I just wanted to know I am taking a little break from the spread betting. I don’t know if it because my Spread Betting Strategies weren’t working, how the markets were performing or whether I am just not that good at it but I lost money overall, about £250 from my original £2000.
I think the market will become more and more choppy in the coming months and don’t want my money on the table.
I hope to restart the blog soon and am thankful for all of you for reading.
New trades set up this week from the Spread Betting Strategies are…
Buy QinetiQ @ 165 (Total risk £19.95)
Buy VT Group @ 561.2 (£19.43)
Buy Smith DS @ 122 (£19.95)
Buy DSG Int @ 39.6 (risk £19.52)
Buy Halfords @ 422.2 (£19.6)
Buy Stobbart @ 126.7 (£20.1)
Buy Salamander @ 286 (£17.75)
Buy Burberry @ 597 (£17.25)
Buy Hikma @ 506 (£20.25).
All these trade were set up on my online trading platform on 6th December.
As I am writing this I have remembered I should’ve analysed gold. I forgot to do it this week but will remember to next week. I only get about an hour or so each week to do the analysis and set up the trades so if I miss my opportunity I have to wait until the next week.
After 2 weeks of decline I had a positive week. Not as positive as expected. The week ended at £1,884.11, so an increase of £26.49. I’m going to start tracking the performance against FTSE All-Share. The way things are going I would be better off buying an index tracker!
So to the action this week… Inchape and Galiform where I amended the stop losses to just below the weekly close were sold.
The only other sale this week was Rightmove. These showed a sharp decline which I think had something to do with the announcement from Google. Good job my stop loss kicked in as they are a lot lower than when I sold.
There were 4 buys this week – Pearson, Home Retail, Aegis and Meggitt.
The two best performing shares I have are Tesco and Mothercare (Mothercare flew this week). They are in the black to a tune of £78 in total. I am thinking of adding another element to my Spread Betting Strategies about moving my stop loss when in profit.
My new spread betting strategy will be to move the stop loss to breakeven once the stock has moved into profit by twice that of the amount risked. Tesco has satisfied this condition so I will move the stop loss to 390.4.
Melrose were on my warning list last week and closed down lower which means I will amend the stop loss to just below close.
New accounts on the warning list this month include BT, BBA Aviation and Brown Group.
Not many on the list this week. I set up the following with my online trading broker on 29/11/09.
Buy Meggitt 258.8 (£19.92 total risk)
Buy Dairy Crest 411.8 (£21.8)
Buy Tate & Lyle 461.2 (£21.45)
Buy Smith DS 124.8 (£19.35)
Buy Home Retail 312.3 (£19.88)
Buy Aegis 112.2 (£20.1)
Buy Pearson 856 (£22.75)
I have amended the stop losses of Galiform and Inchape to just below the close of last week. I also deleted my orders which weren’t executed last week.
I like the gold story and would like to test my Spread Betting Strategies on gold. So far I have been testing stocks but I’m sure they will apply equally well (or poorly!) to commodities. From now on when I do my analysis I will include gold.
Another poor week for my spread betting strategies. The account is down from £1,917.21 to £1,857.62. I’m starting to wonder whether this is just part of the game or whether I need to adjust the Spread Betting Strategies that I’m using.
Let’s start off with a positive – well sort of a positive. If you remember last week I decided to adjust the stop loss on Filtrona at just below the weekly close in the hope that they may recover. Well they didn’t and sold about 20 mins into the trading day. It sold at 167.5 which is actually my first profit! At £3.44 I know it isn’t much but at the moment I will take anything.
Other sells this week Money Supermarket, Dairy Crest and Trinity Mirror, all reaching their stop losses. Two of these were on my warning list and if I had been more decisive then my losses would’ve been smaller. Inchape were on the warning list and their price got worse during the week so I have adjust the stop loss to just below the close price.
Having said that Vodafone were on the warning list and they have shown a good improvement so I will keep this in the spread betting strategies for now.
The new stocks on the warning list include… Melrose, Colt, BBA Aviation, Rightmove and Brown (N) Group.
I also plan to sell Galiform. Their industry went from being in a uptrend to a sideways market so I have adjusted their stop loss too.
There were no buys this week.
I plan to do a more detailed review around Christmas time of my profitable trades (if I have any) and look how the warning list has performed.
As mentioned in my previous post I want to trade out of Filtrona. The reason for that is their moving average has turned down significantly.
Now I had a problem trying to do this when I logged onto my online trading broker because as I do this at the weekend, the markets are closed. So I had an idea, instead of trading out immediately I adjusted the stop loss to just below the last close. This means that if they go lower, it will trigger a sell but if it doesn’t then I will still be in the trade at a higher price.
I will now incorporate this rule into my Spread Betting Strategies.
So here are my new trades for this week.
