What is the difference between book value per share and market value per share for common stock

Understanding the difference between book value and market value is a simple yet fundamentally critical component of any attempt to analyze a company for investment. After all, when you invest in a share of stock or an entire business, you want to know you are paying a sensible price. Both book value and market value can be important tools for investors hoping to build strong portfolios. While the market price of each stock provides clues to a company's financial strength and future prospects, book value reveals the current state of the company and ignores future growth potential. Combining these two figures can help you determine whether a stock is valued correctly, which can help you get the most out of your investment.

Book Value literally means the value of the business according to its "books" or financial statements. In this case, book value is calculated from the balance sheet, and it is the difference between a company's total assets and total liabilities. Note that this is also the term for shareholders' equity. The book value of a company represents how much a company is worth based strictly on its balance sheet. To find book value, add up everything the company owns in terms of assets, then subtract everything the company owes, such as debts and other liabilities. Book value reveals how much the company is worth if it were liquidated and all assets were sold for cash. By dividing book value by the total number of shares outstanding, you can find book value per share.

Market Value is the value of a company according to the stock market. Market value is calculated by multiplying a company's shares outstanding by its current market price. Market value per share is a much easier figure to derive. The market value per share is simply the price of each share on the open market or how much it would cost to buy a share of stock at any given point. While book value represents how much the company's assets are worth, market value reveals what investors think the company is worth and how much they will pay to buy stock in the firm.

Implications of Each

Book value simply implies the value of the company on its books, often referred to as accounting value. It's the accounting value once assets and liabilities have been accounted for by a company's auditors. Whether book value is an accurate assessment of a company's value is determined by stock market investors who buy and sell the stock. Market value has a more meaningful implication in the sense that it is the price you have to pay to own a part of the business regardless of what book value is stated:

1. Book Value Greater Than Market Value: The financial market values the company for less than its stated value or net worth. When this is the case, it's usually because the market has lost confidence in the ability of the company's assets to generate future profits and cash flows. In other words, the market doesn't believe that the company is worth the value on its books. Value investors often like to seek out companies in this category in hopes that the market perception turns out to be incorrect. After all, the market is giving you the opportunity to buy a business for less than its stated net worth.
2. Market Value Greater Than Book Value: The market assigns a higher value to the company due to the earnings power of the company's assets. Nearly all consistently profitable companies will have market values greater than book values.
3. Book Value Equals Market Value: The market sees no compelling reason to believe the company's assets are better or worse than what is stated on the balance sheet.

It's important to note that on any given day, a company's market value will fluctuate in relation to book value. The metric that tells this is known as the price-to-book ratio, or the P/B ratio:

P/B Ratio = Share Price/Book Value Per Share

(where Book Value Per Share equals shareholders' equity divided by number of shares outstanding)

Risk Management Techniques For Active Traders

"SELL SUNTV BELOW 345.50 TGT 340.00 SL 351.00" 

"BUY IDEA ABOVE 181.00 TGT 186.00 SL 176.00"

Risk management is an essential but often overlooked prerequisite to successful active trading. After all, a trader who has generated substantial profits over his or her lifetime can lose it all in just one or two bad trades if proper risk management isn't employed. This article will discuss some simple strategies that can be used to protect your trading profits.

Planning Your Trades:

Successful traders commonly quote the phrase: "Plan the trade and trade the plan." Just like in war, planning ahead can often mean the difference between success and failure. Stop-loss (S/L) and take-profit (T/P) points represent two key ways in which traders can plan ahead when trading. Successful traders know what price they are willing to pay and at what price they are willing to sell, and they measure the resulting returns against the probability of the stock hitting their goals. If the adjusted return is high enough, then they execute the trade. Conversely, unsuccessful traders often enter a trade without having any idea of the points at which they will sell at a profit or a loss. Like gamblers on a lucky or unlucky streak, emotions begin to take over and dictate their trades. Losses often provoke people to hold on and hope to make their money back, while profits often entice traders to imprudently hold on for even more gains.

