Happy New Year!

Well the FTSE closed a hundred points away from its peak the other day at 5899. Shame it couldnt hold onto 6k just for the new year but several news feeds reported alot of people taking profits hence the slight fall. Not sure where the logic is there but I guess maybe people want to start 2011 slightly richer!
Anyway I'm guessing my accounts have fallen slightly the last couple of days, but I will make a usual accounts roundup post on Sunday so come back then if you're interested.

Hope you all have a good New Years Eve and good luck with all your trades next year!

26/12/10 Account Roundups

I hope you all had a good Christmas and enjoyed the company of family and friends aswell as a few wee drams or two ;-)
A day late I know but here are the account standings as they were yesterday:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account value is now £1535.99, about a 9% increase on last weeks figure. An excellent weekly performance from this account! There is currently £1030 of trading resources (positions established) now tied up.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account value is now £1077.10, around a 7.7% increase on last weeks figure, the account is now back in profit. Really pleased with some of the positions and both pyramids I have established are still holding up even though the ITV pyramid is close to stopping out. I think 2011 will give me some good opportunities to advance this account further and with £800 of investing funds still available there is plenty of scope to do so.

As most of you know the FTSE managed to close above 6000 for the first time since June 2008 despite trading being relatively low volume. As I mentioned in a previous post on the 24th, Account 1 was nearly £100 down in early trading but it managed to claw all the losses back thanks to that late surge past 6k.
Trading re-opens on the 29th so I will probably make another post then.
So until Wednesday check all your stops and keep well!

Happy Christmas!

Just 1 last post before Santa arrives - I made a couple of trades this morning in account 1 based on pro tips. Most of the tips I received this week I could not execute because of IG Indexs' huge spreads. They were just too damn wide to make any of the trades worthwhile. So the 2 I did manage to make were EMED Mining @10.77 and Renovo Group @65.91. Account 1 had made it to an all time high of £1556 yesterday but today when I opened the trades I noticed that the account was down -£96 for the day so far. Not the kind of Christmas present I wanted!
No new trades on account 2, most of my stop out list is in positive territory (so no viable trades) and nothing else caught my eye. I had one stop out yesterday in Redrow for a £10.90 profit. One good thing is that there are only 2 negative trades in account 2 at the moment, so fingers crossed it stays that way during todays trading. My guess is people will be concentrating on last minute shopping for presents rather than shopping for shares.

I might have time to make a quick accounts roundup on Boxing Day but as I'm out and about visiting relatives it may have to wait. I will check my accounts and make a quick note of their values though for a post once I have more time.

Anyway, all thats left is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and here's to a prosperous New Year!

Another pyramid

I managed to 'pyramid' into another position today in Account 2. My trade in Tribal has shown a very healthy profit and so the new second position established means I would still show a nice profit overall even if it fails. Its all about backing your winning horses and cutting off the losers quickly!
I did however suffer a losing stop yesterday in 'Home Retail Group', so that has joined all the other stopped out trades on my stop out list.
I also managed to make my first new trade in 2 weeks on account 2. It was a new position in Partygaming, bought at a healthy 14% discount on my previously held price. Its not too far off a major support line, so I have a £10 risk on it and even if it does fall a little, chances are it will rebound off support before I get stopped out.
Trade well guys!

Liven things up..

Just got back from site, it was minus 12 outside on the way home so not a good time to be outside!
Anyway I thought I'd liven the blog up a bit by posting a graph of how the accounts are both doing since I began trading them 13 weeks ago.



Performance Graph



Interestingly the account 1 graph (pro stock tips) is nearly an exact replica of the FTSE 250 graph over the same time time period. I checked out the FTSE performance today on my phone just after dinner and I saw how it had just peaked over 5900 but as usual couldnt hold on and gave back some of the gains in the day.

Going to log onto my account 2 to make sure my trailing stops havent gotten too close because of the FTSE rise. Then I'm off for a little whisky that I received from a very kind client today!

Catch you guys later, happy trading!

19/12/10 Account Roundups

Time for the weekly figures checkup. Both accounts accumulated a little bit of profit so this weeks figures show:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account value is now £1405.11, about a 5.7% increase on last weeks figure. There is currently £1k of trading resources (positions established) tied up in the account. I don't really want to start tying up the accumulated  profit in new trades too quickly, so next week may have less trades in this account.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account value is now £999.87, around a 6.1% increase on last weeks figure, the account is nearly back at break even. Lets hope for a small rally in next weeks trading to take it into profit. I still have nearly £700 of trading money to invest in this account so I am hoping that this week I can establish some new positions as its been a quiet last 2 weeks.

Trade well guys!

Fridays trades.

I did make some trades after all, received the share tips on Friday afternoon so I sorted through them and chose to go with the following in Account 1:

Heritage Oil @425.86
Kesa @166.31
European Nickel @23.31
DS Smith @206.21
Meggitt @356.71
Kalahari Minerals @238.6
3i Group @329.73

I did get 1 more stop out on account 1 in the afternoon, it was the old chestnut 'Cobham' which stopped @198.702 losing me £7 in total.
Account 2 also suffered a stop out, but it was for a profit of £18.47 on French Connection. That will go onto my stop out list, but it would have to come down alot more for me to consider buying it again at this point.

Catch you guys tomorrow when I update the account stats for the week. Have a good weekend.

