FT has been trading full time from home for two years, with nothing but four kids and a beach to distract him .
He fills his spare time with weight training and rugby, though more coaching than playing these days.
FT mostly trades the forex markets and although he plays FTSE on occasions his bread and butter market is £$.
He likes to think that his technique is evolving but still hasn’t the temperament or money to back the big calls. He prefers to trade between 1 and 3 times a day, aiming to take regular small gains, but feels part of the evolution is in not dealing if the conditions don’t feel right.
Going Back To Bed
As I set off for the gym last night I was on top of the world, the cat who’d got extra cream, Ronaldo after scoring a hat trick. You get the picture; it had been a good week. But now I’m feeling thoroughly miffed.
Hot on the heels of Tuesday’s success in EURUSD I bought another £10 yesterday at $1.5051. Yep, it’s a bit of a risk buying close to the all time high, but it looked good for more of the same. The trade worked a treat, allowing me to knock out a fiver at $1.5061 and bring my stop up to breakeven (I like to run a tight ship when I’m in unchartered territory). Throughout the afternoon I took further profits at $1.5081, $1.5092 and $1.5122. I finished the day with a realised profit of £192 and a £2 bet left open, protected at $1.5071.
My Xstrata bet was looking OK, a squeeze into the close put all my bets on a tidy profit. I’d also bought Barclays, just in a couple of quid to test my reading of the chart, and that was showing a £20 gain.
Then came the trader’s nightmare. I was working stupidly late when I saw an early morning report on the FT web site, “Vale bid for Xstrata faces collapse”. Sh*t, there was nothing I could do; I knew the shares would tank the following morning. I had stops in place, but there was no way I could take advantage of discovering this bombshell while sensible people were tucked up in bed. I decided to sell FTSE in a couple of quid, reasoning that the Xstrata price might drag the index down.
Sure enough the nightmare didn’t finish with dawn breaking. The Xstrata price didn’t totally collapse; it fell a couple of pence lower than my stop loss, giving me a bloody nose and nicking nearly £800 out of my back pocket. My FTSE ‘hedge’ made back £20 when I chose to close it, just before the market tumbled on rumours of a UK hedge fund in trouble.
Barclays had dropped back from last night’s levels to 512p when I thought it prudent to close. If the hedge fund rumour turned to fact there was a risk it might owe the banks money, so better safe than sorry. The trade made me £8.
I sold a further £1 of EURUSD, as the Viagra seems to be wearing off this morning. I took $1.5091 for a further profit of £40, leaving me with a £1 bet, protected at $1.5071.
This is a great job, but just today I feel like switching off my screens and going back to bed.
Happy Trading
PS: For those of you trading watch out for US GDP at 1.30; consensus seems to be for 0.8% on the quarter, 2.6% on the year.
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