To benefit by the maximum margin, one needs to monitor stocks with great precision.

Many individuals think that their job is over once they have a good broker as a financial advisor to take care of the money. But, the thing one must understand is that it is not the broker's hard-earned money that has gone into the investment ? it is his/her own. One can monitor his/her stocks regularly through the newspaper and television. The financial newspapers, for example, The Economic Times, Financial Express, provide a detailed analysis of profit and loss making stocks. Television channels like CNBC provide you a point-in-time analysis of fluctuations in stock prices. There are several websites like rdiff.com (stocks) and Google Finance that provide minute-by-minute updates of the fluctuating stock prices for individual stocks. Brokers? analyst research reports, like the S&P reports, provide investors the much-needed information of company backgrounds and competitive scenario prevalent in the market. Several new stock monitoring tools have also been developed to make the lives of the investors easy.

Buying and selling decisions are of utmost importance to a stock trader. Tracking of market trends may give an investor the much-needed insight to take this decision. For example, selling stocks at the moment when its price is at the peak and not holding on to it for it to go further up can lead to huge profits. On the contrary, if the price rises further, selling it at that point of time may not be such a wise decision for a trader. In short, it is luck coupled with good monitoring capabilities that result in profits.

The individuals monitor stocks and tell their brokers to buy or sell particular shares. Sometimes, the brokers may not be efficient in carrying out the orders. So, despite good monitoring and good decision, an investment may not yield gains due to the inefficiency of the broker.

Many individuals new to the market often make this mistake of assuming that the stock price of a certain share will remain constant after the end of trading hours of the stock exchange. In such a scenario, if he/she tells the broker to make a transaction after the closure, the broker will only be able to carry out the order the next day. By that time, the price may have changed drastically, leading to profit or loss.

Another point to consider is that some stocks can be more liquid than others. So while the broker can make a deal for some of the stocks any time in the day, others require special attention to be sold off. Prudent monitoring lets an individual take good decision on the stock that may not be so liquid.

In today's global economy, many stocks largely depend on global stock prices. So, monitoring stock markets at different time zones can be of great help in making decisions.