The US stock market has been in rally mode ever since the recovery from the Great Recession began. But, all rallies come to an end, right? The question for traders is will the stock market rally ever stop? Investor’s Business Daily writes that price targets on FANG stocks are going higher as the stocks themselves hit record highs.

Three of four FANG stocks had their price targets raised Friday, following a survey of 70 ad buyers in which 40% said they’ll boost ad spending above previous expectations for the rest of 2018.

Moreover, 27% of ad buyers said they spent more in the first half than anticipated.

The three FANG stocks receiving price-target increases were Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), and Google-owner Alphabet (GOOGL). All three are well positioned for the boost in digital advertising.

Traders worry about a trade war between the USA and virtually everyone else, but the economy continues to grow and high tech stocks continue to make money. Will the stock market rally ever stop and, if so, what will be the cause.

An Isolated America

The USA is part of an integrated global economy. According to President Trump, we have been in various trade wars with other nations for years and have been steadily losing. One of the possible scenarios of protracted trade war could be a massive reordering of trade relationships and a shift of global growth away from the USA. America has the largest economy when measured in dollars but not the largest economy when it is measured in purchasing power parity.

An America that cuts itself off from the world would be largely self-sufficient, but not the global power it has been. American companies will need to shift production offshore in order to compete. Our sister site, ProfitableInvestingTips.com, noted this problem in two recent articles, Why Is Harley Davidson Moving Production Out of the USA and Will Boeing Have to Outsource Production in Order to Remain Profitable.

In both cases, the problem is being cut off from foreign markets. The problem for Harley Davison is that the old American icon is struggling and cannot afford to lose more customers. The problem for Boeing is the company is a target for retaliation by the Chinese and the Europeans. Boeing is the largest single US exporter and ranks up with all of US agriculture for exports.

Is It Time to Buy Foreign Stocks?

The problem for investors and traders is that a full-fledged trade war will have many casualties. The worst hit will be emerging markets that are dependent on the export of commodities. If and when the rally stops it might be precipitous. In that case the issue will be how to profit from a market pullback.

Stock traders make their money on short term market movement instead of investing for long term growth. And a short term correction followed by higher stock prices could result in profits two times for a smart trader. The two ways to take advantage of this scenario are fundamental and technical analysis. The fundamentals are clear in that stock prices are at historic highs. Where traders will profit is from reading technical signals of both a correction and a recovery. Another approach is to use stock options to hedge risk and lock in opportunity for both up and down markets.

The beauty trading stocks instead of investing in them is that traders can profits either direction the market goes.

When Trump announced increased tariffs on imported steel and aluminum the markets fell. A trade war would be the nail in the coffin for an already-aging bull market. Specifically, the Chinese have been selling low price steel and aluminum to US buyers for years. This is unlikely to stop because the Chinese are deeply in debt both public and private debt. In order to avoid a Japan-like-1989 collapse of their economy the Chinese need to keep their factories producing and keep bringing in at least some income. But if Trump escalates the trade war the Chinese and others will in all likelihood increase tariffs on goods sold to China, such as Boeing jets and US agricultural products. But for the investor are there trade war-proof stocks? To be protected from a trade war with China these companies need to be ones that do not do a lot of business in or with China. It turns out that the FANG tech darlings that have helped drive the US market higher and higher are somewhat trade war-proof stocks at least when it comes to China.

CNBC quotes Cramer of Mad Money as saying that Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet) are pretty much trade war-proof when it comes to China tariffs because none of them does business there!

Facebook’s shares rose by more than 2 percent in Monday’s trading session due to the fact that the social media company doesn’t have a lot of Chinese business, Cramer said.
Amazon, shares of which climbed 1.6 percent on Monday, was safe from fears of Chinese retaliation because the People’s Republic has its own e-commerce colossus: Alibaba.
China doesn’t have Netflix, either. That, along with positive notes from two Wall Street analysts, helped shares of the entertainment giant soar to a new 52-week high on Monday, closing up 4.6 percent.
Finally, Google parent Alphabet’s search service is prohibited on the Chinese mainland, making it one of the safer international stocks out there, Cramer said. Shares of Alphabet rose 0.98 percent on Monday.