Not much to report

No I haven't disappeared, there's just nothing much to report on. For the first time ever I haven't suffered one stop out in the whole of this week. Obviously now I've just jinxed myself and will get several during today! All my positions in both accounts are either flatlining or slowly creeping up. Would be nice to see a good jump up from last weeks figures.
The FTSE is dying to break through the 5900 barrier and stay there, lets hope it does.
On a side note I see people have taken profits in their BP trades after the news the US government is going to sue. Lets face it, it was always on the cards its just a shame investors can't hold their nerve. Obviously I'm invested in BP so I'm a little bias about the situation. Got to love the market swings!
I haven't received any tips so far this week, so not sure if Account 1 will make any new trades.
Account 2 hasn't seen any new action either, there's just not the right opportunities coming my way. No point in trading for tradings sake, that's how you end up losing. I'd rather wait for trades where I feel I have an edge.
Hope you're all doing well, catch you on Sunday for another accounts roundup.

*edit 12:32* - Had my first stop out of the week on account 1, SAGE. After they recently sent me their annual reminder of my maintenance contract on my accounts software that had gone up over 10% I dont know why their shares should be down!! Hey-ho, knew I'd jinxed myself!

12/12/10 Account Roundups

This is how both accounts stack up at the end of this week. For any new readers out there, in 'account 1' I spread bet only on stocks that have been tipped by professional share tipping services. Account 2 is run purely based on Tony Lotons position trading strategy, for further information on this strategy please purchase his book over there on the right. Both accounts started with £1000 on the same day at the same time.

This weeks figures show:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account value is now £1328.77, about a 7.5% increase on last weeks figure.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account value is now £942.61, around a 0.25% increase on last weeks figure, not much of a movement. This can be attributed to me establishing no new trades and a flatline on all current open positions. The markets at a near high at the moment so I will only trade when proper opportunities arise.

Good luck in the markets next week guys!

New trades

As I mentioned yesterday I had some trades lined up for today based on the share tips I receive for Account 1. Three of the tips were AIM shares so couldnt partake in those (£5 per point minimum now on IG Index), but the trades I did make were:
Invensys @331.83
BT Group @182.38
Cobham @208.71
Sports Direct @145.46
Those new positions were all within my spread parameters (less than 5%) and within my account risk (2% max). Had a couple of those before in account 2 so we will see how they perform now they have been tipped.
Have a good weekend guys, I'll post on Sunday with another accounts roundup.

2x4

Just a quick update on how things are going, I havent made a post this week so far as nothing has really happened until today, Mon to Weds trading just saw most of my positions in both accounts either static or steadily rising. Today I got notification of 4 stops on both accounts emailed to me. In account 1 all 4 stops were for a loss varying between £3-8. All 4 stops on account 2 closed in profit, for a total of around £30 so a welcome boost to that account. Not made any new trades on account 2 because of the market rise. Everything on my stop out list has pretty much risen since they stopped out so no new trades have really been available from there. I'll be making my usual share tip trades over the next 2 days so I will report back here on what I bought.
Hope you guys are making monies, take care!

05/12/10 Account Roundups

As promised, the account figures as they currently stack up, just with a little less detail than usual.

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account value is now £1235.99, about a 4.5% increase on last weeks figure. A total return so far of 23.5%.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account value is now £940.35, around a 9% increase on last weeks figure. However this is a total loss of 6% on the account.

It's interesting to see that after those good last few days for the FTSE that account 2 jumped up nearly double the amount of account 1. This is probably down to picking stocks on the dips rather than blind buying of share tips that may/may not be near a support level in their price. In fact it is becoming increasingly obvious that the spread betting companies are well aware of which stocks are 'tipped' and are adjusting their spreads accordingly. There were several tips over the last few weeks that just weren't worth buying as their spreads were as wide as 15% on some!
Obviously I want both accounts to make money overall and I still have a real interest in finding out which strategy pays off the most (if either do!) over the coming months.
Hopefully some of you will stick around to see...
Trade well next week guys!

Catchup post

Ok, I'm going to do a catch up post for the last couple of days trading. After this I don't think I am going to detail every single trade, as its becoming an extra workload for me to keep up to date in this way. The other night it took me nearly an hour to manually adjust my stop levels so I don't really want to be spending even more time on here entertaining my 3 readers ;-)
I will detail my share tip trades though, as I think those are the ones my readership will be most interested in. Maybe the only reason you tune in, heh?
Anyway, not sure if I mentioned this one before but my position in Rentokil in account 2 stopped out on Weds for a loss of £14. Its made its way onto the stop out list. I opened 5 new positions that day, all of them at a discount of when I owned them last. Lloyds banking @62.27, Barclays @259.6 (7% discount), Thomas Cook @178.60 (5% discount with support shown around the 177 mark) and Home Retail @203.8 for a 5% discount.
Those of you that read Tony Lotons blog will already know that Mouchel tanked so that stopped out for a £10 loss. I did however make a profit of £19 on MicroFocus which stopped out @353.25. It did rise more so I guess my trailing stop was too close - in fact this trade was the reason I manually went through every single trade again the other night and tweaked every single stop level of all my open positions. I hate those spikes that catch out my auto trailing stops, so I am even considering going back to full manual control. Yesterday the only new trade I made in Account 2 was in Xchanging @104.7 - that was a 6% discount on the previous stop I suffered on this trade.
In account 1 on Wednesday the position in Tesco closed @411.78 for a £3 loss, Beacon Hill closed out @11.72 for a £1 loss and I established a new position in Aviva @361.56 after it was tipped.
On thursday my position in Serica Energy closed for a £6 loss.
Friday I received a few share tips, some of those AIM shares which as you know seem to be £5 minimum on IG Index now. I bought Ashstead Group @144.76, Coal of Africa @77.19, Archipelago Resources @50.13 and Centamin Egypt @181.75 which I am sure I have owned previously in this account. 1 position closed that day, Euromoney Institutional, for a £10 overall loss. None of the trades in account 1 go onto a stop out list as that is a unique feature of the position trading strategy of account 2.
Like I said at the beginning, my future posts won't go into as much detail as previous posts. Some days I may not post at all if there is nothing worthy of note. I will continue to do the weekly roundup of accounts so that the comparison can continue as before.
Hopefully some of you made some good trades over the last couple of days, I hope next week treats you all well!

