completely agree. another forumer on a site i frequent has this line as his quote: "A stop loss is a win."

Aside, it's a buy for today. Buy, peeps, not dump, not today. (small tho).

The BBs are churning to buy. The blues. look at the data clearly. It's controlled accumulation.

caveat applies; i don't want to name the counters since it's on-going. so look clearly; and above all, pls don't whack.

Totally agree with Livermore.

The people who are best positioned to survive a recession are those who save money and have no long term debt.

It's not about how much you make.... it's about how much you save. 

• In the markets you have trading ranges (flat, up and down), uptrends and downtrends.
  
  
• Don't trade in a trading range market, especially when you are highly leveraged and you work with close stops. It's just like a sparrow trying to dance with the cranes.
  
  
• Don't trade every day - wait for a trend. A trend is the only way for a small guy to stand a chance in the market. It is better to make two winning trades a week than churning your account every day and make your broker rich.
  
  
• We define a trend as a powerful move in one direction which is likely to continue.
  
  
• There are various ways to define a trend.
• 
  
• Don't go long in a downtrend and don't go short in an uptrend, no matter how much it hurts to miss an opportunity.
  
  
• Since it is impossible to anticipate every market move, a good way for small traders is also to trade by market behaviors which frequently appear.
  
  
• Become the master of one or two market behaviors you feel comfortable with (market behaviors don't work when economic data are released).
  
  
• You have to fight two enemies, namely fear and greed and the latter is by far the biggest one, especially if you are very greed driven as most of us are and find it very difficult to sell. To overcome fear you need discipline to stick to your market behaviors, because the market has a lot of tricks to suck you in at the wrong time.
  
  
• The best way to fight greed is by putting a limit order together with your stop, . This will limit your profits too, but how many days are there when the market moves up in a big way - very few. And usually everybody who goes for the killing gets killed himself. Besides this you are out very quickly with your profit and a lot of things can happen during trading hours as you have probably experienced. Therefore wait for the herd, take only a third, as the pros say. It will of course hurt when you see the market go higher after your limit was hit, but in most cases you will be grateful for your limit order.
  
  
• The market is not a one-way street; it gets stronger with every low and weaker with every high which is taken out. Day trading and high leverage are therefore not a good strategy for folks who want to catch every high of the market. . Once you are familiar with them you might use trailing stop loss orders.
  
  
• Don't ever chase the market - always buy weakness and sell into strength. That means if you want to go long in an uptrend on a 60-minute chart, wait for a break on the 5-minute chart to get a decent fill if you buy on market orders.
  
  
• Don't overtrade so you can use wider stops.
  
  
• Remember that even the most reliable indicator can fail, so don't bet the ranch on it

Thus, one can see that a conceptual/philosophical as understanding of the market as it is is absolutely essential.

Simply having greatest trading skills in the world is simply not enough! 

With that understanding, speculative management becomes a breeze and joy...  

agreed, livermore.

leverage mainly has a bad press, not because the tool per se is bad, but because most people do not know how to utilise it to its best effects. more often than not, it attracts people who'll just speculate with the 2x, 3x of money; which only results in them getting busted and margin calls.

but that's just bad money management. Did they have a plan? Did they have an exit strategy? What was their dollar-cost-average levels? Was it thought out?

yes, losses theoretically are doubled (if you go 2x on margin), but gains too are theoretically doubled. the key is in proper money management.

wongmx6, it depends. Most companies require their directors to declare their holdings and all transactions. A lot of the proper companies also have a lockup period: eg, no trading for 7 days, or even 6 mths. This is to prevent overtrading and insider trading. Some will also require you to declare holdings of your spouses and family, to really ensure fairness.

Insider trading is when the person trades on price-sensitive news that is not yet known to the public. (though of course, as i've mentioned on other threads, it's difficult to prove.)   

Actually, a decent and proper company would frown on its directors trading its shares too often: for one thing, it is bad for the company image---the directors come across as gamblers or profiteers--for another, it sends to the public a message that its own directors do not believe in the company. So generally, for good companies, what you find is that when it dips, insiders will buy instead. this is to send a message of faith, that the directors believe in their company. And certainly you'll not find them dumping their stocks when the share price goes down. That's a publicity no-no.

Smaller companies do that though, especially if their own directors are on margin and kena margin call. It's happened before; unwise usage of leverage. And as with cosco: where the directors trade so frequently: if you were an investor, would you trust such a company? The warning signs were there long ago already.