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15 to 30 minutes/day - 2-3 times a week
Experience stock traders agree that one hour of fundamental analysis
a week is required for every stock you're holding. Since my strategy
does not invests in individual stocks, we are blessed to limit
our home to some simple tasks. The following steps are maintenance
tasks of your portfolio that should be performed at least twice a
week (Tuesday's and Thursday's) and every time a position has been
sold or bought or the stock is down trending and crosses the moving
average. Remember: we don't buy and hold, we buy and
control our investments.
Note: We recommend you use a spreadsheet to update your entry
points, exit points and log entries. A formatted spreadsheet
can be downloaded. You may use MS Excel or there is a free
compatible version from Sun OpenOffice
http://download.openoffice.org/
What to do when on Vacation:
some of us take a laptop computer with us when on a vacation trip.
However, this may not works for everybody, and this is what I
recommend you do.
If your brokerage account has "trailing stops", put a 5% trailing
stop, otherwise use a 5% stop order for all your long positions. When
you are getting back, just cancel all your stops. For my swing
trades, I use a 2% stop exit. However, I prefer not to hold any
swing trades while on vacation.
 Updating
the Sell Stop Order information table (spreadsheet). [7 min.)
This is probably the most important task for your home
work. It's an exit strategy, developed to preserve your capital and
of course profits you may have attained. It requires to read the
stock chart after the market closes.
Updating the Buy Limit Order
information table (spreadsheet).
[5 min.)
This update is required for new or additional purchases
only.
Review and place Profit Target order.
[5 min.)
This is an optional task - see profit target page for
details.
Updating the trading action log
(spreadsheet).
[5 min.)
When a position is bought or sold, we want to make a log
entry to keep track of all activities. In this way, we can easily
track all our stock trading action.
Updating the Online
Brokerage Account. [8 min.)
This is the last step. In order to make things happen, we
must log in to your brokerage account and submit all the changes.
Review the Stock Trading Game Plan (optional).
When not sure about your stock trading result, just
review the Stock Trading Playbook. It takes a lot of discipline when
it comes to stock trading. Some compare it to gambling, it's a sort of
the same excitement.
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