I can’t believe it’s only 5 days until Christmas. Fortunately we had a load of snow here at the weekend. I say fortunately because I decided to brave the winter weather on Saturday to finish my Christmas shopping. Most other, more sensible people, decided to stay at home. This was great news for me as town was half empty and I managed to get my shopping finished without fighting my way through the crowds. We still have food shopping to do, and I’m not looking forward to that but hey, we have to eat so I’ll just have to grin an bare it for an hour or two.

 

You may remember I mentioned last week that I was organising driving to Germany. Well as of the 4th of December 2010 it’s now a legal requirement to have winter or all season tyres fitted during the winter months to drive in Germany. I only found this out last week and I think I may have managed to get the last set of All season tyres in the UK. As it turns out it was a real stroke of luck with having the snow over the weekend. I got them fitted last Thursday and they are brilliant. My old tyres would’ve been slipping an sliding all over the place in the snow but these grip in and get the job done. I’d definitely recommend them to anyone. I doubt you’ll get any this year but start looking around October next year.

 

Anyway I’ve yet to mention anything about the topic of this blog, Spread betting. Well not much has been happening today. (Hence the story above). I though I may have the opportunity to move my stop in Punch Taverns over the weekend but unfortunately no such luck. So far today everything is not up to much. The FTSE was up around 30 point or so earlier but it looks like it’s going to close the day flat. No new trades, nothing is taking my fancy.

 

Thanks to everyone for participating in the forum and leaving comments over the weekend. Spread betting trader, as Offthelip has said, I don’t think you can trade using the old market maker platform if you open a new account. I think CMC are only taking new clients on there new platform, which for them obviously makes sense. I think from a new customer perspective it’s probably best to wait a while before opening an account with CMC. To be fair it has come on in leaps and bounds since I opened a new account with them in August. I personally think there is still a long way to go before it’s up to scratch. When I spoke with them on the phone there was no clear date for when the old platform will be stopped. I think if they decided to stop it too soon they would loose a lot of customers. The guy I spoke to basically said they will no longer be adding new features to the old market maker platform but they will be maintaining it for the near future. I’ll keep you posted as and when new features are added to the new CMC platform. They do have tighter spreads and lower margin requirements than the old platform but I don’t necessarily think this is enough to temp people across. I mean after all, what is the point of tighter spreads if you experience more slippage?

 

I’ll try and get some time to spend in the forum myself. I need to have a think about some possible solutions for trailing our stop. The trouble is knowing what to do for the best. Still even if we come up with a solution and then decide to modify it, that’s ok. It’s meant as a learning exercise anyway which is what we are all doing by participating.

 

Right that’s all for today. Hopefully more to report on the trading front tomorrow.

 

Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Spread betting beginner

December 20, 2010 by Harry
Category: blog
Tags: CMC markets, FTSE, spread betting forum