Sorry for not updating at the weekend. I just didn’t get any time in the end. It’s tricky sometimes trying to manage family life, with work and writing this blog. Ideally I’d like to have more time to put into the blog but unfortunately I can’t sacrifice my family life for the blog and so It would have to come out of work time. With having bills to pay I can’t really afford to work any less than I do so for the time being the blog gets less time.
Maybe in the future if I could make the blog generate some form of income I could dedicate more time to it. It’s a possibility, but for the time being it’s a bit of a pipe dream. You never know what might happen so watch this space for any updates on that front.
Back to my trading. With the FTSE up around 50pts at the time I’m wring this you would think that most of my positions would’ve followed suit. Wrong! Most of my positions are taking an opposite view to the FTSE today and have dropped. I’m not too concerned though. None of them are that close to stopping out and they all seem to be going sideways at the moment. Maybe they are all consolidating ready for a major rise? Maybe they are all consolidating ready for a major fall? Maybe they will all continue sideways for the next few weeks? Or Maybe something completely different will happen. Who knows.
It just goes to show that no matter what we all think, no one can predict accurately where the markets or share prices are going. Some go up some go down. The only thing we can do is look what has happened in the past and try and use it to our advantage to guess what might happen in the future.
I looked at my positions today and I am trying to decide if I should pyramid into F&C asset management. I brought the stock at 53.29 and I have a stop set at 59. So I have locked in £5.71 profit. Not much but hey at least it’s a profit. With the stock having pulled back over the last few days I’m thinking to buy in again. The price I can currently get is 62.8 so if I brought with a stop at 59 then that would mean I was risking £3.8 but with £5.71 locked in already I’d still be £1.91 in profit overall. The thing is I’m not sure if I’m attempting this too early? Am I just trying to be too greedy here? Should I wait longer for another opportunity? These are all questions I am currently asking myself and I am unsure of the answers. I guess this is still showing my inexperience. Anyone with any thoughts on the feel free to get in touch.
That’s all from me for today. I’ll try and get a list of my open positions online at some point this week, It’s just getting the time to do it.
Until next time
“May the markets be with you”
Spread Betting Beginner
Pyramid?
In times on indecision I rely upon my strategy. So what does your strategy tell you to do? Under your rules are the conditions for pyramiding / re-entry valid?
If don't have rules that cover this then I guess you could explore the possibilities but as we all know this can be a hard path to follow!
From a money management point of view you have at least locked in some profit with which to pyramid; i.e. you would come out with a net profit / no loss if both your old and new positions stopped out.
That's a 'necessery' condition, but not 'sufficient' in my opinion.
I think you might be too keen to pyramid too soon, rather like how novice traders are keen to take profits too soon rather than letting them run — out of fear of 'missing out'. Or like someone who trails a stop order to break-even too soon and achieves nothing apart from 'at least no loss' 😉
If F&C ever goes back up to 300p there will be plenty of opportunities to pyramid along the way; like when your first position shows a £30 profit and your risk on both positions can be set at £10 thereby giving you at least £20 profit overall.
Although I am a fan of pyramiding, I have been in no rush to do so in my own Trading Trail (http://tradingtrail.blogspot.com) except for fun or demonstration because I'd like to see a more sustained up-trend / more locked-in profit first.
Of course, now that I have given this advice, the price of F&C will double overnight and you'll wish you had pyramided now! 😉