Sorry for the short but sweet post yesterday. With Christmas fast approaching time is tight. Work is busy as well and I don’t see that changing for the near future. If the posts get a little shorter, or more boring (hopefully not) please bear with me. With the site being a hobby for me I can’t really justify spending time on it at the expense of something else in my life. Maybe that will change one day. Always the dreamer hey!

If you want to help me to get more time to spend on the site you can. All you need to do is, when you want to open a new spread betting account is check myspread betting offers first. If I have the company listed click the link and open an account, it’s that simple. I only have spreadEx, SpreadCo and paddy power so far but this will increase over the coming months so keep checking the spread betting offers page. There’s a link to it on the right hand site of the page.

On to todays spread betting action. With the FTSE rattling up around 40 points or so I’m asking the question “Will the FTSE pass 6000 before the end of the year?” Well as always I have no idea but if it can pass the most recent high of 5900ish I think it has a good chance. Will it be over 6000 at the end of the year? Again who knows. I suspect it will pass 6000 fall below 6000 before passing 6000 and continuing upwards. It always seems to do this around the big round numbers. Take a look at the price action back in may. It closed below 5000, before rising above 5000, before falling back below 5000. Ok so the price didn’t continue to fall but the same pattern seems to emerge around these large round numbers. Just so you know I’m not suggesting this a trading strategy or any kind of advice it’s merely an observation I’ve made over the past months/years that I’ve been spread betting.

Most of my positions fell back a little today with one big exception. Persimmon rattled up over 30pts to close the day at 416.79 (according to my spread betting firm). That puts me a whopping 76.79 points in profit. I have to say I had itchy fingers again today. I could quite easily take the profit and run, but I wont. I’ve made that mistake all too many times in the past. Exit the trade too early and miss out on big profits. My most recent occurrence of doing this was with ARM holdings. Although it’s not listed in my spread betting trades, I brought ARM back on 12/2/2010 at 201. They closed today just under 400. That would be nearly 200pts profit and if I’d pyramided along the way who knows where I would’ve ended up. Actually you can see my open positions on my old site. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.

ARM holdings the one that got away. I actually closed the position to free up funds in the account with a view to re-opening it again. Big mistake, as soon as I closed it the stock continued to rise and I missed the boat. Still it’s all been a valuable learning experience.

I’m hoping I’ll be moving stops tonight again. I’ve decided I will trail Persimmon at 1.5xATR until I have the target price of 410 locked in. After this I am going to let my stop widen to the super trend value to make the most of any further price move. If I get the opportunity to pyramid along the way I will but only according to my super trend strategy. Funny how this started as a support level buy and could end up following my super trend strategy rules. Oh the joy of spread betting.

Right that’s it for today. I still have some work to finish before the end of the day. How I said if you want to help me get more time to spend on the site, all you need to do is visit spread betting offers when you are thinking of opening a new spread betting account. If the company is listed click the link and open an account. I’m hoping to get some exclusive spread betting beginner reader offers for you. If I do get any I’ll let you know. If I start getting more visitors there is more chance of getting good deals for you so tell your friends, family and even the dog. Unless your a cat person of course.

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

Sorry there was no post yesterday. I was swamped with work and when I’d finished I’d had enough of staring at a computer screen. You didn’t miss that much anyway. Obviously the FTSE had a good day up well over 100 points, I just wish I could say the same for my positions.

Most of them were up so I was happy, it would’ve been nice if they’d all risen a little more but hey that’s life. As long as they are going up (if there buys of course) I’m happy. I have not made a new trade for a while and I keep checking but nothing is coming up. I did have my eye on Marstons as it had pulled back close to the super trend stop out but it has risen well so far today and I think I’ve missed the boat. Still never mind another opportunity will be along shortly.

I received my monthly statement from CMC yesterday and I’ve decided to share it with you. Those of you that have an old CMC account will be familiar with the format. If you only have a new CMC account then you probably have never seen it before. Why am I adding it to the site. Well as you know I post details of my trades and this is the proof that they are not a work of fiction. They are all genuine trades. Obviously I’ve removed the important details from the statement like, Full name, Address & account number but all the rest is genuine.

I must point out that this statement doesn’t list all the trades that I make. I trade across several different spread betting accounts and this is just one of them. I also trade with Capital spreads, Tradefair, New CMC markets and TDWaterhouse(Formerly E*Trade). As you will see I don’t trade with a massive amount of funds. I never have. It’s actually a lot less now than it was this time last year. That said I do seem to have possibly found my winning way. If you do the maths on this account it’s up nearly 20% this month. If I could continue at that pace I’d be very happy. That said I’m still down 70% or so since I started spread betting back in February 2009 so although 20% up in one month sounds great if you look at it related to the funds I started with it’s around 3.4% up. Still if I could manage 3.4% a month I’d be very happy.

