Introducing "Harriman Intelligence"

You may already know that my Stop Orders book was published by respected financial publishers Harriman House. You might not know that they will soon be launching a new website called Harriman Intelligence, to which they have asked a small number of authors such as me to contribute some content.



You can find my first contribution Stop Orders: Not Just for Stopping Losses now live on Harriman

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Update on my London Capital Group "Trade of The Week"

Following yesterday's Trade of The Week feature, in my warts 'n' all style I thought I should update you on what happened next. Unfortunately, the price of London Capital Group shares fell back thereby triggering the stop order on my original position for a loss of £25.33 including financing costs.



The good news is that by "averaging down" twice and then taking some of the bounce-back profits

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Trade of The Week on London Capital Group

Have you seen what happened to the London Capital Group share price in the past few days? The sudden ramp-up in share price allowed me to bank this quick profit:







I cashed in those few chips so as to demonstrate the handy IG P&L Breakdown Report that shows you exactly how you did -- including financing costs -- on each of the positions you have closed.

I banked a more substantial quick

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Don't Cut Your Losses!

We all know that Warren Buffet is quoted as saying "Don't Lose Money!". And that most seasoned traders laugh at the fact that many novice investors avoid losing money simply by holding on to losing positions until (hopefully) they recover; thereby never registering their "paper losses" as real losses... until it's too late.



I used to laugh at those people, too, and I would have been one of

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Three Steps to (Trading) Heaven

Today I noticed in one of my model "better spread betting" accounts that three positions in the same stock (Punch Taverns) had stopped out for modest profits, as shown here:







Although profitable, I don't regard this as a good result. Not only because of the small amounts involved, but also because of the fact that I think this stock will yet go higher-- so the stop-outs may have been a

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Trade of The Week on Thomas Cook

This week's "trade of the week" is one that I initiated on 24 October last year when Thomas Cook broke upwards from its "flat-line". In the following chart, the lower horizontal line shows the entry price and the higher horizontal line shows the profit I am guaranteed to take (at least) thanks to a guaranteed stop order that I have trailed upwards during the life of this position trade.







I

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Margin Call!

Don't panic, I haven't received a "margin call" (i.e. a request to deposit additional emergency funds to a spread betting account).


No, my headline reflects the fact that I watched the film Margin Call on DVD last night. Our family film night began with all four of us sitting down to watch, then my son dropped out to do something else, then my daughter dropped out, and then my wife fell asleep.

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