Stop-Loss and Take-Profit Points
A stop-loss point is the price at which a trader will sell a stock and take a loss on the trade. Often this happens when a trade does not pan out the way a trader hoped. The points are designed to prevent the "it will come back" mentality and limit losses before they escalate. For example, if a stock breaks below a key support level, traders often sell as soon as possible. On the other side of the table, a take-profit point is the price at which a trader will sell a stock and take a profit on the trade. Often this is when additional upside is limited given the risks. For example, if a stock is approaching a key resistance level after a large move upward, traders may want to sell before a period of consolidation takes place.

How to Effectively Set Stop-Loss Points
Setting stop-loss and take-profit points is often done using technical analysis, but fundamental analysis can also play a key role in timing. For example, if a trader is holding a stock ahead of earnings as excitement builds, he or she may want to sell before the news hits the market if expectations have become too high, regardless of whether the take-profit price was hit.

Moving averages represent the most popular way to set these points, as they are easy to calculate and widely tracked by the market. Key moving averages include the five-, nine-, 20-, 50-, 100- and 200-day averages. These are best set by applying them to a stock's chart and determining whether the stock price has reacted to them in the past as either a support or resistance level. Another great way to place stop-loss or take-profit levels is on support or resistance trendlines. These can be drawn by connecting previous highs or lows that occurred on significant, above-average volume. Just like moving averages, the key is determining levels at which the price reacts to the trendlines, and of course, with high volume.

When setting these points, here are some key considerations:

• Use longer-term moving averages for more volatile stocks to reduce the chance that a meaningless price swing will trigger a stop-loss order to be executed.
• Adjust the moving averages to match target price ranges; for example, longer targets should use larger moving averages to reduce the number of signals generated.
• Stop losses should not be closer than 1.5-times the current high-to-low range (volatility), as it is too likely to get executed without reason.
• Adjust the stop loss according to the market's volatility; if the stock price isn't moving too much, then the stop-loss points can be tightened.
• Use known fundamental events, such as earnings releases, as key time periods to be in or out of a trade as volatility and uncertainty can rise.

Calculating Expected Return
Setting stop-loss and take-profit points is also necessary to calculate expected return. The importance of this calculation cannot be overstated, as it forces traders to think through their trades and rationalize them. As well, it gives them a systematic way to compare various trades and select only the most profitable ones.

This can be calculated using the following formula:

[ (Probability of Gain) x (Take Profit % Gain) ] + [ (Probability of Loss) x (Stop Loss % Loss) ]

The result of this calculation is an expected return for the active trader, who will then measure it against other opportunities to determine which stocks to trade. The probability of gain or loss can be calculated by using historical breakouts and breakdowns from the support or resistance levels; or for experienced traders, by making an educated guess.

The Bottom Line
Traders should always know when they plan to enter or exit a trade before they execute. By using stop losses effectively, a trader can minimize not only losses, but also the number of times a trade is exited needlessly. Make your battle plan ahead of time so you'll already know you've won the war.

why stock market traders lose money

Many people think trading is the simplest way of making money in the stock market. Far from it; I believe it is the easiest way of losing money. I discuss below eight ways of undisciplined trading which lead to losses. Guard against them, or the market will wipe you out.

1. Trading during the first half-hour of the session

The first half-hour of the trading day is driven by emotion, affected by overnight movements in the global markets, and hangover of the previous day's trading. Also, this is the period used by the market to entice novice traders into taking a position which might be contrary to the real trend which emerges only later in the day. Most experienced traders simply watch the markets for the first half of the day for intraday patterns and any subsequent trading breakouts.

2. Failing to hear the market's message

Personally, I try to hear the message of the markets and then try to confirm it with the charts. During the trading day, I like to watch if the market is able to hold certain levels or not. I like to go long around the end of the day if supported by patterns, and if the prices are consistently holding on to higher levels. I like to go short if the market is giving up higher levels, unable to sustain them and the patterns support a down move of the market. This technique is called tape watching and all full-time traders practice it in some shape or form. If the markets are choppy and oscillate within a small range, then the market's message is to keep out.If the charts say that the market is acting in a certain way, go ahead and accept it. The market is right all the time. This is probably even truer than the more common wisdom about the customer being the king. If you can accept the market as king, you will end up as a very rich trader, indeed. Herein lies one reason why people who think they are very educated and smart often get trashed by the market because this market doesn't care who you are and it's certainly not there to help you. So expect no mercy from it; in fact, think of it as something that is there to take away your money, unless you take steps to protect yourself.

