Another fairly quiet day today on the trading front. It’s sods law that I sold out of my bank of Ireland position yesterday at pretty much the low of the day. Still I’m out of it now and that’s that. There will be other opportunities.

My Yell position stopped out today at 12.74. Another example of slippage in action although this time it was a lot less drastic than when it happened to me with EAGA. Persimmon is ticking over nicely. As I write this it’s currently around 372. If it stays this way until the end of the day I will be able to move my stop on the position. I’m currently employing a 1.5x ATR(14) trailing stop. Last time I checked this put my stop around 17.5 points away from price. It may have changed as the ATR is calculated based on the price movements. Still We’ll see what happens at the end of the day. I can’t tell you what the new stop level might be but you can always check my open trades for the latest figures.

I’m not sure what to do about Yell at the moment. I quite fancy it as a potential riser. I think I may hold fire. Possibly place an order to buy at 10p with a stop set at 0. Don’t know yet. I’ll have a think and see what I want to do over the next few days.

Most of my other positions aren’t upto that much. F&C are up a few points so I may be looking to move my stop on them again later. All the others seem to be treading water at the moment, which is fine as long as they shoot upwards afterwards 😉

Thanks to bigAl60 for his latest update on the forum. It will be interesting to follow a fellow spread bettor to see how it pans out for him over the coming months.

I have also started a couple of new topics on the forum myself. They relate to Spread betting strategy development and spread betting tips that you can share with others. When I say spread betting tips I’m not talking BUY BP @ 350p more useful tips and tricks that you have learnt on your own spread betting journey. My goal for both of these topics is to eventually turn them into extra content for the site so all new comers or “Spread betting beginners” can learn from our collective experiences. So if you do get chance please take a look and add whatever extras you want to.

Reading Tony Lotons blog I see he has also spotted spread betting traders blog. It will be very interesting to see how it pans out over the next few months. I’m sure Tony himself will be watching with an eager eye.

Spread betting DVDs

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

Well it’s the end of another week. Is it just me or does time really seem to fly past these days. It’ll be Christmas before you know it! I must be getting old I think.

On to the matter of trading. I had an old order execute today. I’m not sure if I posted about it a while ago but I placed an order for the bank of Ireland. Buy at 44 stop at 34. I identified a possible support level dating back to march 2009. The thing is looking at the chart now I’m not so sure about the trade. The support level doesn’t look strong enough to bounce off. With this in mind I think I will probably look to exit the trade as soon as I can on Monday morning.

You’ll be glad to hear that I have come up with a solution to my stop issues for persimmon. I have decided to employ a trailing stop at 1.5x ATR(14). When I decided this the price of persimmon was around the same as the open price so I moved my stop accordingly. You can see my new stop level on my spread betting trades page.

When the day started I thought it was going to be another good day of gains for persimmon with it heading up to around 371. Sadly the day did not finish how it started and the position ended up closing the day slightly down. Still the position is still open and Monday is another trading day so anything can happen.

That’s really all from me for today. I hope everyone has a good weekend.
I may make further updates to the site over the weekend so keep checking back to see what’s new.

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

Sorry for no post yesterday. I was working late and by the time I’d finished I’d had enough. Not that much to report on the trading front. Persimmon was my star performer climbing around 25pts on the day. It closed at around 360 so currently around £21 in the black. I’ve moved my stop slightly to 335 just below the recent low around 336. This reduces my monetary risk on this trade to £4.25. I would love to move my stop in closer but I would risk stopping out too early, I want to stop in and make as much out of the trade as I can.

Moving stops has always been something the I have found to be tricky. Take this trade for example. Since it’s moved into a decent profit I’ve moved my stop to below the most recent low. This makes sense. If the trade continues to rise rapidly as it has yesterday, then where do I move my stop. Do I trail it below the low of the last few days? I know in Malcolm Pryors book winning spread betting strategies he suggests, “When the trade reaches the half way point(between support and resistance) trail the stop below the low of the last two weeks.” The thing is if the price continued to rocket the way it has the trade could peak and I could miss the boat.

Making these comments about stops has made me realise that this is something that I seriously need to work on. I’m clearly trading here without a fully defined strategy behind the trade. As we all know trading without a clearly defined strategy is a sure fire way to the poor house, “Failure to plan, is a plan to FAIL!” I think this weekend will I will be spending some time on getting the strategies that I trade clearly defined. If they are not clearly defined then I cannot trade them. Simple as that.

Moving on to other news in the world of financial spread betting. The FTSE 100 looks to me as if it’s all set to be touching or passing the 6000 mark before the year is out. I don’t know what other peoples thoughts are on this but looking at the chart I think the recent upward move is set to continue. I’d love to be able to trade the FTSE 100 but my spread betting funds just don’t justify the trade. I guess that I at least have one thing right in my trading. I think my money management is spot on. In fact I think if it wasn’t I would not be trading today.

Anyway back to the FTSE 100. I do have some money invested in the FTSE, although it’s the FTSE all share not the FTSE 100. I have a self invested pension. There are several funds which I can choose from one of which is a FTSE all share index tracker. I know it’s not exactly the same as the FTSE 100, but the charts tend to pan out roughly the same. It’s not an ideal trading solution. If I move the funds it takes a few days for the trade to execute, so I can’t go moving it in and out on a daily basis. What it does enable me to do is look for the longer term trends and move it in and out accordingly. I moved it out in April 2008 and back in in April 2009. I tried more recently to move it out in April and back in in Jun/July. I wasn’t as successful this time and I think I ended up losing more than if I had just left it alone but hey you can’t win them all. Hopefully if I can sit out most of the down swings and get most of the upward moves then this will grow my pension nicely. I think in 2009 I managed to grow it by around 25% if my memory serves correct. I would be nice if I could achieve this every year, but the reality will be somewhat different I’m sure.

I’ll possibly post again at the end of the day with a brief update on how my trades have progressed.

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

Not much to report today. Thanks to Alan for his forum post again yesterday. You can read it here. Unfortunately I am going to be making some changes to the forum over the coming days so I will not be taking any new registrations. I apologise in advance to anyone that wanted to register today. You will be able to register again when I have made the improvements, hopefully they will be worth the wait.

EAGA is turning out to be my start performer. I still have a trailing stop of 6pts set on this and I currently have £7.4 locked in. Not mega bucks but when you consider this is nearly 2x my initial risk it’s not too bad going. Persimmon has crept up a little bit today as well. Hopefully it’s the start of a nice rebound to 400 or higher. I may look to trail the stop on this but I think if I do it will be some factor of ATR rather than just an arbitrary 6pts as is the case with EAGA.

Everything else is not up to much really. I’ll check them all later to see if I can move the stops based on the super trend indicator.

That’s all for today. It’s a short post I know. With having the new forum to do, and work and keeping the family happy there’s a lot to do at the moment.

Thanks to “M” for the e-mail about my rant yesterday. I’m glad someone has the same view as me. Also thanks to another “M” asking about proScreeners. I’ll try and get onto your request at the weekend when I have more time.

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