Well as I promised I will be starting my weekly FTSE analysis again. It’s something that I should’ve been doing all the time I’ve been trading but it seems to have fallen by the wayside over recent months. Anyway I cannot change the past but I can learn from my mistakes to help shape my future. So here it is my FTSE 100 analysis for the past week. This will be a regular feature to my blog and it will go on at some point over the weekend every weekend. Except when I’m away.

FTSE 100 Analysis. Weekending 6 April 2012

Well I have to day I’m glad I started to do my FTSE weekly analysis again as looking at the chart below some interesting events are unfolding. With it being easter weekend the FTSE markets closed at the end of Thursday 5th April and it would seem we are in the middle of breaking through recent lows, making new lows along the way. This should be great news for the bears. However it’s not a bear market just yet, it could be a temporary dip.

If we look at the 20,50,200 Exponential moving average combination (blue, green & red lines on the chart) we can see that the 20 is clearly pointing down, the 50 is about to join the 20 in pointing down and the 200 day EMA is running out of steam. There have been no crossing of any of the moving averages yet but if the 20 crosses the 50 and then onto the 200 it could be the beginning of a retracement or a bear market. Since history can sometimes repeat itself if we look back to July/Aug last year we can see what happened when the 20 crossed the 50 and the 200 before. Price dropped significantly retracing well over 1000 points. Of course this doesn’t mean the same will happen again for sure but anything is possible.

Looking at the chart more recently price has touched the 6000 mark and has been retracing ever since. It could well be the case that the price is just a temporary dip after rising to 6000. The most recent low of 5700 is a support level with the congested price range that developed back in January providing the support. If this barrier is broken significantly then the next levels to look out for are 5600 and 5400, as always though where the FTSE goes no body knows.

Chart Copyright of SpreadCo ©2012

My FTSE outlook for the week ahead.

This week my outlook for the FTSE is bearish. There was a lot of volume when the FTSE fell dramatically on Wednesday and an increase in volume usually means the move will continue, even if for a small amount of time. Therefore when I look for trades this week I will be looking for opportunities to go short, whilst maintaining any open positions that I have.

That’s all for this week.

I know I keep harping on about how I never have time for things and that’s the reasons my blogging has take a back seat but and I’ve actually started to miss it. Therefore I’m going to try and make some time to write during the week but that means I need something to write about. I have made a few spread bets recently so I can write about them today, plus I’m thinking about bringing back my weekly analysis of the FTSE. My goal of starting to blog about my trading was, and still is, to eventually be able to trade full time. However after starting spread betting beginner it became more about the website and developing it and my trading has started to fall by the wayside. So I need to get back to it. I think doing a weekly analysis of the FTSE is useful for my own trading and it is good content for the site so I figured why not. My goal is to try and do this at some point over the weekend but I can’t say for sure when that will be. It should be there by Sunday night at the latest so keep an eye out for that.

I have only made one new trade over the last few weeks. I decided to pyramid my position in Enterprise Inns. My original position was at a reasonable level of profit and I liked the look of the chart. My original trade was made at the end of November when price started to move upwards. Price then dropped to a new low in January before starting on a nice new up trend. The price then consolidated for a little while from the end of February until the middle of March and then it seemed to start back on the upward trend. When it had passed the most recent high and started a small re-trace I decided it was time to pyramid my position. So I bought in again at 56.82 with my stop set at 47. If my stop was to get hit then I would only have a £2 profit overall but that’s not the plan. With a bit of luck the price will continue to rise but we’ll wait and see what happens there.

Chart Copyright of SpreadCo ©212

Two of my positions have closed out since I last updated. My short in Halfords hit my stop loss at the end of March realising a £15 loss and when the whole market dropped yesterday it took with it my long position in Lloyds realising a £9.90 profit. So I’m still roughly a million pounds shy of becoming a millionaire but one day I’ll get there (keep dreaming Harry!)

Anyway that’s all for now. I’ll be posting my weekly analysis starting this weekend so keep checking back here for it. See you then.

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

I’m sure that by now most people will be aware that another spread betting company (World Spreads) has ceased trading due to alleged misappropriation of client funds. Apparently there is a £13m short fall that was spotted on Friday 16th March 2012. If you goto the world spreads website you are greeted with a note informing you the ‘Special Administrators’ have been appointed. I did try e-mailing the address given, I figured I’m kind of press, but I have had no response thus far. If I do I’ll let you know.

If you have or rather had a spread betting account with World Spreads please do get in touch as I would be interested to know what is going on. I guess I’ve been lucky that I didn’t have an account with World Spreads or MF Global and so I’ve not had to deal with the stress of trying to get money back from them.

Anyway moving on I’ve actually done some spread betting in the last few days. I placed two new trades, one long one short. The Long is in regus and the short is in Halfords. They are both super trend cross over trades however, I have modified the settings of the super trend indicator slightly to try and avoid some market noise and therefore avoid being stopped out prematurely. Well that’s the theory at least, we’ll see how it works out in practice.

