You have a lock on your house. You have a lock on your car. You have a lock on your tool shed. Do you have a lock to protect your stock market investments?

Maybe you have a safe at home for your valuables such as jewelry, rare coins, special documents and even stock certificates. Wait a minute. Is that stock certificate protected just because it is surrounded with 3 inches of steel? Not really. The problem is that its value does fluctuate every day. It is OK so long as it is increasing because that is why you bought it. The broker told you to put it away and forget about it.

I hate to tell you this, but in the last 3 years that stock you own whether in your safe deposit box or in your account at the brokerage house might be worth a lot less. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way you could protect that investment from a big loss? You can, but you will have to pay a premium, but you can set the amount of the premium yourself.

Some stocks you don't have to worry about. Isn't that true? You know, it's good ole AT&T. Mom bought that years ago and gave it to me when it was $55 per share. She said not to worry as it will go up and be there for retirement. Huh? You just looked and it is $14.00. Can't be, but it is. Now don't you wish you had bought some of that stock investment insurance? I bet your broker didn't tell you about it. They never do because you might end up with cash and take it out of your account and he wouldn't be able to make some nice commissions.

Most folks never heard of stock insurance. It has been there for years and years. Here is how it works. Call you your broker and tell him to enter an order for this stock with a loss protection and you are willing to pay a premium of 10% (you can set the percentage amount for more or less) and you want it to stay there until you cancel it. No, you don't have to send him a check. He might be a little puzzled at first until he realizes you are talking about on Open Stop Loss Order. He can enter that for you. If you had put that in place when AT&T was selling at $55 you would have sold out at $49.50 and today you would be about $3,500 richer for each 100 shares. (P.S. Brokers don't like to do this and will try to talk you out of it.)

You can do this with any listed stock to protect from loss of your investments. When you consider that the overall market is down about 40% in the last 3 years that 10% premium looks darn good.

A stop-loss order should never be lowered and should always be raised to follow a stock price up as it increases. It is not too late to do it. Call your broker today.

(c) 2005

Al Thomas' best selling book, "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step method. Read the first chapter to receive his market letter for 3 months at www.mutualfundmagic.com to discover why he's the man that Wall Street does not want you to know.

• Trading vs Investing


• Price Targets


• Lemmings Are Gathering


• Shadow Bull


• Nest Eggs and Omelets


• Online Broker Trade History Not Doing the Job


• Learn to Calculate a Stock’s Pivot Point


• Understanding a Stocks PEG Ratio


• Stock Market Investing: Knowing When (and when not) to Sell


• Stocks & Oil, Sat Jun 18th, 2005