Today has seen a flurry of spread betting activity from me.(Compared to usual standards at least). I’ve seen a few positions stop out. I’ve trailed a few stops and I’ve also closed out a position manually.
First onto the stop outs. Debenhams stopped out yesterday at 76 giving a loss of around £10. Hardly surprising since the BBC news reports ‘Wettest April hits retail sales’. The stock was doing ok and looked to be returning to the up trend until a couple of days ago when price dropped dramatically. It then continued to drop and hit my stop at 76. It could well be the case that this a retracement of the previous bigger move but I’m not interested in finding out. I’ve been stopped out so it’s time to move on. Interestingly this was the position that I split in my Capital Spreads Vs SpreadCo trial. You’ll be glad to hear that both of my stop prices were met and the positions closed out at the same time almost to the second.
Spirent also stopped out today as the FTSE 100 continues to fall. The position closed at 158 giving a £20 loss. This also looked like it may return to the up trend but then the falls of the last three trading days kicked in and Spirent fell in sympathy with the rest of the market. I have to say I am not confident at all about the state of the FTSE 100 at the moment. My weekly FTSE analysis has indicated that a new down trend could be forming, are we witnessing the start of it?
I closed my position in Dixons today. After looking at the chart this has really failed to return to any up trend that may have been in place. This always was a stock that I need to keep a close eye on and I would exit if I felt it was not performing as planned. So that’s what I did. I closed out for a £0.5 profit, better than a loss. So this was a scratched trade. Another reason for closing this position now is the fact that I am off on holiday at the end of next week and I will not be able to monitor trades while I’m away. I will most likely close out all of my positions before I go so I can safely relax and enjoy my time off without the worry of open spread bets that could go against me.
Finally I trailed stops in my remaining open positions. Enterprise inns is proving to be my star performer at the moment and is currently showing around a £40 profit. It’s also fallen back a bit today in sympathy with the rest of the market. If it falls back a bit more I may look to pyramid again and buy the dip. Avocet mining is coming along nicely, the last few days of falls have taken it with it and it has returned to the down trend which was the reason for going short in the first place. First group is in no mans land at the moment. It currently can’t decide what to do. You would’ve thought with the recent falls in the FTSE it would’ve also fell but no. I’ll keep my eye on it for the next couple of days but if it’s got nowhere by Friday I’ll exit no matter what.
Right that’s all from me to today. Keep an eye out for my FTSE 100 analysis at the weekend.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
