“Don’t touch it! When I said no I meant it, take your hand away.”
But it was too late. I’d closed out my FTSE short and missed a great opportunity. Still rattled by the ferocity of yesterday’s rally, I misread the early move in FTSE and over-rode my stop loss.

In mitigation, I was expecting to be out at my boy’s sports day and with equities still looking aggressive I fancied making a few hard yards rather than getting stopped at the gain line. Just as I was about to take the youngest son down to get ready for school FTSE popped up to have a sniff at 6090. It dropped back a few points allowing me to close my bet at 6084 for a £44 profit.

Over the next hour the sports day was postponed and FTSE tumbled. Bugger, bugger!
But looking on the bright side, in the short equity relay my FTSE bet handed the baton over to my banking short bets with Barclays taking up the running.

I’m a bit cagey about having too much open ahead of tonight’s US interest rate announcement; I’m due at a rugby meeting soon after the decision and don’t fancy being too exposed to any reaction. Looking at the Barclays chart I decided that this time I’d close out half my bet just above the support level. I paid 445.8p for £1, sticking £40-odd notes in my back pocket.

Alliance & Leicester has been one of the better performing banks recently; where-as Barclays was looking technically oversold when I dealt, A&L looks to have room to fall further. It’s broken below the 520p support and has strayed outside the recent up-channel so I’m sticking with it.

I’ve also been playing around in forex this morning, though with as much success as Robbie Williams’ weight-loss plan. An early drop in the EURGBP rate took it to just below £0.79 and technically oversold. I decided to place a £10 buy bet if the rate recovered to £0.7902, above the previous 10-minute candle. The idea was good, but my stop at £0.7895 was too tight, and I was closed out at £0.7894 for a £90 loss. The rate only fell a further 6 pips but looks stuck in a tight range so I’ll leave it for today.

I’m finishing with a spot of the macabre. This is a car advert with a difference. When they finished filming the ad, the film editor noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. They found out that a person had been killed a year earlier in that exact same spot. The ad was never put on TV because of the unexplained ghostly phenomenon. Watch the front end of the car closely as it clears the trees in the middle of the screen and you’ll see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road….Spooky! Is it a ghost, or is it simply mist? You decide. If you listen to the ad, you’ll even hear the cameraman whispering in the background about it near the end of the commercial. A little creepy but it seems to be authentic!

Happy Trading, and don’t forget the Fed tonight.