What Is a Retracement

What Is a Retracement?

A retracement is a technical term used to identify a minor pullback or change in the direction of a financial instrument, such as a stock or index. Retracements are temporary in nature and do not indicate a shift in the larger trend.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

A retracement is a minor pullback or change in the direction of a financial instrument, such as a stock or index.

The term, used by technical analysts to analyze the price of securities, refers to a short-term change in a stock's price relative to an overarching trend.

Once a retracement is over, there should be a continuation of the previous trend.

Retracements are not the same as reversals—with the latter, the price of the security must breach support or resistance levels.

Understanding a Retracement

 

A retracement refers to the temporary reversal of an overarching trend in a stock's price. Distinct from a reversal, retracements are short-term periods of movement against a trend, followed by a return to the previous trend.

 

The chart below illustrates the share price of General Electric Co. It is showing that the stock is in a downtrend. However, there are points on the chart that indicate that the price is rising, which would be considered a retracement.

 

gold trading strategy

 

 

A retracement by itself does not say much. However, when combined with other technical indicators it can help a trader identify if the current trend is likely to continue or if a significant reversal is taking hold.

 

 

 A retracement should be used with other technical indicators and never alone. If not used correctly, it could cause the analysis to be misguided.

Retracement vs. Reversal

It is essential to determine the difference between a reversal and a short-term retracement. A retracement is not easy to identify because it can easily be mistaken for a reversal. Even worse is if a reversal is mistaken for a retracement.

gold signals

 

 

 

The chart below shows the S&P 500 during 2018 when a significant uptrend took place between April and October. There are three retracements identified on the chart, although there were a series of smaller ones as well, as the S&P 500 was rising to record highs.

 

What is most important is that the retracements never breached the uptrend. However, in October what appeared to be a retracement became a reversal after the index did finally fall below the uptrend, leading to a sharp decline.

 

توصيات الذهب

 

 

Again, it is important to remember that a retracement is a minor or short-term pullback in the price of a stock or index. What is key is that the stock does not breach a critical level of support or resistance nor breach the uptrend or downtrend. Should the price fall below or rise above support or resistance, or violate an uptrend or downtrend, then it is no longer considered a retracement but a reversal.

 

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en 

 

Beta and Passive Risk Management

Beta and Passive Risk Management

Another risk measure oriented to behavioral tendencies is a drawdown, which refers to any period during which an asset's return is negative relative to a previous high mark. In measuring drawdown, we attempt to address three things:

 

The magnitude of each negative period (how bad)

The duration of each (how long)

The frequency (how often)

For example, in addition to wanting to know whether a mutual fund beat the S&P 500, we also want to know how comparatively risky it was. One measure for this is beta (known as "market risk"), based on the statistical property of covariance. A beta greater than 1 indicates more risk than the market and vice versa.

 

Beta helps us to understand the concepts of passive and active risk. The graph below shows a time series of returns (each data point labeled "+") for a particular portfolio R(p) versus the market return R(m). The returns are cash-adjusted, so the point at which the x and y-axes intersect is the cash-equivalent return. Drawing a line of best fit through the data points allows us to quantify the passive risk (beta) and the active risk (alpha).

 

The gradient of the line is its beta. For example, a gradient of 1.0 indicates that for every unit increase of market return, the portfolio return also increases by one unit. A money manager employing a passive management strategy can attempt to increase the portfolio return by taking on more market risk (i.e., a beta greater than 1) or alternatively decrease portfolio risk (and return) by reducing the portfolio beta below one.

توصيات الاسهم الامريكية

 

Alpha and Active Risk Management

If the level of market or systematic risk were the only influencing factor, then a portfolio's return would always be equal to the beta-adjusted market return. Of course, this is not the case: Returns vary because of a number of factors unrelated to market risk. Investment managers who follow an active strategy take on other risks to achieve excess returns over the market's performance. Active strategies include tactics that leverage stock, sector or country selection, fundamental analysis, position sizing, and technical analysis.

 

Active managers are on the hunt for an alpha, the measure of excess return. In our diagram example above, alpha is the amount of portfolio return not explained by beta, represented as the distance between the intersection of the x and y-axes and the y-axis intercept, which can be positive or negative. In their quest for excess returns, active managers expose investors to alpha risk, the risk that the result of their bets will prove negative rather than positive. For example, a fund manager may think that the energy sector will outperform the S&P 500 and increase her portfolio's weighting in this sector. If unexpected economic developments cause energy stocks to sharply decline, the manager will likely underperform the benchmark, an example of alpha risk.