How I said this is only one account. I have my Debenhams , F&C asset management pyramid , Taylor whimpey, Yell and Dimension Data positions open in various other accounts. I doubt I’ll make a regular thing of sharing my monthly statements mainly because of the extra time aspect involved and if CMC do stop there market maker accounts in new year then the nice HTML format statements will stop and It will take me even longer to add them to the site. That said I’ll see how it goes at the end of the month, but I’m making no promises.

With being busy I’ve not had the time to respond to people over on the forum. I’ll try and get round to that at some point today or this evening. Thanks again to all involved with the new spread betting strategy I think it’s turning out to be an interesting exercise for all involved.

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

I have a bit of a confession to make. I’ve kind of taken my eye off my trades this past few days. With updating the site, work family etc my spread betting has been neglected. Fortunately it’s turned out ok so far but it could’ve easily been much worse and still could get worse. It’s something that I need to sort out for myself. I think I need to give more time to my spread betting and update the site when I get the time. Don’t worry I’ll still be blogging regularly but adding more to the rest of the site might take a bit of a back seat for now.

So what has happened. I have a new position in Persimmon. I thought I’d posted previously that I placed a buy order at 340 with a stop at 330, but I can’t seem to find it. Anyway I placed the order and it executed on the 23rd of November. I checked the charts today and the super trend value is 337.06 so I’ve moved my stop to 336. So I currently have a £4 risk on this position. It’s a support buy, pretty much the same as I did previously. If I had been checking the charts properly recently I would’ve also seen that It came close to the super trend level which is also a buy signal for me. Anyway so far it’s turned out ok. I think it’s currently £17 in profit but I have an open risk of £4 and I will trail the stop based on the super trend value. Here’s hoping price recovers to its 2007 high of around 1500 a share. Not very likely but hey, you never know.

Other than that I think the rest are taking care of themselves. My pyramids are holding up so far and I’m hoping before too long I’ll be moving stops on them to start locking in profit.

I’m actually quite surprised that most of my positions have held up today considering the FTSE has tanked nearly 100 points so far today. Maybe I’ve spoken too soon. I hope not!

Oh and in case you were wondering if I’ve heard back from my spread betting firm (CMC markets) about the Northern foods merger question. You probably know the answer already. No! Not a great advert for their customer service I have to say. Still maybe there is a reason behind it. Maybe my e-mails are caught by their SPAM filter. I don’t know. When I know more I’ll let you know.

Have a great weekend everyone. I’ll catch you all Monday. Unless I see you in the forum before then. Thanks again to everyone joining in the new spread betting strategy topic. It’s certainly got people thinking.

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

I don’t have a lot of time today so this is going to be brief.

Firstly a big thank you to everyone that is participating in developing a new strategy over on the forum. If you want to join in the fun please feel free.

Off the lip I’ve seen your latest post but don’t have time right now to read it properly. I’ll try and take a look later and then post a reply rather than rushing it now.

Most of my positions have risen today. I’ll check later if I can move any stops. Debenhams and F&C pyramids are both doing nicely. There’s a long way to go for both of them but hey they have to start somewhere. No new trades, nothing is jumping off the page at me lately. Maybe tomorrow will be different.

That’s all for today, Told you it would be brief.

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

Well another trading day has been and gone. It’s been a bit of a better day with the FTSE rising 80 odd points. My position in Vodafone stopped out yesterday for a loss of £5. It actually closed out before the end of trading so my slippage concerns weren’t needed after all.

I’ve still had no reply from my spread betting firm (CMC markets) about the northern foods merger. I wonder will they respond tomorrow? It’s certainly not a great advert for their customer service. I’m still considering to move from them. I haven’t decided who too yet but when I do I’ll let you know.

I’ve also decided against purchasing one of Malcolm Pryors DVDs. It’s probably a bit too costly especially with it being Christmas. Maybe I’ll consider it again in the new year.

No new trades today. At the moment there is nothing that seems terribly appealing to me. I’m in no hurry to trade anyway, I know that an opportunity will come along soon.

I was thinking of trying to develop a new strategy, with help from you, if that’s ok. It will mainly be for a bit of fun, but who knows maybe we’ll create a profitable strategy together. I’ve started a new forum post and added the first, of many, criteria for a trade setup. I’ve stipulated that we will buy only when price is above the 200 day EMA (Exponential moving average) and sell only when the price is below the 200 day EMA. Now I’m throwing it open to the floor. Add what you want, It’s on a first come first served basis, so you cant add conflicting conditions. Hopefully it will be a bit of fun and useful for us all to learn a little more on what is required to develop a strategy. Thanks in advance for your participation.

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