Today my Barclays position closed out at 264 for a very nice £50 profit. I had three short positions open each making varying degrees of profit. “But I thought you like to let your profits run?” I hear you cry. This is very true and ordinarily I wouldn’t exit a trade using a limit order but with this being a short trade, and there being strong support at 260 I decided to get out while the going is good. I think running your profits on long positions is fine. Let the stops take care of the exits as a long position can rise and rise and rise. Shorts are different. The lowest level a short position can reach is 0 if the company goes bust. Now I don’t think for one minute that Barclays are going bust. I merely identified a downward trend, got a piece of the action and got out. Strictly speaking I wasn’t true to my strategy with this trade. I exited before I received an exit signal from the chart. Now this could prove to be costly as the price could continue to fall, however I don’t really care. I made a judgement call based on other evidence I deemed it appropriate to exit the trade prior to the exit criteria of the strategy. It’s not something I plan to make a habit of but if there is evidence to suggest I should be exiting the trade then that’s what I need to do.

 

My position in premier foods also stopped out today making just under a £10 profit. With hindsight the stop level on this trade was probably too close. This was a super trend cross buy I made back in December so the trade was open for around 6 months. Wow I can’t believe it’s been that long. Anyway I attempted a pyramid which didn’t work and now I’m out of the trade. I have to say as it stands I still like the look of the chart. It’s formed a very nice round bottom (Ooh Err) or saucer, call it what you will. This price pattern is usually formed at the a market bottom potentially signalling a rise. The only question I have here is the rise over, or is this just the beginning?

 



Click image to see larger version. Image © SpreadCo

 

For regular readers or new readers you may see some changes going on over the next few weeks. The website is going to be going through a bit of a re-design so if you notice changes do not be alarmed. I’m hoping to roll out the changes all in one go and everything will work fine, but I’m realistic and I know that something may end up not quite right. Therefore if you spot something that doesn’t work or doesn’t look right please do let me know as otherwise it may go un-noticed for some time.

 

All that said have a great weekend everyone and I’ll see you back here soon.

 

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

June 3, 2011 by Harry
Category: blog