Wrapping up the blog...and account update 27/02/2011

After nearly 6 months of trading 2 accounts I have made the decision to wrap up this blog. A few reasons have swayed my decision really:
(i) My business has recently taken off again over the last few weeks, and after the lull before Christmas and 2010 not being that great for my industry I need to make hay whilst the sun shines. I've now worked every day including weekends for the last 5 weeks, and its going to continue like this for the foreseeable future (thankfully I guess!) and running the 2 accounts just for the very few people who actually read the site is putting me under a little extra pressure.
(ii) Not enough interest to make it worthwhile. Its been great having Tony Loton pop here and leave a comment every so often because I'm running his position trading strategy, but overall the site gets few hits and I've come to notice that even the bigger spread betting sites hardly get any visitors. Maybe spread betting is more of a lonesome wolf activity! There's not much of a community out there, unlike other investment related activities such as share dealing and even poker. I think Tony is one person who can appreciate that running a public portfolio sometimes goes against the best interests of a strategy.
(iii) I have begun to hate the IG Index software. I hate not being able to instantly see my current positions profit and loss without downloading months of excel spreadsheets. Why should I have to, every other spread betting firm out there shows me this info so why cant IG?!! Customer services didn't want to know about it when I rang them. So I'd like to withdraw my funds from IG and go elsewhere meaning the pro share tips account would be on a temporary break.
(iv) Because of the extra time constraints I'm currently under I'd like to just concentrate on 1 account so I can research trades on an evening properly without rushing. That includes consolidating the funds from both current accounts into the one account.

Anyway, rather than just disappear into the ether and never post again I thought I would at least conclude things. But I wont vanish without updating the figures for this week, so here goes:

As you know the FTSE went through all kinds of trouble this week, 4% market swings, Libya unrest and LSE problems made for an interesting week. Both accounts fell for the week but here are the exact figures.

Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
The pro tips account hit a ton of stops, 22 to be exact! Thankfully all the stops were relatively close so as to keep my risk within tolerance, even still the account lost 6% in value and ended the week on £1588.01. It currently only has 17 open trades active now. Final figure +59% return on investment.

Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
This account took a bigger than usual hit, as I couldn't have chosen a worse week to pyramid into 8 more positions. It hit stops galore on Weds and Thursday, each of them losing nearly 1% of the account at a time. Current positions that were showing decent profits also fell to add to the woe. So all in all the account fell 16% to £1095.56 I guess that's the power of leverage! Final figure +10% return on investment.

So there we have it, I hate having to pull the plug on a unusual week that ended in a downer for both accounts but I guess that's just the way it goes. The only thing we know about the market is that it will keep moving! Both final figures are still way above the return you would make on any current savings ISA account.
Thanks to everyone that's popped in, and if anyone ever wants to get in contact to see how things are going in my trading ventures use the email address on the right hand side.

Trade happy, trade well and I wish you all trading success!
'Spreadbettingtrader'