Ok so the title Black Tuesday may be a little over the top but it’s certainly fitting as far as my spread betting goes. You may recall me saying the other week about seeing a £65 increase in one day well today it went the opposite way. It’s only 9am and I’m already realising a £70 drop. The thing is the £65 increase and the £70 drop were never really a profit or a loss but paper profits and paper losses. The £70 drop was from my Misys position which bombed today (hence the black Tuesday). It tanked and took my stop out with it. That said I still made a £10 profit overall on the position so at least that’s better than a loss. The only problem is I keep thinking about the £100 paper profit that I could’ve had if I’d closed out the position near the top of the price rise. Still that wouldn’t have been in keeping with my strategy and the trade could have so easily gone the other way and kept on rising. So I guess it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. With the paper profits and losses never really being mine I need to view them as just that not mine and I can’t miss what I never had. Still doesn’t stop me thinking about it though.

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

My position in International consolidated air stopped out today at 240.757 just below my stop price at 241. So I suffered slippage yet again, this time to the tune of 0.243 points. Not massive and certainly nowhere near as much as a guaranteed stop would’ve cost me. The stop out meant a small loss of almost £2. It would’ve been nice to stop out at a profit but hey if I can keep all my losses small like this and keep my winners big then I’ll be a happy bunny. Keeping a loss small is easy it’s the big winners that I have yet to master.

With the markets all over the place at the moment I don’t know where it’s headed so for the time being I am sitting on the side-lines as far as looking for new trades is concerned. I’m quite happy to just monitor my open positions and start to look for new trades when I feel the time is right. The only downside to me doing this is it may get quite boring for you the reader. Therefore I am appealing to all you readers to guest write on the blog. If you spread bet and would like to share you own experiences please do get in touch. I’m sure other people would love to hear the experience you have had.

So all that said the Spread Betting Blog may go quiet, unless someone wants to guest blog in the mean time. I’m going to be enhancing the rest of the site while I have this quiet patch in my trading so keep your eyes open for the new features that will be coming soon.

I also had an e-mail from Capital Spreads today announcing the launch of their new charting package this weekend. The key features of which include:

If you don’t already have an account with Capital Spreads then why not open an account today to take advantage of their new charting package. There is also the exclusive Capital Spreads Offer for Spread Betting Beginner readers which you can read more about on the spread betting offers page.

Oh and one last thing: If you have subscribed to my news letter don’t forget the FTSE100 competition closes this weekend. Please don’t miss out on your chance to win. It will take you less than 5 minutes and as always it’s completely free.

Also I will be teaming up with Your Trading Edge Magazine shortly. They are are an Australian magazine who are just launching in the UK and you can get a years free digital subscription by signing up here. There is no spread betting beginner option in the where did you hear about us option so just select other for now. I think it’s a good magazine and it has a lot of useful and informative information in there so enjoy.

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

As I’m sure you will have noticed by now the re-design work on the website is underway. At the moment due to time constraints I am having to do the work in stages but I should get there eventually. It’s a bit of a radical overhaul I know but hopefully you will agree it’s for the best. It’s by no means finished yet and this is just the beginning. It’s very much a work in progress and will be a while yet before it’s complete. I never knew how much time and effort went into designing a website and to be honest I’m glad this is not something that I do for a living. Hopefully you can bear with me while I make these changes.

As far as spread betting goes it’s been quite quiet for me just lately. With feeling almost over exposed to the market I am not looking to take on any new positions at the moment. I am merely monitoring exiting ones and adjusting any stops as dictated by my strategy. At the moment I am in the fortunate position of all my open spread bets being in varying levels of profit. The only question is how long will it last. The are showing a paper profit but with the stop losses still set further away all that profit could easily fade away.

It’s times like this when spread betting gets tough for me. I feel like I want to be doing more or that I should be doing more but I know from past experience if I act upon my itchy fingers it will cost me. So for now the order of the day is doing nothing. It’s funny that I find it so hard to do nothing. After all the goal is to spread bet for a living some day, do I think if I’m only spread betting that I will find it easier to do nothing? Probably not, I guess I need something else to draw my attention when there is no spread betting to be done. I guess it’s a good job I have this website to work on.

I’m sure I’ve probably asked this before but If anyone would like to guest post on this blog or has any other content they would like to add please do get in touch. Even if you just want to share your own spread betting journey so far, I would love to hear from you. If we share our experiences together it makes us feel less alone in the scary world of spread betting, or at least that’s my theory.

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

Today I pyramided my existing Britvic spread bet. I pyramided according to my new pyramiding strategy using 1 ATR. My new pyramiding strategy is actually kind of hidden in another blog post entitled “Doing Nothing – It’s a part of Spread Betting.” Since I intend to use this strategy for pyramiding spread bets I will probably tidy it up a little and move it to a more sensible place, most likely with my other spread betting strategies. I think pyramiding Is probably one of the most difficult aspects of spread betting. When do you pyramid? How do you pyramid? It’s certainly something that I have struggled with and still do. I wonder if my new pyramiding strategy will work out for me over the long term? As always time will tell.

Anyway back to my new pyramid. Since Britvic made a high yesterday of around 402.7 I subtracted 1xATR 7.7 and placed a new sell order at 395. With a stop set at the current super trend level of 415. This extra £1 per point puts the position back into risk rather than break even. Hopefully the price continues to fall and makes me a nice profit.

Other than that I’ve just been moving stops. I had a quick look for new trades today and nothing jumped out and slapped me in the face so I’ll be waiting until another opportunity comes along. I’m not worried at the moment anyway as I have more than enough open positions for now. I think I will now just be monitoring them and seeing how they progress and if any new pyramiding opportunities come along.

Hopefully you all saw my previous post about the spread betting beginner news letter. I have three e-mail addresses registered for testing purposes and when I wrote the blog entry I hadn’t received the e-mail at one of the addresses. It came in about 15mins or so later so I guess it could just be the time it takes to send out the news letter to the hundreds of thousands of people that have already subscribed(Yeah right, I wish). Anyway if you haven’t received the news letter and would like to please let me know and I will send it too you manually. Please do enter the FTSE100 competition this month as it is completely free, no strings attached and you can win a prize. Just ask Ted.

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

Hi All,

This is a very brief post to say that I have just sent out the latest Spread Betting News Letter. I think there may be a slight problem with my e-mail system but I can’t say for sure. If you have subscribed can you please let me know if you received the news letter or not. I suspect that some people may have missed out on the opportunity to enter the FTSE competition because of this and I need to get this rectified as soon as I can.

So if you have subscribed please let me know if you received the news letter of not via e-mail spreadbettingbeginner[at]yahoo.co.uk.

Thanks in advance.
Harry.