توصيات الذهب

 

The Cost of Risk

In general, the more an active fund and its managers shows themselves able to generate alpha, the higher the fees they will tend to charge investors for exposure to those higher-alpha strategies. For a purely passive vehicle like an index fund or an exchange-traded fund (ETF), you're likely to pay one to 10 basis points (bps) in annual management fees, while for a high-octane hedge fund employing complex trading strategies involving high capital commitments and transaction costs, an investor would need to pay 200 basis points in annual fees, plus give back 20% of the profits to the manager.

gold trading strategy

 

The difference in pricing between passive and active strategies (or beta risk and alpha risk respectively) encourages many investors to try and separate these risks (e.g. to pay lower fees for the beta risk assumed and concentrate their more expensive exposures to specifically defined alpha opportunities). This is popularly known as portable alpha, the idea that the alpha component of a total return is separate from the beta component.

 

For example, a fund manager may claim to have an active sector rotation strategy for beating the S&P 500 and show, as evidence, a track record of beating the index by 1.5% on an average annualized basis. To the investor, that 1.5% of excess return is the manager's value, the alpha, and the investor is willing to pay higher fees to obtain it. The rest of the total return, what the S&P 500 itself earned, arguably has nothing to do with the manager's unique ability. Portable alpha strategies use derivatives and other tools to refine how they obtain and pay for the alpha and beta components of their exposure.

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

Self-control

Self-control

 

Self-control, an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses.[1][2] As an executive function, it is a cognitive process that is necessary for regulating one's behavior in order to achieve specific goals.[2][3]

 

A related concept in psychology is emotional self-regulation.[4] Self-control is thought to be like a muscle. According to studies, self-regulation, whether emotional or behavioral, was proven to be a limited resource which functions like energy.[5] In the short term, overuse of self-control will lead to depletion.[6] However, in the long term, the use of self-control can strengthen and improve over time.[2][6]

gold trading strategy

 

Self-control is also a key concept in the general theory of crime, a major theory in criminology. The theory was developed by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi in their book titled A General Theory of Crime, published in 1990. Gottfredson and Hirschi define self-control as the differential tendency of individuals to avoid criminal acts independent of the situations in which they find themselves.[7] Individuals with low self-control tend to be impulsive, insensitive towards others, risk takers, short-sighted, and nonverbal. About 70% of the variance in questionnaire data operationalizing one construct of self-control had been found to be genetic.

 

Counteractive

Desire is an affectively charged motivation toward a certain object, person, or activity, but not limited to, that associated with pleasure or relief from displeasure.[9] Desires vary in strength and duration. A desire becomes a temptation when it impacts or enters the individual's area of self-control, if the behavior resulting from the desire conflicts with an individual's values or other self-regulatory goals.[10][11] A limitation to research on desire is the issue of individuals desiring different things. New research looked at what people desire in real world settings. Over one week, 7,827 self-reports of desires were collected and indicated significant differences in desire frequency and strength, degree of conflict between desires and other goals, and the likelihood of resisting desire and success of the resistance. The most common and strongly experienced desires are those related to bodily needs like eating, drinking, and sleeping.[11][12]

توصيات الاسهم الامريكية

 

Desires that conflict with overarching goals or values are known as temptations.[11][10] Self-control dilemmas occur when long-term goals and values clash with short-term temptations. Counteractive Self-Control Theory states that when presented with such a dilemma, we lessen the significance of the instant rewards while momentarily increasing the importance of our overall values. When asked to rate the perceived appeal of different snacks before making a decision, people valued health bars over chocolate bars. However, when asked to do the rankings after having chosen a snack, there was no significant difference of appeal. Further, when college students completed a questionnaire prior to their course registration deadline, they ranked leisure activities as less important and enjoyable than when they filled out the survey after the deadline passed. The stronger and more available the temptation is, the harsher the devaluation will be.[13][14]

 

One of the most common self-control dilemmas involves the desire for unhealthy or unneeded food consumption versus the desire to maintain long-term health. An indication of unneeded food could also be over expenditure on certain types of consumption such as eating away from home. Not knowing how much to spend, or overspending one's budget on eating out can be a symptom of a lack of self control.[15]

توصيات الذهب

 

Experiment participants rated a new snack as significantly less healthy when it was described as very tasty compared to when they heard it was just slightly tasty. Without knowing anything else about a food, the mere suggestion of good taste triggers counteractive self-control and prompted them to devalue the temptation in the name of health. Further, when presented with the strong temptation of one large bowl of chips, participants both perceived the chips to be higher in calories and ate less of them than did participants who faced the weak temptation of three smaller chip bowls, even though both conditions represented the same amount of chips overall.

 

Weak temptations are falsely perceived to be less unhealthy, so self-control is not triggered and desirable actions are more often engaged in, supporting the counteractive self-control theory.[16] Weak temptations present more of a challenge to overcome than strong temptations, because they appear less likely to compromise long-term values.[13][14]

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

Satiation

The decrease in an individual's liking of and desire for a substance following repeated consumption of that substance is known as satiation. Satiation rates when eating depend on interactions of trait self-control and healthiness of the food.

 

 

Why I Go To Investment Conferen

Why I Go To Investment Conferen

I’m off to a conference this week for the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA).  Why am I going?  What do I hope to get out it?  When you go to investment gatherings, what are your expectations?   I’ve garnered essential benefits from a wide variety of seminars and conferences, and those benefits serve as an informal “goals list” for this week’s IFTA event.

1.      I’m less interested in the speakers’ prognostications and future outlooks, and more interested in their systematic methods of analysis.  If they offer up one without the other, I am not shy in challenging them for specifics.

2.     I have a rule that I don’t read investment books unless they come recommended to me by at least two people I respect.  There are just too many bad and misleading how-to books out there.  I’m a little like that with new resources as well, such as advanced tools or websites.  These conferences are a wonderful venue for learning about such items.

3.      gold trading strategy

4.     In listening to other experienced investors talk about their tools and systems, one can’t help but review one’s own methodology.  This enforced reflection is facilitated by metaphorically kicking the tires of other investors’ approaches.  Most of the time, it reinforces my own methodology and builds self-confidence in my own system, and confidence does matter.

A corollary to objective #1 above is to remind attendees that the guy sitting next to you may have valuable knowledge and experience to share with you as well.  I’ve found that these peer-to-peer, belly-to-belly networking  توصيات الاسهم الامريكية

5.     opportunities can yield both friendships as well as keen insights.  In other words, don’t miss the lunch and dinner events.  It’s half the fun, and you never know who you’ll get seated next to!

6.     Call it the enthusiasm kick-start.  I find I’m simply recharged as a trader when I get home.  Let’s face it, these things are usually at pretty nice locations, and taking a break from normal office routines is always good for whatever ails you, even if you think nothing is ailing you.

7.     Sometimes, I’ll take with me a specific element of my methodology or an indicator that I’d like some help demystifying an area of confusion.  I recall just such a case some 20 years ago pertaining to stochastics.  Lo and behold, I had dinner with George Lane, the creator of the stochastics oscillator.  His advice was spot on, and I’ve been reaping the benefits for the past two decades.  But I did pay for dinner!

8.     With any speaker, I first try to ascertain his or her motive for being there as a presenter.  This offers both a credibility check as well as helps me to focus on specific content rather than being mesmerized by the sizzle or the sales pitch.   Keep an open mind, but in the end remember there is seldom a free lunch.

1. https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

Finally, don’t get swept up into a totally new investment methodology or excited by a new system far outside of your comfort zone.  Most investment conferences and seminars can offer something appropriate for every level of investor.  You may have to actively dig for it, but that one trading gem which catapults you onto the next higher rung is there somewhere.  Be patient.  Be focused.  But for gosh sake, be there. توصيات الذهب

Wall Street's Complexity versus Investors' Profits & Simplicity

Wall Street's Complexity versus Investors' Profits & Simplicity

 

“Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.”  -- Pete Seeger

As a long-time trader, I am living breathing proof that simplicity and profits are positively correlated while complexity and profits are inversely correlated.  In other words, as my 25 year investing career has jettisoned multiple methodologies and numerous indicators, my profits have became more regular and predictable while my losing ratio has diminished.  This is the absolute antithesis of what Wall Street wants you to believe. 

 

Wall Street lives and breathes on complexity.  They pitch derivatives of every variety and alternative funds for specific self-serving reasons. 

1.    They want to convince investors that it’s far too complicated for them to manage their own money – therefore, the wisest decision is for investors to just give it to Wall Street managers instead.

 

2.    They try to assure you that with this complexity come “insider” rates of returns and big profits.  But then can you explain to me why so many university endowments and retirement funds are closing out their hedge fund positions?   Because the returns have not justified the risks, losses and complexity.

