The stock market can be an extremely exciting place… though it seems like this is how it works for many people.

• If you are in the stock market, you hate it and are probably losing money.
• If you aren’t in the stock market, you feel you are missing out on easy money.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence. I’ve been trading stocks since I was in high school, so I am quite familiar with the ups and downs and how everything works. It’s extremely easy to setup a stock trading account with sites like ETrade, Scottrade and Ameritrade and you can start trading stocks from home with only a couple hundred dollars in your account. All you need to pay is the stock value price and a trading fee every time you place a trade, which is usually around $10.

The concept of trading stocks is quite simple as well. You can buy stocks in nearly every popular company and established brand out there. You simply find their stock ticker symbol, decide how many shares you would like to buy, then sell the stock when it goes up for a profit. It sounds easy enough, yet so many people lose money in the stock market.

With that said, I will move on to my next two points…

1. What is short selling stocks?
2. Investing through guidance of others

Buying Stocks vs. Short Selling Stocks

The vast majority of people will BUY stocks to try and make money, this simply means that you are betting that the stock goes up in price. There is also something called “SHORTING” stocks, which is something I’ve tried my hand at over the past few years. When shorting a stock, you are still buying it at it’s currently share price, but you are betting that the stock goes down in value. If it goes up, you will lose money.

To better explain the process, Shortzilla.com provides the example below for us.

Example: XYZ stock has deteriorating fundamentals and you believe the stock will decrease in value. XYZ stock is currently trading at $100 per share. You decide to short 100 shares of XYZ @$100 per share. In order for this transaction to take place, you borrow the 100 shares from your brokerage. The transaction looks like this.

• Borrow 100 Shares and Sell Short @ $100 per share.  Proceeds from Sale = $10000
• Shares of XYZ rise to $120 per share. The stock is obviously moving in the wrong direction, and you decide to close out your short.  In order cover your short position, you will need to purchase XYZ shares in the open market.
• Your loss on the transaction is $120-$100 * 100 shares = $2000.

While many people can make a lot of money with shorting stocks, it can be quite scary if the stock you are betting against continues to go up. This could result in a massive loss if a stock skyrockets when you are betting against it, and for this reason, many short sellers will look for quick gains and get in and out of stocks they are shorting.

Investing Through the Guidance of Others

Some of you are probably scratching your heads and have no idea what I am talking about, while others are intrigued and interested in getting started. Either way, there is a learning method for you. The stock market and investing is no joke. You can give all your money to a bank or investment company to manage your money, or you can do it yourself. One of the growing trends lately is that people are joining stock alert services which tell them what stocks to buy/sell and when. All you need to do is simply subscribe to their monthly services and follow their email/text alerts on when they buy and sell. I have been doing this and wrote about these types of services in the past from Tim Sykes and Jim Cramer. Most of these services will cost anywhere from $49-$100+ per month.

Another site that has been doing well and growing fast as of lately is Shortzilla.com, which is a combination of everything we discussed above. They offer learning tools, a forum area and alerts on when to buy/sell stocks, and they mostly focus on short selling and getting in and out of stocks fast for a quick gain. You can see a chart of some of their previous closed trades below.

The stock names and symbols have been blurred, as this is for their members only to see, but you can still understand how the trading system works. There will also be profits and margins here and there, but in the long run most of these alert services are quite profitable. As a member, it’s up to you to learn about the stocks you are trading in, how to trade and make sure you place the trades right when you receive your alerts. Having an app for trading on your mobile device and receiving stock alerts through text is the best way to do this.

Buying & Shorting Resources

For anyone who isn’t ready to make the plunge and start investing with your own money, there are plenty of resources out there to trade with play money and to learn what has worked in the past for others and how to spot trends in the market place. Shortzilla has provided us with an excellent selection of stock buying and selling resources below.

From Shortzilla:
What Is Short Selling? – Our primer on the basics of shorting stocks.
What’s a Short Squeeze? – Don’t get caught in a short squeeze!
The Benefits of Short Selling- We discuss some of the exploitable inefficiencies in shorting stocks.

Links
Link to SEC Accounting Enforcement Releases

White Papers
The Financial and Market Effects of the SEC’s Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases

Suggested Articles on Short Selling:
Short Selling Stocks: Is it Time? by Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
How to Play the Short Game from the Financial Times
Jim Chanos on Short Selling from Market Folly
Kathryn Staley Video on Art of Short Selling
Knowing the Rules of the Shorting Game by Jim Cramer
Joining The Dark Side by James Montier
Shorting a Stock: 20 Investment Lessons From Life Partners by Harry Beck (@Seeking Alpha)
What Short Sellers Know (study of Short Interest) by Alpha Now- Thomson Reuters
Cash Doesn’t Lie all about Accruals..

Book Recommendations:
The Art of Short Selling by Kathryn Staley
Quality of Earnings by Thornton O’Glove
Short Selling: Strategies, Risks, and Rewards by Frank Fabozzi

Tools
Short Interest Data
Short Interest Publication Calendar 2012

Last month I wrote about post on Tim Sykes and how I receive his stock alerts for market trading. That post, titled “How I Quickly Made $700 Profit in 20 Minutes with Tim Sykes” got a lot of attention and I continually get emails all the time asking how well his stocks perform and if they are consistent. I received a new stock alert from Tim earlier today, and here we go again!

The Tim Alert received said the following:

“TIMalert: bought 20k GSLO at 80 cent/share, new Apple accessory play, junk company but low marketcap & technical breakout, they like issuing PRs unlike LQMT, goal is $1/share or higher.”

By the time I read the alert and checked the stock (which was within 30 seconds), it was already at .89, but Tim has an awesome track record, so I gave it a shot with a few thousand shares at .89. Within a few minutes the stock rockets up to $1.14 per share, putting my earnings at over $1,250 within just minutes. (With 20,000 shares at .80, at the high of $1.14 for the day, Tim was up nearly $7,000) This was all happening pretty fast, and after watching LQMT last month, I know how fast and crazy stocks can move.

It looks like this stock will end the day in the mid .90s (up 35% on the day). Still up on the day, but after seeing the stock his $1.14 earlier today, it’s quite exciting to see where it goes next. I’m still holding my shares, but we’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

This is actually the first stock recommendation I’ve acted on the in the past couple weeks from Tim. Whenever I get an alert, I will see if shares are available, but most times Tim is shorting stocks and it’s much harder to get in vs. when he is buying. Tim was on an amazing hot steak during August, but September has started up slow… however this new recommendation looks to be doing pretty well for Tim and his alert subscribers.

Either way, I’m not trying to push this stock or Tim’s service… but instead, keeping you updated as my “Tim Sykes” related posts always seem to be a hot topic!

Tim Sykes’ Stock Alerts

UPDATE: This morning Tim sold his position in GSLO and the following alert was sent out “TIMalert: sold GSLO for decent profit at 0.96ish”. I also sold my position at .92 for a quick profit.

Every week a new product is released and it promises to give you the secrets of wealth and how to make money online. While most of these are rehashed programs, data and learning methods… some of them are actually great. But what if you go could around the product and follow the exact moves of the mastermind itself! That’s exactly what I have been doing for months now with Tim Sykes.

Today’s layout was too perfect not to post about, and I just had to let more of you know about how great Tim Sykes is at stock trader, and why his learning program is simple the best around.

Here’s how it works, in short. Tim Sykes is a mastermind at trading. He turned his $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million, and is the number one investor on Covester.com. Tim’s stock training program includes a ton of learning guides and dvds, but his “Tim Alerts” is where the big money is. Right before Tim buys/shorts a new stock, you are sent a new stock alert… likewise whenever he sells. This alerts are sent by EMAIL and TEXT to cell. You simply buy/sell based on Tim’s recommendation… oh, by the way… he’s almost ALWAYS profitable!

How I quickly made $700+ profit today with Tim Sykes in less than 20 mins.

10:00 AM – I receive the following stock alert: “TIMalert: bought 10k LQMT at .545, signed a mysterious deal with Apple yesterday, could really ramp higher in the next few days”
10:01 AM – I quickly head over to my stock trading site ThinkorSwim.com and purchase LQMT. It’s already moving, so I get in at .594.
10:19 AM – I’m keeping a close eye on the “profit for the day” and it’s already swinging upwards of $600, so I put a SELL order in if it hits .69 per share. BANG! Sells all 7,500 shares and I walk away with another $720 profit because of Sykes recommendation.

