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

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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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(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

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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

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