3. Ignoring which phase the market is in

It is important to know what phase the market is in whether it's in a trending or a trading phase. In a trending phase, you go and buy/sell breakouts, but in a trading phase you buy weakness and sell strength. Traders who do not understand the mood of the market often end up using the wrong indicators in the wrong market conditions. This is an area where humility comes in. Trading in the market is like blind man walking with the help of a stick. You need to be extremely flexible in changing positions and in trying to develop a feel for the market. This feel is then backed by the various technical indicators in confirming the phase of the market. 

4. Failing to reduce position size when warranted

Traders should be flexible in reducing their position size whenever the market is not giving clear signals. For example, if you take an average position of 3,000 shares in Nifty futures, you should be ready to reduce it to 1,000 shares. This can happen either when trading counter trend or when the market is not displaying a strong trend. Your exposure to the market should depend on the market's mood at any given point in the market. You should book partial profits as soon as the trade starts earning two to three times the average risk taken.

5. Failing to treat every trade as just another trade

Undisciplined traders often think that a particular situation is sure to give profits and sometimes take risk several times their normal level. This can lead to a heavy drawdown as such situations often do not work out. Every trade is just another trade and only normal profits should be expected every time. Supernormal profits are a bonus when they -- rarely! -- occur but should not be expected. The risk should not be increased unless your account equity grows enough to service that risk.

6. Over-eagerness in booking profits

Profits in any trading account are often skewed to only a few trades. Traders should not be over-eager to book profits so long the market is acting right. Most traders tend to book profits too early in order to enjoy the winning feeling, thereby letting go substantial trends even when they have got a good entry into the market. If at all, profit booking should be done in stages, always keeping some position open to take advantage of the rest of the move. Remember trading should consist of small profits, small losses, and big profits. Big losses are what must be avoided. The purpose of trading should be to get a position substantially into money, and then maintain trailing stop losses to protect profits. Most trading is breakeven trading. Accounts sizes and income from trading are enhanced only when you make eight to ten times your risk. If you can make this happens once a month or even once in two months, you would be fine. The important point here is to not get shaken by the daily noise of the market and to see the market through to its logical target. Remember, most money is made not by brilliant entries but by sitting on profitable positions long enough. It's boring to do nothing once a position is taken but the maturity of a trader is known not by the number of trades he makes but the amount of time he sits on profitable trades and hence the quantum of profits that he generates.

7. Trading for emotional highs

Trading is an expensive place to get emotional excitement or to be treated as an adventure sport. Traders need to keep a high degree of emotional balance to trade successfully. If you are stressed because of some unrelated events, there is no need to add trading stress to it. Trading should be avoided in periods of high emotional stress.

8. Failing to realize that trading decisions are not about consensus building

Our training since childhood often hampers the behaviour necessary for successful trading. We are always taught that whenever we take a decision, we should consult a number of people, and then do what the majority thinks is right. The truth of this market is that it never does what the majority thinks it will do. Trading is a loner's job. Traders should not talk to a lot of people during trading hours. They can talk to experienced traders after market hours but more on methodology than on what the other trader thinks about the market. If a trader has to ask someone else about his trade then he should not be in it. Traders should constantly try to improve their trading skills and by trading skills I mean not only charting skills but also position sizing and money management skills. Successful traders recognize that money cannot be made equally easily all the time in the market. They back off for a while if the market is too volatile or choppy.

FEARS OF TRADING AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM

While some traders are more likely to fall victim to greed ("How much could I make?!"), others have experienced loss in the market to the point where all they can see is the fear and anxiety ("How much could I lose?" or "How much could the market take away from me?").

Let's look at some resources to help us cope with these fears.

I recommend beginning with article " Fears of Trading" which lists and explains each type of fear - it's more than just being afraid to lose money. lists the fears as the following:

1.Fear of Losing Money

2.Fear of Missing Out (on a Move)

3.Profit Turn into a Loss

4.Fear of Being Wrong (or not being right)

Technical Analysis: The Basic Assumptions

What Is Technical Analysis? 

Technical analysis is a method of evaluating securities by analyzing the statistics generated by market activity, such as past prices and volume. Technical analysts do not attempt to measure a security's intrinsic value, but instead use charts and other tools to identify patterns that can suggest future activity. Just as there are many investment styles on the fundamental side, there are also many different types of technical methods.like rely on chart patterns, use technical indicators and oscillators, and also use combination of the two. technical analysis exclusive use of historical price and volume data is what separates them from their fundamental counterparts. Unlike fundamental analysts, technical analysts don't care whether a stock is undervalued - the only thing that matters is a security's past trading data and what information this data can provide about where the security might move in the future.

The field of technical analysis is based on three assumptions:

1. The market discounts everything.
2. Price moves in trends.
3. History tends to repeat itself.

4. Art over science

5. No need to know 

6. Self-fulfilling prophecy 

7. Momentum reverses 

How we can analyze Fundamentals of a stock

Fundamental Stock Analysis is typically more closely tied to buy and hold investors, whereby day traders use solely technical analysis and most swing traders use both fundamental and technical stock analysis. Technical analysis is specifically important for swing traders with a very short time horizon (that is, a couple of days or just a few weeks).

Stock Fundamental Analysis (Value, Growth, Income, Quality, GARP)

Many people rightly believe that when you buy a share of stock you are buying a proportional share in a business. As a consequence, to figure out how much the stock is worth, you should determine how much the business is worth. Investors generally do this by assessing the company’s financial’s in terms of per-share values in order to calculate how much the proportional share of the business is worth. This is known as “fundamental” analysis by some, and most who use it view it as the only kind of rational stock analysis.

Value. A cynic, as the saying goes, is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. An investor’s purpose, though, should be to know both the price and the value of a company’s stock. The goal of the value investor is to purchase companies at a large discount to their intrinsic value – what the business would be worth if it were sold tomorrow. In a sense, all investors are “value” investors – they want to buy a stock that is worth more than what they paid. Typically those who describe themselves as value investors are focused on the liquidation value of a company, or what it might be worth if all of its assets were sold tomorrow. However, value can be a very confusing label as the idea of intrinsic value is not specifically limited to the notion of liquidation value . These value investors tend to have very strict, absolute rules governing how they purchase a company’s stock. These rules are usually based on relationships between the current market price of the company and certain business fundamentals. A few examples include:

·         Price/earnings rations (P/E)

·         Dividend yields above a certain absolute limit

·         Book value per share relative to the share price

·         Total sales at a certain level relative to the company’s market capitalization of market value

 Growth. Growth investing is the idea that you should buy stock in companies whose potential for growth in sales and earnings is excellent. Growth investors tend to focus more on the company’s value as an ongoing concern. Many plan to hold these stocks for long periods of time, although this is not always the case. At a certain point, “growth” as a label is as dysfunctional as “value,” given that very few people want to buy companies that are not growing. Growth investors look at the underlying quality of the business and the rate at which it is growing in order to analyze whether to buy it. Excited by new companies, new industries, and new markets, growth investors normally buy companies that they believe are capable of increasing sales, earnings, and other important business metrics by a minimum amount each year. Growth is often discussed in opposition to value, but sometimes the lines between the two approaches become quite fuzzy in practice.

Income. Although today common stocks are widely purchased by people who expect the shares to increase in value, there are still many people who buy stocks primarily because of the stream of dividends they generate. Called income investors, these individuals often entirely forego companies whose shares have the possibility of capital appreciation for high-yielding dividend-paying companies in slow-growth industries. These investors focus on companies that pay high dividends like utilities and real estate investment trusts (REITs), although many times they may invest in companies undergoing significant business problems whose share prices have sunk so low that the dividend yield is consequently very high.

Quality. Most investors today use a hybrid of value, growth, and GARP approaches. These investors are looking for high-quality businesses selling for “reasonable” prices. Although they do not have any shorthand rules for what kind of numerical relationships there should be between the share price and business fundamentals, they do share a similar philosophy of looking at the company’s valuation and at the inherent quality of the company as measured both quantitatively by concepts like Return on Equity (ROE) and qualitatively by the competence of management. Many of them describe themselves as value investors, although they concentrate much more on the value of the company as an ongoing concern rather than on liquidation value.