 

3.    Wall Street loves to use the cliché, “you get what you pay for” as justification for higher fees.  So then, can you explain to me again why so many academic studies have concluded that no load mutual funds outperform advisor-recommended loaded mutual funds?  The fact is that investors often do not get what they pay for. 

gold signal

 

The catalyst for this week’s rant is that I cleaned out a closet with my old trading binders from over 20 years ago and was stunned by two observations.  The first thing I realized was that I had been so vulnerable to believing Wall Street’s siren song of complexity.  The second thing was that it was obvious my trading methodology back then was unnecessarily complicated. 

 

To most individual investors, it seems counterintuitive when I preach my doctrine of simplicity, but it is precisely this simplicity that empowers you to outperform the professional money managers.  Layer on top of that my other sermon that no one will manage your money with the same passion and commitment as you yourself and you have the magic ingredients for achieving consistent success as a stock market investor.

gold signals

 

Wall Street is based on its own version of Yin & Yang as opposites and contrary forces are actually interconnected and interdependent.  In simplest terms, the market is made up of buyers and sellers, load and no load funds, passive and managed strategies.  The complexity and simplicity paradigm is just another example.  Much like life, one must decide to embrace the light or the dark, the hot or the cold, the high or low.  So too, as an investor, you must choose between the dichotomies that Wall Street offers you.

 

I am simply sharing the experiences of my own journey as an investor.  As I embraced the mantra of simplification in my investment methodology and my trading tools, my net worth grew.  My relatively small basket of 10 technical indicators and the Tensile Trading approach that I’ve written so much about are living testimonials to this mantra.

 

Albert Einstein famously said, “If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes implementing the solution.”   If you were in a life threatening situation and had only one hour before it proved fatal, what would you do?   Einstein said he’d spend his time wisely asking probing questions to understand the problem in depth.  Having done that, he’d only need 5 minutes to address the issue.

 

Many new investors I meet in my classes totally flip around Dr. Einstein’s approach.  They have an unstoppable inclination to jump right into the market, metaphorically speaking.  They’ll trade impulsively for the first 55 minutes and then allocate the last 5 minutes trying to figure out what just happened.

 

Humor me, please.  Just go with this.  Place your hands on the table, turn down the lights and let’s invite Albert Einstein to our séance to give us his advice.  If it was indeed possible to “channel” him, I suspect he would suggest approaching the market’s first 55 minutes more like this:

gold trading strategy

 

You have accumulated certain assets.  Ask yourself if they are safe.  Dr. Einstein would challenge you to address asset protection, first and foremost.  Issues such as insurance, estate planning, identification theft, tax planning, record keeping and the like.  You have to secure what you’ve got.

Next, he would ask if you had thought through personal money management questions and committed yourself to a personal trading plan in writing.  It’s shocking how few investors actually do this.  Einstein’s objective here would be to make certain you grasp the full scope of the problem.

 

Narrative Economics

Narrative Economics

stories affect economics, look no further than the example of Bitcoin.

When the idea of Bitcoin was first introduced online in 2008 by a mysterious person under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, hype quickly grew around it. It was an entirely new system of money that had the ability to change everything we know about currency. From there, it became a global phenomenon, though partly not for the reason you’d think.

Sure, its innovation and complex mathematical theory is impressive, but what excited most people about it seemed to be the hype and mystery surrounding it. If you ask most Bitcoin investors about the actual theory that runs Bitcoin, they probably could only give you the very basics.

But ask them about what excites them about it and they’ll probably say it’s the idea of a new, revolutionary way of using currency. The way of the future. They feel that by investing in Bitcoin, they have a stake in the future, proving they are among the forward-thinkers of today.

Another narrative attached to Bitcoin is that it’s free of the control of governments and banks. This idea attracts those investors with an anarchic streak who view many modern institutions as corrupt. Because it isn’t attached to any one country, investors feel they are promoting internationalism.

In short, it is these futuristic narratives along with the mysterious founding of Bitcoin that have made it so attractive to investors, not the complex math behind it. Without the exciting story, it probably wouldn’t have succeeded as quickly as it has.

توصيات الذهب

Lesson 2: There is a lot in common with epidemics and economic narratives.

Two subjects people don’t usually compare are epidemiology, or the study of epidemics, and economics. This is a shame, because epidemiology and economics could learn a lot from each other. Epidemiologists study how diseases spread, and many of the patterns they see are similar to what economists observe.

