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First we'll start off with what a system is. According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary a system is "an organized or established procedure". It follows then that a stock trading system can be defined as "an organized or established procedure for trading stock". Two words in this definition are very important. Those words are organized and established.

These words basically tell us that a stock trading system is planned. Planned is good because it indicates that when trading using a stock trading system that we know what to do ahead of time. Every profitable stock trader has a plan. You don't want to jump into a trade and then try to figure out your next move at the last minute.

Another thing we can say about stock trading systems if that they are designed to trade stocks profitably. That, of course, is the intention and not necessarily the outcome. Basically I haven't heard of anyone wanting to create a stock trading system that loses money. Stock trading systems may be broken down into 2 basic types:

Fundamental
Technical

The differences are that fundamental analysis uses economic data about supply and demand whereas technical analysis uses past price, volume, etc. data. Most of the time when someone refers to a stock trading system they are referring to a system designed using technical analysis. Stock trading systems range from very simple to very complex. A simple example of a stock trading system would be as follows:

Buy a stock at the open every Monday
Sell the stock at the close every Friday

I know this is a simple stock trading system and you're probably saying to yourself, "That would never work". Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't...only through testing would we be able to find out.

Stock trading systems have grown in popularity over the last few years. One of the reasons more and more people are trading stocks using stock trading systems has been the need to have more control over risk. After the sharp decline in stock prices starting about April 2000 we all started to realize that maybe there is more to making money in the stock market than "buy and hold".