Spread Betting Strategies

So when reviewing my account last week I had three trades in play and 5 that weren’t executed.

I looked at the market first and it appears to be in an upward trend. The close for the week was little different from the open which may be of some significance.

So my first job is to review the 3 in play trades against my spread betting strategies to see if the case for the trade still exists. All 3 appear to be in an upward trend so happy to let the trades run.

There does however to be some resistance at the closing level of Filtrona but reaching resistance is not an exit point in my spread betting strategies so the trade remains in play.

I have not amended the stop losses for these 3 trades.

I then reviewed the 5 trades which were not executed this week. Having done a full review against my Spread Betting Strategies not one of the trades now fulfil they relevant criteria so I have abandoned each one.

I then continued my analysis to find new trades, the trades that I set up on my spread betting trading platform (23/10/09) are below…

Buy Chloride Group @ 170.7 (£19 Total risk in brackets)

Buy Cadbury @ 811 (£14.25)

Buy Synergy Health @ 628 (£21.1)

Buy Aviva @ 458.5 (£17.5)

Buy Grainger @ 321.5 (£23)

Buy Friends Provident @ 84.5 (£19.6)

All the trades were set up with contingent stop losses in line with the spread betting strategies.

These trades were set up last Saturday so I will give an update about the 3 trades I had in play and if any of the further 6 trades were executed. Having just looked at the markets I think it is more likely my 3 trades were stopped out!!

Technorati Tags: Financial Spread Betting UK, Spread Betting Strategies

This post is just to let you know what happened in my first week after my trades were set up. In my previous post I let you know which trades I had set up resulting from my spread betting strategies.

By the end of the week 3 out of my 8 trades went into play and the week ended with me being up £9.37!

I first checked my account on Tuesday and none of my trades had been executed. I was a bit disappointed and questioned if my Spread Betting Strategies were going to give me any action!

By Wednesday however, I had my first trade. I bought Tesco @ 390.4 and by the end of the day my position was up by £1ish.

I didn’t check my account again until Saturday (remember that I am using weekly spread betting strategies). When I checked I found that 2 further trades had been executed.

Vodafone was executed @ 137.53, a minimal amount above my requested execution level. Filtrona was executed @ 168.35, well above my desired execution point of 165.7 but having checked the daily charts it appears that it had gapped up on the Friday open.

Tesco and Vodafone finished the week slightly down on the price that I bought at. All my gains have come from Filtrona which closed the week very strongly @ 172.8. There appears to be some resistance at the closing level.

I then reviewed all the trades that went in play to assess whether the conditions for the trades remained. I then reviewed all the previous set ups that weren’t executed to see if they still fit with the spread betting strategies. Once that was completed I started analysing other financial Spread Betting UK instruments to identify trades for this week. I have found a number and set these up on my spread betting trading platform on Saturday.

I will give an update on the trades I have set up later in the week.

Technorati Tags: Financial Spread Betting UK, Spread Betting Strategies

OK, so last weekend I set up my first trades. Adhering to my spread betting strategies, if the market is trending, then I will trade on the side of the trend. I am trading financial spread bet UK equities so I first analysed the UK market. The market was clearly in an uptrend so I knew my trades would be on the long side.

I then did some analysis of different sectors. The majority where in an upward trend confirming the market analysis I had done earlier. This was a completely different scenario to what I found when I was practicing in the summer where only a few sectors were in a clear upward trend.

Now this is where my Spread Betting Strategies differ from my normal buy to hold strategy in my stock ISA. At the current time I would be reluctant to purchase stocks to hold given the dramatic price rises. I feel uncomfortable about going long now but that is what the spread betting strategies I’m using is telling me to do. I need to identify the trend of the market and trade in that direction and not fight it. I will not try to impose my will on the market.

The 7 trades I set up (on 18^th October) on my spread betting platform were as follows…

                                                Total risk

Buy Tesco @ 390.4                       £22

Buy Northern Foods @ 68.5           £19.20

Buy Close Brothers @ 770.1          £16.60

Buy M&S @ 368                           £14.10

Buy Vodafone @ 137.5                 £20

Buy Beazley @ 118.4                   £18.40

Buy Filtona @ 165.7                     £20.4

Buy FirstGroup @ 428.6                £14.85

I set up a contingent stop loss orders on each trade and the stop loss points combined with the bet size per point determine the total risk. I have not given the exact stop loss and size of the trade as this may tempt visitors to this site to copy. This site is a diary and doesn’t make recommendations on any assets so I don’t feel they are needed anyway. My stop losses where determined by a recent low.

As mentioned in a previous post, as part of my spread betting strategies, I only want to risk 1% of my capital at this stage. I am publishing the total risk to keep myself in check! I know that 2 of the trades above where slightly above that threshold (of £20) but they are only slightly over and I’m comfortable with the risks associated with each trade.

I will give an update in the next day or two to let you know if any trades where executed and if so are they in profit (and hopefully not a loss!).

Technorati Tags: Financial Spread Betting UK, Spread Betting Strategies

Just a quick post to say I have set up my first 7 trades on my spread betting trading platform. I have changed my mind about how I’m going to complete the diary. I was going to make public the trades I have initiated as a result of the spread betting strategies I was using before I put them into the trading software. I am now going to do this the week after I’ve done them.

The reason for the change is because although the purpose of this diary is clear to me, it may not be clear to all visitors and they may misinterpret my diary as some kind of financial advice. I am not regulated by the FSA so not qualified to offer financial advice of any description. Please do not misinterpret any of my post as recommendations. For more information please read this disclaimer.

