Another fairly quiet day of trading, well for me anyway. Only really one thing to report and that is my F&C asset management position pyramided today. I’m now long £2 per point with both stops set at 69. The new position was set to buy in at 72 but again good old CMC markets suffered slippage. Still as long as it’s in my favour then I don’t mind it. They’re probably trying to compensate for the massive slippage I faced in EAGA a few weeks ago. Anyway, the new F&C position opened at 71.802. The position is currently sitting around a 10p loss. Hopefully the recent upswing will continue and present more pyramiding opportunities with it along the way. Only time will tell.

3i Infrastructure has finally started to move. It’s currently making new highs not seen since September 2008. Obviously the price has spent the last few months consolidating and is hopefully now gearing up for a new move. I just hope it’s an upward move. This buy was more of an experiment than anything else. The price was close to the super trend stop value and I thought I’d give it ago. The stock could be at the price it’s worth but who knows. Maybe the recent move is because of a take over rumour, I wish it was. Hey here’s an idea lets start a rumour that 3i Infrastructure is about to be the target for a take over bit at £10 per share. I wonder would that work? Doubtful, still would be nice if it did.

Thanks to everyone with their continued support via e-mail and over on the forum. I really do appreciate it. Offthelip thanks for the e-mail I will get to your request as soon as I get chance. If your wondering what the request was it’s for my super trend construction page. It’s not quite finished yet but it will be soon. When it’s done I’ll post a link on the blog to let you know.

One other thing before I go, I stumbled across spread betting forum . Net today. I’ve posted a request over on my own spread betting forum if anyone can help me let me know.

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

Again not a massive amount to report on the trading front today. I set a new buy order for yell at 10p with a stop set at 2p. I wanted to set no stop but CMC wouldn’t allow a stop set at 0p, so I opted for 2p instead. Why not 1p I hear you ask well I say to that why not 2p? There’s no real reason behind the stop level, although if it starts to move in my favour I will probably adjust the level to the super trend value.

I’ve also placed a new order for F&C. I’ve set a buy in at 72 with a stop set at 69. The stop level on my current open position is set to 69 currently locking in a potential profit of £15.71. With the new £3 risk on the table it reduces the potential profit to £12.71. There is no guarantee that this trade will even execute and the price could continue it’s recent rise, which hopefully it does. This is more of an experiment in pyramiding for me than anything else. I think the extra £3 risk is worth taking to make the most of any potential rise.

There really isn’t much else for me to report today. Thanks again to bigAl for posting his latest update, you can read it here. I know he’s probably feeling a little lonely over on the forum so please join him. It’s completely free and you can share your spread betting wisdom with others.

Spread betting DVDs

Oh and if your looking X-mas presents early you can always search amazon below to find them.

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

The day started so full of promise, then the markets opened. My EAGA position was sitting with a healthy £7.4 non-guaranteed profit at the close of trading yesterday. Non-guaranteed being the operative word. The stock opened down and continued to fall. I was stopped out at 8:05am at a price of 59.2, well below my stop price of 64.69. Yet another example of slippage in action. Fortunately I exited at a profit even if it was only £1.91, better than a loss any day.

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

Well it looks like all our prayers have been answered. Vince Stanzione is going to make us all millionaires. All we need to do is invest £197 in his trading system.

I was reading a forum post over on spread betting central and I seen Vince himself has posted and included a link to his winning formula website. Now I can’t really pass comment on his trading system and I’m sure he’s made more money spread betting than I can ever dream of making, but all these trading system sites look the same too me. No offense to Vince but the design of all these sites just screams rip off. Also if Vince has made the millions that he claims why does he need to charge £197 for his trading system? Why not just keep making millions and millions spread betting? Or why not give away the information for free and do some other people some good since he has more than enough money any way.

Sorry for the rant, it just those sort of sites are all the same. It starts with an introduction, then its explains how you can do the same. Then it’s all the reports of other people copying them and making huge sums of money. Then come the copies of bank statements showing us proof of the money. Then the videos of all the people that have copied them and made a 90% return in a couple of months. The thing is they leave out all the bad parts. What about the people that have lost 90% in a couple of months , well it’s probably because they didn’t follow the system properly, right!

