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.
The Scowling Scot And The White Knight
You can always tell when a Prime Minister is under pressure; he starts trying to do other people’s jobs. Yesterday, Gordon Brown (he who gave the Bank of England independence to set interest rates) decided that independence was wasted if the Bank didn’t toe the line. He opted for a public hint that inflation is low enough to allow a cut interest rates-NOW!.
What! Let’s just re-cap on the targets he set the Bank of England; the central target is 2% with 1% leeway in either direction (so 1-3%). Anything outside that and Governor Mervyn King has to stay behind after school, writing an explanation of where he went wrong.
Inflation is currently at 2.5%, which seems to be the wrong side of halfway. The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee begin a 2-day meeting today, culminating in a decision on whether to move rates at high-noon on Thursday. Despite concerns that inflation might hit 3% in the next few months, they’re odds on to cut rates by 0.25% to 5%.
But I wonder if they’ll pull back now, just to remove any suspicion that they’re trying to please their paymaster, the Scowiling Scot.
***********************************************
And on the subject of pleasing their masters, Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC, must be well on the way to becoming ‘Sir Stephen.’ In the land of crunching credit and mortgage demons, HSBC looks set to be the knight in shining armour, appearing out of the mist to save the 1.4 million damsels in distress. The bank announced plans to match the terms of homeowners’ existing fixed rate mortgage deals, due to finish this year. This would allow homeowners to switch mortgages and avoid the much publicised higher rates being forced on them by other banks. Looks like a financial Bruce Willis coming to the rescue, but I wonder what the small print says.
*************************************************
There’s plenty of interest out there today; on my daily chart Barclays looks in a pivotal position, just dropping below support at the cross of the recent uptrend line with the longer-term downtrend line. Trouble is, there’s barely room to trade before support at 460p, but it’s on my watchlist.
Yesterday’s fun and games in BHP Billiton took the shares through resistance at 1700p. I’m watching to see if the price returns to test 1700p as support, but it’s got potential as a ‘squeaky bottom’ trade, to quote Sir Alex.
The Euro hit a new high against Sterling, at £0.80; I’m not sure how to trade that one at the moment so a bit of sitting on the fence is the order of the day.
Self-motivation in sport is breaking new boundaries all the time, but check out the new ‘Crazy Russian’ method below.
Happy Trading
April 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Great video! Maybe we’ll see Trichet do something similar in a press conference one day as he realises that the Fed and the BOE had the right idea in cutting rates all along!
I reckon the HSBc news is quite big though. Up to recently we’ve seen mortgage lenders trying to reduce the amount of business they do - and how often does that happen in the business world? Imagine Tesco saying to it’s customers ‘We don’t want you .. p*** off to Dunnes or Sainsbury or wherever and leave us alone’! Or Vodafone trying to get you to switch to O2. At least HSBC are showing some sort of confidence in the housing market.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Exactly. And how long before RBS, Barclays and Nationwide feel the need to stand up and look big, even if it costs them more than HSBC? It looks promising but, like I said, lets see the small print. How many of the 1.4million will qualify? At the moment HSBC are alone at the fruit stall, so they can be as choosy as they want
April 9th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Some of the small-ish print on HSBC (details from reliable website!)
Offer to last just 5 weeks and minimum of 20% equity required. Sizeable booking fee dependent on individual circumstances (i.e. rate & size of loan). Could cost £4k to fix 250k @4.54%
If I find out more will post.