Just for the record...

During my quick post yesterday I forgot to mention that Worldspreads had already processed my cashout request of the bonus monies they gave me. So props to them for having a very quick cashout turnaround.

FTSEs about to open, lets cross our fingers for another day like yesterday. It took me nearly an hour last night to double check through all my stop positions after that nice jump up in the market.
Trade well guys!

Dear Santa, for Xmas please bring me more days like today!

Not got much time to post today, the market seems to have shot up on the back of Euro interest rates. Both accounts have gone haywire, account 1 going from an open loss of  -£60 to a +£100 profit and account 2 going from breakeven to an open profit of +£150. Just shows you what a bit of leverage achieves when the market moves in the right direction. My ITV pyramid is holding up aswell due to the jump up.
Bit steamed about all the last couple of days stops that are now way above their stop out levels but I guess thats the life of a trader, no whipsaw losses for me thanks! I'll wait patiently for the right new trades to come along.
Hope you guys had a good day of profits too. Catch up later when I have more time to document yesterdays trades.

My first pyramid!

OK well today I managed my first ever 'pyramid' into a position in ITV. This is the first time I've achieved this so lets hope it doesnt collapse within its first few days. That was in account 2 btw, something Tony advocates in his position trading book. I've pyramided into the trade as it is now in guaranteed profit even if the pyramided position gets stopped out. Not a huge profit as its a low value share but still, I'm pretty excited about it!  As well as locking in some profit I did unfortunately suffer a quick loss with 'Resolution' for £12.50.

The FTSE doesnt know what to do with itself at the moment, no point trying to second guess it. I got some stop-outs in account 1: UK coal stopped @35.6 for a loss of £3. I guess the trailing stop was caught short there. I opened up 2 new positions aswell, one in Aberdeen Asset Management @179.95 and one in Serica Energy @50.13.
I will be opening a couple more positions in Account 1 tomorrow so keep an eye out for those.

Happy Trading!

FTSE falls further

Well the good ol' FTSE has fallen a bit more today, I'm glad to get November out of the way really.
Yesterdays trading looks like this:
Account 1:
Costain stopped out @199.49 losing me £10.50
Datatech stopped out @289.26 losing £13.30
Henderson Group stopped out @118.9 losing £3.20
I opened up new trades in:
TalkTalk @153.78
Melrose Plc @300.45
Brown (N) Group @290.32
Fenner Plc @302.76
Restaurant Group @277.39

Account 2:
Aviva stopped out @368 the same day I bought it @379.1!
Xchanging stopped out @110 costing me £10
Cobham dropped like a brick and stopped me out @194.80 costing £15.
All the above added to my stop out list.
I established 1 new position in MicroFocus @335.1, previously owned but bought at a discount as usual.

After Tonys comment yesterday I requested a withdrawal from Worldspreads to that amount, but have yet to hear anything back from them. We'll see how long it takes for a cash out to occur. Tradefair used to be very good in that respect and their cashouts were usually done same day.

the FTSEs not very happy at the moment, so good luck out there!
The advantage for Account 2 is that the further the FTSE falls the bigger the discount on previously held shares and new positions will be.

Bonus for Account 2!

Ok well I got an email this morning from Worldspreads regarding Account 2. It seems though I qualified for some cashback on a promotion they used to offer before they started the current 'zero spread' promotion. I qualified for any losses I accumulated over the first 8 weeks of having the account open to be paid back into my account - which they did this morning for the sum of £136.62. My best trade yet!
Question is, am I allowed to add this to the accounts tally or do I withdraw it from the account? Let me know your thoughts.
Looks like the FTSE got off to a great start this morning but then the bears stepped in and spoilt the party as now its given back all the early morning gains.
Good luck with your positions out there!

28/11/10 Account Roundups

Ok, before I kick off the accounts figures I'll get Fridays stops out of the way.
1 stop on Account 1(IG index), this was Northgate @214 for a £6.50 loss. Account 2 (Worldspreads) had a loss of £10 on EAGA sold @53.
I think I have decided to stay with IG index for account 1. I will just have to ignore the AIM share tips for now unless IG move their pricing back to £1 a point for them. I don't really want to be moving accounts as I think it would adversely affect the results and I don't want that to happen at this early stage. Thanks to Alan again for his second comment on the issue, your example is just slightly above the percentages I like to risk on the account but I will bear it in mind when the right conditions arise.

Anyway on with the accounts figures for this week:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account balance is £1182.82 with 44 open positions showing a current open loss of -£13.19. Thats around a -£35 change from last week. As usual most of these are positions are showing breakeven status *yawn*. Believe it or not around Thursday time last week there were 3 positions showing profits of more than £5 each but all 3 slipped back on Friday!

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account balance is now at £863.63 with 30 open positions showing a current open profit of
£2.64. Thats around a -£21 change on last weeks figure. Biggest open profits at the moment are Cairn Energy, Tui Travel & Game Group.
Historical data shows that December is usually a good month for the FTSE, but with the Euro crisis and Korea on the brink of war I'm not sure what we'll see happen this year. I'm hoping for a good month though just so that Tony over at the trading trail can get his portfolio into a profit in his final month.