If I personally had made millions from spread betting I would share how I did it. You never know you could be witnessing the very start of that story. Not very probably but certainly possible.

Anyway enough about all that back to the business of trading. You may remember I said on Friday that I tried to move money from my old CMC account to my new one. Well for whatever reason they couldn’t do it and they still haven’t so my persimmon order didn’t exectue at my price of 341 because of lack of funds in the new account. I opened it in my old CMC account at 339.25. Saving myself a whopping £1.75. Still it’s a saving at least. My stop is still set for 331 so I’m only risking 8.25 rather than the £10 originally planned.

All my other positions are taking care of themselves. Debenhams has dropped back a little but EAGA is ticking up nicely. Interestingly I’ve just checked the chart for Persimmon and 339.25 is the same low price that was hit on 20/8/10, maybe it’s fate, or probably just pure luck.

I’m trying a fixed price trailing stop on EAGA currently set to 6pts. I’m keeping it tight for now until the position moves more into profit. I think I may look to employ a trailing stop based on ATR possibly 1.5x the ATR(14). I’ll leave it as it is for now and take a view on this over the next few days.

UPDATE: I’ve been looking at my open positions page (Which I’ve renamed spread betting trades). I think the new name makes more sense. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing regarding the stop value. I am currently updating this when I move my stops. Should I just leave this as the original stop level? This way it will be possible to see the initial risk and the final P/L rather than just the final P/L? What do people think it’s best for me to do here? Please let me know. You can either leave me a comment below or contact me. Thanks!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’ve only just noticed that bigAl60 has started his trading journal over on the forum. Incase you haven’t read it you can check it out here. If you want to reply or add a comment to his post then you will need to register here. Please do read his journal. It makes better reading than my trading at the moment!

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

I’ve been trying to transfer money between spread betting firms today. Actually it’s between my old CMC markets account and my new CMC account. Why they can’t just give me a button on the platform that lets me do it myself? I don’t know? I was thinking to move away from CMC markets when they close my old account but I’ve decided to give them a little longer yet. When I spoke to the CMC markets man he told me that they should be updating their charts etc. Around the middle of next month. So I’ll probably give them till the end of the year to make their updates and then decide if it’s time to move on or not. I still have accounts with tradefair, capital spreads and tdwaterhouse (formerly E*Trade). I may look to open some new accounts soon but I’m not sure which spread betting firm to choose. I know SpreadEx have an introductory offer for new customers so maybe I’ll try them.

I’ve only done one thing relating to my spread betting today and that is to move my stop on my EAGA position. I’ve moved my stop to 59 locking in a whopping £1.71 profit. With the price currently hovering around 62 I’m willing to risk the extra £3 profit in hope of a further rise. Will it happen, I have no idea, but it could do.

My order for persimmon nearly executed today. With price dropping to 342.5 it has been 1.5 points away from buying me into the trade. This is support zone buy and if price can bounce off this support level back up to the recent high of 412 then I think it’s worth the £10 risk. The only thing I’m not 100% sure on here is when to trail my stop. In Malcolm Pryors book winning spread betting strategies he suggests when the price reaches the midway point to trail the stop below the low of the last two weeks. Maybe I’ll do this, at the moment It’s the only solution to trailing my stop that I have .

UPDATE: I just checked and persimmon closed the day with a buy price of 341.06. I suspect this trade may trigger on Monday morning at the open.

Thanks to Alan for his comment again. I know the feeling of the FTSE goes up and your portfolio value goes down. It sometimes seems to make no sense what so ever. The thing I try and do now is keep an eye on the overall market (FTSE) but keep a closer eye on my trades. Like Alan says “I’ve given up trying to work it out..!!”

That’s about all from me today. If I get chance to update the site over the weekend I will. I’m working on updating the spread betting strategies section and want to add details of my super trend strategy along with more detail on the super trend construction and function.

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