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.
Bailouts Galore
Hi folks,
It looks like the weekend arrived in the nick of time for both me and the equity markets. Me, because I was badly in need of some time away from the screens; and the markets because it allowed politicians to build up their Air Miles and cobble together some more plans for throwing money at the markets. Unsurprisingly, equities are steadier and higher but, for me, it’s all pretty meaningless with much of the US on holiday today.
I reckon it’s pretty pointless making a call on the market today; we’re suffering from news overload, with politicians trying to out-do each other using monopoly money to boost market sentiment. I’m looking to spend a quiet hour or two looking for some facts behind the numerous headlines. Equity markets have predictably rallied, but to me it counts for little with Japan and the US on holiday. I still reckon markets are oversold in the short term, but I felt that most days last week. And last week was the perfect demonstration that markets have no respect for technical indicators when there’s business that needs to be done. In the short term I couldn’t call FTSE within 200 points in either direction.
So, what am I up to today? My priorities are damage limitation on my remaining option positions, and preserving my trading capital. I’m tempering the urge to make some quick, big gains to rectify Friday’s losses and concentrating on a few small bets just to keep my hand in. This morning I used FTSE’s failure to take 4200 as a catalyst to sell £3 at 4180. As the price fell I brought my stop down to guarantee a profit and sold another £3 at 4156. As the move continued I sold a further £3 at 4126,trailing my stop loss on the first two trades down to guard my profits. I missed the turn in sentiment and took a small hit on my last bet, but made around £250 on the earlier trades. For today only, it looks like FTSE’s taking comfort from a 4100-4200 trading range:
Traditionally, this is the key week in the month for UK economic data in the run up to Friday’s FTSE option expiry. Check out the Weekly Wrap for a quick run down of what to look out for, including Ireland’s budget tomorrow and the next US earnings reports building up momentum. I’m not sure how relevant this week’s data will be; given recent events all economic numbers will be viewed as pretty historic, although CPI numbers always attract some attention.
I’m off to gather my thoughts; if I find them, I’m hoping to knock out an article in the next few days on markets and how I’m looking to trade them going forward. But just before I go, I’ll throw this one open for debate. Looking at the chart, is gold a tentative buy here?
Happy Trading
October 13th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Ya think gold might bounce at that level but could also break right through it with the volatility in these markets. As you have said FT, markets are showing no respect for technicals at the moment so wouldn’t be for trading it with any great confidence
October 13th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
It’s clear that Governments have abandoned all fiscal policy and are entirely focussed (possibly correctly) on averting an immediate crisis and putting something in place to stabilise their economies and provide a new platform from which to start moving forward.
But, despite their criticism of the financial services (intended to divert our attention from their own role), they are taking on huge liabilities and off-balance-sheet debts. In the not too distant future, they will turn their attention to dealing with that. The printing presses will roll and dollars, euros and pounds will spill out into the economy in order to deflate the debt away.
Given the appalling state into which Brown’s age of irresponsibility has already put the UK, the pound will be pounded.
So gold will glitter. Trouble is, I haven’t a clue what it will do short term. But looking out to 2009/10 makes me want to keep holding gold. I guess I might be temtped back into a short term position on a drop back below $800, given that there is enough uncertainty around that it’s bound to get a boost from some piece of bad news.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
No! Gold will go to $720 or below in my view - it might be a buy at those levels. I won’t re-iterate my arguments but I think gold has got further to drop for all the reasons I’ve outlined in previous posts. Having a monster day today, short gold, long dow as usual…
October 13th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Any thoughts on the yen. I feel it could further strenthen over the coming weeks and months. I’m long yen against the euro at the moment and hope to let the trade run for a few weeks at least. Traders seem to be running to the yen for cover against these markets, with more volatility in the near future is the yen going to get even stronger?i think so….opinions?
October 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Did anyone catch the 7:30 snapper.
Like clockwork.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
So, pretty impressive stuff.
The markets were drifting lower, the S&P was getting down to 950 and the clock struck half past seven. Lights, camera and let the action begin. 500 points on the DOW, 50 something on the S&P and similar percentages on FTSE, DAX & Nasdaq in the space of an hour and a half.
I made mention of this phenomenon a short while back. It happens too often to be a coincidence. The V in the market is quite astounding and I say totally planned. I know Ken gave my conspiracy theories a bit of stick but this is surely huge manipulation and I’m convinced that there are a lot of big players (read the banks left with any money) who know exactly when this is about to happen. It certainly usually happens after some big market intervention that the respective governments want to make sure is seen to be working.
GP
October 13th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Agree with gazza P there are rumours of a PPT(plunge protetion team) at work and maybe a bit of casual info is leaked - they have been saving their ammo for today - can they push it to the resistance on the DOW - if they do look for another vertical dive
October 14th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Not so sure - I think we could be moving into a reflationary period now. Credit conditions easing a bit, interest rates down… EUR/USD and GBP/USD seems to have reversed direction. Have closed out my gold short. I think we’ve got at least another 10% in this rally. There will also have been a massive amount of short covering going on over the last few days….It’s not going to get any easier…I’m a bit less bullish on the dollar than I have been over the last few weeks.