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.
Profits Growing In The Sun
How lucky am I? A day of interrupted power supply has coincided with an uninterrupted hot sunny day. And better still, in the limited time at my desk I’ve made money. Wa hey!
Poor numbers from Alliance & Leicester justified running the short bet over the results announcement, though I did use the sell-off to close out my positions. With the market still moving erratically I’m more inclined to take profits when moves look over-extended. Sure, I’m missing out on a few quid, but I want to build up my trading capital for the bigger moves.
I bought back my first bet in Alliance & Leicester at 475p and closed out the balance at 452p for an overall gain of £135.
I sold FTSE this morning, not at the best levels but it put some dosh in my back pocket. I’d been mulling over a short bet at 6220, but with the Dow future holding steady I wasn’t convinced. The 6220 level has been acting as a sort of second division support line so when it gave way that was a good enough excuse to go short. I placed a £2 bet to sell at 6206, using a wide stop at 6285, just above the recent high.
The trade worked a treat; the market broke below 6200 and headed for the next support at 6150. Now I faced a tricky dilemma; the trader in me wanted to close out at 6150. After all, the market had bounced well from that level only a week ago. But the other part of me didn’t want to close out a good bet too cheaply. I compromised by bringing my stop loss down to 6162. That way I’d leave the road to untold riches open, but if support held I’d still lock in most of my gains. Support held and I was out for £88 in between power cuts.
My third trade came from yesterday’s leftovers. My call on EURGBP had been pretty good, except for the small matter of my stop loss being hit! After stopping me out the price had rallied throughout the day and I was tempted back in. As I’d been wrong earlier I limited myself to a £2 bet with a wider stop loss. My £2 buy bet at £0.7939 was protected by a stop at £0.7890 and survived the night unmolested. This morning the higher price allowed me to sell £1 at £0.7964 and bring my stop up to break-even.
The bumper 3% CPI number put paid to the rest of my bet, closing the trade for a small, but ultimately satisfying £25.
Just at the moment I’m in the rare position of having no bets on. Blimey, that won’t last long. I’m now more inclined to sell FTSE rallies and, once again, it looks as though I might get another chance. With support from the uptrend line getting ever closer the risks of it breaking are increasing.
Ooops, my ‘lecky wants me out the way so I’m off now to do some research in the sun.
Happy Trading
May 13th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
If ever there’s a sign of a consumer slowdown it’s an increase in sales at ASDA. You don’t shop there through choice! I’ve gone short of FTSE again, but I may have been too impatient.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Or, if you’re in the USA, Wal Mart or Costco. I see that Wal Mart are offering to cash the stimulus cheques for nothing in the hope that it will get people spending in their stores.
Still, Hanky panky Paulson has announced that the credit crunch is over (for Wall St. maybe, not for Main St.) and that these $600 or so cheques will provide the stimulus needed to get the economy started. I wonder how much will be left over once these same people have paid off their missed mortgage payments or cleared some of their credit card bills.
Anyway, I too am looking to short anything that shows any strength, although my system still shows most indices on a ‘buy’, and didn’t do too badly today on FTSE, DAX, DJIA, S&P and NASDAQ, although I got out of my FTSE short well before it went to -77. Never mind, in the words of Todd Harrison at www.minyanville.com, never lament a profit.
If you’ve never been to to that site check it out. It’s the only site I’ve found that seems to tell it like it is for America at the moment. I’m sick to the back teeth of the positive spin that Bloomberg, Yahoo et al! seem to be able to put on everything. Even Bernanke finally managed today to warn about the ‘moral hazard’ of the central bank bailing out all and sundry who shouldn’t have been so f**cking greedy in the first place. Seems like they can’t lose. Having created all this mess in the first place they want all their money back when things start to go tits up, as described brilliantly by Bird & Fortune in this fantastic sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
cheers for that Gazza. We used to You-tube clip in an earlier blog-it is the dog’s whatzits isn’t it. Couldn’t gt the other site, is there a letter missing anywhere? Yeah, my systems haven’t turned bearish yet. Guess I’m just growing impatient/ frustrated/ incredulous…..
So what are you trading until the signals change, apart from short FTSE?
May 13th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Sorry FT, there is a comma at the end of that first link. It’s a brilliant site though, really full of info.
I only really trade the indices that I mentioned (have never really been into FX)….and at the moment I’ll only go long if there is a real down day against the trend. As you mentioned, it’s tricky staying disciplined and not falling foul to the boredom trade or trading just to be in something.
At the moment I’m not sure how much upside is left, the DOW certainly looks like it could be running into heavy resistance and it feels like the rug could be pulled out from under them at any moment. I don’t want to be caught long with the markets screaming in the other direction.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
And here’s another sure sign that the consumer slowdown is just starting. Gordon Brown has announced new money to purchase unsold new houses for the public sector.
If Brown’s entering a market then it must be turning — this is the man who brought the Brown Bottom to the gold market. If he’s buying housing (with our money, of course) then prices must be at a peak — as I’m sure his Housing Minister can tell him, or he can read her notes in today’s papers.
With the housing market in freefall, consumer spending will dry up. And ther goes 2/3 of our national spending.
Stay short. Having said that, the time to go long on banks might be approaching. Barclays need to recapitalise one way or the other and there’s bound to be some more write offs so scope for another big sell off but that might be it?