 

For example, they study a disease like Ebola. They keep track of things like the rate of contagion and well as recovery and death rates. When an epidemic is quickly spreading, the contagion rate is much higher than death and recovery rates. When the epidemic starts to decline, the contagion rate falls while the recovery and death rate outnumbers new cases.

 

This idea can be applied to economic narratives that are contagious. The contagion of a narrative rapidly rises as people talk about it, whether through conversation in person or online. It also spreads through the news and other media. But just like an epidemic, eventually, the story slows down. People start to forget or they just lose interest and the story dies off.

gold signals

We can see this parallel when we look at the Bitcoin craze again. If you search how often news stories over the last decade said the word “Bitcoin” you can see this pattern. There was a sharp increase in 2014, and then there was another peak in 2018 before it fell again.

 

While this isn’t the end of the story for Bitcoin, we can see that the rapid increase and decline with secondary waves is strikingly similar to the shape of a graph of the contagion rate during an epidemic. So studying disease curves can give us a good idea of what a popular narrative might do to the market.

 

Lesson 3:  We must understand the narratives of the past if we want to be ready for our economic future.

Clearly, narratives are important when we’re looking at the economy. This is why it’s essential that economists take these stories seriously, rather than just looking at the math, so they can more accurately predict what’s coming next.

 

Luckily for economists, now more than ever we are able to access data about these narratives. We can learn through market research, looking at social media, and gathering information about internet searches.

 

Technology can help economists to find patterns in the data. They can then use this information to predict what the prominent narratives will be and how they might affect the economy. Shiller makes a point to say it has to be done carefully and accurately if you are studying the effects of narratives on economic events.

Forex trading Signals

What good does this information do? By having a good understanding of narratives, policy-makers can help shape people’s behavior when there are times of stress.

 

An example of this is during the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt addressed the nation with “fireside chats.” He understood the people’s lack of confidence was part of what was keeping the economy down. In these chats, he asked people to set aside their fears and spend money. It seemed to work, too. Following each address, the markets stabilized.

 

If people in charge of making policy understand the narratives and take control of them, they can be active participants in what’s going on rather than just bystanders who have no control of the situation.

Read signals on https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

 

Avoid emotional trading

Avoid emotional trading

Trading psychology describes how a trader handles generating gains and handling losses. It represents their ability to deal with risks and not deviate from their trading plan. The emotional aspects of investing will attempt to dictate your every transaction, and your ability to handle your emotions is part of your trading psychology.

It is impossible to eliminate emotions in trading, but this should not be the goal in the first place. Instead, traders should understand how certain biases or emotions can affect their trading and use this information to their advantage. Every trader is different, and there is no simple rulebook that everyone should follow.

Identify your personality traits

Develop and follow a trading plan

Have patience

Be adaptive

Take a break after a loss

Accept your winnings

Keep a trading log

Identify your personality traits

One of the keys to developing successful trading psychology is identifying your personality traits early on. You will need to be honest with yourself and say if you have impulsive tendencies or if you are prone to acting out of anger or frustration.

If this is the case, it is important to keep these traits in check while you are actively trading because they can lead you to make rash and ill-advised decisions that have little analytical backing. However, it is also important to play to your personal strengths. For instance, if you are naturally calm and calculated, you can take advantage of these personality traits during your time on the markets.

Equally as important as identifying and being aware of your personality traits and emotions is recognising your biases, as listed above. Biases are an innate aspect of human nature, but you should be aware of what your individual biases are before opening or closing any trades.

Develop and follow a trading plan

Having a trading plan is paramount to ensuring that you achieve your goals. A trading plan acts as the blueprint to your trading, and it should highlight your time commitments, your available trading funds, your risk-reward ratio and a trading strategy that you feel comfortable with.

gold signals

For instance, a trading plan could say that you were going to commit one hour every morning and evening to trading, and that you will never commit more than 2% of the total value of your portfolio to any one trade. This can help minimise losses and limit the effect of emotions on your trading as the rules for opening or closing a position are already highlighted for you.

Trading plans should also take into account individual factors that could affect your trading discipline such as your emotions, biases and personality traits. If you make clear what your biases are before you start trading, you might be less inclined to act on them.

Have patience

Patience is integral to discipline and it is crucial that you have patience with your positions. Acting on emotions like fear can lead you to miss out on a profit by closing a position too early. Trust your analysis and remain patient and disciplined. Equally, when looking to enter a trade, it is important to be patient and wait for the opportune moment rather than just jumping into a trade right then and there.

