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!