As I suspected I’ve not had an opportunity to look for new trades today, hopefully tomorrow will be better. My position in Yell stopped out today for a £2 profit. Better than a loss I suppose.

With nothing much else to report I stumbled across some more detail about the guaranteed stops that Capital Spreads, Tradefair, Tdwaterhouse and possibly paddy power trader now offer. I’ve scanned the documet very briefly earlier today and there is that much information, I couldn’t take it all in. If your interested in learning more about the guaranteed stops you can read all about them on the London Capital Group website.

One final note, I would like to say how impressed I am with BigAls trading diary. I wish I could triple my money in less than a year. Keep up the good work Big Al. It’s nice to know that someone is making some money spread betting. Big Al also posts his latest trades which you can see on BigAls latest trades page. He also documents his progress in his daily forum posts, which you can read over on the spread betting forum. How I said keep up the good work Big Al.

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner

Unfortunately work is really busy at the moment and spread betting is having to take a back seat. There are no new trades for me today and I suspect tomorrow will be much the same. I just don’t have the time to look at the moment. Things should start and quieten down by the end of the week so I should have more time then.

I didn’t get chance to read back through all the forum posts relating to our new spread betting strategy. Again this is something that I aim to do later in the week. I know off the lip suggested posting a summary of where we were up to and I haven’t even had chance to do that. I did start a web page that details where we are upto but even that is a little behind the pace. I’ll get this update and push this forward later this week I promise.

Oh I don’t know if many of you have accounts with Capital Spreads but I got an e-mail from them today and they have just introduced guaranteed stops. I had the same e-mail from Tradefair so I’m assuming all the companies under the LCG (London Capital Group) brand will be offering guaranteed stops. Don’t quote me on that as I don’t know for sure but I would think logically it makes sense. So I would assume that Paddy Power Trader also now offer guaranteed stops. I don’t know the full details of how much the stops cost but I do know there is a mandatory wider stop distance. For example if you want to go long £1 per point on the FTSE the usual min stop distance is 4 points, with a guaranteed stop this jumps to a min distance of 31 points. I think there may also be an extra premium when you trade with a guaranteed stop but the details are not that clear to me at the moment. If anyone else knows please feel free to leave a comment or let us know in the forum.

One last point there are still places available for my Capital spreads offer. You can read more about that and other offers on my spread betting offers page.

Hopefully I’ll have more trading talk for later in the week.

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner

Today I’ve been swamped with work and have had no time to look for new trades so I don’t really have much to report on the trading front.

Hopefully I’ll get some time over the weekend to move our new spread betting strategy forward over on the forum. To be honest I’ve forgotten where we had gotten up to and I will need to refresh my memory before we progress. It would be nice to get it finished and maybe paper trade it to see if it would be a profitable strategy or not. How I said I should get chance to take a look at the weekend.

That’s all from me for now. I hope you’ve all had a good week of spread betting and I hope you have a great weekend.

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner

Works still really busy while I play catch up after having a few days off, so I don’t have loads of time to spare today.

I had one stop out today and made one new trade. Firstly the stop out was in Debenhams. I was stopped out at 68.696 so yet again I suffered slippage. I know it’s only 0.3 points but still it all adds up. This was in my new CMC account where I have suffered some of the worst slippage in terms of how frequently it occurs. The new CMC account does have reasonably tight spreads but even so I’m not sure if this makes up for the amount of slippage I’m suffering.

My new trade is in Ladbrokes. It’s a super trend buy at 128.7 with a stop set at 122. I decided to open this position in my Tradefair account. Although the spread was slightly larger I seem to have suffered less slippage with them than CMC so I thought I’d place the trade with them instead. I liked the look of Ladbrokes and although the share has been in a slight down trend there is a potential double or even triple bottom formation with the low made back in July, the end of November and the most recent low made at the end of December. So this is all in keeping with my strategy. Will it pan out ok? Well only time will answer that question.

I’ve added a new section to the site called market comments. This is basically some comments from Capital Spreads and SpreadEx about what the markets are doing. Some of it makes interesting reading and I thought you might like to read it so I’ve added it to the site. This should be updated everyday but it’s really out of my hands as it comes from Capital Spreads and SpreadEx themselves. I usually get the commentary in the morning so as soon as I get it I’ll add it to the site.

Thanks for the continued feedback about the speed of the site. I suspect it’s something to do with my hosting provider as some days it seems fine others it’s really slow. I’ll be contacting them about sorting it out so hopefully I’ll get this sorted ASAP!

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner

Well I’m back after a 13hour drive home yesterday. Still it’s good to be home. What’s not so good is that it’s back to the daily grind today. I guess someone has to pay the bills. It’s taking a while to get back up to speed with work etc so things are a bit slow at the moment.

On the trading front not much has happened since I’ve been gone. I got chance to take a quick look at my positions over the weekend and they seemed to be all doing reasonably well. I checked them again this morning and they have all fallen back. Still not to worry, my stops will take care of any that fall too low, some are showing a sight “locked in” profit, others are showing a slight risk. With not getting back until late last night I’ve had no time to look for new trades. Hopefully I’ll get some time later to take a look.

On a side note I spotted a news report on BBC news about some bloke that is being done for a setting up a Ponzi scheme. In there is says about one couple who invested £1.4 million (Their entire life savings) into the scheme, and now there is only £14,000 left. The thing is if you are going to invest £1.4 million you would think you would do some research into the person that you are giving your money too. I usually make sure I’ve checked out any individual or company that I give any sum of money too. Anyway reading this made me think about when I had a phone call from Alexander Stark from ENEQ trying to get me to invest in Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK). I’ve kept my eye on the share price and I have to say it’s currently doing quite well. When he “tipped” me, the share price was around $23 it’s now around$27, so it’s doing alright. It did fall back initially to around $21 but has since rebounded. With hindsight I should’ve placed a small spread bet on it but hey If I had know then what I know not I’d be a millionaire already. All that said I would never give any money to someone who just phones me up, I much prefer to manage my own investments.

Anyway that’s about all for now. Hopefully I will have time to spend spread betting and improving the site. I still need to look into the speed issues that a few people have been having. I’ll try and get this sorted as soon as I can.

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner