Category: blog

Well another week has flown past and it’s taken half the year with it. I can’t believe we are already half way through this year. It really is scary how quickly time seems to fly past these days. Still I guess that’s just life for ya! Maybe one day the days wont seem to whizz past, I think that might be wish full thinking hey.

 

The last few days has seen a hive of activity as far as my spread betting is concerned. The recent rally in the market has seen a lot of opportunities come my way that meet the entry criteria for my trading strategy. I haven’t taken every opportunity possible for a few reasons. Firstly some did not meet my risk criteria and secondly if I had taken on all the trades I would be seriously over exposed to the market. I’m almost running the risk of being over exposed at the moment but I am still just about in my comfort zone.

 

The new spread bets are:

A pyramid into my Misys position. Buy at £1 per point at 422. This means I am now long £3 per point on Misys. Overall the three positions are just about at break even if my stops were to be hit. One would make a profit, the other is break even and the newest position would see a loss almost equal to the locked in profit. Hopefully the recent up trend continues for some time yet and this trades works out to be a good one.
Next up I brought into TUI travel £1 per point at 224.49 with a stop set at 210. This is a long trade and meets the requirements for my super trend cross and a buy signal from Vince Stanziones trading system.

 

Yesterday I made two new trades. £2 per point in ITV at 71.7 with a stop set at 64, again this is a super trend/ VS buy. £1 per point in Henderson group at 152.63 with a stop set at 142 yet another super trend/ VS buy.

 

Today I also made one new trade. Again it was a buy in Alliance Trust, £1 per point at 387.27 with a stop set at 367. With opening all these trades over the last few days I know have a total of £10 per point exposure across 7 trades. I think this is more than enough for the time being so I shall be taking a break from looking for new opportunities until I close out some of the open positions. Hopefully this will not be for a while and they all close out for a nice juicy profit. That said if the do start to move into profit and I start to lock in some of that profit then I may either look to pyramid the positions or establish new positions in other stocks. I don’t know yet, I’ll decide should the occasion arise. For the time being though I am happy enough to wait and see what happens with my open positions.

 

And the winner is!!!

Congratulations to Ted. He is the winner of this months FTSE100 competition. You have won yourself a copy of 101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners By Clem Chambers.

 

The next spread betting news letter will be available shortly with your chance to win this months prize, courtesy of Global Investor Bookshop. It is a copy of The Naked Traders Guide To Spread Betting By Robbie Burns. Now this is a book that I have read and you can read my review on my spread betting reading list.

 

To be in with a chance of winning you have to subscribe to the monthly news letter and enter the FTSE100 competition via the link within the e-mail. I’m not sure why only three people entered this month but hopefully this month we’ll have a better turn out.

 

Ok so that’s all from me. How I said the spread betting news letter should be out soon. I aim to send it out over the weekend so keep checking you inbox for that. Other than that have a fantastic weekend everyone and I’ll see you back here next week.

 

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

I thought I’d write a little about Spread Betting Psychology today. I personally believe that psychology is probably the most important factor of all in spread betting. Think about it, if you feel angry or upset do you think you will be thinking clearly when it comes to making trades, probably not right. I mean if you’ve just had a row with the misses(or hubby for the ladies) the last thing you want to be doing it trying to concentrate and stay focused enough to make sensible trading decisions. I know when I’ve had a row I sometimes just want to head to the gym to work out the frustration and tension.

 

So what can we do to avoid making rash psychological decisions in our spread betting? Well I suggest stop thinking about it. Get a strategy that works for you and your are comfortable with and let that dictate your trading decisions to you, not the other way round. Let’s look at an example of how thinking too much can ruin your chances and your bank account. Take my Barclays position for example. I closed it out a few weeks ago at 264 because I thought there was a potential support zone at 260. I entered via my trading strategy, did everything else according to my trading strategy and then I cut the trade short because of what I thought might happen. Guess what the support at 260 never happened and the price has continued to fall. It’s now down around 238. That’s 26 additional points I’ve missed out on and at £3 per point that’s an extra £78 paper profit that I’ve missed because I injected my own thoughts and feelings into my trading. Although I exited at a profit you can see I could’ve potentially have more if I’d stuck to the strategy.

 

So to summarise don’t think too much about your spread bets. Don’t look at the chart and think this might happen, that might happen, the other might happen. Get your trading strategy sorted and stick too it. Take control of your spread betting psychology before it takes control of you.

 

On a side note all my spread bets are ticking over. Misys is consolidating, hopefully before another big move upwards. I’m actually thinking about pyramiding into the position again. I haven’t decided on that one yet so I’ll keep you posted as always.

 

Have a great weekend everyone and I’ll see you all back here on Monday.

 

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

With Spread Betting for nearly 30 months now I feel I am only just getting to grips with it enough to be profitable. It’s been a hell of a rollercoaster ride so far and I suspect it will continue that way indefinitely. So what have I learned after all this time? Well if I had to pick the most important thing I’ve learned to date it would be “Keep calm and stay in control of your Spread Betting. Don’t let your Spread Betting control you!” It’s easier said than done believe me. There was a time when I would be logging into my spread betting account every 10 minutes to check on them, at one point it got to the stage where I was watching it tick by tick. This is a bad move. It’s almost as if I got a thrill by watching the price of the stocks move. There was on problem though they didn’t move enough. So I decided to try my hand at Indices & FOREX. Big mistake! These markets move so quickly in such a short space of time it was not long before my tight stops were getting hit and I was out of the trade.

 

Now I am much more in control of things. I look for trades almost everyday. Probably spending around 15-20mins or so each day checking for new trading opportunities. Then I check if the stops on my existing positions need altering, which takes around 5-10mins. Then I probably check on my spread bets 3-4 times throughout the day. I buy according to my strategy, and adjust stops likewise. All in all I probably spend about 30-40mins per day looking for trades, maintaining existing positions and keeping an eye on proceedings. This is what I hope to be doing in the future when Spread Betting is providing me with my main source of income. The whole point of me doing all of this is to “Enjoy Spread Betting as part of a Balanced Lifestyle”. I currently spend over 8 hours a day in front of a computer screen at work and there is no way that I want to do it for the rest of my life. This may be wishful thinking but I’m hoping I’m on the right track to make a success of spread betting.

 

Spread Betting Action

Well after yesterdays bumper day with Misys today was not quite so good. The stock dipped slightly losing almost 8 points on the day. Still I’m not worried. I think I would be more concerned if the stock kept rising with out any sort of correction or consolidation. As long as the stock doesn’t keep on falling I’ll be happy enough, and you never know it could present a good pyramiding opportunity. Time will tell. I also made a new trade in International consolidated Air. It came up as part of my screening process and meets the requirements of my modified super trend strategy. I’m long £1 per point at 242.74 with an initial stop set at 221. So monetary risk of £21.74. I’ll be trailing this stop at the super trend value and I guess we’ll wait and see how it pans out.

 

Spread Betting Beginner Appeal!

If like me you have struggled or are struggling with your spread betting I would like to hear your story. You can e-mail me either via the website form or direct e-mail to spreadbettingbeginner [at] yahoo.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

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

What a day. Today is probably the first day I have ever come any where near to making my £100 a day target. I made a total combined profit today of £64.60. This is by far the biggest single day profit ever for me. It’s all down to one stock. Misys. The price shot up today to around 427 before dropping off a little. As luck would have it I logged into my Saturn trader account with SpreadCo and saw the events unfold. Now I’ve seen price spikes like this in the past but I’ve never had the fortune to be in on the trade when it’s taken place. My first reaction was sell before it falls all the way back to 390, fortunately I didn’t. I had a word with myself and told myself I am trading a strategy here and I should stick to it. I think the stock has more room for rises so I’m still in the game. It looks like my pyramid that I was moaning a bit about yesterday could’ve been a good move after all. How I said I went long again at 388 so from there on I’m £2 per point. If the price retraces I’ll be looking to potentially pyramid again if the circumstances are right.

 

My other positions did not fare quite so well. My short positions lost ground today, still it could present potential pyramiding opportunities. We’ll see what happens. I did want to write more today but the misses isn’t very well so I need to cut it short and go look after her.

 

I hope you had as good a day as I did!

 

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

Quite a lot has happened since I last posted a spread betting update. Firstly my position in Shanks stopped out at break even. At least it wasn’t a loss but it certainly was a bizarre stop out. The price dipped very quickly, stopped me out, then rebounded to it’s previous price before rising slightly. (See chart below) It does make me wonder sometimes. Is mister market out to get me. If you take a look at the 10day ATR for Shanks it’s currently around 2.5, so the dip represents around 2 and a half times this value. I really don’t see anyway to allow for this kind of behaviour, the only thing I can think is to use manual stop losses but I can say for sure I wouldn’t have exited at the value my stop was set at. I wasn’t watching the price when it happened for one and two if I was I probably would’ve started to think I’ll wait to see if it rebounds, which in this case it did, but so often it doesn’t and that’s when losses start to get out of control. Anyway I guess it’s just another one of those things that a spread bettor has to put up with. Hopefully it won’t happen too often.

 

Click image to see larger version. Image © SpreadCo

Next up my Misys position pyramided. I used the strategy I talked about previously using a value of 1xATR(10) for the dip. My order executed at 388. It’s sods law that all the price has done since then is drop, fortunately it hasn’t dropped too far. Hopefully the pyramid will stand up but who knows. We’ll have to wait and see I guess. The 1xATR(10) is a bot of an experiment at the moment and I have no idea how this is going to pan out. I may tweak this value in the future but for the time being it’s a bot of a ‘suck it and see’, Ooooh Errr!

 

Thanks to Jamie, the spread trader & Ted for taking part in this months FTSE100 competition. I’m not sure why only three people entered? Lots more have signed up to the news letter and the competition is completely free. I did try to give everyone enough warning about entering. I guess I could’ve left the closing date for entries until some time on Sunday as the markets were closed anyway. Maybe I’ll do that for next month. If you have subscribed, please do enter next months competition. How I said it’s completely free and you have to be in it to win it. If you have yet to subscribe then please do. The next news letter will be out in the next few weeks with a brand new competition.

 

Ok, I think that’s everything for now. As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now my updates have dropped off a little, mainly due to time constraints. But don’t worry I’m still here, updating you as regularly as I can. If I haven’t updated you can always read the latest spread betting news from Capital Spreads. It’s updated daily so while your waiting for me to update you can read that to keep you entertained.

 

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