For instance, if you were wanting to speculate on some GBP currency pairs like EUR/GBP or GBP/USD, you may want to wait until just before a Bank of England (BoE) announcement as there tends to be increased volatility at this time.

Forex trading Signals 

 

Be adaptive

While it is important to have a trading plan, remember that no two days on the markets are the same, and winning streaks don’t exist in trading. With this in mind, you should become comfortable in assessing how the markets are different from day to day and adapt accordingly.

If there is more volatility on one day compared to the day before and the markets are moving particularly unpredictably, you may decide to put your trading activity on hold until you’re sure you understand what is happening. Being adaptive can help to limit your emotions and rule out representative and status quo biases, enabling you to assess each situation on its own merits – ensuring that you are pragmatic during your time on the markets.

Take a break after a loss

Sometimes after a loss, the best thing you can do is walk away from your trading account for a short while to gather your thoughts and compose yourself – rather than rushing into another trade in an attempt to regain some of your losses.

forex signals 

The best traders are those that take their losses and use them as learning opportunities. They will typically take a few minutes to themselves before going back to their platform, using this time to assess what went wrong for that particular trade in the hope that they might avoid making the same mistake in the future.

In doing so, they keep emotions like pride or fear in check by letting themselves cool off before approaching the next trade with a clear head and sound judgment.

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en 

 

S&P 500 Inclusion Criteria

S&P 500 Inclusion Criteria

The S&P 500 was created in 1957 and is one of the most widely quoted stock market indexes. S&P 500 stocks represent the largest publicly-traded companies in the U.S. The S&P 500 focuses on the U.S. market's large-cap sector.

An S&P 500 company must meet a broad set of criteria to be added to the index, including the following:

A total market capitalization of at least $14.6 billion

Must be a U.S. company

Must have a public float of at least 10% of its equity shares outstanding

A positive sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters of trailing earnings

Positive earnings for its most recent quarter

Must meet certain liquidity requirements

1

Companies may be removed from the S&P 500 if they deviate substantially from these standards.

2

$40.3 trillion

The total combined market cap of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 as of March 31, 2022.

3

توصيات الاسهم   

stock signals

 

S&P 500 Calculation

The S&P 500 is a free-float market capitalization-weighted index. Market capitalization (or market cap) represents the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding equity shares. Market cap is calculated by multiplying the total number of outstanding shares of stock by the company's current stock price.

4

 For example, a company with 20 million shares outstanding in which its stock is selling for $100 per share would have a market cap of $2 billion.

As a result, the more valuable an individual company's stock becomes, the more it contributes to the S&P 500's overall return. It is not uncommon for three-quarters of the index's return to be linked to only 50 to 75 stocks.

Therefore, the addition or subtraction of smaller companies from the index will not have a noticeable impact on the overall return of the index. However, the removal or addition of even just one of the largest stocks can have a major impact.

S&P 500 Sector Breakdown

Below are the top sectors and their weightings within the S&P 500 index as of March 31, 2022.

5

S&P 500 Sector Weighting

 Sector Index Weighting

Information Technology        28.0%

Health Care     13.6%

Consumer Discretionary         12.0%

Financials        11.1%

Communication Services        9.4%

Industrials       7.9%

Consumer Staples       6.1%

Energy 3.9%

Utilities           2.7%

Real Estate      2.7%

Materials         2.6%

Source: S&P Dow Jones Indices

Being aware of the S&P's sector weighting is important because sectors with a smaller weighting may not have a material impact on the value of the overall index—even if they're outperforming or underperforming the market.

For example, if oil prices are rising, leading to increased profits for the energy sector, those stocks represent only 3.9% of the S&P 500. As a result, oil stocks may not lead to a higher S&P if, for example, the more heavily weighted information technology sector is underperforming.

 S&P 500 components are weighted by free-float market capitalization, which means that larger companies can affect the value of the index to a greater degree.

6

Forex trading Signals

Top 25 Components by Market Cap

Because the exact weightings of the top 25 components are not available from S&P directly, the weightings below are from the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY). SPY is the oldest exchange traded fund (ETF) that tracks the S&P 500 and holds over $419 million in assets under management (AUM) and is highly traded.

