Getting A Handle On ETF Trading Strategies

By Patrick Deaton

Nowadays, many traders are looking to exchange traded funds and are trying to take advantage of these funds because they do, in fact, make for great investment vehicles that can actually deliver a very nice income in many cases. Knowing what makes a good ETF trading strategies, then, will be necessary in order to take advantage. It's also a good idea to know a few things about ETFs first of all.

Exchange traded funds have a lot of things going for them. Their costs are low and their tax efficiencies are very high. They are constituted somewhat like mutual funds in how they are operated by a fund manager. Normally, and ETF limits membership to authorized participants such as large institutional investors can buy large blocks of assets. Small investors usually use in ETF trading system.

Think of an ETF, also, as a corporate stock in how it is sold or traded and bought. This will give you a good idea of how ETFs can be tracked in a market. Additionally, it is even easier to do so because all ETFs track one of the major market indexes. For purposes of discussion, assume that a particular ETF will track the Standard & Poor's 500. This makes it very easy to follow trends.

There are a huge variety of trading strategies out there when it comes to tracking market movements and then setting up a timed strategy for getting in and out of those markets. Usually, though, all strategies tend to fall into two major categories known as technical and fundamental. Strategists who use technical methods think they can discern shapes and patterns in market movements.

For those with the ability to pick out shapes and patterns in market movements -- by analyzing a stock chart -- the possibility of good income is very real. These movements can signal upward and downward movement in markets that can be timed through technical analysis, with the correct buy and sell orders put in at the right times.

One of the most common of technical strategies that exists today is to utilize what professional and amateur traders call the "moving average cross." With it, traders look at short-term movements in the market -- or a stock or fund -- and then overlay that short-term movement on a long-term trendline. Usually, most short-term movements are from-- to 25 days in duration to create a moving average line.

After that moving average line has been created, most traders will superimpose that over an analysis of the short-term movements in an attempt to discern the actual movement the price of the stock or stock held in the ETF will take once it crosses the moving average line. Long-term trendline analysis, which is the second element, takes a 50 day moving average, which can damp the short-term trend.

In this way, ETF trading strategies involving the long-term trend can be used as what industry experts call a "moving support line." A typical strategy by most traders in this instance would be to purchase a stock or an asset in the ETF when it is in the beginning of an uptrend or if the stock price goes back up after it either touches or barely penetrates the 50-day moving average. One could short the stock also. - 29970

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