Buy Greggs @ 436 (risk £19.40)
Buy Stobbart @ 128.8 (£19.96)
Buy St James Place @ 258.5 (£18.59)
Buy Bunzl @ 660.75 (£19.35)
Buy G4S @ 253 (£19.55)
You may notice that Greggs was on of my trades that hit its stop loss last week. I don’t like the idea of buying them again but my objective spread betting strategies indicates I should so I have set them up.
This post is a bit late this week due to the fact that I have been busy not because last week was such a bad week for my spread betting strategies!
The week actually started very nicely, my account moved up to £2151.95 but ended at £1917.21. I knew that my spread betting strategies would be volatile due to the margins but didn’t realise how much.
Lets start with the new trades… Only 2 were executed, Brown Group and John Wood. John Wood in fact traded out two days after incurring a loss of £19.94.
As well as John Wood, Greggs also hit its stop loss incurring a £23.86 loss overall.
There were poor performances from all parts of my spread betting trading portfolio with the exception of Rightmove and BBA Aviation. This poor performance has led to the moving averages of a number of my trades now pointing down. I really need to think about how I deal with these.
Moving averages are a vital component of Spread Betting Strategies. How can the stocks be in an uptrend if their moving averages are pointing downwards? Is it a blip or has the trend ended?
My approach will be… when a there is a significant change to the gradient of the shorter moving average then I will trade out of the trade. If it is not that significant then I will give it another week. I will put these on my ‘warning list’ (I just thought of that) and if they end the week at a price lower than at the beginning they will be sold.
Now I am sure that the above will cause me some problems. I want spread betting strategies that are totally objective. While I have made the above rule as objective as I think I can at the moment, I’m still not 100% happy about it. I will test it out because at this stage that is the whole point of this experiment.
Filtrona has shown a significant downward gradient of the short moving averages line. I don’t like the look of that so I will trade out of that soon as I can.
Here are the shares that now appear on my new formed ‘warning list’…
Vodafone
Colt
Money Supermarket
Inchape
Trinity Mirror
These now have one week to prove themselves!
The trades page has now been updated.
I haven’t set as many trades up this week, 10 in fact. There were 3 other trades I’d have liked to set up but given my maximum risk of £20, even with a stake of 50p I’d be risking too much.
The market is obviously still in an upward trend making a new recent high this week. Even some sectors that appeared to be waning have resumed their trend.
After analysing all the shares against the Spread Betting Strategies I set up the following trades with online trading broker (14/11/09).
Buy Domino Printing @ 304 (Total risk £18.4)
Buy International Personal Finance @ 226.1 (Total risk £18.96)
Buy Paragon @ 152.7 (£19.89)
Buy Brown (N) Group @ 263.1 (£19.2)
Buy St James Place @ 260.5 (£19.58)
Buy Hunting @ 556.1 (£18.12)
Buy John Wood @ 338.7 (£19)
I wanted to setup for others, Unilever, Fidessa, Homeserve & Amec but I couldn’t enter these trades and maintain my limit of risking only £20 even with a minimum stake of 50p per point.
Eaga also came up again in my analysis. They were bought and sold last week. When I looked into it I decided against entering the trade. The reason for this was that the spread on this trade looked too large and I think this was one of the reasons why it stopped out so easily.
In future if a trade is stopped out then it won’t prevent me from entering into that trade again in the future. The spread betting strategies decide the trades to enter. My job is setting them up with my online trading broker and after a good week I’m starting to get into this financial spread trading.
Another strange and volatile week where surprisingly, it finished on a positive. My account balance stood at £2014.61 at the beginning but then took some large hits and fell to a low of £1901.27 by Wednesday. Following the UK market making another recent high, the account rallied strongly and closed at £2028.30.
I have added a new trades page where you will be able to see how all my holding which I have bought to test the spread betting strategies are doing, so here I will concentrate on the trades that were executed and exited this week.
Monday 9th was a very busy day with my email account flooded with contract notes. Seven trades were entered and 1 was exited, in fact, one was bought and sold within 2 minutes. Cadbury were subject to a takeover bid from Kraft and amid speculation my trade was entered at 785.5 and exited at 745.25. That resulted in a £20.13 loss in 2 minutes.
The other six that were entered on Monday were Eaga, Galiform, Greggs, Colt, Britvic and Money Supermarket. Eaga went on to be sold the next day at a loss of £21.67.
Two other trades were sold this week, Friends Provident which were bought out last week at a loss of £10.15 (my first loss under my limit of £20!). PZ Cussons which I entered into on 5/11/09 also hit its stop loss incurring a loss of £20.34.
So far 5 of trades I have entered into have been exited and everyone has been at a loss. I am not too concerned about this at this point as my Spread Betting Strategies are all about letting your winners run and cutting your losses short. Usually I do the opposite when I am investing with my normal portfolio!
As usual I will give details of the trades I have set up later in the week. There aren’t as many as the previous 2 weeks as there have been fewer pullbacks.