The purpose of Market Forecasting is to determine, with a high degree of accuracy, when the market is likely to start a new leg up or down. In other words, the plan is to ‘when’ the market is likely going to make a new top or bottom.

Now why is that important?

Trading is all about probabilities and risk. You first determine the probability for the direction of the market, and then you must determine the risk exposure if you were to take the trade.

What Market Forecasting attempts to do is to find the right time to enter the market where the risk exposure is as low as possible while the profit potential justifies the risk.

Since 1988, I’ve dedicated thousands of hours and dollars in pursuit of sharpening my market forecasting skills. Has this paid off? Absolutely! The payoff occurred early on in my trading career, following my first account wipe-out. Having to replenish my trading account following one very bad trade back around 1991, I was at a point where I could not afford to take big risks due to the small size of my account. Trading the futures markets back then, we did not have the luxury that many beginning traders have today, such as opening mini-Forex accounts. So realizing that just one futures contract could put you in a deep hole fast if you are not immediately correct in your timing, I focused all my efforts on learning the skills and secrets to precision market timing.

Market Forecasting became the vehicle that provided me with high probability “turn points” in which to plan my trades around. When the calculations were such that signaled a high probability for a new top or bottom, I looked for an opportunity to trade in the new direction expected.

Most of what is needed to be good at Market Forecasting is actual experience. While there are many ways to isolate high probability turn points, knowing how to deal with these turning points is also very important. The reason for this is that each turning point presents its own set of questions that must be answered.

For example, if the turn expected is a bottom, you need to ask yourself whether your suspected bottom is at known support. Is the market currently oversold? Is the trend currently bullish, or am I trying to catch the very bottom of a bear market? Are there any other indications that support my assumptions? If I were to take this trade, where would be the logical price to put a protective stop-loss? Is the amount of risk exposure justified for the amount of upside potential I suspect is available?

While predicting market tops and bottoms has its obvious advantages, it is how these predictions are actually used for trading that will determine whether you are profiting or not from your calculations. It is the foolish and inexperienced trader that thinks he/she can just find some useful market prediction method and immediately become a trading phenom. The smart trader is the one that realizes that, along with a very good forecasting (timing) method, practice and patience, along with good old fashion experience, is also a major requirement.

Every market behaves in predictable ways. While this may not be obvious at first to a new chart reader, simple technical techniques such as trendline analysis, even oscillator indicators (Stochastic, MACD, %R, etc.), can give you insight as to ‘when’ the market is ‘likely’ to change direction.

While no method is 100% foolproof, consider the simple Gann or Fibonacci retracement method. By first determining the trend of the market for the time frame you are currently analyzing, any time the market moves against that trend, you look for it to move 37%, 50% or 62% against the last move that was with the trend. In other words, if the trend is bullish and the last move up from a top to bottom was 100 points, you would then look for price to move down about 37 points, 50 point or 62 points. These ‘support’ levels, if they happen to also coincide with a trend line you have along previous bottoms upward, can often signal a turn point.

Another simple method is to count price bars. From any significant top or bottom, count forward 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 180, 270, 360 trading days and calendar days. This is something that was taught by W.D. Gann, amongst other methods. When these time periods arrive, see if you get other indications to support a top or bottom likely.

Whatever method you learn and use, keep in mind that profiting from Market Forecasting requires you address each turn point with the seriousness it deserves before you trade it, as discussed earlier. Enter the trade only when your assumptions have been proven correct, and place your protective stop-loss where your assumption has proven wrong.

By taking advantage of Market Forecasting methods and methodically filtering each calculation with other supporting factors, along with good old fashion practice and experience, you can really extract excellent profits regularly from the markets with low risk exposure.

Develop a strategy to pull patients towards your allergy and asthma practice. Consider these techniques before planning a marketing plan.

To turn things in your favor, you need to do something extra-ordinary. Multiple marketing strategies can improve your patient base while maintaining a positive reputation. To ensure that you step in the right direction, design a unique and customized marketing plan. It will help you attain practice growth and maintain long-term success. Your plan should consist of several offline and online marketing techniques directed toward educating potential patients about your practice.

You should consider a few things before commencing your marketing campaign. Sit down and make a list of people you want to target. Think of those methods with which you can reach them and educate them about your practice. Find out what sources of information they use. Once you have all the required data, you can act accordingly.

Email marketing plays a significant role in marketing an allergy and asthma practice. Reaching the target audience, who are interested in reading your message is one aspect of email marketing. People receive a lot of emails daily. They read only those that create an interest. That is the challenge you will face when creating a proper message for your audience. Unique and attractive content will compel a reader to open your email.

One of the traditional yet effective ways to publicize your practice is by placing advertisements in newspapers. It has always been the first choice for most asthma and allergy specialists. In this tech- savvy world, people still look forward to newspapers for discovering relevant information regarding medical specialties. Design an attractive advertisement highlighting your expertise along with explaining causes and symptoms of allergy and asthma.

It’s no secret that when it comes to allergist marketing, social media has a role to play. Sharing your practice information directly with patients online helps in winning their confidence. Inspired by your services, they are more likely to discuss them with friends and acquaintances, enhancing your chance of acquiring more patients. Develop your profile at the popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Share it with your friends, existing patients, and relatives. Add more people to your profile. This way, you reach a larger audience.

