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!

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!