7

As a result, the SPY's portfolio weightings provide a good proxy for investing in the underlying S&P 500 index, although the two may not be exactly the same. As of April 1, 2022, the following are the 25 largest S&P 500 index constituents by weight:

8

Apple (AAPL): 7.14%

Microsoft (MSFT): 6.1%

Amazon (AMZN): 3.8%

Tesla (TSLA): 2.5%

Alphabet Class A (GOOGL): 2.2%

Alphabet Class C (GOOG): 2.1%

NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): 1.8%

Berkshire Hathaway Class B (BRK.B): 1.7%

Meta (META), formerly Facebook, Class A: 1.4%

UnitedHealth Group (UNH): 1.2%

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): 1.2%

JPMorgan Chase (JPM): 1.0%

Visa Class A (V): 1.0%

Procter & Gamble (PG): 1.0%

Exxon Mobil (XOM): 0.90%

Home Depot (HD): 0.8%

Chevron Corporation (CVX): 0.80%

Mastercard Inc. Class A (MA): 0.8%

Bank of America (BAC): 0.8%

AbbVie Inc. (ABBV): 0.7%

Pfizer (PFE): 0.7%

Broadcom Inc. (AVGO): 0.7%

Costco (COST): 0.7%

Walt Disney (DIS): 0.7%

Coca-Cola Company (KO): 0.6%

How Many Companies Are in the S&P 500?

There are 500 companies within the S&P 500 index. However, there are 505 stocks since some companies have multiple classes of equity shares, such as Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway.

9

 

What Are the Top 10 Holdings in the S&P 500?

As of April 1, 2022, the top ten holdings and their weighting in the index are:

Apple (AAPL): 7.14%

Microsoft (MSFT): 6.1%

Amazon (AMZN): 3.8%

Tesla (TSLA): 2.5%

Alphabet Class A (GOOGL): 2.2%

Alphabet Class C (GOOG): 2.1%

NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): 1.8%

Berkshire Hathaway Class B (BRK.B): 1.6%

Meta (META), formerly Facebook, Class A: 1.4%

UnitedHealth Group (UNH): 1.2%

How Are Companies Selected for the S&P 500?

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

Existential-humanistic

Existential-humanistic

 

Psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 posited that humans have a hierarchy of needs, and it makes sense to fulfill the basic needs first (food, water etc.) before higher-order needs can be met.[103]

Humanistic psychology, which has been influenced by existentialism and phenomenology,[104] stresses free will and self-actualization.[105] It emerged in the 1950s as a movement within academic psychology, in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis.[106] The humanistic approach seeks to view the whole person, not just fragmented parts of the personality or isolated cognitions.[107] Humanistic psychology also focuses on personal growth, self-identity, death, aloneness, and freedom. It emphasizes subjective meaning, the rejection of determinism, and concern for positive growth rather than pathology. Some founders of the humanistic school of thought were American psychologists Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, and Carl Rogers, who created and developed client-centered therapy.

stock signals

Later, positive psychology opened up humanistic themes to scientific study. Positive psychology is the study of factors which contribute to human happiness and well-being, focusing more on people who are currently healthy. In 2010, Clinical Psychological Review published a special issue devoted to positive psychological interventions, such as gratitude journaling and the physical expression of gratitude. It is, however, far from clear that positive psychology is effective in making people happier.[108][109] Positive psychological interventions have been limited in scope, but their effects are thought to be somewhat better than placebo effects. The evidence, however, is far from clear that interventions based on positive psychology increase human happiness or resilience.[108][109]

 

 

Humanistic psychology is primarily an orientation toward the whole of psychology rather than a distinct area or school. It stands for respect for the worth of persons, respect for differences of approach, open-mindedness as to acceptable methods, and interest in exploration of new aspects of human behavior. As a "third force" in contemporary psychology, it is concerned with topics having little place in existing theories and systems: e.g., love, creativity, self, growth, organism, basic need-gratification, self-actualization, higher values, being, becoming, spontaneity, play, humor, affection, naturalness, warmth, ego-transcendence, objectivity, autonomy, responsibility, meaning, fair-play, transcendental experience, peak experience, courage, and related concepts.

Forex trading Signals

 

 

Existential psychology emphasizes the need to understand a client's total orientation towards the world. Existential psychology is opposed to reductionism, behaviorism, and other methods that objectify the individual.[105] In the 1950s and 1960s, influenced by philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalytically trained American psychologist Rollo May helped to develop existential psychology. Existential psychotherapy, which follows from existential psychology, is a therapeutic approach that is based on the idea that a person's inner conflict arises from that individual's confrontation with the givens of existence. Swiss psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger and American psychologist George Kelly may also be said to belong to the existential school.[111] Existential psychologists tend to differ from more "humanistic" psychologists in the former's relatively neutral view of human nature and relatively positive assessment of anxiety.[112] Existential psychologists emphasized the humanistic themes of death, free will, and meaning, suggesting that meaning can be shaped by myths and narratives; meaning can be deepened by the acceptance of free will, which is requisite to living an authentic life, albeit often with anxiety with regard to death.