Trade well guys!

Soldier on!

It looks like the FTSE is taking a right old battering this morning over the euro farce and North Koreas war-mongering. Every single share on my position trading stop out list is showing a drop in price. Which is great news for picking up bargains but not so great for existing open positions!
Thanks to Alan for his comment on the IG £5 per point situation. I am going to email some other firms today to find out if there is a viable alternative to IG when trading AIM shares. In the mean time I will soldier on...
Anyway I didn't think I was going to do any trading today but I have established 3 new positions this morning.
2 new trades in account 1: London Capital Group @102 and Elementis @117.09.
In account 2 I have re-established an old position in Resolution @224.7.
At an 11% difference from the old price that equates to a saving of £25 by having effective stop losses in place. The price is pretty much close to an old support level as well so I'm hoping it will rebound from it, as long as the FTSE pulls out of this slump! The position trading strategy doesn't rely on technical analysis anyway, its just a coincidence really. For more information on this strategy I suggest you pick up a copy of the book over on the right hand side there.

Had 2 stops on account 2 yesterday. 1 closed at a loss, Grainger Trust @91 and one closed for a profit, Thomas Cook @186.8 for an £11 profit. £2 profit overall, not going to make me rich but its money added to the balance.

Happy trading guys and have a good weekend.

Plans go down the drain...

Ok well today I had quite a few trades planned as I'd received alot more tips than usual for the pro tips account. Thing is a lot of the share tips are low value AIM shares, which is actually pretty good for the account as it means I can keep my risk within levels I find acceptable. But.. I ran into a bit of a snag today on my IG Index account when I tried to establish positions - most of the AIM index shares now seem to be a minimum of £5 per point! Which means that I can no longer afford to trade these share tips on this account. I don't know when they changed this, as one position I wanted to open in 'President Petroleum' was one I already had once in this account for £1 per point. In fact if I look back quickly this position only closed a few days ago. Why IG have done this is beyond me, maybe they dont want small players' business anymore? Anyone else out there notice this?
It kinda sucks, as in order to run the strategy properly and fairly I need access to the AIM shares market. So if anyone out there can recommend an alternative to IG and they know for definite that I can establish positions of £1 per point then give me a shout. I hate the fact I may have to switch accounts as I was very happy with the IG interface and their range of markets is superb. From many reviews I have read on other spread betting platforms there are not that many good alternatives out there. *sigh*.

So now the bad news is out the way I may aswell list the couple of trades I did manage to setup on there today. I established new positions in UK Coal @41.85, CVS Group @105.51 and Dominion Petroleum @5.11. As I stated in yesterdays post I had already received 3 stop notifications from IG. Thankfully I didnt receive anymore and so far today no others have stopped out. All 3 trades were a loss as none stopped out for a profit, these were:
St James Place @240.50 for a £2.22 loss
Segro @279.72 for a £4.10 loss
Hampson Industries @26.43 for a £3.30 loss

No stops and no trades on account 2 today, not through lack of looking though. Just nothing at the moment that is ready for buying.
Trade well guys!

No buying, just selling!

No post yesterday as I was caught up building my new custom PC all evening after work. Bit of a geek I know but I love building new computers and seeing what performance I can grind out of them. *ahem*

Anyway, last couple of days have seen just stops and no new positions. I have my eye on a few but they are not quite buys yet. I noticed Micro Focus has started to fall back down a bit so it may end up a possibility again at some point.
Yesterday saw 2 stops in both accounts. Firstly in account 1 President Petroleum stopped out @65.83 giving me a £5 loss, and Sable Mining stopped out @25.45 dishing out a loss of £6.
Account 2 gave me a loss of £11.65 when both Cable & Wireless and Mitie group both hit their stop losses.
I've had 3 emails from IG index about stops in account 1, but I will report on those tomorrow. Hopefully a bit of buying action too, catch you then.

1 loss, 1 profit.

I'm not usually going to post on a Monday but seeing as I've finished my work for the day and its a short post I thought 'why not?'.
So both stops occured on account 1, one profit of £25.27 on Segro sold @265.83 (yey!) and one loss of £3.30 on JJB @5.4 (boo!)
I really think JJB are going down the plug hole unfortunately.

Trade well!

21/11/10 Account Roundups

Time for this weeks roundup of account figures:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account balance is £1216.62 with 44 open positions showing a current open loss of -£13.52. Thats around a -£32 change from last week. As usual most of these are positions are showing breakeven status.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account balance is now at £884.83 with 33 open positions showing a current open loss of
-£25.16. Thats around a +£22 change on last weeks figure. Biggest open profits at the moment are Thomas Cook and ITV. Still dissapointing that so many of them are slightly negative. Lets hope for another FTSE rise next week!
Happy Trading!

I guess I got shafted twice!

OK well yesterday I kept my eye on Microfocus and of course it started moving upwards earlier than I predicted. But as you know the beauty of working from home is I can keep a closer eye on prices and jump in and trade whenever I want. Well half of that statement is true because Worldspreads decided not to let me log into my account all day so I missed the boat completey on Microfocus and just had to sit there and watch it rise even further. *sigh!*
I'd also put in an offer on a property I was looking at, and lets just say that due to the dodgy estate agent and the secret handshake club I missed out by such a small margin that it was obvious to a blind man I was stitched up. Another *sigh!*
Anyway enough of my personal woes, I didn't make any new trades yesterday (thanks Worldspreads) so all I have for you are stop outs, sorry!
In Account 1, Hardy stopped out @284.27 losing me a clean £10 and Novae Group stopped out @335.15 losing me £5.
Account 2 saw Wincanton that I recently purchased drop like a brick from a roof and it looks like I suffered slippage as I lost £18 @197.50.

