[RubberMallet]

I personally have a pretty neat way of doing it if you ask me and it helped me even out my portfolio last year.

the first part was finding good companies obviously. companies that had a lot of cash, had a good competitive edge. weren't too far in debt. such and so forth.

now that I have a company I like I start looking at three different things for the most part.

moving average, MACD (comparison of 2 moving averages), and stochastics (takes the closing price and compares it to the high and low of the past 14 days). I use the charts from www.stockcharts.com to find the info. when all 3 begin to show an upward swing, I buy. when all 3 show a downward swing I sell. 2 out of 3 or 1 out of 3 I do nothing. that’s really it.

I'm vary much a novice at this and have read a few books that really sold me on this.

will be getting into some covered sells here shortly after reading some on warren buffet and some of his tactics…

[Liberty4Life]

85% of daytraders lose money in the stock market. I am one of them.

I've since re-appropriated my money into four different mutual funds, broken down as such:
25% small-caps
25% mid-caps
25% large-caps
25% international stocks (of which, I've divided into 'China' 'Int'l Small Caps' and another International fund).

It's worked so far for me... my year-to-date return is 16.4%. (My China fund has gone up over 46% in that time). At this rate, I should break even from my last year's losses somewhere around 2032.

[RubberMallet]

i do the same thing with mutual funds it works on the same line it just works alot easier because you just do it over a longer period of time. (like a year or so) . and i don't day trade. i have about 15 stocks right now that i'm buying/selling and i check my charts about 3 times a week for indicators.

i currently own a few funds. american, vanguard, oppenheimer allocation funds, and a few other dodge and cox funds.