I bought equities last night and I’m wondering if I should buy them again today. No, I’ve not been sharing herbal ciggies with Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse; but I’ve noticed that this morning’s barrage of bad news has resulted in FTSE being slightly up on the day and 100 points above last night’s lows.

The Key rule in spread betting is to cut your losses and run your profits. That’s in all the text books, on all the seminar slides and Paul McKenna CDs on how to get stinking rich without working. But my recent trading has cast doubt on these wise words. I’ve been happy to run short bets on the FTSE up to several hundred pounds in the red, then they’ve come good and I’ve made varying degrees of profits. But on the profit-running I’ve come a cropper on several recent bets. I’ve tried to be a good boy and not be tempted by the obvious quick gains; I’ve tried to run the profits, varying my trailing stop from conservative (lock in break even, but leave on the horizon) to active (adjust constantly to run 20 or so points behind the price).

For example, yesterday I made a good call on EURUSD and was up £600 at one point. Normally I’d take half off to lock in a decent gain and edge the rest out as the price improved. But I decided to make some real money on this one and left my stop loss way out in the distance so’s not to interfere. The upshot was that my greedy target frightened the market and the reversal stopped me out for a poxy £250.

The same thing had happened with my FTSE short yesterday; I’d called the move right, but bad (cautious) stop loss management saw me leave the field with enough for a couple of pints.

Last night, the equity markets went apesh*t; there were haunting memories of the Soc Gen turmoil back in January as FTSE plunged after hours. I reckoned it was overdone, but waited for the knives to stop falling before buying FTSE in a fiver. I paid 5440 and left my stop in the distance; at that level I was prepared to be patient and wait for a rally. Bang On, checking the levels at the US close FTSE was back above 5500. I could have taken my profits and thanked the trading gods for a good days work. Instead I brought my stop up to 5470 and backed the correction to go higher.

And that’s what it did this morning, except that first it went back to shake hands with 5450, taking me out at my stop loss for a £150. It’s now at 5530 and looking to go higher. Aaaggghhhhh!!!!!!

The FTSE market’s reaction today has been interesting; OK, UBS and Deutsche Bank came out saying that they didn’t need to raise further capital. But closer to home Marks & Sparks dropped a surprise bombshell that like-for-like sales were down 5.3%. These weren’t just crap results; these were M & S crap results. On top of that Taylor Wimpey said that they’d failed to raise the capital that had been taken for granted. They waved goodbye to their finance director and warned of heavy write downs and a possible rights issue.

On a different day those news items would have led to a collapse in equities; instead they’re merrily reaching for the sky. My problem is that I’m better at jumping on the train just as it’s pulling out of the first station. I’m not so good at getting on mid-journey. Still, the money’s coming in on a regular basis so I’ve no need to force the trade unless I feel comfortable.

A note to Newbies: I was only kidding; no it’s not a good idea to run your losses.

Don’t forget the early ADP employment number from the US at 1.15pm, and the weekly oil supply numbers at 3.30.

Happy Trading