When tax time comes you are going to be required to fill out Schedule D and report the gain. In order to do this you are going to have to make sure that you have precise records of all your buys and sells and the dates they took place. Stock market trading just made your tax life a little tougher and there is nothing you can do about it.

It is important to note that every single time you sell a stock, whether it be for a gain or a loss, is going to have to go on that Schedule D. The brokerage companies are required to report all your transactions to the IRS and so there is no escaping it. If you fail to report your gains and losses, your information will not match what the IRS has on you and bad things will start to happen. At best you will be required to make your return correct and at worst you will owe more money in penalties and fines.

If the stock you sell for the year adds up to be a loss, you can use up to $3000 of that loss on your return. Anything over that amount in losses has to be carried forward until the next year. This is just another thing that makes reporting your stock trading gains and losses a headache.

The stock market for beginners is hard enough before you add in the taxes. Unfortunately, the government won’t have any sympathy for you as they consider you rich for just having enough money to invest in stocks!

About the Author

Please visit my site Stock Market For Beginners which is set up to teach you everything you need to know to get started in stocks.

The stock market for beginners is a place where you need to pay attention to what is going on. During a bull market, you can probably make money from almost any stock. Everyone will want to give you their stock pick and chances are the stock will go up. All the pundits on TV will be pumping out their stock picks and you can most likely make money on any of them. Even your hair stylist may want to give you a stock tip.

If you start investing in stocks during a bull market you may get over confident. You may make money right away and think it is easy. This is something to be weary about if you are just starting to invest in stocks. It is not easy and things can turn around in a day.

During a bull market, everyone wants to sell. The stocks you own may go down 4 out of every 5 days. You will be confused and want to sell and wonder whether you should. Remember 9/11 when the stock market went down huge and kept going down for months after? Do you sell or do you hold? Will the stock market ever turn around? Do you buy more at a lower price? These are just a few of the questions that you will be faced with in a bear market.

Most of the time the market is somewhere in between a bull and bear market. Usually the better stocks go up over time and the stocks of companies doing poorly go down. It is best to always try to pick stocks of companies that are doing well or will do well. The stock market for beginners can be a confusing and scary place that takes a lot of time and experience to get used to.

The problem is that if you don’t know how to choose among stocks & how to properly approach them you could end up wasting good money instead of increasing your profits.

You can’t just trade stocks like if you where gambling in Vegas.

The rules and the opportunities are the same for everyone, so either you are going to make money when you pick a stock and make a trade or you are simply going to lose it in favor of the more seasoned ones.

The are a lot of books on the subject that pretend to help you, however many of them where written 5 or 8 years ago and that kind of makes them obsolete in this constantly changing field.

To become a profitable stock trader your winning trades have to overcome your loser ones in terms of dollars and cents.

Successful traders know how to adapt to different market environments and choose among the best trading opportunities by applying effective trading strategies.

Just always keep in mind that a good strategy is simple and practical. Complicated stock systems will always make you slow in your decision making process or confuse you from the start.

Do we have to worry our Indian investments in stocks & mutual funds?
What would happen next in the stock markets of India?
Whether investors should make more investments in India?

We at would like to bring a couple of things into picture:

1. Federal Reserve (US head banking institution, like RBI in India) is looking forward to make more rate cuts (interest rate cuts) in the coming future to ease out the credit crunch that has evoked since this subprime crisis. Its effect would take 6-8 months to reflect in the global economies including markets of India: Derivatives Trading Market, Futures Trading Market, and Commodities Trading Market of India. This reflection in trading and investment sentiment could take some time to happen, but it would be definitely witnessed with an increment in local business, FII investment in India and NRI Investment Services in India. Good news

2. Indian Shares/Stocks market are not performing great in the gone weeks, but institutions still have abundant money on the table to invest; but with the coming rate cuts, the debt market would not look any good to them either (in the US). So would they put money into commodities (mainly: gold, oil, silver)?
Commodity prices have risen up real fast, not giving many investors the room or time to switch from equities or debt market into commodities market. All this brings the investors, institutions, banks & hedge funds in the land of uncertainty. They have to rethink their strategy and that is where the emerging markets look attractive to these investors (because these investors would still want to invest their money. US recession doesn’t mean people would stop investing for their future, or hedge funds/banks would stop investing/speculating money). Thus bringing such investors to look for good valuations and a very positive side for the Asian stock markets. Good news