 

 

gold signals

 

Personality

Personality psychology is concerned with enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. Theories of personality vary across different psychological schools of thought. Each theory carries different assumptions about such features as the role of the unconscious and the importance of childhood experience. According to Freud, personality is based on the dynamic interactions of the id, ego, and super-ego.[116] By contrast, trait theorists have developed taxonomies of personality constructs

Read signals on

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en

Psychological Traps

Psychological Traps

 

1. Anchoring Trap

First, there is the so-called anchoring trap, which refers to an over-reliance on what one originally thinks. Imagine betting on a boxing match and choosing the fighter purely by who has thrown the most punches in their last five fights. You may come out all right by picking the statistically more-active fighter, but the fighter with the least punches may have won five bouts by first-round knockouts. Clearly, any metric can become meaningless when it is taken out of context.

For instance, if you think of a certain company as successful, you may be too confident that its stocks are a good bet. This preconception may be totally incorrect in the prevailing situation or at some point in the future.

Take, for example, electronics retailer Radio Shack. Once a thriving seller of personal electronics and gadgets in the 1980s and 1990s, the chain was crushed by online retailers such as Amazon (AMZN). Those trapped in the perception that Radio Shack was there to stay lost a lot of money as the company filed for bankruptcy multiple times and shrinking from its heyday size of 7,300 stores to 70 outlets by the end of 2017.1

In order to avoid this trap, you need to remain flexible in your thinking and open to new sources of information, while understanding the reality that any company can be here today and gone tomorrow. Any manager can disappear too, for that matter.

#2. Sunk Cost Trap

gold signals

The sunk cost trap is just as dangerous. This is about psychologically (but not in reality) protecting your previous choices or decisions — which is often disastrous for your investments. It is truly hard to take a loss and/or accept that you made the wrong choices or allowed someone else to make them for you. But if your investment is no good, or sinking fast, the sooner you get out of it and into something more promising, the better.

best signals

If you clung to stocks that you bought in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom, you would have had to wait a decade to break even, and that is for non-technology stocks.2 It's far better not to cling to the sunk cost and to get into other assets classes that are moving up fast. Emotional commitment to bad investments just makes things worse.

 

#3. Confirmation Trap

Similarly, in the confirmation trap, people often seek out others who have made and are still making, the same mistake. Make sure you get objective advice from fresh sources, rather than consulting the person who gave you the bad advice in the first place. If you find yourself saying something like, "Our stocks have dropped by 30 percent, but it’s surely best just to hang onto them, isn’t it?" then you are seeking confirmation from some other unfortunate investor in the same situation. You can comfort each other in the short run, but it’s just self-delusion.

#4. Blindness Trap

stock signals

Situational blindness can exacerbate the situation. Even people who are not specifically seeking confirmation often just shut out the prevailing market realities in order to do nothing and postpone the evil day when the losses just have to be confronted.

If you know deep down that there is a problem with your investments, such as a major scandal at the company or market warnings, but you read everything online except for the financial headlines, then you are probably suffering from this blinder effect. 

#5. Relativity Trap

stock signals

The relativity trap is also there waiting to lead you astray. Everyone has a different psychological make-up, combined with a unique set of circumstances extending to work, family, career prospects and likely inheritances. This means that although you need to be aware of what others are doing and saying, their situation and views are not necessarily relevant outside their own context.

"I think a lot of people tend to equate their self worth with their income, or they think that social media, these days puts pressure on people to make it look like they're doing better than they are. And because of that, people feel bad," said Amy Morin, Verywell Mind’s editor-in-chief. "We look at somebody else who has a new car or somebody else whose house looks beautiful and think, 'Oh, why don't I have that?' And those emotions that get stirred up, I think for a lot of people are really difficult. Then how do you decide what you really value in life and what's most important?"

Be aware, but beware too! You must invest for yourself and only in your own context. Your friends may have both the money and the risk-friendliness to speculate in pork belly futures (as in the movie Trading Places), but if you are a modest earning and nervy person, this is not for you.

#6. Irrational Exuberance Trap

When investors start believing that the past equals the future, they are acting as if there is no uncertainty in the market. Unfortunately, uncertainty never vanishes.

Read more on

https://www.gold-pattern.com/en