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.
Watching And Waiting
Today’s been a thinking and watching day. After some of last week’s big moves I’m wary of jumping on the bandwagon. Equally, I’m not confident enough to go against the trend.
“What!” I hear you cry, “you keep banging on about selling FTSE and it’s higher. And you said you’d turned bearish on the Euro, and that’s rallied to give you a selling opportunity as well. Get a grip man.”
Both valid points so here’s the case for the defence m’lord:
True, I don’t like equities at this level, but part of trading is listening to the market; on Friday I suggested that the FTSE chart had several bullish points. Today’s move (at the time of writing) hasn’t broken that picture. In fact, the retracement back to support/ resistance at 6150 might be a further buying opportunity. The trouble is, my hand starts shaking the nearer it gets to that ‘Buy’ button. Ideally, I’m looking for some help from tonight’s closing level; if 6150 holds, then I might try a small buy bet, but with a damned tight stop below 6145. If it closes below 6150, well it still needs to break the uptrend, which is roundabout 6110-15 (depending on how thick your nib is).
My defence for not trading the Euro also follows the ‘wait and see’ plea, but with a slightly different slant to it. Since April 22nd the EURUSD rate has dumped by 650 pips, though it’s now nearly 200 pips off the bottom. In last week’s Reasons To Be Cheerful, One Two, Three-NOT I said that I’d really like a move higher to test $1.5730, but that I might be tempted if it failed to break $1.55. After breaking the $1.55 level I’m watching the rise towards $1.5610. Fibonacci’s bonking bunnies reckon that’s close to a significant 38% retracement of the recent top to bottom. At the moment the rate is $1.5590, and looking a bit overbought on the 30-minute chart. But if the 38% retracement level breaks there could be a push up towards $1.5690, so I’d rather wait for a while.
Yep, the chart shows I could have bought the Euro for a nice little rally, but it looks a bit against the trend so I’m going to be patient.
And yes, I was stopped out of my Alliance & Leicester short, all the way back at the 530p breakeven level. This happened during Friday’s rally, just a day after the shares were languishing at 506p!
The only position I’m running at the moment is a £1 short in Barclays, which is showing an £18 profit.
How stupid does the boss of Yahoo look now? After weeks of refusing to talk to Microsoft (a move which led Microsoft to raise a couple of fingers and walk into the sunset) he said he’s happy to talk really and was only playing hard to get. What a wally!
Happy Trading
Enjoyed this post?
Leave a Reply