Ok so I’ve finally started to develop my trading plan over at spread betting talk. It’s always interesting when I start to think about these things, you never realise exactly what you need to think about and write down until you actually get on and do it.
For instance I has nothing written down about what my financial goals were from trading. I just wanted to make money but I had no idea how much (the more the better obviously). Now I’ve put a minimum annual % return that I aim to achieve, while I strictly don’t like the idea of limiting myself to profit targets I think it’s a good idea to have one in place and let it run if need be. I’ve tried to generate a list of questions that I can form into a template for others to use and develop their own trading plan. If you do have any input or think I’ve missed something please do join in the conversation ondeveloping a trading plan.
Anyway I don’t want to cover everything I’ve just written again so go and read it at spread betting talk.
I don’t have much to report by way of trading as I’m not even looking for new trades until my trading plan is complete. I may paper trade for a while, I’m basically sick of losing money(who isn’t) and I’m trying to do something about it. As I mentioned before 2012 is the year of the spread betting beginner.
If you need a little light entertainment you can check out my latest articles on Finance news. These are Greece to leave the Euro in 2012? and UniCredit shares suspended after falling 9.9%. They are not meant to be uber serious news stories but more my spin on actual news stories of the day. If you want to have a go at writing one yourself do get in touch as it can easily be arranges. My view is, if you can read a news story and have an opinion on it then you can write for Finance News.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
Happy New Year to you all. I hope Santa was kind to you and you had plenty of festive cheer over the holidays. Personally I had a good break. More so than I anticipated which was nice. The upshot meant that I spent less time developing the site than I had hopped but hey, more time with family and friends is worth it.
I did get some time and I and proud to present to you my new Finance News section. If you take a look at this new news section you will notice that it looks like a completely separate site to SBB. It’s supposed to have a kind of a newspaper look to it so you might actually think you are reading a newspaper not a blog by some armature spread bettor. Don’t expect the latest breaking finance news just yet, unfortunately at the moment I do not have the resources to achieve this. What you can expect is some of the latest news stories of the day with my commentary on them and how they might affect the markets. Ok so it’s a work in progress but I hope that some day I will be able to bring you the latest news as it happens. It’s just going to take me a little time to get to that point.
What I am willing to do is offer some of you the chance to write on the finance news. Don’t sit there thinking “I can’t do that” because believe me you can. If I can do it you can too. All you need to do is pick your favourite news story from the day add some of your own commentary and opinion to the story and your done. If you are interested in having a go at writing then please e-mail me and I will get it arranged. If you don’t want to then that’s fine but don’t write yourself off before you’ve tried it. You never know you might be good at it and as always there will be some kind of reward in it for you. Not sure what that will be just yet but I’m sure I’ll figure something out that will be agreeable.
I’ll still be blogging along the way but the blog will be purely for commentary on my trades and keeping you abreast of new developments with the website etc. There probably wont be a blog update every day which is what the Finance news is for. Hopefully you will find my thoughts on the latest news stories amusing and entertaining and it’s something that you can look forward to each day of the week. I may update with news stories at weekends but we’ll see if I get time or not.
With the new year comes a new me. As regular readers will be aware the tail end of last year was a tough time for me and it has taken it’s toll on my spread betting and this site. Well that was last year and this year [2012] is the year of the Spread Betting Beginner. I think I started to lose some interest with spread betting and became increasingly disheartened and frustrated which lead to further losses. Bad news I know but I’m still alive to tell the tale and my view is “Whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger”. I’m starting the new year fresh faced and ready to go. The only thing that is standing in my way is a little thing called work, but that is something that I will have to manage for now. My plan is to make a plan first. Sounds strange I know but I need to get down what my goals and objectives are for spread betting/trading and then start to think about how I am going to achieve these. Part of this plan will be to develop my trading plan, which I have been harping on about for ages. I now have the renewed enthusiasm to get the job done and work at making a success of spread betting/trading. As I said 2012 is the year of the Spread Betting Beginner and I will succeed. Whether or not I’ll still be saying that at the end of the year is yet to be seen.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
Well it’s that time of year again and a fat bloke in a red suit will be popping down your chimney in a few days time. Not Santa of course, it’s the resident burglar nicking all your presents that you’ve spent ages to save for. Of course I’m joking Santas on his way and the festive season if firmly upon us. Hopefully you’re all set with your presents for everyone and you do not need to brave the Christmas eve rush. I’ve done enough this year that I’m all set, so I’ll be relaxing on Christmas eve with my feet up and a nice glass of eggnog watching Santa Clause, The movie starring Dudley More and John Lithgow. If you’ve not seen it I highly recommend it for Christmas eve entertainment, especially if you have little ones. Then Christmas day will be upon us and I’ll probably spend most of the day doing the cooking, just call me Jamie Oliver.
Anyway I guess I should get onto some spread betting talk, that is of course why you read this blog. (If anyone does still read that is). Well my current open positions are all still open, just about. Most of them are showing losses, but as we all know losses are a part of spread betting. Learn to love them because they will happen. While I may love losses, it doesn’t mean I have to like them. It’s at times like this when things don’t go according to plan that I usually start to make rash decisions which inevitably cost me money. Take today for example, I can’t tell you how close I came to closing my positions with the view to start again in the new year. I still think it might be a good idea to take a break and re-asses my situation but then that wouldn’t make good reading now would it? With having time over the Christmas break I will certainly spending time analysing past performance and thinking about what my next move should be. As I mentioned previously the strategy that I am trading at the moment will probably be great in a trending market but in long periods of sideways movements it seems to perform poorly at best. Therefore I need some other strategy for sideways moves. Something I plan to develop over Christmas, along with getting my trading plan nailed down. I need to do something as continuing the same way will only lead to the poor house and that’s not the plan. The idea is to spread bet or ‘trade’ ,y way to financial freedom not into financial meltdown. I don’t think I ever would trade into financial meltdown but from my point of view if I don’t make an overall profit then it’s a financial meltdown. I keep my losses small and manage risk which is most certainly the only reason I am still trading today. I just now need to learn how to pick stocks that perform and then let the profits run and run. I’m sure I’ll get there one day, it just takes time.
I’ll be adding more new features and content to the website over the Christmas break which I hope you will enjoy. I will also be starting my own FTSE 100 commentary, which I aim to update daily with my thoughts about what’s happening and what I think might happen. It will be in a new ‘news’ section so keep and eye out for it. I’ll still be blogging on a semi-regular basis so don’t worry I’m not going anywhere just yet. I just think it makes more sense to separate FTSE commentary from my blog posts. Hopefully this analysis will help with my spread betting by giving me insight into what the FTSE is doing and where I think it will be going. I guess we’ll find out.
Right that’s about all you’ll hear from me before Christmas. So I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
Do you ever have times where you are really busy but seem to get very little done. I reminds me of the song lyric “busy doing nothing working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do”. It kind of sums up my life in the last few months. I seem to have had no time to do anything but I seem to have very little to show for it. Ok so I guess a house in Spain is not nothing and having the cat back but spread betting wise I seem to be getting nowhere fast. I need to change this and get back to the sort of time I was spending spread betting when I started this blog.
Over the last few months I don’t feel like I’ve learnt much except how to lose more money. Something that I seem to have quite a knack for. Maybe I should package it up, “how to lose money and go broke slowly”, I wonder would anyone buy it? If you’re interested please do let me know, I am an expert at losing money don’t you know. Joking aside I need to give myself a kick up the arse. I need to focus more on trading and get back to the real reason I started this blog, to make money spread betting. How I will achieve this is yet to come to light but I have learnt some things not to do, which hopefully can only be a good thing. I started my trading plan topic over on the forum but have yet to put more time into it. My plan for over Christmas is to make some free time to work on my trading plan and finish re-reading Robbie Burns Naked Trader book. The aim is to start the new year as I mean to go on and hopefully start to make money from my spread bets.
As you may or may not know, tomorrow I am off to Spain to sign for the house so I will not be about until the middle of next week. I’m sure I’ll get time to update with my Christmas blog post but I’m not sure when it will be. The new year should hold some new surprises on spread betting beginner, so keep checking back for the latest news.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
I’m still Spread Betting, just about. When I thought things were going to settle down to a nice Christmas boom(again) we are signing for the house in Spain on the 16th December. So I’ve been a busy bunny the last few days making sure everything is in place for that so it should all go smoothly. I managed to get the time off work so I’ll be gone from the 15th December and back on the 19th. Fingers crossed it all goes well.
With all that going on I’ve still found some time to spread bet. I’ve doubled my Amlin position as this is moving further into profit. It looks like a consolidation zone has appeared so I’ve decided to buy in again in the anticipation that the break from the consolidation zone will go in my favour. I brought a new £1 per point spread bet in Enterprise inns at 35.02, this has been rising steadily and hopefully it continues to do so. Today I brought two new positions in Lloyds and RBS both at £2 per point and buy in of 27.55 and 22.92 respectively. So that’s a grand total of long £7 per point across four positions. All of them I opened with Capital Spreads as they have one of the easiest and straightforward platforms to use. They also offer good charting with back testing facilities which I have yet to fully investigate. They also have some of the tightest spreads on UK equities, If you don’t already have an account with them you should certainly check them out.
Ok so that’s me up to date with all my latest spread bets. I haven’t had chance to think any more about my trading plan but if you want to add your comments and input you can do so over on the spread betting forum.
Until next time,
“May the markets be with you!”
Harry,
The Spread Betting Beginner