These are basic marketing techniques to follow that can earn you a positive reputation along with achieving practice success. Plus, you’ll walk out with a written, customized allergy marketing plan to help you reach your allergy & asthma marketing success.

In the years and decades leading up to retirement, most savers are focused on accumulating as large of a retirement nest egg as possible, and guarding those investments against loss. Even after retirement, a great deal of attention is required to preserve your capital making sure that the retirement savings lasts throughout your retired life.

But for retirement savings that are held within an IRA, there is an additional factor to take into consideration – the rules regarding “required minimum distributions.” In summary, once the IRA account holder reaches age 70½, he or she must begin withdrawing a certain amount out of their IRA each year, regardless of whether he or she continues to work, has other sources of income or actually needs the money from the IRA in order to support themselves.

The amount of the required minimum distribution is calculated each year, based on the age (and therefore life expectancy) of the account holder, as well as the current balance in their account. The account holder is always free to take out more than the required minimum amount, but failure to take a distribution of at least the minimum amount will trigger penalties.

The logistics of taking a required minimum distribution are generally quite simple for IRAs held with traditional custodians; if there is not sufficient cash or money market funds in the account and then the account holder simply sells some stock or shares of a mutual fund that’s likely in their account in order to get the cash.

But there can be liquidity challenges if the retiree uses a self-directed IRA structure and holds real estate within that account. If the real estate is still generating cash flow from tenants, then that cash will often be enough to meet the required distribution amounts. But as the retiree gets older (and the required minimum distribution increases), it can be difficult to meet the distributions simply based on cash flow. In these cases, the retiree may need to sell the property and invest in more liquid assets in order to meet their distribution obligations.

Note that if the retirees take possession of the real estate held within the self-directed IRA, and begin using it themselves, then the account will likely be deemed to have made a distribution equal to the market value of the property. This will significantly reduce the burden of the required minimum distribution rules, but it will almost certainly result in a significant tax hit if the self-directed IRA was set up as a traditional IRA.

On the other hand, if the self-directed IRA was structured as a Roth IRA, then the required minimum distribution rules do not apply. Because Roth IRAs (including self-directed Roth IRAs) are funded with “after-tax” dollars, the IRS has already taken its tax bite and a retiree could take possession of real estate from their self-directed Roth IRA without having to pay taxes on the distribution.

Given the opportunities and potential advantages to be gained from a self-directed IRA, the required minimum distribution rules should not stop someone from holding real estate within that type of account. However, it is worth planning ahead to avoid running afoul of the required minimum distribution rules, or incurring any unexpected fees or taxes.

With the rise of internet accessible devices, ads have gone to the digital space. More and more consumers buy their products from their iPad, or iPhone everyday. So you have a product and you need to start selling. Well if you are not utilizing internet marketing, you are doing yourself a severe disservice. Consider how your customer base. Do they browse the web? Where do your customers hang out? I have a few ways that internet marketing could put your product in front of a viable customer.

To make Internet Marketing success, you need to take understand that there are predominantly five types of online marketing that you should be utilizing. These five are are email marketing, pay per click (PPC) marketing, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, and article marketing.

Email marketing is promoting products through e-mail. To be successful here, you’ll need to build a large list of people you can email then be able to write great emails. The emails should be packed with amazing content that gives value to your subscribers. There are creative ways to build a list for free or you can buy an email list.

If you are paying for the list. There is also Pay per Click (PPC) Marketing. This is where you have to pay for ads. You can target certain words or keywords and then when those words are searched for on a search engine such as Bing, Yahoo, Google then your ad will show up usually as a sponsored result. Every time your ad is clicked, you pay. You need to make sure you do your homework and find out how to effectively use PPC. If you don’t, you could lose lots of money in a short period of time. Staying hyper focused on relevant keywords will definitely help you out with budgeting.

Social media is very popular. You can tap into that popularity by using social media to sell your products. Just make sure you don’t SPAM people. In fact, you shouldn’t use any social media to directly sell anything. Just use social media to direct people to other sites where you can then hit them with a sales pitch. Facebook and twitter have self servicing platforms where you can buy traffic on a ppc level.

Affiliate marketing is when people sell products or services that aren’t their own for a commission. There are plenty of affiliate networks that have a publisher base where you can tap into a pool of experienced internet marketers to drive sales to your product or service. You should definitely have an affiliate program for everything you sell. I would say its a must have. Allow others the opportunity to make money by selling your products gives a drive to many. Albeit that you will be surrendering some of your profits but you’ll be able to reach far more people and make a lot more money then you would trying to do it all on your own. This can be done on a revenue share model or a CPA (cost per action/sale) model.

If you are great at writing content then article marketing is a great free way to promote a product. Writing articles and then posting them on your site or on one of the many popular blog sites online can have a great impact on the customers who search for your product. The key to article marketing is targeting popular keywords and providing value in the article. Then you also want to make sure you funnel people to another page (a landing page) where you can then try to sell them your products. Don’t ever try to directly sell people anything in the article itself. The focus should be to concentrate on providing value in the article and then include a call to action at the end of the article. The call to action should invite people to click on a link to learn more information or something similar.