Everybody can buy and sell stocks. All you need is money to invest, an online exchange and a whole lot of determination.

The truly difficult part is when to sell stocks. Should you sell when itís on an upward swing? Or do you wait until it peaks and starts to fall? How long do you wait while the stock falls? Should you keep on holding until it rebounds or should you sell immediately and cut your losses?

Keep those questions in mind while you continue reading the article.

Part of a successful trading is to take a step back from the market and look at the bigger picture. Too many details and information can actually be detrimental to your goal of achieving profits through stock trading.

Here are some secrets for a successful stock market investment:

1. Buy when the market signals the start of a bull trend. A bull trend is a set of rallies (an upward surge of stock value) where each rally exceeds the highest point of a previous rally. The start of an uptrend is signaled when the peak of a rally is higher than the previous peak. This means that the value of a stock peaks at a certain value, drops again, and then increases again reaching a value higher than the previous high value.

2. Select leading stocks that are outperforming the market

3. Sell when the bull trend has ended. This can be seen when the bull trend has a rally whose peak is lower than the peak of the previous rally. 

4. Sell stocks when they move against this trend

Given the above tips, it may still be difficult for you to actually identify the end of a bull trend. The problem here is when the last peak of the bull trend starts to dip and continues to fall without stopping. When do you sell when that happens?

That is when the next big secret comes: Trailing stops.

Trailing stops have three uses:

1. To limit losses

2. To protect profits

3. To prevent you from entering (or exiting) a trade too early 

Stops can be based on the high/low of the daily trading range or on a trailing percentage.

Based on this, you can formulate your own trailing stop strategy. With a trailing stop strategy, you ride your stocks as high as you can, but if they start to tumble, you have an exit strategy. A good trailing stop is 25% off the highest value the stock reaches. 

With these strategies in place, youíll be able to have a better chance of minimizing your loss.

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