Where did it all go wrong?

It is with great regret that I have to tell you that despite practicing Better Spread Betting according to my Position Trading philosophy that utilizes Stop Orders... it's all gone wrong and I have lost everything on one mad spin of the proverbial roulette wheel!



Aside from documenting (in the coming days) how exactly it all went wrong, it looks like I will now have to shut up shop, and I

Read More

The Case for Position Trading Equities

Although I stopped writing for Spreadbet magazine a couple of months ago (don't ask!) a few of the articles in the latest edition caught my eye.



In his interview, Vince Stanzione says that his main successes in the markets have come from longer-term position trading rather than from short-term day trading.



In his trading diary update, John Walsh talks about how he lost a lot of money

Read More

This is how Position Trading works...

It seems a good time to show what a couple of position trades look like when they progress as expected. Those of you who follow my "trade of the week" features will not be surprised to see that the two stocks I have chosen are Sainsburys and Barratt.



The following screenshot shows how the example (but real) Sainsburys pyramided position trade is looking:







In the last pyramiding session I

Read More

Hot off the Press:Position Trading (Third Edition)

Today I am proud to announce the publication of the third edition of my Position Trading book. It's an evolution rather than a revolution, so...



What wasn't broke, I've left alone.

What was broke, I've tried to fix.



There's enough new stuff to have made it worth the effort, but not so much as to make it unrecognizable from the earlier editions. Think of it as a mid-term facelift: the same

Read More

Barratt Benefits from the Budget

You can imagine how interesting it was for me to see the Barratt share price shoot up in response to Chancellor George Osborne's budget announcements about supporting buyers of new homes. It was interesting to me, obviously, because I've been pyramiding Barratt recently.



The bottom line is that the guaranteed stop order on my most recently added position in Barratt is now almost at break-even

Read More

Pyramiding Sainsburys

You may have read at The Motley Fool and other places today that J Sainsbury plc Rallies As Sales Jump 7.1%. I took advantage of the positive gap-up and partial-gap-close to add a third pyramid position to my aforedocumented (it's a new word) Sainsburys "trade of the week".

The following picture shows what this pyramided trade looks like now. The thin horizontal lines represent the three entry

Read More

From Cantor Index to SpeadEx

Like me, you may have received an email from Cantor Index the other day advising that "all of its non-single stock, financial spread betting account holders will be taken on by SpreadEx... as of the close of business on Wednesday, 20th March, 2013."



I'd be happy to be moved to SpreadEx, but since I have essentially an empty account with Cantor Index, it will be interesting to see what happens

Read More

Does the Morrisons-Ocado tie-up make sense?

..and what does it mean for investors?


Over on The Motley Fool there is an article (and some debate) about whether the potential tie-up between Morrisons and Ocado makes sense. News of this potential marriage -- not in the merger sense -- sent Ocado shares a lot higher and Morrisons shares a little higher today. That's because it makes "perfect sense" for both companies... in the short term.

Read More

Trade of the Week on Sainsburys (profit is sanity)

What a pity I missed out on today's (14 March 2013) surge in the price of Ocado shares, and the related (but possibly short-lived) boost to the Morrisons share price following the announcement of a tie-up.



Fortunately, I have had my fingers in another supermarket pie, metaphorically. I'm talking about Sainsburys which has been on something of a roll (not the sausage variety) recently. Okay,

Read More

Barratt and the Four Step Pyramid

If I'm serious about extolling the virtues of pyramiding in my Position Trading book, I'd better show you convincingly how it can go beyond the usual two- or three-step pyramids that I have posted here before. So following my Three Steps to (Trading) Heaven article in which I described my three-step pyramid trade on Barratt, I've now gone one better by adding a fourth position as illustrated

Read More

The Result of Yesterday's "Trade of The Week"

Well, that will teach me to go out on a limb and post a trade "in advance" of seeing the outcome ;-) I'm referring to yesterday's (failed) Trade of The Week.



On the second day, the price rose to meet my guaranteed stop order, and stopped me out for a loss of 9.40 "pips" (e.g. £9.40 per £1-per-point staked) plus 1.57 additional "pips" for the guarantee on the stop order.



This was a failed

Read More

(Short) Trade of The Week on Aviva

I reckon it's been more than a week since I last posted a "Trade of The Week", and this one is different in two respects:


It's a short trade, which is pretty unusual for me considering my predominantly-long position trading approach.
I'm documenting it in advance rather than after-the-fact, so I really have no idea how it will turn out.


My rationale is that, according to the Capital Spreads

Read More

Dealing in Google Chrome (with IG)

Following my posting the other day about the new Chromebook Pixel laptop, I was thrilled to see an email from IG this morning containing the sub-headline "Dealing in Google Chrome".



To enable this facility, you need an IG account (so get one now) and you need to install the IG Dealing Chrome web browser extension.



The idea is that when you visit certain financial web sites using the Chrome

Read More