If you read my last post you will know that I placed a couple of short trades in Avocet Mining and First Group. Both of these positions went into losses from the get go but first group has recovered some today and has crept into a slight profit. My Avocet Mining position on the other hand is still in a loss but I think I know why. I rushed the trade! It is a trend following trade and instead of waiting until the trend had retraced I just dived in and guess what the stock has been doing for the last few days? Retracing!

I think the retracement might be over as price rose today before falling back and closing close to the low for the day. Obviously nothing is certain in trading but if I could go back a few days I would be placing the trade today instead. Fortunately I left a lot of wiggle room in my stop and I’m still in the trade so we’ll wait and see how it pans out longer term.

I’ve also made a new trade today. There seems to be quite a few stocks that are trending at the moment and I’m focusing my efforts on finding those trends and trading along with them. I think I successfully proved to myself that the super trend cross strategy was only breaking even which is fine if you don’t want to lose money but don’t expect to make all that much either. As I said there seems to be a few stocks that are trending nicely which has surprised me as the overall market is really going sideways. I think it’s good to keep an eye on the FTSE to give a general sense of what’s going on and if it’s trending downwards only trade short and vice versa. When the FTSE is going nowhere or sideways then anything goes as long as it’s trending.

The new trade I have made is in Spirent communications. The price of this stock has been trending upwards for a while, the 20,50,200 EMAs confirm the up trend and price has just retraced from the 52-week high. Sounds like a good stock to buy so I did. Buy at £2 per point at 168.8 with a stop at 158. I made the trade with SpreadCo as they had the tightest spread and hopefully the uptrend will continue. It’s sods law that I brought at almost the high of the day but the important thing is price rose overall on the day. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same and it will surpass the high of today and keep rising.

Anyway that’s about all from me today. I’m hoping to get time over the weekend to expose all my trades that I’m logging in my position logging utility so keep an eye out for that. As always and questions about anything you’ve read on spread betting beginner or in my blog or about my latest trades then please do get in touch with me.

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

The spread bets are coming thick and fast again after my 6 months or so of messing about. I say messing about I’ve actually put a lot of time and effort into this website to keep building it up a bit at a time. I have to say that I think I’m developing a very useful spread betting resource (I’m so modest)which will hopefully continue. Most recently I’ve added a spread betting wiki which is a place where you the reader can become the writer. I don’t know if any of you out there are familiar with the wiki concept but it basically means anyone can add/edit any page within the wiki. So for instance if you know loads about technical analysis and want to share it with the world now’s your chance. You don’t need to ask me or signup or anything, you just add your content and that’s it. Other people can also edit what you have written just in case what you have written is not factual and obviously I will be monitoring what goes on there to keep the spammers away. Anyway feel free to add and change what you like. The more people that get involved the better the resource will become, which is the spread betting beginner way. Share what you know so others can learn!

Moving on to my own spread betting activities. I’ve placed two new trades today. They are both short trades to try and balance up my portfolio during these turbulent times. The first spread bet is for Avocet Mining. Sell £1 per point at 162.4 with a stop set at 180.4. Second is first group. Sell £1 per point at 197.77 with a stop set at 210. I’ve deliberately set my stop tight on first group as 200 is a support level and if this level does not get broken then I don’t want to be in the trade. Having said that it could be a temporary bounce to 210 before continuing downwards. What are the odds that the latter will happen and I’ll be kicking myself for setting my stop too close in a few days/weeks time. Anyway we’ll wait and see what happens.

Both of these trades are trend following trades, or at least that’s the plan. They are both making new 52 week lows, 20,50,200 EMA are all in down trend formation, ADX is well above 30 for both and here’s hoping the down trends continue.

Again I’ve logged these trades in my own position logging utility. I was planning to make changes over the weekend, so my trades would be publicly visible, but I took some time off instead. Hopefully I’ll get chance to make the changes this weekend. You’ll know when they are anyway as my most recent trades will be listed and I’ll probably post to make you aware of the changes.

All my other positions are ticking over nicely. I’m keeping a close watch on my recent position in Dixons and an older one in Regus. With Regus it’s really failed to resume the uptrend and so I think it will be best to cut my losses now to save the few extra pounds before my stop hits anyway. Dixons has dropped slightly today so it could be that the recent retrace is not over. I’ll probably give Dixons a few more days before deciding what to do as the position has only been open a few days. I’ll give it the rest of the week and go from there I think.

Right that’s your lot from me for today. I’ll post again later in the week when I have some more news.

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

Another turbulent week for the FTSE 100 index and by the look of the chart(see below) I suspect it may be more of the same for the week ahead. The 20 day EMA has now successfully crossed the 50 day EMA and they are both making there way down towards the 200 day EMA. Price has also crossed the 200 day EMA quite significantly last Tuesday before finding some support at 5535. This is well below the level I suggested last week of 5600 but as always there is no exact science when you’re trying to predict markets. That’s why I prefer to try and look at what is happening and trade accordingly.

I would think this week will see the FTSE testing out support levels again with the lowest low of last week being a key level to watch this week. If this level is broken I suspect the downwards move will continue. Testing of this level could occur this week as markets generally fall much quicker than they rise. Usually some world event will happen that triggers the fall so we’ll wait and see if anything major happens this week.

