Well I thought I’d write a summary of my week. Not that much to report. There have been no new trades only moving stops. I have placed one new order this week and I have placed a time limit of 2 weeks for the order to execute. The order is for Trinity Mirror. It’s a £2 per point buy order at 65 with a stop set at 60. There is a potential support zone around the 65 mark so I thought I’d place an order. Will it work out, or even execute, who knows!

I’ve been keeping my eye on persimmon over the last few weeks. I thought, and still do, that it may be heading back to the price I originally brought in at 340. It seems to have bounced today, probably buoyed by the news that house prices rose 0.8% in in January. I suspect this good news may be short lived so I’ll be keeping my eye on Persimmon. If it seems that it’s heading back to 340 I think it could be a good buy. Now I’ve said that the share price will probably just keep on rising and rising.

The more regular readers of you may have noticed that I’ve added a couple of new sections to the site. They are spread betting reviews and Compare Spread Betting Companies. As the names suggest you can now review your spread betting company and also compare spread betting companies against each other. There aren’t many reviews yet, I’ve added a few for the companies that I trade with but I don’t trade with all of them so I can’t review them. If you have a spare 5 mins please add a review of your spread betting company. Good or Bad it could potentially help someone else out a lot when it comes to picking a new spread betting company. I’m still waiting on some info from some of the spread betting companies so the comparison table is not complete yet but I should have the info shortly so keep checking.

If you do take a look at the reviews &/or comparison table please let me know if you think it could be improved for the better. If you think there is something missing from the comparison table again please let me know and I’ll do my best to get it added.

The FTSE is really confusing me at the moment and I don’t know what to think. I’m not convinced that it will continue nicely upwards past 6000. I’ve been re-reading Technical analysis explained by Pring and in there he suggests a trough to trough market cycle lasts approximately 4 years and a primary trend lasts from 9 months to 2 years. Well if that’s true then it would mean that the recent primary uptrend which has been in force since March 2009 could be about to come to an end. Will that be the case? I have no idea! I am a little cautious though. I guess I’ll just be keeping an eye for now, because I’m the same as everyone else and I cannot predict where the markets are going. As Tony Loton put it the only thing we know about the markets is that they will fluctuate.

That’s all for this week. Hopefully I will resume to a more regular update soon.
Have a great weekend everyone.

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

Well with the FTSE down another 50 odd points (so far) it’s not looking too rosy. It would seem that the resistance level around 5875 has thus far held true. The question is will the FTSE gain enough momentum go get up past it or will it continue to fall. I suspect it may be the latter. Taking a look at the chart it looks like a potential head and shoulders pattern has emerged or is in the process of emerging. Not a good sign. I suspect we could see a the FTSE trading between the 5000 – 5900 range before it makes a move either way. All that said I really have no idea. I’m only guessing what I think might happen, I don’t know for sure. One person does know what the FTSE is going to do! You’re intrigued now aren’t you. Tony Loton correctly predicted “It will fluctuate. That’s all we know “. Spot on!

Not surprisingly since, the FTSE dropped, some of my positions have dropped as well. Most notably Vodafone. It’s currently very close to it’s stop level. Will it stop out today? Maybe tomorrow? Maybe not at all. I am slightly concerned with it getting so close to it’s stop level that I will suffer slippage yet again. I guess we’ll know tomorrow what happens.

No new trades today. There is nothing that is appealing to me at the moment. There are a few orders that I may look to place. I read Tony Lotons blog post earlier and saw he’s either established new positions or has orders on for the Irish banks. I already have an order for Bank or Ireland set to buy at 14 with a stop set at 4. There is also allied Irish and Irish life which I’m considering placing orders for. They are all close to their all time lows and could potentially bounce of these levels as support. I haven’t decided what to do yet when I have I’ll let you know.

I’ve still had no reply from CMC markets about the Northern foods merger. I have to say I’m suitably unimpressed with their customer service so far. So much so that I am considering to switch spread betting companies to SpreadEx or SpreadCo. Maybe I’ll give Gekko a go as they offer factional bets. I was going to write about CMCs new charting tools that they have just added. It’s a step in the right direction but I personally think they have a long way to go.

Well that’s enough of that rant. Is it really that hard for the spread betting company to e-mail me back. I’ve sent three e-mails so far and I’ve had nothing. I’m just going to keep e-mailing them everyday until I get a response. They can’t ignore me forever, then again maybe they can.

Oh one last thing, I am thinking of possibly treating myself to one of Malcolm Pryors DVDs for X-mas. Does anyone have either of them? If so is it any good? If you have both which one would you recommend? I’m going to start a new forum topic so if you could post a reply there that would great thanks.

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

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