As I suspected I’ve not had an opportunity to look for new trades today, hopefully tomorrow will be better. My position in Yell stopped out today for a £2 profit. Better than a loss I suppose.

With nothing much else to report I stumbled across some more detail about the guaranteed stops that Capital Spreads, Tradefair, Tdwaterhouse and possibly paddy power trader now offer. I’ve scanned the documet very briefly earlier today and there is that much information, I couldn’t take it all in. If your interested in learning more about the guaranteed stops you can read all about them on the London Capital Group website.

One final note, I would like to say how impressed I am with BigAls trading diary. I wish I could triple my money in less than a year. Keep up the good work Big Al. It’s nice to know that someone is making some money spread betting. Big Al also posts his latest trades which you can see on BigAls latest trades page. He also documents his progress in his daily forum posts, which you can read over on the spread betting forum. How I said keep up the good work Big Al.

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

Unfortunately work is really busy at the moment and spread betting is having to take a back seat. There are no new trades for me today and I suspect tomorrow will be much the same. I just don’t have the time to look at the moment. Things should start and quieten down by the end of the week so I should have more time then.

I didn’t get chance to read back through all the forum posts relating to our new spread betting strategy. Again this is something that I aim to do later in the week. I know off the lip suggested posting a summary of where we were up to and I haven’t even had chance to do that. I did start a web page that details where we are upto but even that is a little behind the pace. I’ll get this update and push this forward later this week I promise.

Oh I don’t know if many of you have accounts with Capital Spreads but I got an e-mail from them today and they have just introduced guaranteed stops. I had the same e-mail from Tradefair so I’m assuming all the companies under the LCG (London Capital Group) brand will be offering guaranteed stops. Don’t quote me on that as I don’t know for sure but I would think logically it makes sense. So I would assume that Paddy Power Trader also now offer guaranteed stops. I don’t know the full details of how much the stops cost but I do know there is a mandatory wider stop distance. For example if you want to go long £1 per point on the FTSE the usual min stop distance is 4 points, with a guaranteed stop this jumps to a min distance of 31 points. I think there may also be an extra premium when you trade with a guaranteed stop but the details are not that clear to me at the moment. If anyone else knows please feel free to leave a comment or let us know in the forum.

One last point there are still places available for my Capital spreads offer. You can read more about that and other offers on my spread betting offers page.

Hopefully I’ll have more trading talk for later in the week.

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

With another day drawing to a close I have a little more time to write a more detailed post.

Persimmon are up to around 425. Woo hoo! Sadly it means nothing to me. As I expected my position stopped out. I’m not disappointed I still made over £50 on the trade, but it’s another lesson that I’ve learned the hard way. Both my positions stopped out at the open of the day. The interesting thing is one suffered slippage, but the other didn’t. What’s really fascinating is that they were with the same company. The first position was with my old CMC markets account and the second was with my new CMC markets account. The first (OLD) position stopped out at 405 as expected, the other stopped out at 401.79. So over 3 points slippage. That’s around 0.8% slippage. Quite a lot when you think about it. Oh and I still haven’t found out from them what’s going to happen with Northern Foods. I have to say I’m not that impressed with them. So why haven’t I moved? Well I said I’d give them until at least the end of the year before deciding and at the moment time is that tight I can’t be bothered with the hassle of with drawing the money and moving it. That said I may look to move part of it back to Tradefair or capital spreads.

I read some of the news for Persimmon and I probably could’ve avoided being stopped out. Apparently their Interim Dividend Payment Date was today. I’m assuming this explains the drop in price. I think from now on I will check each of my open positions for relevant news like this at the end of each week. If I had known about this I probably would’ve committed the ultimate sin of spread betting, lowered my stop loss. Only slightly though, to allow for any dip in price and not be whipsawed out of the trade. Still you live and learn. How I said I still made money from the trade so I haven’t done too bad.

My dimension data position stopped out today. From what I can gather because they were taken over a while ago, today was there last trading day. I was sold out of the position for a £1.40 profit which more than covers the financing charges(only just). Still better than a loss.

I’ve run some quick figures on my open positions list and I’m just about in profit on my closed positions. With the remaining open positions showing a locked in profit of around £20. Maybe this is the beginning of winning ways for me. I still have a very long way to go before I recouped all I’ve lost on my spread betting journey so far, but with time, patients and hard work hopefully I’ll get there. I certainly agree with the statement “Spread betting is a Hard way to make an Easy living”

As far as I’m aware there are still palaces left for my Exclusive reader offer with Capital Spreads. So for any one wanting to open an account with them you can find more information about this offer on my spread betting offers page.

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