Yes so 7 trades set up, I’ve just checked and none of them have been executed yet. Will give an update at the weekend with a more detail account of the Spread Betting Strategies used.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Guide

The Spread Betting Strategies that I will be using will be relying heavily on the strategies that I have read about in my research so far. Over time I expect to adjust these to my own trading style.

Objective: I have read so many times that if you breakeven in your first year you have done very well. So my objective is to have at least broken by the time I am made redundant.

Starting Capital: Given my objective above I am going to start with a small amount of capital and then add my redundancy payment to this amount when I receive it. I am going to start with £2,000.

Risk Management: According to what I’ve read, this is often the most overlooked part of spread betting strategies. I aim to risk only 1% of my capital every trade. Given my low starting capital this means £20. I’m not sure if this will work in practice but MF Global Spreads offers 50p per point so hopefully it is possible.

Spread Betting Strategies: I plan to buy dips in an uptrend and sell rallies in a downtrend. First I am going to look at the market, I plan mostly to trade financial Spread Betting UK equities so it would be the UK market I analyze.

If the market is in an uptrend then I will look at the sectors that are also in an uptrend. Once I have identified all the sectors that are in an uptrend I will identify the stocks within the sector that are in an uptrend. If any of these stocks have had a pull back in recent weeks then I will then set an entry point which is high than a recent high. If the stock reaches that level I will enter the trade using a contingent order. I will then set a stop loss level above a recent low.

If the market is in a downtrend then I will look at the sectors that are also in a downtrend. Once I have found all the sectors that are in a downtrend I will identify the stocks within the sector that are in a downtrend. If any of these stocks have had a rally in recent weeks then I will then set an entry point which is lower than a recent low. If the stock reaches that level I will enter the trade using a contingent order. I will then set a stop loss level below a recent high.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

Before I could start I needed a spread betting broker. There are so many brokers out there but which one do you choose?? I tried looking at review sites but a lot of these sites actually get paid for referring new accounts so how do you know if these sites are being impartial? I also needed a broker which meant I could implement the spread betting strategies I wanted. A key part of that was the use of contingent orders, this ruled out a number straight away.

I sometimes read the Naked Trader’s website and he recommended the MF Global Spreads as he used it with some of his trades. I went onto their website and requested the application forms. They sent them promptly and were quite comprehensive. I did have one question about the minimum bet per point. When I gave them a call I was a bit concerned as the guy that answered their main line said “Hello Dave speaking”. But after seeing the company on the Bloomberg channel was glad to see there weren’t being run out of someone’s bedroom so I decided I would open account with them.

I have to admit I was really impressed with how quickly my account was opened. I sent off the application on the Friday night and on Monday I received an email confirming my account was open. Haven’t worked out how I claim my free bet that was advertised to new account holders but I’m sure I’ll find that somewhere.

So now I am really ready to go. I just need to add some money to my account. I will talk about that in my next post when I go into more detail about the Spread Betting Strategies I’ll be using.

By the way, please email me with your comments here. I would love to hear any advice you have to offer. 

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

This is my second post to my blog about my Spread Betting Strategies. I am going to talk a little about my preparation to get me to this point. Once I decided I was serious about this I knew I needed to get some charting software. Malcolm Pryer, on of the authors of the books I read, used ShareScope and as it worked well for him I thought I would give that I go.

This was a couple of months ago and at this point I still hadn’t started spread betting. I wanted to do some paper trading before being unleashed with the real thing! Being really organised I decided to put together a pro forma for the set up, the review when in play and the close of the trade. The pro formas were designed so they fitted with the spread betting strategies I had read about and wanted to use. When I work out how to do it I will upload these onto the site.

My paper trading wasn’t very successful actually; I put that down to in part the volatility of the markets and me confusing my spread betting strategies. If I was trading with real money then I definitely would have lost a fair bit of money. I learnt a lot about not setting stop losses too tight in volatile markets

I think I also tried to take on too many trades. I was very busy with my job and was struggling to follow my trades on a daily basis and given that they were paper trades I think I didn’t put enough effort in. I’m actually even busier now so I’ve decided to that one of my spread betting strategies will be trading on weekly charts.

Having subscribed to some charting software and set up my paper work I decided to buy some pin boards in my bedroom so I could monitor my trader easier.

I was almost ready to go…

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

Hi, my name is Nigel and this is my new website about my spread betting journey and spread betting strategies I will be using. I have never spread bet before so I am going to document here how I get on. I have read a number of books on spread betting strategies and they all say that a successful trader keeps a journal so here is my journal… in the public domain and there is a reason for that which I will come to.

I’ll start with a bit of background about the all this. I recently received news that I was going to be made redundant. The redundancy won’t happen until next year so I have a bit of time to plan. I decided that one thing I would do was learn how to build website, hence one of the reasons I am doing this. The second was to learn how to spread bet. If I have never spread bet before you may be wondering why I chose this option. I have a portfolio of shares that I use a buy and hold strategy. I know this is completely different to Spread Betting Strategies but it was an area I always wanted to learn and the redundancy pushed me here quicker.

OK.. that was a couple of months ago so what have I done since. Well I have bought and read few books which I highly recommend…

The Way of the Turtle

How I made $2,000,000 in the stock market

Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets

The Financial Spread Betting Handbook

Winning Spread Betting Strategies

The Market Maker’s Edge

I really enjoyed reading these so that convinced me that this was definitely an area I wanted to pursue.

The spread betting strategies I will be using will be a combination of the strategies discussed in these books. I should put in a disclaimer here. I have never done spread betting before so please please don’t copy me. This site is not to make recommendations, it is my journal.. oh that reminds me, why public? Well first, it helps me learn how to build websites and second, if I have to justify my decisions publicly then I am more likely not to deviate from my system and decisions will be scrutinized.

More soon…

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies