalped 7 stocks of the SP500 and made just one losing trade, but that was expected since a scalper should experience a high success rate, in order to withstand the cost of commission. I also traded EUR/USD in the FOREX market 4 times quite successfully. Totally, I did 11 trades, 8 of which showed a profit.

While busy at forex trading, the biggest win for me was when EUR/USD climbed from 1.25875 up to 1.26375. Although I did lose 2 trades prior and after that big move, the profit that was made during that price rise made it all back and some more.