I'll give a Sunday roundup of account figures as they stand, I doubt it will be pretty!

BUY! BUY! BUY!

As you can probably guess I established a few more positions today. First lets get the boring stops from yesterday out of the way.
In account 1 MicroFocus stopped out @322.99 for a £4 loss.
In account 2 Punch Taverns stopped out @59.60 for a £15 loss and Mitchells & Butler stopped out @335.05 for a nice little profit of £38.75. Thats another example of the price spiking and then lowering quickly to take out my trailing stop too fast and its already ten points above that stop out price today. I really need to take a deeper look into my trailing stop strategy on these trades to see how I can avoid this from happening. Still, its nice to bank some monies for the account so the trailing stops are working to some extent, I just need to optimise them a little.

Onto todays trades then, firstly in account 1 I have established 6 new positions today based on share tips. These were:
Augean @26
Bellzone Mining @62.16
Blinkx @78.19 (this is a reopen of a closed position due to it being re-tipped in a different service)
Costain @218
Charles Stanley @275.69
Zincox @45

In account 2 I have re-established 3 positions at discounts from previous stops. These are:
McBride @169.3 - a 5% discount on the last stop out
Tribal @25.6 - a 23% discount on the last stop out
Trinity Mirror @74.9 - a 25% discount on the last stop out.
I also have a close eye on MicroFocus too. I know it just stopped out of the pro tips account but I already held it in my position trading account before and its currently at a 13% discount on its old stop out price. The fact it appeared as a share tip is an added bonus, but I feel it has a couple more % to drop first before I rebuy but we'll see.
Happy trading!

A few more stops: I guess the FTSE dropped whilst I was away!

Thanks to Tony for his comment yesterday. I did try replying to it via my mobile phone from my hotel room last night but the software just wouldn't let me for some reason. Anyway I'm home now, and I'm afraid to say my mistakes were made in the Position trading account Tony, sorry!
As for the 'Pro Tips' strategy, I wont be running it like the position trading account otherwise it would just be a slight variation on Tonys strategy. I will run it like I run my normal shares account, with slightly wider trailing stops and decent money management. I wont be pyramiding into any of the positions and occasionally I may cash a position in if it is doing particularly well just like my shares account - not that I'm having that problem at the moment!

Anyway Mondays trades went down like this:
All trades occured in Account 2, these were a stop of Mouchel @91.70 which got me a profit of 3.30, a new position in Wincanton @215.5 and a new position in RM PLC @150.10.
No activity in Account 1.

Tuesdays action:
In Account 1 three stops triggered, one in Blinx Plc @76.56 at a £2 loss, one in Centamin Egypt Ltd @173.06 at a £3 loss and one in Norseman Gold @68.33 for a £4.20 loss. I'm not sure why the stops for Blinx and Centamin were so close to my opening levels, my only guess is that they rose and my trailing stop rose slightly higher then they dropped and took me out very near to the buy levels but not quite break even. Ah well, that frees some money up for new trades tomorrow (Thurs.)

In Account 2 I established 5 new positions, these were:
Barratt Developments @76.6
William Hill @161.20
Kewill @96.2
Cable & Wireless @49.2
Grainger Trust @100.70

One stop was triggered, unfortunately another loss for the account but not a massive one - Robert Wiseman Dairies sold @315.3 for a £6.20 loss. One more for the stop list, and I guess I'm glad I dont have a real large holding after their recent bad share price action. Poor stockholders!

Anyway as I've just got back I doubt I will open any new trades today as I have other stuff to catch up on. I know I have got an email from IG index (account 1) about a stop that must have triggered but I will report on that tomorrow with any other action from the WorldSpreads account. (account 2)
Good luck with your own trades!

WARNING: Classic amateur mistakes ahead!

I was in a rush this morning as I was due out on an early site visit for a client, but there were a couple of trades I wanted to make before I set off. I was already running late getting the kids up and ready for school etc, the classic family morning chaotic scenario but I wanted to make sure I remembered to place my trades, so...

Classic amateur mistake Number 1: Trading when you should be doing something else. If you can't commit 100% of your concentration whilst placing your trades then don't trade at all! You might miss the boat on 1 particular trade but there will be another 100 ships sailing later that you can hitch a ride on!

Classic amateur mistake Number 2: Rushing to place trades means you miss important things like a huge spread! One share I traded had a bloody huge spread which meant I was already £7 down the moment the trade went through. I couldn't believe it but I should have taken note of the spread before I placed the trade but instead I was putting my shoes on with one hand and eating cornflakes/trading with the other! DOH!

So there you have it, learn from my mistakes and don't replicate them yourselves. I'll let you know what trades went down in Wednesdays post. Tomorrow I am away on business and trust me I won't be trading this time!

Good luck out there, and beware of those huge spreads on certain shares!

14/11/10 Account Roundups

Thanks to Tony Loton for his comment yesterday. One thing I need to fine tune more is my trailing stops. I'm not saying that Savills will definitely have made me more money if I had a wider stop in place because obviously the share could go down from here but theres always a chance it could go up and would have made me more. Looking at Savills graph, the price spiked alot on Wednesday shooting the price up to around 385 and obviously my trailing stop followed that price action.
The next 2 days it dropped back down to around the 365 mark which was still slighter higher than Tuesdays price but low enough to trigger my trailing stop. The next trading week will show me whether my trailing stop triggered at exactly the right time. I still need to work on setting my stop losses to maximise profit. I noticed over on spread betting beginners blog that he sets his stop loss based on an ATR (14) value of around 2x. That's something I may start to check against my usual stop distances of around 10-15% to see if there is a big difference between the 2 figures. Each share reacts differently within the market so maybe I need to take a closer look at each individual share rather than using a blanket stop figure for all.