GARP. Investors combines the value and growth approaches and adds a numerical slant. Practitioners look for companies with solid growth prospects and current share prices that do not reflect the intrinsic value of the business, getting a “double play” as earnings increase and the price/earnings (P/E) ratios at which those earnings are valued increase as well.One of the most common GARP approaches is to buy stocks when the P/E ratio is lower than the rate at which earnings per share can grow in the future. As the company’s earnings per share grow, the P/E of the company will fall if the share price remains constant. Since fast-growing companies normally can sustain high P/Es, the GARP investor is buying a company that will be cheap tomorrow if the growth occurs as expected. If the growth does not come, however, the GARP investor’s perceived bargain can disappear very quickly.

Things Which Every Online Investor Should Know

Things Which Every Online Investor Should Know

The resources on this page have been designed to help you develop an understanding of how to stay safe when investing online.

1.     Start small. 
If you are new to online investing, don't put your entire life savings into an online account. Start with a smaller sum, which will be easier to handle and keep track of. Once you feel confident, you can then decide to add more money to your online account.

2.     Stay diversified. 
Once online, many investors tend to concentrate on stocks, specifically large-cap domestic stocks. While these stocks should make up part of your portfolio, they shouldn't be ALL of it! Take into account your time horizon and risk tolerance to develop a well-balanced portfolio of stocks, bonds, and cash.

3.     Don't bail on mutual funds. 
Most investors are in mutual funds for a good reason. They don't have the expertise to make their own investments calls on individual stocks. They also are too preoccupied by work, family and other concerns to spend every minute watching the market. So keep your mutual funds; it probably is an unwise move for you to cash out your long-term fund holdings so that you can start "playing the market" in individual stocks!

4.     Costs may not always be obvious. 
Even if online brokerage costs are lower than those of full-service brokers, they can still add up, particularly if you do a lot of buying and selling. Online brokerages firms also impose a number of other fees and charges that you should study closely. The federal capital gains tax is also something with which you must reckon. Before you start buying and selling stocks or mutual funds online on a large scale, you should give careful thought to what the tax bite would be as a result of such trading.

5.     Make orders work for you. 
If you are going to do your own investing online, you need to learn how to use the tools available to avoid potentially steep losses and to buy or sell a stock at attractive prices. Here are three "orders" that you should use to your advantage:

A MARKET order is an instruction to buy or sell a specified amount of a stock (or other security) at the current market price. The advantage of a market order is you are almost always guaranteed your order will be executed - as long as there are willing buyers and sellers. Depending on your firm's commission structure, a market order may also be less expensive than a limit order. 

A LIMIT order allows you to avoid buying or selling a stock at a price higher or lower than what you specify. A limit order is an order to buy or sell a security at a specific price. A buy limit order can only be executed at the limit price or lower, and a sell limit order can only be executed at the limit price or higher. By contrast, a market order only guarantees you the best available price -- not the limit order's specified price. 

A STOP-LOSS order sets a sell price for a broker. When the price of the stock drops below this level, it automatically is sold. Also: Take the time to learn about "stop orders," "day orders" and "good-till-cancelled" orders

6.     Mind those market orders. 
Limit orders are often used to guarantee that an investor will not pay over a certain dollar level for a stock. If no limit is placed, the trade is considered to be a market order. Placing a market order means you won't necessarily get the price you see when you buy or sell online. Here's how that works: an investor places an order for a fast-moving stock at $10 share price, but the order does not reach the market until the stock's price is at $15 a share.

7.     Problems are inevitable. 
Trading online is not foolproof. There will be times when you can't access your account. You could be away from your computer when the market makes a major move. Your Internet connection could be down. The online brokerage firm's server could crash due to heavy trading, unexpected software glitches or a natural calamity. Know about the firm's alternative trading options. This could include automated telephone trading or calling a broker.

8.     Information is power. 
If you are going to buy and sell individual stocks online, it is your duty to keep as well informed as possible about what is going on with the company in question. Don't just settle for the hype about hot stocks! Go to the company's Web site and download its prospectus. Check out the company's publicly available filings through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR system. Take advantage of free services that allow you to get automatic e-mail messages whenever there is news about your stock.