BetterTrades coach and 20-year stock market veteran Bob Eldridge believes in simple, consistent concepts: Make money most days in the stock market and use it to generate income and pay the daily bills. That's the same philosophy he teaches to his students.
Bob believes you can take the day's profits from the stock market and use them to pay off the mortgage, a car note or perhaps just buy the groceries. He uses that common-sense approach in his daily "Trading Lab," a hands-on learning experience which allows students to duplicate his moves and benefit from his years of experience.
"New traders have no business being in a high-risk trade with anything other than risk capital, money they can afford to lose," Bob says. "It's foolhardy for them to ignore the risk simply because they have become excited about potential profits. The results of such trading will likely result in a loss of part or all of that money."
Bob helps his students learn to practice his very conservative, yet profitable, lab trades over and over until they feel safe enough to use real money. A former stock broker with a major brokerage firm, Bob wants his students to consistently build their trading accounts through small steps. His goal is 1 to 3 percent profit per day.
"Be safe, be sane, and use common sense," Bob says. "You can make money almost every day from the natural oscillation of the stock market, no matter the direction."
Bob believes traders need a plan to run their accounts as if it were a business. He shows students how they need short-term, medium-term and long-term accounts to meet daily cash flow, stability and net worth accumulation. Learning his techniques can allow traders to handle any sort of stock market circumstance. Bob says that since all stocks move up and down, the key is to take advantage of the movement.
"I don't subscribe to the theory that you should swing for the bleachers with your trades," Bob says. "Don't put the majority of your trading funds into risky situations. Put that money into a trade where you're going to be successful most of the time. Maximize the frequency, not the amount of the profit."