Archive for March, 2009

No FTSE 100, no Dow, no short and no long. But wait a minute! what about my Call 4000 option for April? I’ve gave my friend permission to manage it. He holds the same position so let him to decide.

I need a vacation! see you in April

The £200 offer is no more valid.

Hi all,

Tradefair offers one year subscription for FT (worth £149) for new accounts. You need to make a £100 deposit which is fair make two trades (not shares) and that’s it. This is a great offer… too bad I have an account with them already…

In one weekend I’ve read one journalist saying that soon we will see the S&P 500 at 500 while other one said we already reached the bottom and the direction is up. Who is right? one of them, that’s for sure. But really when it comes to predict where the market goes or where a share price goes no body knows a thing.

You want an example? voila:

When the oil touched $140 a barrel last summer all the smart people said that soon we will live in a world where a barrel cost $200. In fact most of the analysts where sure that the only way is up. When it crashed and the price was $40, suddenly all the smart people from the city said that soon it will reach $20. In both cases they were wrong and to be honest, most of the time the get them wrong.

I have a friend that says that when analyst tells you to buy it is time to sell and when they tell you to sell it is time to buy. That’s why he bought GE at $5.80 and now it is almost $10.

I was surprised to see on Friday morning at Paddypower homepage that 90% of the opened positions on the FTSE 100 were short. It was obvious for me that after the rally on the Dow on Thursday the direction is up. But this is MY opinion and 90% of the people thought a bit different.

The point is you should decide for yourself. If you think that the FTSE 100 will go up then buy it. Your opinion is not worth less than others. And if you were wrong so at least you can learn from your mistakes.

If you want another example here it is:

Last year I was so busy at work so I didn’t have the time to follow the market. So I thought that giving my hard cash money to a fund manager would be a good idea.

Well it was a difficult year and in less than 4 months they lost me 20%. So one can say it was a difficult year so you can understand why they lost my money. But! they should be professional. They should know how to read the market and how to gain profits when the market is going down. And they don’t. And most of the funds manager don’t know. In the end I took out my money and they sent me a letter saying they are sorry for the lose. Of course they are sorry but it is so easy to lose someone else money.

So I thought enough is enough. I will do it myself. I’ve started to learn a bit and opened an account with spread betting. In no time I’ve lost most of my money that I put into the account. I put £700 and I’ve lost £650. I was depressed and I took it hard. My first thought was to leave it and do something else. But then I took a morning off sat in a nice coffee shop with my notebook and started to think about my trades and why I’ve lost my money.

I came up with 10 reasons why I lost and another 10 rules of what to do and what not to. I put more money into my account and this time I didn’t lose. So I put more money and more money and now I have around 50% profit since October. Compare it with the market it is better. Compare it with any fund and I am still better off doing it myself.

Reading the naked trader gave me a lot of confidence that I can do it myself. In fact I am going to move my pension into sell account and run it myself. I think that only you really care about your money and only you can run it wise. And if you lose the only person you can blame is you. And again no need to blame yourself. Just LEARN from your mistakes and you will do better next time.

Good luck!

Hi all,

I have 2 shares that I bought for March rolling with Paddypower. I thought they are automatically roll over to the next quarter but I was wrong. I’ve called today to their customer services (nice lady by the way) and the explained to me that I need to call on the expiry day and ask to roll over them. This is quite important. When you ask to roll over you will be charged half the spread.

So if you hold shares with Paddypower and want to keep them you must know the date they are going to expire and the time and arrange a roll over before.

and just before submitting this post I’ve got an email from TradeFair stating the same. I think on IG Index it is automatically but it is better to check.