Ok its time for this weekends roundup of account figures:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account balance is £1242.80 with 44 open positions showing a current loss of -£14.64 and even though some of them had gone into positive territory during the week it seems all of them have slipped back into breakeven trades during Fridays market.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy accountOverall account balance is now at £862.04 with 31 open positions showing a current profit of £32.95 and I have £599.13 yet to invest. The biggest open profits showing at the moment are Mitchells & Butler at £40 and Segro at £30, both slightly down on last weeks roundup.

Well thats it for this weekend, hopefully I will bag some bargains for Account 2 next week. Good luck with your trades!

Woohoo! Profit!

Ok so this morning I received my usual midnight email from Worldspreads for Account 2 and after the last few days I presumed it would be another loss. To my surprise it was actually a nice trailing stop that had closed at a profit. Savills closed at 363.05 giving me a profit on the trade of £65.05, just what this account needed at the moment.
I also opened a new very small test position in Cairn Energy @379.20. This is one that had stopped out previous in an old account and the share has gone thru some tough times recently due to disappointing results in their Greenland explorations. This means I'm opening this position at a whopping 17.5% discount on my last position, a very big saving. We'll see how it goes.
No action on account 1 at all yesterday.
Tune in tomorrow for account figures updates, and hopefully you guys did OK during last weeks trading.

Coming down like a lead balloon

Account 2 suffered 2 more stop outs, Qinetiq group stopped out losing £12.30 and Trinity Mirror that I've had for a while stopped at a loss of £13.80. Not all doom and gloom as Aviva stopped out for a profit of £9.45. All 3 get added to my stop list.
I also made 2 more opening trades in the account, small positions in Xchanging @120 and 888 @40.3.

In account 1 I've had no stop outs and made 4 new opening trades based on share tips. These were
IQE @40.85, Photo-me @62.16, Chariot Oil & Gas @189.97 and Henderson Group @132.63. See if we can bag us a winner on one of them. 2 positions in this account have actually started showing a profit after the last 2 weeks of breakeven play. I'll update account figures on Sunday, if I suffered any stops on Account 2 during today I will report on those tomorrow.
I really think the market has found resistance at the moment, so long only strategies may start to suffer but we shall see.

IG notification emails do work!

Well as usual I was snowed under with work yesterday so unable to update on here. It was nearly midnight when I finished so thought I may aswell wait till I received the days statement from WorldSpreads and make 1 post this morning about both days trades.

Tues:
As promised I made some new trades on Account 2. These were:
Royal Bank of Scotland @44, Sports Direct @130.46, Cobham @209.8, MITIE Group @204.9, DART Group @81.95, French Connection @53.4 and Booker Group @55.8.
Hopefully one of those will shoot up in value at some point! Thankfully no stop orders were triggered on Tuesday in either account so it was just a day of buying.

Weds:
I got my first email notification from IG Index so it confirmed that they have set everything up as promised. Unfortunately I knew it was a stop because I had made no new opening trades in this account for nearly a week. Hill & Smith Holdings stopped out @271.80 for a loss of £16. Unlike Account 2 where I would add this to a stopped out list for repurchase at a lower price, I wont be doing that with stops from Account 1as the stop out list is specific to Tony Lotons position trading strategy. So I will use the freed up trading funds to buy a new pro tip later on today.
As for Account 2, I suffered another stop out with Interserve @189.40 losing me £18. This one I WILL add to my stop out list. A bit dissapointed with the recent spout of stop outs recently but I guess it proves the current volatility in the market. I have made some very nice quick profits trading in real shares over the last 3 months so I wish the same would happen here! Anyway, plenty of time to turn things around.

Happy trading guys!

Not much action, but a profitable trade triggered!

I guess I should explain that this blog will generally run 24hrs behind my actual trades. This is partly down to my work schedule but also due to the fact that I get my daily statements from WorldSpreads around midnight every night, so its easier for me to report any trades I made earlier the following day. So until that changes, there wont be many posts made on a Monday.
So now I got that explanation out the way, yesterday was pretty uneventful, mainly due to the fact I was asked to go into a clients office for a meeting all day that ruined my plan of action trading-wise.
But the day wouldn't be complete without some stop outs! Actually one stopped out in Account 2 making a profit, I think the first proper reported one so far. Resolution had gotten up to around £22 profit as I reported on Sunday, but sadly it dropped down and hit my trailing stop but the silver lining is I made a £19.70 profit on the trade. Ker-ching! Maybe next time I will keep my mouth closed about the profitable open trades!
I think a few people may have been caught out by Tribal Groups latest share price and I didnt escape unscathed, a loss of £10.20 racked up for me and another one for my stopout list.
I did make a couple of trades today in Account 2, but I'll wait for my statement to come through later tonight and report fully on those tomorrow.
No action at all on Account 1, unless IG Index didnt set up my instant email notifications like they said they had. I didn't receive any emails about any trades but I'll double check on that tomorrow aswell.
Happy trading!

Accounts roundup

Ok so here are the figures for both accounts after 9 weeks:

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
Overall account balance is now at £1270.70 with 42 open positions showing a total of -£13.84 and £995 of funds invested. Not one of the 42 positions is currently showing a profit, they are all practically break even point even after the markets upward movement over the last couple of days.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Overall account balance is now at £822.13 with 28 open positions showing a current profit of £165.65 and I have £687 yet to invest. The biggest earners are Mitchells & Butler at £50, Savills at £46, Segro at £36 and Resolution Limited at £22.

All those have now moved into guaranteed profits due to their trailing stops, but hopefully they will all continue to rise.
Catch you next week, where I will be opening up new positions in Account 2 as I have a lot more available funds than I realised!

Market Rally means no stop outs for a change!

As most of you will know, the FTSE rallied pretty well on Thursday and Friday so thankfully I didn't get any more stop outs on Friday. I established 4 more new positions in account 2 (position trading strat.) rebuying some old ones I have previously owned but at a much lower price.  These were EAGA @63.4, Partygaming @226.5, Redrow @112.3 and Tui Travel @204.9. The EAGA position was at a huge 35% discount since I last owned it, the spending cuts taking the toll on the shares price. Hopefully it can rebound from here.
I havent established any new positions in Account 1 (pro tips account) due to the fact that the account is nearly at full invested capacity (£989 invested of the original £1k) so gave this weeks tips a miss as they were too expensive.
IG Index got back to me by email regarding not being able to keep track of the pro tips account positions very easily. They have now set up email notifications on my account so that I will see every bit of activity on there and I can report the daily activity here without trying to decipher their overly complex daily statement. Big thumbs up to their customer service team who sorted it out very quickly and politely for me.

I'll give a proper roundup of the account figures on Sunday (fingers crossed this time!)

I'm also adding a links part to the blog, first space goes to spread betting beginner. I've followed his site for a few weeks now and really enjoyed it so check it out when you can, especially if you are new to the spread betting scene. He has recently expanded to a full blown website from a blog so check the rest of his site out too aswell as his blog.
Catch you Sunday!

Slippage and company cuts

I got caught out by the slippage in Tribals share price aswell as Cobhams 12% drop in price after it warned of further delays in US military orders. Both these will end up on my stop out list for repurchase at a later date.
I'm having difficulty keeping track of my activity in the first account (pro tips account) as the IG Index software is pretty complicated to use. It's a completely different ball park compared to Tradefairs which email you everytime there is any activity in your account. I'll give IG Index a buzz today and see if I can clear things up. My main concern is that it is difficult to keep track of closed out orders, as far as I can see there is nowhere to see which positions have recently closed out and the profit or loss when closing out. If anyone out there uses IG Index and wants to give me any hints then feel free to let me know!
I'm hopefully going to establish some new positions today at a discount price in the position trading strategy account so watch this space.

Paragon

Well I had 1 position stop out yesterday, that was Paragon @150.70 for a £15 loss. Another for my stop out list, hopefully repurchase it at a cheaper price sometime.
I was snowed under with my business over the weekend so never got chance to come on here and give my account figures for the week. Now that they have changed I dont have the figure from Friday evening after market close so you'll have to tune in this Sunday for account roundups, sorry!

2 New positions

Today I established 2 new trades in the position trading account.
These were 'Helphire' @22.1 and 'Mouchel' @88.4.
Both these shares I have held positions in before, Helphire stopped out and Mouchel I owned in a previous account and closed the position in profit. As the principle of this strategy is to buy at a lower price than when you last got stopped out/sold at, both these shares I have picked up at a discount compared to last time I owned them. Helphire I have got at a 39% discount on my last stop out price and Mouchel I have got at a 29% discount. Therefore I have saved myself money on the fall of price from when these 2 last stopped out.
You can find out more about the position trading strategy I am using by purchasing Tony Lotons' book over on the right there. As I own the book myself it would not be fair on the author if I revealed the full extent of his strategy on this blog - it is well worth the purchase.
As I write this the FTSE is up a measly 0.06%, but hopefully enough to keep all my current positions open. The aim of the game is not to get stopped out!

CSR gaps down plus more pro tip purchases

Well yesterday CSR gapped down very quickly stopping me out at 288.30 for a total loss of a huge £56.10. Not good news really and that shows the disadvantages of not having a guaranteed stop loss in place. Party gaming also stopped out at 268.75 for a smaller loss of £11.65. I've added both stocks to my watch list to hopefully have an opportunity of repurchasing them at a lower price but as of 15:00hrs today CSR was already back up to 314. Just one of those things really when having stop losses in place, sometimes you suffer from gapping when the price drops fast triggering your stop only to rebound very quickly meaning you cant get back in at a decent price.
Anyway you have to plod on, I made quite a few pro share tip purchases today so here they are in no particular order:
Afren @126.52
Hill & Smith @310.52
Hampson @31.58
Northgate @245.0
Micro focus @380.15
St James Place @278.19
Vectura @61.65
Chrysalis @110.18
All of them have around a 15% stop order placed on them dependant on price.
I wont be making anymore pro tip purchases again this week but I will update any activity involved on my normal position trading account so please tune in tomorrow at some point.

Nothing to report...

Last 2 days have been uneventful, none of my current positions have stopped out and I haven't been able to repurchase any of my previous holdings at a cheaper price. Nor have I received any 'pro tips'.
Hopefully more to report tomorrow!

Quick update and Week1 account results

Just a quick post to say that one of my positions Hardys Oil & Gas fell sharply and triggered its stop loss @176.80 for a loss of £19.70. Obviously a little dissapointed but I will probably try buy it again sometime at a cheaper price.
As for current account standings (profit/loss) these are at:

Account 1: Pro Stock Tips: (-£12.63)
Account 2: Position Trading Strategy: +£81.84

So after week 1 of my blog, the position trading strategy account is ahead.

