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!