Now, I usually BUY/SELL whenever I receive a recommendation from Tim, but this one was moving quick and I was happy with the profit in 20 minutes. Tim hadn’t sent out an alert yet to sell, and the stock is now at .84! If I stayed in I would have profited over $1800 within an hour! Obviously, your gain/loss will depend on how much you put into each stock and when you get in/out.

UPDATE: Tim Sykes releases stock alert at 11:53AM – “TIMalert: sold 10k LQMT at 85 cents/share, having trouble making new highs, i gotta play it safe, $3k profit in exactly 2 hours, potential rebuy later though”

Tim Sykes isn’t a long term trading and is usually in and out of stocks within a few hours or a day or two. With this said, it’s important to always have access to your Tim Alerts and being able to trade stocks. I have Tim’s alerts sent directly to my cell, then with a click of an app, I have ThinkorSwim load up on my iPhone and I can make a trade almost instantly. Buy/Sell based on Tim’s recommendations and you are set… rinse and repeat!

Take a look at Tim Sykes’ Stock Alerts!

Yes, I know… I’m late to the party, but it’s still better to be late than never, but I finally changed over to AT&T and got an iPhone. I gladly would have left Verizon a long time ago, but I had well nearly 2 years on my contract. If you don’t already have an iPhone… every time Apple has one of their commercials playing, it makes you want one event more. On top of that, I already have and love my 16GB iPod Touch, which is basically the same thing as an iPhone, but not a phone!

I was doing some research online to see if I could find anything on how to get out of my existing contract with Verizon, and if it’s even been seen that ATT&T would credit or pay off your existing contract. Looked all over, and never found any good success stories. So I decided to give it a shot and headed over to my local AT&T store and asked if they could do anything. Luckily, their head business accounts manager was in, and he was able to credit my account for all early termination fees I would then have to deal with from Verizon. I would still get hit with the termination fees from Verizon, but AT&T would credit my monthly plans til it made up the difference. He was only able to do this because I was an established business, and said it couldn’t have been done if it was a personal account.

On that note, the iPhone is just great and makes internet life a million times better than with the Voyager I was using over at Verizon. Earlier I was thinking over upgrading to the Blackberry Storm… but always wanted the iPhone and it worked out in the end.

Now that I have the iPhone and not just the iPod Touch, I can take advantage of all applications available through iTunes. I thought I would share a few of my favorite apps, and also get a few of yours as well.

Twitterrific
I was able to access Twitter on my Voyager, but it was slow as anything and a crappy text based version. Twitteriffic loads fast, shows full images, and it’s just like being on a Mac or PC. (I’m now using Tweetie instead of Twitterrific)

E*Trade Mobile Pro
I’ve been trading stocks for over a decade now and I’ve always been using E*Trade, among a few other sites. I know the iPhone is already loaded with a Stock app, but you can actually trade through this app and look over your real portfolio.

Fieldrunners
This is just an awesome game. When I used to play Warcraft 3, I would play the tower defense games through Battle.net. This game is made up of the same concept, but very addictive and fun.

NBA Game Time
I can’t get enough of the NBA, and now I’ll be getting even more with this new application I just picked up today. NBA GameTime has live streaming scores and playoff bracket updates.  With a few clicks, check scores, schedules and full standings.

AzoogleAds
I beleive AzoogleAds was the first network to come out with their own app for the iPhone. Not only is it great to be able to login to your stats and see how much you’ve made… but it should pave the way for more affiliate networks to do the same. Who’s next?

Those were just a few of the apps on my iPhone… what’s on yours?

No matter what the economy is doing, how big your competitors, or what niche you’re in… someone is always making money. More than anything else, it comes down to how you are marketing, and what you are offering to your customers. The other day while I was watching Fox Business News, I them list AutoZone stock on the screen. While almost every stock has been tanking for the past several months, AutoZone has been living it up, and just hit it’s 52 week high. Take a look at their one year chart below.

While the Rest of the Markets Tank, AutoZone find a Way Thrives

As you may have guessed, AutoZone is thriving while others are dying, because instead of buying new cars, many people are instead buying parts to improve or fix their current cars. The economy has been changing the way a lot of people spend their money, but people will always continue to spend their money.

The same holds true for marketing online. Whether your competition is holding back on ad spending (which is usually never a good idea), or customers are buying cheaper and used products through Amazon & eBay instead of full price directly from the retailer, the consumer spending will always be there.

Whether the economy is doing great or poorly, AutoZone will always have a significant customer base. Does the same apply for your business?