Pro tips bought

As stated yesterday it was my intention to buy some of the pro share tips I received. So today out of the 5 share tips I got, I have purchased 4 of them. One I didnt purchase as the share price is quite high and it would have required a fair chunk of my acount capital just to cover the position.
So these are the new positions I opened:
Blinx @88.72
Booker Group @54.14
Obtala Resources @44.11
Walker Greenback @39.6
All these have around a 10-15% stop loss applied. Hopefully one of them will turn a decent profit in time. Remember the mantra of "a position trade is a short term trade gone well!"

I also made a new position over in account 2 (the position trading strategy account). I purchased a £1 position of Punch Taverns @74.6.
I wont be doing any more trading now, the only trades will be ones which reach their stop loss and as the FTSE looks pretty stable at the moment I am hoping no trades will close out today.
I'll post current standings in both accounts on a Sunday I think.

Have a good weekend everyone, and remember follow my trades at your own risk. This blog is for educational purposes only and not intended as financial advice in regards to spread betting.

Account 2: one stop loss triggered, two new positions opened.

Ok well today one of my open positions 'Hansen transmissions' hit its stop loss of 42.4, giving me an overall loss on the position of £4.70. When I checked later it had already gone back up to 50.0 so it could be a while before I am able to get back in  at the cheaper price. Part of the stategy dictates that you cannot buy the share back at a more expensive price than it stopped out at.
My two new buys were 'Punch Taverns' and 'Hardys Oil & Gas' for 74.6 and 196.5 respectively. Both these are old buys that stopped out at a higher price than I have bought them for today. In fact the Hardys share is at a pretty big discount at the older stop out price of 231.0. So I am hoping it will get back to around that same price at some point for a nice £35 profit.
I will be making a couple of trades on Account 1 tomorrow, so watch this space!

Account 2

So todays post will cover my second spread betting account. This is the account in which I follow a position trading strategy which can mean daily trades, so in regard to this blog it will have more activity than the first account.
I started this account with the exact same deposit as the first account from yesterdays post - £1000GBP. So both accounts started on an equal footing. As stated above, because the strategy involves a daily routine of checking the FTSE markets after each daily close this means that there is potential for at least 1 trade per day whilst account funds allow.
So here are my current open positions on this account which currently show an £84.45 profit:

So these are all my current open positions. As with 'account 1', some positions have closed before starting this blog either by hitting their stop losses or a trailing stop therefore realising a profit.
I have several stocks I have in mind to open positions on before the end of the week if their price is right so watch this space!
So there you have it, full details of both accounts. Account 1 remember is built up of stocks from pro stock tips I have received and Account 2 above is based on a proper position trading strategy.
Hopefully in later posts I will go into more details about both accounts and along the way give out tips for any beginners out there.
In the meantime, check out my recommended reading lists on the right hand side - I have both UK and U.S. versions.

Account 1

One of the pitfalls of working from home is sometimes you get a project that needs completing quickly and as you dont have the usual work routine of actually leaving the workplace to go home on a night that means that sometimes you end up working very long hours sat in your home office. That's where I've been for the last 2 days!

So anyway as promised I'm going to go through one of the accounts and show my current open positions.
This account is the 'pro share tips' account, so I only open new positions in the account when I receive share tips from either of 2 sources. I'm not going to reveal my tip sources here so please don't ask, but I will be showing which new positions I open as and when they happen.

So the account started with £1k in it (around $1570) and is currently showing a slight profit of £0.64. Here are all my current open positions:

I've had one or two positions close before this point, either through hitting their stop loss or dropping in value after their trailing stop has triggered and therefore realising a profit. For the sake of this exercise I will forget about those previous trades and from this point on document the current open positions and any new trades I make.

All the above trades were based on share tips only. In my next blog entry I will show you my current positions open in my Account 2 - following a position trading strategy. See you then!

Welcome...

Welcome to my new blog. I'm starting this really as a record of my progress but also to compare 2 different spread betting strategies I am using on 2 separate accounts to see which comes out top after 12 months. I hope you'll stick around and follow my progress.
A short introduction about myself:
I'm male, 35 years old and I'm a self employed architectural consultant, so I'm in the fortunate position of being able to work out of my home office. This gives me an added advantage of being able to trade at any time of day during London market hours.
I began spread betting (or trading as I prefer to call it) around 6 months ago after reading a few books on the subject. I've been a regular investor in normal stocks for around ten years so I have a fare grasp on how the markets work. I have the usual savings, ETFs and ISA accounts so spread betting is just another investment vehicle that I am trying out.

I actually turned a small but not insignificant profit during my first 3 months of spread betting, but as I began to learn the ins and outs of the platform software I discovered that the company I traded with had quite limited features compared to other companies out there - and on top of that their spreads were quite wide. Obviously every little advantage helps, so I closed all my positions and withdrew my funds whilst I did my research into other spread betting companies to decide what was the best platform for me.
During that first 3 months I was using a position trading strategy and like I said it turned a nice profit for me. What interested me was how this strategy which leaves the stock picking completely up to you would perform against a strategy based on 'professional' stock tip advice.
So I decided to open up 2 separate accounts on 2 similar platforms (both in features and in spreads) and test each strategy against each other.
So there you have it, basically this blog will follow the progress of each of the 2 accounts for the next 12 months. I am already 1 month into this experiment, so the next post I make will show you what positions I currently have open in one of the accounts.
Hope you'll stick around and enjoy the rollercoaster ride that is spread trading!