3. Nothing bad is happening in the Asian markets. We look pretty strong, and all this major blood is on the street is a result of short-term panic we are witnessing. The momentum would soon pick up once the US recession worries ease a little with fed pumping in more money (bailout) into the subprime cycle. Thus we would see lot more buy orders coming into demat accounts to buy the Indian stocks. Good news

4. India story has not changed at all. We still believe that our economy has lot of potential with great fuel to shoot up. However we still believe that this is not going to happen in short-term, and we might not see too much purchase orders coming into the Online Dmat Accounts of Indians as well as NRI, PIO or OCIs (non resident Indians). There is a lot of room for expansion in India, and there is huge demand for credit consumption. We are just waiting for the liquidity to pour-in. That liquidity is definitely on the table, but all big institutions are looking for some good indicators, and when this happens we would be crawling back on the curve. Good news

5. We all believe that the markets are majorly falling due to the US worries that are coming in and not because of the performances exhibited by the Indian corporates. Earning results of the company are expected to be out in April (when companies declare their quarterly/annual performances to the public). Everyone out here expects these numbers to be good, which could thus decide the turn of the market sentiments. Good news

Important: Our idea is not to put a very rosy picture in front of you, but to ease out some tension by highlighting certain macro & micro economic points that are still in our favour. We know investors not only with us, but also with other brokers are loosing their portfolio strength in terms of capital and valuations. However, keeping all the above notes in mind along with strong/stable Indian fundamentals that are still pretty attractive we advise our clients to stay strong and very importantly increase their time frame from 2 years to a minimum of 3-4 years now. This is especially for clients who have invested heavily in mutual funds, as mutual funds are supposed to be long term financial instruments and not short-term trading products. To conclude we would advise clients to stay calm and hold onto the positions with a long term perspective (3-4 years now) and lets take this opportunity to build our portfolios even stronger by adding good positions(especially in mining, commodity, energy & infrastructure sectors) at lowers prices as well.

Just around the corner, the stock market Doomsday could strike as early as sometime before mid April.

American housing prices had soared to nosebleed heights, homeowners lined up to get home equity credit lines. From large SUV’s, vacations to the playboy lifestyle. Americans have used their houses as ATM machines.

Living above their means had never been easier. Of course this money was borrowed, but virtually no one is paying it back! Housing prices have tanked and Banks are helpless to get the consumers to pay up. There are bond insurance companies who have insured the loans made by banks like, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Bank of America, Wachovia Corp., Citigroup Inc., and Washington Mutual Inc. But will these bond insurance companies like MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group be able to meet potentially billions of dollars worth of claims.

Americans are drowning in debt. To make matters worse, the Federal debt is sitting at $7.2 trillion and growing by $1.71 billion per day! Much of this is fueled by deficit spending, which has been Bush policy for eight years!

The money is spent, both the American people and the American government are cash strapped. Now many people are pinching pennies and cutting back on necessities. The dollar is all but worthless around the world.

The credit bubble is ready to pop. Many of our banks will become all but insolvent from bad loans. The government will try to bail the banks out but there isn’t enough cash in the coffer to cover the problems. Shares of commercial banks had dropped a few points after after Bear Stearns Cos. agreed to be bought by JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $2 per share. Bear Stearns had traded as high as $159.36 in the past 52 weeks.

Recently, financials and banks stocks appear to be jumping back up after the AP Associated Press article “Ahead of the Bell: financial stocks” was released.

On March 20, 2008. Richard Bove, Punk, Ziegel & Co. analyst basically said that the financial crisis is over and that we should buy banking stocks. Bove himself worries that the Fed may not have the necessary resources to bail out the banking crisis mentioning that the Fed has about $921 billion in assets, about half of Bank of America’s assets and less than half of Citigroup’s. Brace yourself for the 2008 stock market crash.

Elvis Preston King’s advice, don’t do anything rash, like sell all of your stocks. The market will come back and you will be fine. I am not sure if I would buy any more bank stocks or bond insurance company stocks!