Well January draws to a close, and the FTSE All Share Index ended pretty much where it left off last week. So what happened to my accounts during that time?
Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
I established 12 new positions during the week and only suffered 4 stops. One of the stops hit was for one of the positions I had established this week, so a very quick loss on that particular share. But despite the market flatlining I have managed to manually raise my trailing stops on 12 positions within the account, locking in a little bit more profit for each of them. The value of the account ended up at £1768.86, a 1.5% increase on last weeks figure, approx +£30.
Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
Despite having my eye on quite a few new opportunities at the beginning of the week only 5 of them became new positions within this account. I only suffered the one stop this week, a position in Partygaming just stopped out then of course rebounded very slightly the following day. Isn't that usually the case? I can't really complain as one of the 5 has already brought in a £50 profit in 2 days of trading so I have managed to lock in £25 of that as guaranteed profit - well guaranteed as long as I don't suffer any slippage...
Anyway the account increased by 5% to £1138.92 so its going in the right direction. I've managed to move trailing stops on 9 of the existing positions to lock in profit and free up more trading capital, although there is currently £650 available so no shortage of funds to worry about as yet.
Depending on how the market continues to react next week to those poor GDP figures will pretty much dictate what happens in both accounts. I was lucky enough to read 3 of Tony Lotons books before I begun live spread betting. I learnt the importance of stops and money management before I placed my first trade. In that respect I haven't had to learn from the 'School of hard knocks', Tony did that for me! Every one of my positions have very strict stops applied to them, so if Mr Market does want to go on a downswing I won't be wiped out I will 'live to trade another day' as Tony states. I haven't yet lost money on spread betting, before I started these 2 public accounts I ran my first £500 account up to just over £800 before withdrawing purely practising the position trading strategy. I'm pretty certain that the first account would have been a failure if I hadn't read those books beforehand. Tonys book over on the right hand side there called "Stop Orders" is invaluable reading and I suggest you pick up a copy, especially if you haven't started live trading yet. Without money management and stops in place then your trading strategy will never have an edge.
This account is run on the Worldspreads platform - I recently posted on a spread betting forum that I have now been getting referrals on every trade I try to place. This means that when you click the 'buy' button I get a box that pops up saying 'trade refferal' and someone at the spread betting company is manually approving my trades before it goes through. Thing is, on a couple of the trades I haven't been given the price that I saw when I pressed the 'buy' button because it can take around 10-20 seconds to complete. Only maybe +1 or +2 on the spread, but still slightly annoying.
Someone replied to my forum query and said that he guessed I wasn't a losing trader because losers don't get referrals. So in a round about way I guess I'm currently being classed as a 'winner' by Worldspreads and not sure if they like it. I'll give them a buzz about it during this week and ask them why...
Anyway that's enough for today, Trade well guys!
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