Spread Betting Strategies

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.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

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.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

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.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

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.

Technorati Tags: finacial spread trading, online trading broker, Spread Betting Strategies

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 9^th 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.

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

I’ve added some new pages to the website…

A trades page which shows all the trades I’ve made along with the entry and exit levels as well as the profits or losses on each.

An about me page.

A lessons learned page where I write about the lessons I’ve learned and general feelings on spread betting.

I will give a review of my performance last week shortly. You can get a sneak preview of this from the ‘trades’ page.

Another week, more trades to setup to test my Spread Betting Strategies. I have set up a total of 16 trades this week and here they are… each were put onto me spread betting trading platform on 6/11.

Buy Britvic @ 360.2 (Total risk £19.8)

Buy COLT @ 125 (Total risk £19.8)

Greggs @ 435 (Total risk £20)

Cadbury @ 785.5 (£19.75)

Dairy Crest @ 411.6 (£19.74)

Inchape @ 30.65 (£19.8)

BBA Aviation @ 162.9 (£19.68)

Money Supermarket @ 80.5 (£19.80)

Rightmove @ 546.5 (£19.5)

Trinity Mirror @ 170.5 (£19.8)

Vectura @ 88 (£19.8)

Aggreko @ 771.7 (£22.7)

Eaga @ 148.1 (£19.32)

Galiform @ 80.55 (£19.9)

Regus @ 103.2 (£20.02)

Spirent @ 96.3 (£20.14)

Quite a few of the above stocks closed last week quite close to the entry level I expect that a quite a few of the 16 will be executed. Let hope none reach the stop loss as quick this time!

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies

At the start of the week my account was down overall to £1997.06. Me spread betting strategies target is to breakeven by the time I am made redundant so I wasn’t too disappointed. This week did go better.

At the start of the week I set up 20 trades so there was a lot of action to be had this week which showed in how the account balance fluctuated. After starting at £1997.06 it recovered to £2009.62, then fell to £1985.22 before finishing the week at £2014.61. I have to say I am happy about that.

The four that were already in play at the beginning of the week.

Tesco which closed at 418 (bought at 390)

Filtrona which closed at 180 (bought at 168.35)

Vodafone which closed at 135.8 (bought at 137.5)

The fourth was Friends Provident. They were bought on the 5/11/09 so not too sure what happens with my holding at the moment, I will have to check that out and let you know in the next post.

If they weren’t bought I was wondering what to do with the trade anyway. The sector they were in moved from an upward trend to a sideward market. I need to be clearer about my exit strategy on these.

Six other trades identified by my Spread Betting Strategies were executed last week. These were…

BT bought @ 137.34 (closed 137.8)

Kingfisher @ 238.24 (closed 234.9)

PZ Cussons @ 260.38 (closed 256.2)

Mothercare @ 598.4 (closed 606.5)

Melrose @ 186.82 (closed 187.2)

The final one was Pace, this was executed at 236.66 (above my stop order of 230.5) and was stopped out the next day at 217.31. This gives me something the think about. The spread betting strategies I’m using mean I should only risk £20 per trade. Because the price opened above the stop order I am therefore automatically risking more than the £20 as my stop loss is fixed. Perhaps I should think about risking less, may be £15 per trade, so in reality I don’t lose more than £20. Overall I lost £27.09 on this trade.

So overall, good week but with a few things to take on board. I have set up my trades for this week and I will post these later in the week. As with last week there are lots of trades that I’ve set up. My spread betting strategies mean I buy the trend on the pull back, again last week a lot of shares had a pullback. Will they revert to their upward trend or is it the end of the trend?

Technorati Tags: Spread Betting Strategies, Spread Betting UK

As mentioned in my last post, I set up a lot of trades this week on my spread betting trading platform so apologies for the long post.

