Not a bad day in the markets today. It would seem that the FTSE is digesting the last two days of strong gains. It was pretty flat for most of the day. Most of my positions rose again today some more than others. My persimmon position rose to nearly 390 putting my position just under £50 in profit. I had a flash back to days of old today. In the past I would’ve sold out of the position only for it to continue rising. I really had to restrain myself today from making the same old mistake. It was only the though of people reading this blog that stopped me. If I had reported that I sold out of my position without any real reason then I feel you may have been disappointed. It was that though that stopped me selling out. That said the price dropped back to 380ish so it may have been a wise move to sell out. Still I didn’t know that at the time.
Ideally I want Persimmon to continue rising and I want to be in on it. Therefore I’m using a trailing stop to take care of when I exit the trade. Last time I used a 1.5xATR(14) trailing stop. It stopped me out making a profit of around 15pts which was roughly 1.5x my initial risk. I was thinking to use the same trailing stop this time but I’m really not that sure what to do. I did work last time as it stopped me out when the price continued to fall which enabled me to buy back in at the same buy in price as before. I think I will do the same this time. I’m going to use a 1.5xATR(10) though instead of a ATR(14). This is because my super trend strategy use the 10 ATR and it seems to be working quite nicely.
I’ve made on new trade today. Premier foods crossed the super trend yesterday and I brought in at 18.3. The super trend stop is currently 15.06 which means (according to my strategy) I’ll place my stop at 14. It’s also recently bounced off support at 16 so could this be the start of a new rise for the stock? Who knows. Oh did I mention there is a rumour going round about a take over bid for premier foods? What, it might work!
Well that’s about all from me for this week. I’m going to see if I can move stops later and look for some new trades. If there are any new potential trades I might post them over the weekend. Depends if I get the time or not.
Anyway, If I don’t post over the weekend I hope you have a good one.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Spread betting beginner
hi Harry,
I know what you mean about locking in profit – its tough to see the real hard cash staring you in the face and having your finger over the mouse ready to close it out! Several times I’ve regretted not locking in profits, (Thomas Cook is my most recent one) but it only takes one of your shares to keep on rising to make it all worthwhile just holding off. That turns a losing/breakeven trader into a winner over time.
Remember that if you close trades too early that DO keep on rising you will have to make more profitable trades to make up for the small number of losers. So you need to let your winners run their distance for you.
Just keep your manual stops trailing at a decent distance and the market will take care of the trades for you.
Trade well bud!
Oh, and I wanted to enquire if you have somekind of automated watchlist that notifies you of supertrend crosses, or are you literally manually going thru every share in the LSE?