Owners of these stocks know that they do not do business in China and so they are buying more of these US-China trade war-proof stocks. But who else is safe from retaliation by the Chinese or other foreign nations?

Totally Domestic US Companies

Although a trade war would slow the US economy, companies that do business exclusively in the USA will be safe from the effects of foreign tariffs. Fox Business discusses companies that only sell in the USA.

A handful of the larger players whose revenues were generated solely in the U.S. at the end of its last fiscal year included:  AT&T (NYSE:T), with over $132 billion in revenue; Kroger (NYSE:KR), $108.5 billion; Wells Fargo, (NYSE:WFC) $82.9 billion and Target (NYSE:TGT), $72.6 billion.

Depending on how the Trump tariffs work out and on foreign responses traders and investors may be well advised to investigate trade war-proof stocks. And, as we wrote last month, discipline and rules result in trading profits so pay attention and deal with this issue now, before you experience tariff-related losses.

The stock market keeps going up and more and more people want to get in on the profits. We are reminded of the surge in the Chinese stock market followed by a crash just a few years ago. A taxi driver in Shanghai lamented, after the crash, that he had picked all lucky names and numbers in the market and felt cheated that his picks had failed! Unfortunately, many in the US market are taking an all-too-similar approach. Just because has stock has been going up does not mean that it will still increase in value instead of correct. Way too stock pick advice is just so much hype and frankly dangerous for the novice investor. Long term investors focus entirely on fundamental analysis of stocks and day traders focus primarily on sound technical analysis. In both cases discipline and rules result in trading profits.

Picking Stocks to Trade

In today’s electronic and internet age the best way to find stocks to trade is with stock screening tools. Here are a few to consider.

Stock Spotlight
Big Cap 20
IBD 50
Sector Leaders

Use these tools to find stocks with strong fundamentals such as sales, margins, and profits. And always use these tools to check out stocks about which you read in the financial news or about which you receive a tip. That is the first discipline that will lead to trading profits.

The Past Predicts the Future

Fundamentals are what determine the final stock price but along the way technical analysis is a better tool. Markets develop patterns. And those patterns are repetitive. Technical analysis indicators are based on statistical analysis of trading patterns.

Relative Strength Index (RSI) – this indicator measures a stock’s most recent performance in relation to its historical strength. The number and magnitude of recent and historical up and down closes in compared.

Moving Average – the moving average is also used in technical analysis it is used to find the average value of a security’s price over a set amount of time. Trends of financial assets are tracked using the moving average through smoothing out the price fluctuations of daily price data. There are different types of moving averages including the Simple Moving Average (SMA), the Exponential Moving Average (EMA), the Moving Average Crossover, and the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD).

Candlestick Analysis – candlestick analysis uses candlestick charts that provide advantages over the bar charts. They are much more visually appealing and they clearly illustrate investor sentiment. This provides a much clearer depiction of what is actually occurring in the markets, than if you were to use bar charts.

These technical tools help the disciplined trader make sense of a moving market. By recognizing the first part of a developing pattern the trader can profit by placing a trade the benefits as the second half of the pattern develops. But, it takes patience to make this work and traders need to avoid the twin demons of the market, greed and fear. Taking a disciplined approach in following trading rules is the best way to produce trading profits.

The stock market is clearly over bought and it keeps going up. Earnings and the promise of benefits from the tax overhaul are driving many sectors. Bulls keep buying and bears warn of a stock market correction. Interestingly, CNBC writes that for the market to keep going up it needs to pull back first.

The stock market posted one of its best weeks in over a year and all the major averages hit records.

However, let’s be honest: those who are looking for this rally to continue nicely through the rest of the first quarter should be hoping for a pullback right here.

That’s right – a pullback at this juncture would help the market digest its recent gains and work off stocks’ overbought condition, which will actually give it a better chance of rallying further in the future.

Stock traders make their money on short term market movement instead of investing for long term growth. And a short term correction followed by higher stock prices could result in profits two times for a smart trader. The two ways to take advantage of this scenario are fundamental and technical analysis. The fundamentals are clear in that stock prices are at historic highs. Where traders will profit is from reading technical signals of both a correction and a recovery. Another approach is to use stock options to hedge risk and lock in opportunity for both up and down markets.

How to profit from stock option trades is to develop, improve, and trade with an options strategy. It is common to see the expression options strategy bandied about on the internet. But, what is a stock option strategy? It is defined method of approaching options, analyzing options and their underlying equities, and buying or selling both puts and calls.

If you think the market will keep going up you will buy call options and if you think it will correct you will buy put options. A call option gives you the right to buy a stock at a set price even if the market price goes up. A put allows you to sell at a set price even when the market price falls. If you simply cannot decide which way the market is going to go an alternative as described on our sister site, Options-Trading-Education.com is to use a long straddle.

A long straddle is buying both a call and a put on the same stock with the same expiration date. In a long straddle options strategy the worst a trader can do is lose the cost of the premiums paid for the call and put if the stock does not change price. However, this options trading strategy has potentially unlimited potential if the stock price changes significantly either up or down.

Considering that both the bulls and bears have good arguments about a continued rally and for at least a short term correction, options allow you to limit risk to the price of an option contract and a strategy such as the long straddle let you position yourself to take advantage of market movement in both directions.

In a Forbes article about why bitcoin is worth anywhere from zero to infinity the author notes the sketchy beginnings and risks of the cryptocurrency.

The first time I wrote about Bitcoin (BTC) – the electronic currency set up to buy and sell illegal drugs and other products through an anonymous public electronic ledger – was in June 2011, a few days after its price dropped from $17.50 to “a few pennies” after its Tokyo-based currency exchanger Mt. Gox was hacked.

People buy or sell BTC in a wave of fear. Specifically, they are afraid of missing out on further appreciation in BTC’s price. For those suffering from such fear, there is plenty of evidence to support their belief.

In succumbing to the fear of missing out bitcoin investors are ignoring the risk of hacking which happens with a predictable frequency. There is no Federal Deposit Insurance on bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency. The other risk is just how fast can an investor get out of a large bitcoin position when there is a crash? There are no guarantees of fast and reliable exchange of your bitcoins for dollars in the event of a crash. And, unlike the US stock exchanges, there is no circuit breaker that clicks in at a 5% loss. That having been said there is good reason to be wary of long term bitcoin investment. But can you make money just trading bitcoin?

Can You Apply Technical Trading to Bitcoin?

Let’s say that you are avoiding bitcoin investment for all the right reasons but you are a day trader and making money from high volatility in markets is your business. Technical analysis works in most markets and may well be effective in trading bitcoin on a short term basis.

Should You Buy and Sell Bitcoin Futures?

The CBOE is going to offer bitcoin futures although many large banks are uncertain about the risk of clearing these contracts. Bloomberg writes about how this is working out.

With just a few days left until Cboe Global Markets Inc. debuts futures contracts on the cryptocurrency, many banks are still weighing whether to offer them to clients — and if so, how to handle the mechanics. Several of the largest firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., aren’t immediately offering clearing of the futures as they wait to see how it will work, according to people briefed on the plans.

In interviews, some executives and traders said their desks are eager to get in on the action – but most sounded cautionary notes, ticking off concerns and unanswered questions. Bitcoin’s violent price swings this week have made the new market look all the more dangerous.

The basic concern is that traders will default on their bitcoin futures contracts if their positions are overwhelmed by the sort of price swings that the cryptocurrency has undergone, especially this year. There have been corrections of 25% and 20% in September and November. An advantage of trading bitcoin futures is that one will be able to get in and out of contracts more reliably, providing that the whole thing does not go south all at once.

It would seem that the best course of action for those who want to make money just trading bitcoin is to start with small positions and to keep them short, mostly day trading until a technical strategy can be shown to be a reliable guide to profitable trading.