OK, so last week didn’t end on a good note, but I’m doing this to test the Spread Betting Strategies at this stage so every lesson I learn is valuable. The lesson I learnt last week is not to get too confident. I had a good first week, doing great in the second week then the market turned and now I’m down overall.

The market still appears to be in an upward trend although may be stalling. I therefore still want to be on the long side of the market. When analysing the sectors for this week I noticed that more trends seem to be waning but most still, according to my spread betting strategies are in an uptrend.

The 4 shares that I currently have in play still have the conditions to remain so. These for have been left for this week. The stops on these also remain the same.

The spread betting strategies identified the following trades to set up. All were set up on my spread betting trading platform on November 2^nd. The amount in brackets is the total risk per trade.

Buy Associated British Foods @ 854.5 (£16.75)

Buy BT @ 137.3 (£20.7)

Buy Cadbury @ 791 (£22)

Buy Hargreaves Langdown @ 296.7 (£18.53)

Buy Henderson Group @ 141.5 (£19.92)

Buy Carphone Warehouse @ 197.4 (£19.5)

Buy Kingfisher @ 238.2 (£19.92)

Buy Mothercare @ 597.5 (£19.5)

Buy Sports Direct @ 104.5 (£19.8)

Buy IMI @ 468 (£20.05)

Buy Melrose @ 186 (£19.8)

Buy Legal & General @ 85.6 (£19.4)

Buy JKX Oil @ 301.3 (£18.2)

Buy PZ Cussons @ 260.3 (£19.56)

Buy Vectura @ 91 (£19.75)

Buy Connaught @ 417 (£19)

Buy Galiform @ 81 (£19.11)

Buy Serco @ 531 (£19.6)

Buy ARM Holdings @ 154.5 (£19.2)

Buy Pace @ 231.5 (£19.6)

If you notice that amount risked in brackets from Henderson down were very close to £20. This is because I worked out that I didn’t have to trade whole £s per point. My spread betting trading platform allows my to trade at £1.2, £2.1 etc. per point which is great.

So a lot of trades were set up this weekend. My gut feeling is that the market will see large declines but my spread betting strategies don’t listen to my gut feelings.

I will update you on what happens soon. I do hope some trades get executed. Wouldn’t have wanted to go to all that work for nothing!

Technorati Tags: Financial Spread Betting UK, Spread Betting Strategies

This is the second review of my spread betting strategies. After my first week, my account that had started at £2000 was standing at just over £2009, not bad for the first week.

The week started with 3 trades still in play from last, these were Tesco, Vodafone and Flitrona. I had then set up 6 trades to be executed at my set entry price. Last week was bad for the market generally and it wasn’t surprising that only one of the trades I set up was actually executed.

Tesco – I had bought at 390.4 and these closed the week at 407.35

Vodfone – I bought these at 137.53 and these finished the week at 134.55

Filtrona – Bought at 168.35 and closed at 168.35

So out of the 3 that started the week, only 1 remains in profit.

The trade that was executed this week was Friends Provident. This was bought on Friday @ 84.5. It actually finished the day at 81.6.

Overall it wasn’t a good week. The week was fine up to Thursday were my account move to £2025.44. By the end of the week however the account closed at £1997.06. I guess the ‘big’ swings are a consequence of the spread betting strategies.

The market had a volatile week last week with a sharp decline on Friday. It will be interesting to see how the market opens on Monday as the loss I have incurred up to now may be extended.

Interestingly last week has opened up lots of potential trades for me this week. The purpose of the Spread Betting Strategies I am using is to identify shares on weekly charts that are in an uptrend and then buy once it has had it’s pull back.

As you can imagine, most shares had a pull back last week and therefore this led to me identifying 29 possible trades for this week. I have set up 20 of these. I couldn’t do 9 due to the limited size of the capital I want to risk per trade.

I will let you know the full details of these 20 trades and the set up details in the next post of my spread betting strategies blog.

Technorati Tags: Financial Spread Betting UK, Spread Betting Strategies, Spread Betting UK