Chart Copyright of SpreadCo ©2012

With the absence of any clear trend in the FTSE 100 any thing goes(short or long). However I will be taking a cautious view on any new trades that I make this week. I’ll be keeping a close eye on them and if they fail to react as expected within a reasonable timeframe then I will cut them quickly and without emotion. More FTSE analysis next week.

Capital Spreads Vs SpreadCo, which one is better? There’s only one way to find out, Fight! (No I’m not Harry Hill from TV’s Burp, I just thought it was a good quote). I’m raising the question because as you may or may not know I trade with both of them. Today I tried an interesting experiment that really came about by chance more than anything else. I was checking through some charts looking for potential trades and I spotted a couple. (more on those later). So I made the trades and realised that my position size for one of them was half what it should be. So I decided to place the exact same trade with Capital Spreads and SpreadCo. I don’t know if it will really prove much as I think both of these spread betting companies offer different things which is why I trade with both. What will be interesting to see is if one exits and the other doesn’t or if one suffers slippage and the other doesn’t. I’m not saying that either of these scenarios will happen but it will be interesting to see if it does.

Moving on. Thanks to Mark and Vince Stanzione for their comments on the last post about withdrawing funds from spread betting companies. It would seem that most of the time people don’t have issues but the people that do kick up a stink about them. It’s always the way though, people do not take the time to review good service but if it’s bad service they make the time. I keep telling my misses the same thing. She works for a big hotel chain and she’s always telling me about the bad reviews they have an wonders why there aren’t that many good reviews.

Getting back to Vince Stanzione I’ve been going back through his DVD’s again just recently as a refresher course and one thing that he talks about in there really stood out to me. He was talking about people these days always feel the need to be connected e.g. checking e-mails or checking their stock prices basically because they are bored. It reminded me or me when I first started spread betting back in 2009. I would check on my trades frequently throughout the day and sometimes watch them as they ticked up and down. I realise now how sad and unnecessary that was. There is no need to check every 5 minutes. Once a day is plenty. Plus it’s not what I want from spread betting. I don’t want to sit there looking at a screen all day long, I do that already. I want to free up my time to do other things. I’m only half way through the DVDs as I’m watching them in stages to try and digest what he says and really take it in.

As I mentioned earlier I have made a few new trades today. They are both trend following trades and hopefully the trends will resume shortly. I know I said my outlook of the entire market was bearish in my weekly FTSE analysis and maybe these new trades will come back to bite me but if I don’t try I’ll never know. The new trades are in Dixons buy at 17.45 stop at 13 £5 per point and Debenhams buy at 78.9 stop at 73 £4 per point. The Debenhams spread bet is the one that I split across the Capital Spreads and SpreadCo accounts. Both of these stocks have been trending upward recently and have just pulled back. My stops are a little wide and I may exit before the stops get hit if they fail to resume the trend. I guess well see how they pan out.

For those that check my list of recent trades I have not been updating it recently. The reason for this is I have moved all my trades into my online position logging utility and have yet to implement making my trades publicly viewable. If you would like to take a look at this position logging utility you are more than welcome to register and start keeping track of your own positions. This utility is in a beta release though as I am still working on it when I get the time. It’s essentially everything I think I would like to be able to do to help me keep track of my positions and review my performance. You can expect much more functionality as I get more time to work on it. Just so you know the login page is in the navigation bar on the left of this page. You can also get to the registration page from there too.

Right that’s all from me for today folks.

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

Todays topic is all about getting your money back from a spread betting company. As it stands I have not had to do this as I’ve never withdrawn any funds but my father has tried to do it recently and he’s having a bit of a headache with it. His point of view is that the spread betting companies are quick enough to take your money from you but really seem to drag their feet when it comes to asking for it back.

I am appealing to anyone that has an experience with withdrawing funds from a spread betting company to get in touch. I have started a new topic over on the forum and I would love to hear your experience good or bad. Even if you are attempting to get your money back from a company please do post a reply as you never know I might be able to help you out. There is nothing worse than getting a bad review on the most popular spread betting blog available. (I’m talking about spread betting beginner of course.)

So I’ll ask again if you have any experience good or bad, or if you are in the process of withdrawing funds get in touch. I’m sure that it’s the few firms that are dragging there feet with paying back money that are giving the rest of them a bad name and I would like to name an shame those firms to help people avoid being messed about.

Moving on to some of my spread betting action. With the FTSE 100 taking a tumble today (over 100 points) It took with it one of my positions. RBS stopped out banking me a £4 profit, Who hoo! Who says you can’t get rich from spread betting. Last week my Lloyds position also stopped out on another day when the FTSE 100 took a tumble. This time my profit was £9.9. Almost a whole ten pounds, I’m hitting the big time now. This leaves me with just two open positions, one in Regus and another in Enterprise inns. I still like the look of the Enterprise inns chart, even with all this market turmoil recently the stock price is holding strong. Hopefully this is more justification for my pyramid.

With the markets dropping sharply there could be some bargains to be had but I will be treading cautiously as my FTSE 100 analysis this week points to weak technical data in the chart which is either a temporary dip or the start of something bigger. Which it is though is yet to be seen.

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