I’ve also been busy beavering away developing a position logging utility that will allow users to log there trades in the same way that I do. I have been using excel and while it’s great not everyone is a programmer like me and therefore I’ve been developing the same thing online. It’s in a beta stage at the moment while I Iron out the bugs and continue development but if you are interested and would like to take a look you can register here. How I said it’s in a beta phase and therefore is not free of bugs and does not have all the functionality I would like. You maybe thinking why didn’t I just offer a free excel download of the same thing? Well I could have but I decided to develop something online as it can then be accessed from anywhere in the world. It keeps all your positions in one place and it will be constantly updated with new features when I get the time to add them. How I said take a look if your interested.

Right that’s all from me for now. If you did have an account with world spreads I hope you didn’t have too much cash in it.

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

Regular readers (or should I say reader) will be well aware that this spread betting blog, trading diary, call it what you will has gone a bit stagnant recently. Trying to work and spread bet part time as well as maintain this website has taken it’s toll and it had to take a back seat for personal reasons. It’s not made any easier by the fact that I keep thinking of new things I want to add to the website. Each new thing takes time to implement and it comes out of time that I just don’t have. Life would be so much easier if I didn’t have to work but unfortunately that’s not the case and it doesn’t look like it will be changing anytime soon. Therefore the blog will be quieter still as I continue to work on other parts of spread betting beginner. I’ll still be here but I probably won’t be blogging that regularly.

I just don’t think this blog draws the readership that it once did or that I would like. To be honest I think there is only one person that actually reads on a semi-regular basis. You know who you are, offthelip, naming no names. I do appreciate your continued support and I would like to blog everyday but it’s just not practical at this point in my life. Maybe this will change in the future but I can’t see it happening any time soon.

Since the last update I’ve pretty much done nothing by way of spread betting, hence the title of the post. Therefore there are no new trades to report. I’m currently working on adding more content to the site such as increasing the amount of information on technical analysis and I am also developing a new feature that I’m not quite ready to reveal just yet but it will hopefully be coming sometime in March. I think this ‘new feature’ will be useful to people and hopefully you will agree.

Anyway that’s about all I have for now.

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

Since I have no new spread bets to report I thought I would so some analysis of my spread bet in Amlin. The goal of this analysis is to try and determine where I went wrong or right with my trade and if I should be doing anything differently in the future to enhance my chances of success. Feel free to comment or add a post in the spread betting forum. I’ve started a new topic purely for the discussion of this analysis. If you would like to join you will need to drop me an e-mail and I will add you as a member.

Amlin Spread Bet Analysis

If you take a look at the Amlin Chart below you will see I’ve marked it up with my buy prices and my final stop out price. It also has the super trend indicator added to price. The settings I have used for the indicator are the default 10 periods with a 3 multiplier. You will see how the indicator tracks prices upwards as they move higher. The interesting thing to note here is that the super trend indicator is still in bull mode and did not change to bear mode when my exit price was hit. This is because the indicator is calculated on the median price for the day. Therefore since this price never fell below the super trend value the indicator was not reversed. (Not the best news for me as I could still be in the trade but hey ho, we live an learn.)

So my first buy was at 305.11 on 21st November 2011. I then decided to pyramid on 6th December and brought again at 329.27. Now I wish I could tell you that there was some clever reason for doing so but unfortunately there wasn’t. My excuse(if you like) is the price had retreated from it’s previous high and could be a dip in the recent up move before continuing upwards. Anyway with hindsight it wasn’t a bad move but it wasn’t a great on either. If I had waited a little longer I would’ve seen price drop further before starting upwards again. Then as prices rose again I decided to pyramid again on 30th January 2012 after a dip in price. Again I rushed into this as if I had waited I could’ve got a better price. This time however my reason for pyramiding was more sound. At the time I was reading Alexander Elders come into my trading room and in there he discusses the use of the 22day EMA (Exponential Moving Average). So I waited until the price was just above the 22day EMA and then decided to buy. With hindsight I should’ve waited for price to fall just below the 22day EMA as I would’ve got a better price.

My stop levels were at, or just below the super trend price(the green line on the chart). As you can see price spiked through the super trend value which was enough to stop me out of my trade but not enough to reverse the super trend into bull mode. If I could’ve avoided this spike I would still be in the trade and the price is just about reaching it’s previous highs of 365 made at the end of January.

You will notice that I used the phrase ‘With Hindsight’ quite a lot in my analysis. Obviously I can look back now and say what went wrong and what I should’ve done differently. It’s knowing what to do at the time of making the decisions that’s the hard part. Still no one ever said spread betting was easy.

Summary of my Spread Bet

In conclusion I think I still have some work to do. I was thinking of abandoning my super trend strategy all together but I’ve decided to persevere. I have a reasonably good understanding of how the indicator works and I’ve been using it for a while so I think it would be wrong to abandon it completely. I think I need to make a few tweaks to the strategy though. I’m not sure exactly what those tweaks will be, maybe set a stop some % of price below the super trend to avoid the price spikes, maybe alter the settings of the indicator to a longer period or larger multiplier or both. It’s going to require some consideration on my part but I’ll figure something out. In the mean time if you want to have your say why not leave me a comment or post on the spread betting forum.

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